Digital Representation: Timebased Media

Part 01: Animation experimentsPart 02: A Pneu Story

Anam Afroze Hasan106331514

Tutors: George Thompson and Lukas Schrank

Part 01 Animation TestsThe Shining Chronogram I chose this scene because it emphasises a moment of spatial disorientation that

exists in Dick Hallorann’s mind. He was always being lured back to the hotel because of his supernatural connection with it.

The scene shows Dick Hallorann sitting on his bed in Miami where he is listen-ing to a weather report, which highlights the severe weather in Colorado. The camera then pans in on his face as he begins to experience a moment of spatial disorientation and sees that room 237 is open at the Overlook Hotel. Palpitating, piercing music plays as his face turns to shock.

1.Camera pans out from the TV set at the level of a man’s feet on the bed. 2. Camera pans out again from Dick’s face to show him lying on the bed in a room listening to the weather news. 3. Camera is fixed on the TV. 4. Camera pans from a closer distance onto Dick’s face as he sits in shock from a premonition.

Part 01 Animation TestsThe Puppet Master

The puppet master represents the scene I had cho-sen from The Shining through the use of stop mo-tion, by using digital imagery. I wanted to capture the notion of Mr. Hallorann becoming a puppet, akin to an inanimate being brought to life by his pup-pet master the ‘hotel’ itself. Dick represents the puppet and the picture above his bed is represen-tational of the lure and hold of the hotel over Dick. The scene ends with the puppet releasing him-self from the puppet master by cutting his strings.

A rough sketch of the pup-pet master scene.

The puppet master sequence stills.

Part 01 Animation TestsStop Motion Test 2: Inanimate Being

I have always been fascinated by how non-living objects in the worlds can appear to portray a feeling or an emo-tion that would be present in a human or animal when they are animated. I think it’s interesting to be able to feel for something nonliving. This short animation shows a quarrel between a bulldog clip and a magnifying glass stand, the stand responds by pushing the bulldog to the point where it climbs on top of the magnifying rim, only to be pulled off by the magnifying stand’s claws.

Part 01 Animation TestsStop Motion Test 2: Inanimate Beings

‘The Bulldog and Mag story’

Still from the stop animation overlaid.

Part 01 Animation Tests2.5D test in After Effects: The Inanimate Animated

I decided to take my initial stop motion test and place the frames in After Effects with a new background and lighting. I realised whilst initially taking the frames into After Effects that I would need to crop out the background from each of the frames.. So I decided to take 40 frames from the animation and Photoshop the background out, this proved quite laborious , and for future reference a green screen which would be keyed out in After affects would be more ideal.

Inanimate animated sequence stills.

Part 01 Animation Tests2D Tracking Test: Constructors

This 2D tracking experiment was done by using filmed footage of a busy street in Cricklewood and then over-laying filmed footage from a computer screen of a con-structor, which is an object that consists of lines and dots and can be manipulated to walk, float etc. The camera tracks the movement of the spiders on the road.

Footage of spider filmed from sodaplay.com

Still from 2D tracking animation.

Part 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02Cinema 4D rendering test (unrelated)

Gum ball modelling and render test in C4D

Attractor test with Sketch and toon in C4D

I began to do some experiments in Cinema 4D to try and get to grips with 3d modelling, render-ing and animating. The animation test I did used an emitter, a solid sphere as a rigid body (turned transparent) and sketch and toon as the material.

Part 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02Animating in Cinema 4D

In this experiment I tried to animate solar balloons ris-ing , which was based on my design project. I also tried to animate the movement of cloth as the solar balloons rose, unfortunately by using the emitter function I was duplicating the cloth rather than causing it to rise at certain points.

Part 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02Stop Motion: Still from a Grasshopper animation

I tried to save stills from my Grasshopper experiments in design, then I took them into Photoshop and finally I overlaid the balloon landscape on a test animation of the burning man desert. This entire process showed the in-flation of the solar balloons as they use the sun to self inflate and rise.

This scene showed the initial rising of the solar balloons. The backdrop shows the movement of the clouds subtly moving across the sky to reveal the sun. The stop motion animation of the sky is reversed for the deflation scene. Spline dynamics in Cinema 4D

- Cables for solar balloons

Part 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02Cinema 4D animation tests and stop motion test combinedIn After Effects

Inflation and deflation experiments in C4D-anima-tion stills

Part 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02Cinema 4D animation tests, composite in After Effects

Spline dynamic test in Cinema 4D with particle emitter test to repre-sent cables and cloud movement. This scene shows the movement of the cables in the sky as the balloons are moving with the sun path.

Stills from cloud movement animation .

Part 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02Fabric test in Cinema 4D and Grasshopper

I wanted to simulate the fabric that would be de-ployed as the solar balloons rose into the sky. I ini-tially tried to take stills from the grasshopper ex-periments I worked on in design. I then went on to testing the simulation of fabric in Cinema 4D. .

C4D fabric test below. Above: Stills from composited animation of fabric with sky. Below right: Stills from grasshopper anima-tion of a deployable membrane.

Undulating fabric moves with the balloon movement above. This scene still requires shad-ows from the balloons above and more clearer outlines of the cables moving in the wind. .

Part 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02Cinema 4D rendering testPart 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02Cinema 4D waves and bouncing pneus test

I wanted to test materials and simulating waves and water in Cinema 4d. This experiment would help in capturing the scenes where the pneus rise from the ocean and come to land to form the solar balloon land-scape. I used XPresso to simulate the objects on the wa-ter which are the pneus bouncing along and coming to shore. The wave was created from a plane, which was turned into a hyper nurb then a displacer was added to the plane to affect the strength and height of the waves.

Controlling the objects on the water by the plane movement in XPresso.

Animation stills from separate render tests in C4D

Part 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02Under water environment and landscape tests in C4D

The following experiments were trying to simulate the context of Burning Man Festival, which is based in the Nevada Desert. The first experiment was using an envi-ronment layer on a landscape layer in cinema 4D, the af-fect produced an under water scene. I also wanted to play with dappled light passing through the water, so I posi-tioned a cylinder with a cloner and animated its move-ment. A light source was positioned above the cylinders to create the feeling of light passing through water. For the desert landscape I took away the environment and played with the height and parameters of the landscape layer.

Cylinders positioned above the landscape with a light source above to create the effect of dappled lighting in the water.

Camera pans from the depth of the ocean floor to the sur-face. (Stills from animation)

Part 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02Desert and water tests in C4D

The following images are stills from a Cinema 4D ani-mation I created using the landscape and water I had developed from previous experiments. The scene shows the pneus that came from the ocean ascending to the sur-face and coming to shore. I hope to use a similar sequence for the pneus coming to land for the final animation.

Part 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02Cinema 4D Pneus of the 3rd order- Clumping together

For the pneus that form in the water into larger bodies I experimented with metaballs and animating each of them fusing together into a larger form. Point anima-tion was used for this process and each spheres move-ment was key framed until they all connected.

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Part 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02Cinema 4D test: Pneus of the 1st and 2nd orders

For the first order pneus I scaled , moved and rotated each sphere, icosahedron and cube during the ani-mation, to represent the initial growth of the first pneus coming into exist-ence. The material I used was downloaded from C4D textures and the texture layer helped in deforming the regular forms into mi-cro-organisms.

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Part 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02Cinema 4D: Deflation tests

I carried out a few more inflation/deflation experiments, as the first attempt was interesting but the deflation was not immediate, I achieved balloons that resembled liquid. This second attempt uses the same method of a soft body and rigid body simulation tag but with adjustments to the stiffness and other parameters. I also experiment-ed with different forms to create more diversity in the scene of the film where the solar balloons rise and fall.

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Part 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02Cinema 4D: Metaballs- fluctuating balloons

For the scene where the balloons are moving in the sky and falling and rising I wanted to use metaballs in C4D to simulate this movement. The stills show the changes in the form as I move the position of a point on a spline and animate it.

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Part 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02Cinema 4D: Pneus on land moving and joining together

The following stills show how the pneus would move in the scene where they are coming to shore. I used metaballs and spline point animation to show the movement of the pneus and their eventual transition into solar balloons.

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Part 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02 Physical model tests

I did several tests with physical models and tried to in-corporate them into the movie, but in the end I felt that merging the digital with the models I had created did not seem to work cohesively. I created a site model from paper and saw dust to cap-ture the Burning Man site. And a vacuum form from a 3d printed computer model from Grasshopper which rep-resented the solar balloon landscape.

Still from fabric blowing in the wind. I hoped to overlay this on some of the digital animation I was doing, but in the end I decided not to as it seemed like the digital anima-tion worked better without it.

Vacuum formed stages of in-flation.

Part 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02Cinema 4D and After Effects test- Deleted scene

This scene showed the solar balloon landscape rising up from the perspective of a solar balloon, however some of the angles of the camera extended quite far out and it was quite a choppy piece of footage.

Part 02 A Pneu StoryInitial storyboard

Time lapse of a dynamic pneumatic landscape rising from the dusty, scorched desert floor. An autonomous membrane gains buoyancy with every ounce of radiation it absorbs onto its black shiny skin. The heat is retained within the membranes double shell, stimulating its crinkled form into an inflated thirsty giant, that floats breezily into the upper echelons of the atmos-phere. As the day progresses the membrane peaks and falls continuously to the sun’s amuse-ment, this reveals a hidden netted membrane beneath which contains the animated beings of this planet, that dance merrily on the undulating and ever changing solar balloon bed. As the night sky begins to pass over this baked landscape, the clouds melt away slowly into the cold desert floor like sleeping giants, ready to be awoken once again the following day.

Joyful music like bouncy, pinging sounds as solar balloons dance.

Crinkled membrane expanding, use 4d cinema to simulate this expansion.

Mini model of the undulating net membrane, and blow air on it to create movement. Create mini peo-ple that are hand drawn dancing on the membrane, lying in it and waling underneath it. (Background music card rippling sound or wind howling)

Hand drawn desert sky changing over time, possi-bly using the tablet to paint it in.

People’s laughter and joyfulness heard as they enjoy the rhythmic movement of the solar bed.

Solar balloon form modelled in grasshopper/3d and animated in 4d cinema. Shrinking of membrane re-versed from inflated model.

Burning man playa(Nevada Desert)

Part 02 A Pneu StorySecond stage of story Board

This second storyboard builds on the initial storyboard, but omits the people in the scenes. It seemed more ex-periential if the camera took the position of the inhab-iters and described their journey through the spaces.

Part 01 Animation Tests and Experimentation for Part 02Initial scene test of animation

Burning clouds begins with a view from the clouds and gradually lowers to the desert floor. Wisps of cloudsPass by as the desert floor approaches and an autono-mous landscape begins to bubble up from the cracked, dusty floor. A cloudy white floor emerges from the base and a billowing fabric above that begins to gain height as the black balloons rise. The black pneumat-ic membranes begin to rise and bubble as they become exposed to the sunlight. The camera zooms into the black marble inflated forms on the desert. A deflated landscape appears in elevation, the landscape gradu-ally bounces and rises to reach its full height. Cables restrain the structure to the deployed fabric, and the fabric echoes the movement of the burning clouds.

Part 02 A Pneu StoryFinal Story Board

The pneu story begins not with the burning clouds but with their origins.The biological pneu began life in the deepest depths of the ocean floor, it is here where the story begins and the camera pans up from the sandy bottom of the ocean to reveal a small mass expanding and growing.

The pneus travel the length of the desert floor then join with others to form larger forms. Burning clouds begin to form on the desert floor, the pneumatic struc-tures on the ground gorge on the sunlight and enlarge their membranes with air. They inflate and fluctuate throughout the day and at night they rest and de-flate into the ground. The story ends with The structure flying away into the clouds.

Part 02 A Pneu StoryStory Board

The pneu then joins other pneus like structures and they become a family, evolving into a larger structure that eventually leaps out of the ocean. The pneus bob happily along the surface of the water ready to grow further on land.

Part 02 A Pneu StoryChronogram