Intro?

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)

Banging out the dents

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.

Ritual and Context

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 It is pretty rough, so it is an unpublished draft right now.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.

Simple Animations That Evoke Strong Emotion

I thought I would put together a list of animations that evoke an emotion similar to the one I am trying to capture.

https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2014/12/31/yearbook/

https://vimeo.com/4262780

Chased Out with a Broom

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...

Bringing a Character into an Environment

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...

Calculate the DPI of a monitor to make a parallax barrier.
https://www.sven.de/dpi/

Specs of the one of the common ACCAD 24" monitor
http://www.pcworld.com/product/1147344/zr2440w-24-inch-led-lcd-monitor.html


MIT student who made a 24" lenticular 3D monitor.
http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~mhirsch/byo3d/tutorial/lenticular.html

Chased Out of the Store Shot

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.

Rehearsing for Death, Education for Death and Der Störenfried

Rehearsing for Death, Education for Death, and Der Störenfried

One of many examples of Japanese animation that is edited for the west.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co4_WHDp72Y

A few animations that do not seem to support my theory

Das Dumme Gänslein (The Dumb Gosling)

Nazi Cartoon about a goose who wants to focus on herself (Little Red Riding Hood)

Die Verwitterte Melodie 1942 (Weather-beaten Melody)

(I thought this would be like The Grasshopper and the Ant but it was just about playing with no moral)

The "Goose Tracks" swipe indicator

This is from 10/13/15, but I forgot to publish it.
I took a picture of a goose footprint and Photoshoped it into an icon

A quick animation...

.gif

Interactive Goose

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.