Birth Progress

Concept

 

Let me refresh everyone with my concept before we talk about the testing on the walls. Humans have 5 senses, sight, smell, hear, touch, and taste. In this universe, there are many things we cannot see, smell, hear, touch and taste. These things are in another dimension. And since we can’t sense these things, are they really there? Our reality becomes our reality only when we can see and feel them, but if we don’t know or see them, are they really there? With that, I would like to use atoms, which are the smallest particles in the universe and recreate the “Birth of our Universe”. These atoms will eventually become conscious of their own intelligence and will expand into the endless and mysterious universe we live in now. 

 

Cute. Now Let me refresh everyone with my mood board that I created in the beginning of this assignment.

 

 

I positioned these images the way I want to animate my atom particles. I wanted the initial visual to be all black (the nothingness). And suddenly there is something which pops out in the centre (the Big Bang). In the beginning, it was a colourful blip but I adjusted it to be a black blob with gradient graphics surrounding it, inspired by the cover of one of my favourite books by Stephen Hawking, Brief Answers to the Big Questions. 

I tried to recreate it but have to contrast it with the black background instead of the white, which after tasting, turns out to be too bright. Let’s get back to the mood board. After the “birth” we will have many many more blogs come out of the original blog which signify the birth of the universe. These atom particles will then gain consciousness and start recreating and moving. Upon completion of the 1st minute, I really want the whole screen to be filled with moving atoms. After that, the blobs will start to merge, get better and go out of the screen. Slowly, they will become lighter and lighter and at the end of this visual, we will have a very faded blurry colouring.

 

AFTER EFFECT

 

I am creating this visual piece with after effect, I will be able to control the movements of everything easier. I separated my visual piece into different layer to animate:

1. Background

        2. Noise (Gradient)

                                                                                                             3. Atoms

              – The Atom colors

                  – The Atom animations

There are a lot of things to animate, I was straggling in the beginning to animate everything at once, then after I separated them into these layers, the animation became a lot easier. Let’s take a lot at the drafts for this visual.

For this first draft, I just wanted to test the colors. I wanted to see what shade is too bright, and how big my blobs should be. I knew I did not have to animate much. From this draft, I realised that white is too white and it will be too bright for the wall. Objects movements were fine, it wasn’t too fast. Here is the video of my first draft.

Now that the first draft is completed, I know I can start animating for real. Since I knew what and how I wanted my story to flow, I needed a beautiful background music to go along with this piece. The first draft music was just a 15 minute search online, but this sound is extremely important so I looked around a lot longer. I came across the PERFECT sound which tells similar story and give similar vibe to my visual. The sound is Cassette by Efence:

I was super stoked to find this sound and thank you to Efence for creating this wonderful sound. So now that I have the perfect sound, to go with my visuals. It is time to work on my second test. Another thing I learned from looking at the first test was that the background was a little flat. I wanted the minimal look, but I thought having a little noise and texture in the initial state of the visual would make my work look really interesting too. So I worked on the noise in the beginning of this test. After that, I worked on the blobs.

This testing was a lot better than the first test, the colors are much more controlled. However, I realised that some parts became really dark. Another weird thing I discovered was yellow on my screen = brown on the wall. I had to adjust that for my next test. Apart from that, I wanted the noise to last a little longer than how much is it lasting currently. The blobs movements looked a little uncomfortable to the eyes because of the sudden movement. Here is the link to watch the second testing.

This scene from the Doctor Strange movie is my reference for the noise (smoke) effect.

Up till today (11 March 2019), this will be my 3rd test on the wall, I wanted it to look as close as my final as possible because we are half way through this semester. So I tried to finish as much as I could. 

As mentioned, once hit 1 minute, the whole screen is suppose to be filled with blobs of atoms. Will continue to work on it as we progress through this semester. The noise is a lot longer and a lot more obvious as compared to the earlier version. The blobs are not colorful, it just makes you feel happy and excited to look at them. Here is the video to this version.