Andrew's ITP blog

This fall I began a long term design collaboration with the band Blue Kid.  My projects with them include everything from creating their album art, to live-projections during performances.

One element we talked about was an interactive animated music video.  Another element we talked about was folding images/moments from that into a flash animation for their website’s landing page.   That is what I’d like to focus on for this assignment.  Taking a small moment, and animating it in flash so that it can be suitable for the web.

Below is a storyboard for the begining of the video for their “Dismemberment Song.”  I am not sure if I want to include this whole first page in the flash animation.  Or just cut to “Blue Kid” walking onto the gears, and standing on them as they rotate.

For Methods of Motion, I have spent the past few weeks working on a stop-motion project.

As mentioned in previous posts, my direction with this assignment was to create a study for my design of an upcoming opera, The Proof.

The goal here was to offer a visual reference for my idea of what could eventually become a fleet of glowing surgical gloves.  I also used this project as a way to work on learning the intricacies of human movement in the hand.

I ran into several frustrating steps along the way, due to issues with iStopMotion.  However, after a 3rd reshoot I was able to get some footage working with the LEDs inside of the hand (without crashing my computer). The movement is not as intricate as it was at previous stages, but it does give a fair sense of where the idea can go.

The video can be viewed on vimeo:

As I mentioned, I am working with the composers “The Bengsons” on their upcoming opera, The Proof.

I decided for this assignment to focus on the most challenging moment of the story for me:  The point in which the husband is diagnosed with a fatal illness.  I chose this moment precisely because it scares me the most.

I knew that I wanted the world, and objects in it, to come to life in this section of the story.  After watching several stop-motion examples last week I started sketching a few images.  The ones that stuck with me was the image of glowing latex gloves.  I decided that I wanted a fleet of them to enter the scene.

Below you will see the story boards I am currently working with, and a super rough rehearsal recording of the track.   I have also begun several demos at creating the glowing hand.  Sadly, I haven’t achieved it yet.  But I made another trip to Compleat Sculptor today.  A women there was extremely helpful, and helped me come up with another method of attack.  I have also reached out to a few friends of mine who work with puppets for their help in crafting the first hand.

My aim is to have at least two working before the shoot.

Two more things with noting: I plan on pixilation as my main approach to this video.   And so the ‘set’ will be a primarily white room.  With projections on the wall, as we shoot.  The other thing is to note that this is not necessarily part of the design that will be in the opera itself.  Rather it is an exercise and experiment with an aesthetic.  The main goal here is how to capture what a moment feels like to the characters, and portray thefeeling visually.

Lift Me Rehearsal

I am currently on the creative team for a new folk-based opera with the working title called “The Proof.”  Right now the rest of the creative team has a residency on the West Coast, which I’ve been watching over a webcam.  But it just isn’t the same.

So for this assignment, I decided to focus on one small segment of the opera, which they have been working on this week as well.  A sequence like this  might not actually be projected in the final performance.  But at the very least, I think it will help us find some of the magic and beauty that can exist here.  And I know it will help my work in finding the right aesthtic for the overal projection design.

The context of the scene is that our protagonists are a young married couple.  The moment before this sequence, the husband has just been diagnosed with a fatal illness.  And is given roughly 6 months until his motor system shuts down.  The goal of this section is to show how his wife views the moment, and to create the sensation of what her response must feel like.

The basic gist of the movement is that she watches as her husband’s clothes (ie identity) falls away away. Off of his body.  At a certain point in the music, she really feels the pain and faints.  His clothes (which come off on their own.) end up under her.  And they lift her up.  So that she hovers momentarily before gravity kicks back in.  At which point she falls back into the chair.

Below is a png showing the progression of movement:

Note: I am just getting back into the habit of sketching.  So please pardon the quality of my drawings here