It occurred to me that the shot where he gets kicked out of the store, would work much better it it were a butcher shop. So I am looking for images, and locations.
The red and white awning is iconic
I like the checkered floor and the font
I might be able to get away with adding a sign, and changing the stuff in the window (the interior is was all done in Maya anyway, so it wouldn't be that hard).
I like the idea of meat hanging in the window that is not visible from Tuba-Goose's approach, but visible to the audience
Signs
Maybe a close up of the door as it closes behind him with the words "Deli and Butcher Shop"
I might take a video inside a butcher shop for reference or to use as a texture
"The anti-fairy tale has long existed as a shadow of the traditional fairy tale genre. First categorized as the ‘antimärchen’ in Andre Jolles’ seminal Einfache Formen (c.1930), the anti-tale was found to be contemporaneous with even the oldest known examples of fairy tale collections. Rarely an outward opposition to the traditional form itself, the anti-tale takes aspects of the fairy tale genre and re-imagines, subverts, inverts, deconstructs or satirizes elements of them to present an alternate narrative interpretation, outcome or morality. Red Riding Hood may elope with the wolf. Or Bluebeard’s wife is not interested in his secret chamber. Snow White’s stepmother gives her own account of events and Cinderella does not exactly find the prince charming." http://www.sussexfolktalecentre.org/2010/06/30/anti-tales-the-uses-of-disenchantment-symposium/ 22 essays on the use of disenchantment http://www.academia.edu/2574146/Anti_Tales_The_Uses_of_Disenchantment
Once upon a time there was probably a goose
there were probably lots of geese,
and this goose was no exception
but he didn't know that,
because he was just a goose
A human thing was around,
and that's what he thought he would be,
because there was no one said who said that he couldn't
So he did, or he tried, and he left geese behind
to show people a goose with a tuba*
(it was actually a sousaphone, but geese don't know that)
I am trying to hammer out the little issues that have kept me from declaring my shot "ready for review", before the presentation. A few shots that I had deemed "almost ready for render" are giving me problems with what I thought were minor issues, but will be ready for direction and conceptual analysis.
I have been working on writing something that ties the ritual of bedtime stories, the role of tragic stories (heroes on failure in particular), the self esteem movement, and how it relates to what I am doing. It is pretty rough, so it is an unpublished draft right now.
The writing this semester has been very rough.
The reflections are a bit tricky. I want the tuba to reflect the environment, but not the windows... But I want the windows to reflect the tuba, with the environment...
I have a lot of render layers to deal with this problem...
I used a separate mesh for the fabric collision and it appears to be blocking the shadow of the words on the ground except in the places where the ground is higher than the bounce plane...
I have been working on developing an interface to bring my character into a physical environment for 5194. I was hoping I could use the result to provoke a genuine response from an unscripted audience for the final shot in my Tuba-goose project. I hoped I could build something with the lenses I have, order a custom lens (they are only $12 a foot + the price to cut), or create a parallax barrier. Unfortunately, creating a high quality lens does not seem possible with the materials I have (2 of the sample packs of 8" X 10" lenses Microlens sends with bulk orders of 50+ lenses), and a parallax barrier blocks light exponentially based on the number of viewing angles (2 views blocks 50%, 3 blocks 66%... 10 views blocks 90%).
I am going to try a patch that blends pixels to fix the problem with the lines on the screen not lining up with the lenses (it basically blends interlaces to make a non integral number of pixels with the lines per inch of the lens).
Worse case scenatio... A ready to go lenticular monitor is $500, the lens designed to work with a 23" monitor is $200, and a 23 inch monitor with a pixel pitch of .270 mm is about $130.
Links I have found useful are...
I went out to the location and compared the model with the physical location. I was having trouble getting the model to match the location because the corner of the building was not 90 degrees.
I have finished the mask and I am working on the words.
Photos will follow.
I have been spending a lot of time working on an augmented reality display that I hope to use with either a parallax barrier or a lenticular lense LCD. The project is for Experiential Media, but he wanted our work to relate to our thesis. I was hoping to this patch and display (or something like it) to provoke reactions out of people for the "Magician Style Editing" shot I still plan to use to create the climax and resolution scenes. I was testing Lenticular Lenses A pre-made screen is $500, and the lens mounted to class is $200. The lenses are $6 a sq foot without the glass, so I am going to try creating my own monitor from a 31 LPI lens (which I do not have, but my research suggests it is the best match for the pixel pitch of the available monitors). I was going to try to index match the lens to the glass with some oil instead of adhesive, so I could correct the interference distortion caused by micro misalignment during registration. If that doesn't work I could create a parallax barrier, but that would throw away 50% of the light for 2 images, 66% for 3, and 90% for 10. I hoped to use 9 images, so that would be a serious reduction in the brightness. Below are some images from the patch with some videos from the process.
Interactive Augmented Reality Display for ACAD 5194/Experiential Media
Operator Interface
(used to calibrate the virtual environment with the physical)
Video of the Working Patch
0:00 - 0:01 changing the relative angle
0:01 - 0:04 changing the relative x position
0:04 - 0:09 changing the XYZ rotation
0:09 - 0:20 adjusting the width and distance between the interlaced lines
0:20 - 0:30 adjusting the scale and XYZ YPR of backdrop 1
0:30 - 0:50 adjusting the scale and XYZ YPR of backdrop 2
0:50 - 0:60 adjusting the scale and XYZ YPR of the model
First Tests of the Lenticular Lens
(the resolution is bad because the only lens I had that would match the pixel pitch of the available monitors was 10 LPI)
I am a Kinect to get the Audience Information for Interactivity
The resolution is terrible because the only I have gotten to work is broadcasting an 80X60 image. But, the depth information is there, so I have managed to get it to work with a great deal of processing.
The Processing Process
I created an actor that changes the luminescence to color, and used another actor to create an outline around the colors so the Eyes++ actor could identify different object, even if they are touching, as long as they are at different depths.
I shot some footage for the store scene. I wanted it to be on a corner because 2 of my 3 shots are flat, which is OK in a book, but a pretty boring animation.
I am building a 3D environment and matching it to the scene now.
When Andy Warhol created "Brillo Boxes" he was making a satirical statement. By using techniques that required a mastery of printmaking, the time, and the effort of a hand crafted work of art to make something that was indistinguishable from a stack of common Brillo Pads boxes, Warhol challenged definitions and made an argument about the social qualifications for good art. The comment, though clever when Warhol made it, would not be accepted in the same form again. The Heroes' Journey has been mapped, structured into formula, and it continues to emerge. There are fundamental differences between the anti-fairy-tale I am trying to tell and The Heroes' Journey. When I signed up for the class, I hoped I would find an corresponding pattern for ironic children's stories, and recreate the circumstances that lead George Lucas to the creation of Star Wars. Mythologist and philosopher Leszek Kołakowski was of the belief that myth could not be consciously created because the knowledge of its profane origins would undermine the conditional perception as aethereal. The analogous elements I am coming to determine are between the hubris in an attempt to reproduce a phenomenon instead of culturing an original, and the inherent flaw in consciously constructing your own god.
I think an approach that would be more conducive to successful creation in my situation would be the study myth as a frame of reference rather than a recipe. For my final paper in Myth and Religion, I am going to try to find research studies on Volksgemeinschaft and the self esteem movement to contrast and compare as functional mythologies in the sense that both are social constructs that impart the culture's instruction onto its participants about "what is and is not a value" (Kolakowski 25).
Jean Piaget's Genetic Epistemology study played a big part in child psychology around the middle of the 20th century as a foundation for understanding the development of knowledge in children... Not sure how this relates yet, but his ideas influenced just about every aspect of child psychology, and I should be able to talk about if it comes up.
I thought this book might be beneficial in the construction of a dialogue.
"There is a need for general theoretical
principles describing/explaining effective design -- those which demonstrate
"unity" and enhance comprehension and usability. Theories of cohesion
from linguistics and of comprehension in psychology are likely sources of such
general principles. Unfortunately, linguistic approaches to discourse unity
have focused exclusively on semantic elements such as synonymy or anaphora, and
have ignored other linguistic elements such as syntactic parallelism and
phonological alliteration. They have also overlooked the non-linguistic
elements -- visual factors such as typography or color, and auditory components
such as pitch or duration. In addition, linguistic approaches have met with
criticism because they have failed to explain the relationship between semantic
cohesive elements and coherence. On the other hand, psychological approaches to
discourse comprehension have considered the impact of a wider range of
discourse elements -- typographical cuing of key terms to enhance comprehension
-- but have failed to provide general theoretical explanations for such
observations.This volume uses Gestalt theory to provide
general principles for predicting one aspect of coherence -- that of continuity
-- across the entire range of discourse elements, and also to outline the
relationship between cohesion and coherence. The theoretical core of this book
argues that thecognitive
principles that explain why humans "sense" unity in a succession of
sounds (a whole musical piece) or in a configuration of visual shapes (a
complete object) are the basis of principles which explain why we
"sense" unity in oral, written, and electronically produced
documents."
Coherence, Continuity, and Cohesion: Theoretical Foundations for
Document Design. Hillsdale, N.J: L. Earlbaum Associates, 1995. Print.
I am reminded of the end ofPerfume...
Maybe if I could understand the theories behind semantic perception and
alliteration, I wouldn't have to make sense or know what I was talking
about...
Or maybe I could write a narrative that complimented and supported my story...
Or figure the knowing of all the sense making talking them what does the runnings of this university place are all about...
This has nothing to do with the animation I am working on, I was trying what I learned from n cloths with a different model and different attributes...
There is a bit of a problem with the technique I am using...
You have to erase history and apply texture before you transform (see above), but I want the first frame and the last to be a perfect projection... What I have been doing is putting the polygons in the initial position, applying the texture, and then creating the fabric deformer. The problem I am having is, the exact position of the last frame is unknown until the deformer does it's thing...
Maybe if I take the last frame, delete history, and create a blend shape to a shape with the polys in the right spot...
There are a number of different ways to apply texture to an object. I have only used a couple, and never a 2 sided texture. I also have little experience with cloth deformers...
First test... The cloth is a little bouncy. I am using gravity to turn the page, and the camera was a perspective, rather than orthographic... There is an odd distortion in the texture as the page turns, so I am looking up ways to apply UV maps, and switching to an orthographic camera. Next I will apply the 2nd sided texture.
I am trying to make a realistic brick wall, but the bump map is off. It might be a glitch, because some of the images I alter in Gimp do not work at all.
If the character is walking left (returning from a right facing action), the text following the character would have to go in the other direction. This action reversal is unlike a book, so I am looking into ways to compensate, without crossing the line of action.
This shot works, the text is in the background on the wall, so the wall needs to be photo realistic.
But it came out a bit off... The guy I was shooting fidgeted a lot and seems to have a bit of a stress condition (speaking as someone who has been working on one for a few years)... I gave him some cash, and he didn't seem to mind being filmed (I told him I was going to be shooting on this street, and he didn't have to move or anything), but his role in the footage is different from what I intended.
On the one hand, I wanted the video to have emotionally heavy elements, on the other I feel like it might be inappropriate... Maybe if I showed him what I am doing and i was sure he really understood...
These are test shots, so the background is just a low resolution representation, the tuba is missing the ring around the lip, the connector ring is not beveled, the shadows are a bit low resolution, and there are a few details on the tuba that are missing to speed up render time.
I didn't realize that the goose would need to be going the other direction for this shot to swipe right until after I rendered the first test shot, so I reversed the text. I mirror a lot to compensate for the side the tuba is on, so I think it will pass.
It's kind of hard to see, but there is a flying V of text that says "Regular Goose"
Neither texts read well... So, I guess what I got out of this is:
1. To preserve the line of action and the swipe direction, I should use text following the goose to go left and text on the background to go right...
2. Pick a more readable font for graffiti and a flatter surface for reflection text...
Stuff to build on or a way someone might use my research???
when I find a scene that is final, I will go out with a light probe and make an environment sphere, but if you just want to make test shots, and the environment sphere is really important because your object is highly reflective; this saves the time of going out to shoot an environment sphere for each test shot.
I have played around with light painting, and I have some Blinky-tape. It is a beautiful effect, but it it can only be done at night, and it requires a long exposure, so animation cannot be done live, only in stop motion.
