We were asked to present about a festival, conference, or competition of our choosing in order to determine which one we'd like to enter our final project into at the end of the semester. I chose Pictoplasma.
Pictoplasma is the world's leading festival that celebrates contemporary character design. It started as an annual festival in Berlin, but has now expanded to happening every year in Paris and New York along with Berlin, as well as a "tour," which travels across various cities in Europe.
The festivals consist of one week full of screenings, artist presentations, workshops, installations, and crazy parties. All types of media are accepted, including animation, narration, music visuals, experimental work, and motion graphics. The only real requirement is a focus on character. Here is a video with work that has been previously shown at Pictoplasma:
Neat, huh? The good thing about this festival is that it accepts a wide range of entries, and you have several chances to get your entry into a festival. Another great aspect of entering in Pictoplasma is that there is no submission fee. The deadline for 2012 festivals is February 1st, 2012. The Berlin festival takes place in April (I was there!), the NYC festival in November, and Paris in December.
More information and pretty pictures can be found here.
Project complete! It's been a while since my last post, which was all about the concepts for our projection mapping/augmented reality project. It's been a long road, but I am overall happy with the result, which you can see in a video below:
Above is our video, stitched together, where you can see all three parts. In the actual space, though, there are three separate videos playing on three separate walls, like this:
The program we used to project the videos is called VPT. It can be used to play multiple videos at the same time, and can skew and stretch the videos to fit on surfaces that aren't flat.
This is the interface for VPT. The program worked for our project, but barely so. It was hard to control, confusing, and very fickle about which videos it would play. For example, some video codecs worked better than others, and if we tried to play a video of any sort of significant quality it would drop the frame-rate to below 10 fps. At first we were using Mike's computer to run VPT, but we discovered that a faster computer could handle higher quality videos, so we ended up using Oscar's newly built (and much more powerful) desktop.
To get to this point, however, we had a long road. There are always elements of trial and error in every project, but in Tagline we experienced it more than usual. Almost every facet of the project was redone more than once. For example, we wanted the silhouettes of ourselves to look like this:
To get this effect, we recorded ourselves in front of a green screen, with the intent of keying out the background later. The first attempt didn't turn out too well.
Not the best. Obviously, we needed to record again. We got Glen to help us with the lighting of the screen, which was great. The silhouettes turned out much cleaner, as you can see in our final videos.
As you can see, it's much better. Instead of just recording in front of a screen, we used the physical lighting to make a silhouette and recorded that. It was much easier to key that way.
Another part of the project that went through many iterations was the wall-break. Near the end of our video, the "guardian" of the space breaks through the wall and attacks Oscar. The first attempt we had for this lacked depth and failed to realistically depict the wall breaking, even somewhat.
We decided to entirely revamp this, and, as you can see in our final video, it turned out much better.
Above is a frame from the final render of the wall breaking. There is more depth, better lighting, and it is overall more realistic and immersive.
The monster we used in our project went through several iterations as well. Here is the original concept sketch, done by Mike.
Below is a rough draft we showed on Thursday, before the project was due.
We decided to change the color of the monster, as it didn't fit in the environment as well as we'd hoped. We considered changing the electricity, but decided to keep it, as it was visually appealing and added a certain dynamic energy to the overall composition. Below is the final monster.
We were happy with how the monster turned out. The lighting and texturing were greatly improved on the final monster, and I think that it worked well.
Overall, I think that this project turned out well. I was pleased with the way that our narrative and video fit with our space. The urban theme and adventurous feel was what we were going for from the beginning, and I think that we succeeded in our goal. When people went to our space and experienced the project, they were entertained and had a fun time "spraying" the monster. One person said that he felt like he was "in a Disneyland ride," which was exactly what we were going for. By only playing the video at certain times, limiting the audience each time, and providing props, we built anticipation for the project and made it feel more like a ride or event, something immersive that you could experience with friends.
The fact that our group "performed" the piece helped with the concept of "augmented reality." We went from a real environment where we talked and interacted with the crowd to the screen, bringing our conversation to the space where we were projecting. The fact that we included the audience in the event also helped, and most people would pretend to spray the walls and monster when the voice onscreen instructed them to.
If we were to extend this project further into the future, I think that we would work more with the projection techniques. VPT wasn't an ideal program to use, and the quality of the videos, and therefore immersion, suffered. Also, I would want to flesh out the "monster" part of the project more, maybe including an extended fight scene or more audience interaction.
As for what each team member did, the answers are as follows: Oscar modeled, textured, and animated the monster, as well as creating the wall break. Mike was in charge of the VPT side of things, as well as researching and helping with all other aspects of the project, including the wall break, the spray from the can, and the graffiti on the wall. I was in charge of compositing everything together in AfterEffects, which consisted of keying the blue-screen videos, making smoke, creating the background, timing, audio, and rendering. It was a great group effort, and we all worked hard to achieve our goal.
I am pleased with the success of this project, and I hope to work more with projection mapping and augmented reality in the future. It's a great way to make projects on a grander scale, both physically and and in the amount of exposure you get. Most people are very receptive to projects such as this, which makes them perfect for introducing and showcasing visualization techniques to the public.
I started researching different styles for our projection mapping project. Right now, our story is that there are a few kids spray-painting a wall, and as they are doing so the "guardian" of the wall, a giant monster, breaks through and starts causing chaos and just generally wrecking the place. The feel is sort of like a Disney interactive adventure ride, with the viewer taking the place of another mischievous kid.
Our space is in the emergency exit stairwell of Langford, which is generally abandoned, gritty, littered, and a perfect place for our story, which was inspired by this sort of urban, underground feel.
The projector would sit on top of the stairs (sort of where the viewpoint is in the picture above), and project onto the three walls ahead. The viewing space is on the second floor landing.
Above is a view of the landing where the people would stand.
The space also extends up four stories, giving it a vast, empty, and abandoned feeling. The large space also works well for sound, as it echoes.
I researched the general look and feel of the project, as well as the kids, which will be shadows or silhouettes. The lighting of the project will be low key, with highlights and high contrast a priority. Below are some examples
The style we're going for is evident in those pictures. It's a film-noir-meets-graffiti kind of feel. Here are a few videos that show the silhouette/shadow style.
The reference for the latter is around 18 seconds in.
Anyway, we have the basic concepts and look down. We just need to finish out the narrative, get the timing down, and start working.
