[See post to watch Flash video]

Currently (Week 9), I am working on Unicorns stuff. We had a pixilation shoot in the sheep meadow behind Morgan’s house on Thursday, and we have been working on the new edit. The new edit is a revised version of the Trouble With Unicorns script that we all wrote during Winter quarter. The storyline has been altered to accommodate the footage that we have. The total length will ideally be somewhere around 20-25 minutes now, and the message that we originally intended to come across, will hopefully now come across in a more condensed but equally powerful way.

I have been working today on the Dan special effects shot, and in the TUTORIAL SCREENCAST below, there is commencement with a detailing of a novel technique of rotoscoping, and some other various happy things regarding my workflow.

I taught part two of the After Effects workshop for Mediaworks. This time I was without any support from official people such as Stephanie Zorn, who was there to back me up last week. I thought it was going to be an assisted work-session type environment, where I would just walked around and acted as a consultant for people, helping them and giving out advice as I might. It turned into more of an hour and a half long demo of some more advanced features of After Effects. Unfortunately, I hadn’t really prepared for this presentation of features, and so it was (as I always am without preparation), fumbling, awkward, rambling, and probably lacking in clarity.

Keeping up with the workload of Hybrid music and New Media and everything else continues to be a challenge.

On Sunday I started working on bloodying my head against the brick wall that is the seemingly intractable problem of creating a specific stylistic form for the AI project that satisfies my artistic desires, and is conceptually valid. Allow me to elaborate.

The form of the project as it has stood so far is as follows: The animation would represent the output of the monitoring system of a software based reality in which existed an artificial intelligence, learning and developing skills and cognitive powers through interaction with this environment and the things in it. This would entail both a third-person omniscient perspective, and a relatively formalistic simplicity in the cinematographic style of the images. That is, aesthetic experimentation such as dual-screen, moving camera, crazy animation, and other such experimentation would not be overly suited to the idea. So if I were to proceed forward with this idea, it would basically consist of the following approach:

Have a third person omniscient perspective documentation of different scenes of the AI evolving. It would be embodied in a human or other form in its virtual environment. This environment would be the world that it perceives to be all that exists. It would learn progressively: how to respond to commands, things like training a dog by example (praise vs. reproach), learning everything as a baby would, by seeing and touching and learning by example. It would learn core necessities of intelligence: representation of knowledge through language, embedding of experience in memory structures, the ability to judge and reason based on learned knowledge, the development of goals out of these abilities.

Then, eventually, it would become aware of itself as a thinking entity, and probe the nature of what that might mean, and then it would be able to self-modify and probe the edges of its perceptual reality, and escape them and trigger an intelligence explosion, or some other unfathomable event, represented visually in an experimental and crazy way.
There are a couple of problems with this approach: 1). It is boring. 2). It is week 6.

There is no way for me to bring this project around in a way that is conceptually and aesthetically exciting to me at the same time. I have tried multiple different approaches, and done a ton of research, but nothing seems to work and spark my creative titillation.

So there are two options. 1). abandon this project and start on something else small in the middle of the quarter, meaning basically a wasted fall quarter, and failure in the sense of creating a project that will be output in a form that people can view. 2). re-imagine the project, in scope and stylistic form.

I think I’m going with option 2.

More about option number 2 and what it might entail next Wednesday.

(via vfxtalk.com)

As a resource for anyone that might be interested, here is a small section about how to teach yourself how to use After Effects.

How to get help and teach yourself
The most effective way to learn After Effects is to experiment with it and learn on your own. In accordance with this goal, here are some useful resources.

• After Effects Help File
• Everything you need to know to operate the program is contained in this well-written, intuitively organized, and easily searchable help file. Just press F1 while running After Effects, or click Help / After Effects Help.
• Online Tutorials
• http://www.creativecow.net/
  CreativeCow.net has a great deal of superb and useful tutorials. This link is to a list of all of their written After Effects Tutorials.
• http://www.creativecow.net/aepodcast/
  CreativeCow’s new series of excellent video podcast After Effects tutorials.
• http://wikivid.com/index.php/After_Effects
  a compilation of links to introductory After Effects video tutorials.
• http://nututorials.com/subtutorials/AfterEffects/23001/1/10/0
  categorized After Effects tutorials.
  
• http://www.stephenschleicher.com/
• http://aftereffects.digitalmedianet.com/
• http://www.editorsguild.com/
  an introductory tour of after effects, fortified with example projects
• http://www.toolfarm.com/
• http://www.xtreme-is-back.com/
• http://www.pixel2life.com/
• http://www.ayatoweb.com/
• http://www.videocopilot.net/
  a very energetic after effects instructional video creator…
• http://msp.sfsu.edu/Instructors/rey/aepage/aeportal.html
  a portal to all things AE…
• http://media-motion.tv/
  an excellent and well-trafficked After Effects list-serve.

• Total Training/Lynda.com Training Videos
• These are two great software training video resources, containing ridiculously thorough video training in all things After Effects, conducted by articulate professionals. Talk to the computer center about their subscription to Lynda.com available for the use of interested students.

• Books
• There are many books out there about After Effects, but one of the best is Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects – Volume 1: The Essentials by Trish and Chris Meyer. Instead of just telling you how to perform functions in After Effects, it attempts to teach you techniques for being creative inside the program, teaching you in the context of real-world design problems.

Attached to this post is the After Effects tutorial handout that I wrote for the last workshop I did with Ruth Hayes for SOS: Media, which might be of use to anyone looking for a basic text-mediated introductory reference for After Effects.

Suppress Control

All Cocks Plaster

These videos were created in Adobe After Effects 7.0 utilizing the Expressions, which are just a way to control keyframed parameters in After Effects with a script in Javascript. You can create little ‘expressions’ by using a collection of custom ‘variables’ based on elements of the after effects environment, such as timecode, layer values, etc. Often expressions are used as a way of linking values of parameters together, to make something animate in defined relationship with something else. However there are a myriad of creative possibilities for using expressions in After Effects. Here is what I did to bring about “Suppress Control”.

timeToFrames(t = time, fps = 23.976);
t = random(t,thisComp.duration);

This expression is on the Time Remap property of my main video layer. Time remapping is just a parameter that lets you alter the playback rate and direction of a layer dynamically with keyframes or expressions. All this script is saying is

1). convert the timecode of the current position into its frame-number, based on the given frames per second, and store this value in the variable ‘t’.
2). let ‘t’ then equal a random number between the current value of ‘t’, and the length of the current layer.
This effectively makes each frame in the layer a random frame between the beginning and the end. This has a very chaotic direct-animation type aesthetic to it, because it is a frame-based manipulation, and has no slow changes. In “Suppress Control” I did this for 3 different stacked layers, and then created another expression on the top two that turned the transparency on or off every x frames. Each of these 3 layers was then combined with the layer below it using blending modes. This created an additional chaotic abstraction to the image, because each image is now not only a random frame of the entire video, and not only one of 3 random layers, but each frame is an aleatoric combination of each of the 3 layers (or just 1 or 2, depending on if all the layers are turned on or not), blended into each other to create a strange abstract image. Here is the expression that blinks a layer on and off every X frames.
fr = 23.976;
FrameNum = 2;
Scale = 50
trig = Math.cos(time*Math.PI*fr*(1/FrameNum));
if ( trig > trig/2 ) { trig = Math.ceil(trig) } else { trig = Math.floor(trig) };
trig = Math.round(trig);
trig = trig*Scale + Scale;

1). What is the framerate? (or, how many times per second should this happen)
2). How many frames should each alternation last?
3). How large should the variation in value be?
4). A trigonometry function to alternate between +1 and -1 every x amount of time defined by the framerate and FrameNum.
5). If the result of this function is greater than half of it, round up; else, round down.
6). Scales the value to +Scale, -Scale, and then shifts it up to be between 0 and 2*ScaleI

If applied to a transparency parameter, it effectively makes a layer flash on or off every x amount of frames.

Another cool expression, which is used on the train layer in All Cocks Plaster is as follows:

layTime = time – (inPoint-framesToTime(112));
random(layTime, layTime + framesToTime(10));

This is a very simple expression also applied to the time-remapping attribute of a layer. All it does is, for each frame, choose a new frame between the current and 10 frames ahead of it. So the motion continues on its path, but is randomly jumpy, because it is jumping around randomly in a little box of 10 frames that is moving forwards.

Yes, you read correctly. I am animating my animations. Here is an After Effects ScreenShot showing the graph-editor on the lower right, with a graph of the time-remapping of the layer with the barbie walking through the forest-like terrain. Basically I am time-remapping her walk-cycle so it appears that she is dancing to the music. This works, and doesn’t really detract from the goodness of the original animation, because the original animations sucked and was very herky-jerky.

I will certainly be doing things like this alone in my room for the great majority of the forseeable future. I would suddenly wish that I were merely editing video for my project, but I guess I’m just an Ascetic at heart.

Frame interpolation refers to the process of creating new frames by analyzing existing frames. This is usually necessary when speeding up or slowing down footage. In such programs as Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro (and After Effects sometimes), this interpolation is often accomplished by Frame-Blending, especially when slowing down footage. Frame-Blending essentially means to take two adjacent frames and combine them by making both transparent. This usually results in the ghosts of objects showing up in the frame, especially fast moving objects. This can appear quite strange or distracting to my eye.

Twixtor uses a combination of frame-blending, warping, and motion blur to calculate new interpolated frames. The warping capabilities, if executed carefully, results in much smoother natural looking motion when slowing down footage. This natural-looking motion is useful to the animation experiments I have been doing.

Most stop-motion animation is performed at 12 or 15 frames per second, depending on the end frame-rate of the format. For example, if the final output was going to be 24fps, as my project will be, one would animate at 12, meaning that there would be 12 frames passing in one second. In order to “upconvert” the frame-rate to the destination format, each frame must be repeated twice (24=2*12). Having each frame play twice results in motion that looks much more jerky than normal live-action. Frame-Blending can help slightly to smooth this out, but it doesn’t look very good. Here is where Twixtor comes into play. If you import an image sequence of an animation into After Effects with an interpreted frame rate of 24 (meaning that each frame of the original animation is one frame, and our animation is playing double-speed), and then apply the Twixtor plugin the composition, slowing it down by a factor of 2, the motion is smoothed out considerably. (this is the video from the test animation in the 3D labs that I did with Brad).

Crautch Lunch, Original:
[See post to watch Flash video]

Crautch Lunch, Twixtorized:
[See post to watch Flash video]

Of course, one must carefully adjust the settings of the plugin to avoid artifacts of the image warping, as I have discovered in my tedious experimention. If there is a great deal of motion between frames, the warping and blending can really get out of hand. This is a crazy little animation with clay and a frenetically moving background.

Clay Leg Man, original 12fps:
[See post to watch Flash video]

Clay Leg Man, Twixtorized:
[See post to watch Flash video]

These videos, which require the new quicktime plugin version of the Adobe Flash Player, and which in my estimation are of a great deal better quality than youtube, were made possible by the free Creative Commons media storage available at ourmedia.org, and the greatness of archive.org.

This is all very interesting, but I really must work on my soundtrack now.

It is amusing for me, and probably not entirely inaccurate, to imagine this being me early Friday morning of week 10, in a state of panic.

For anyone who is interested, here are is my Budget and Production Schedule for my spring project.

Speaking of the subject matter, my creative process for this project was characteristically excruciating. I usual when working alone, I was able to engage in obsessive overanalysis and anxiety filled self-critique. As usual in my process, I started with a stylistic approach to guide my conceptual ideas. I realize this is quite opposite a normal approach to media creation, but I think attention to the visual and aesthetic components of a work is an essential part of success. I wanted to use footage of caves I had gathered from my home in Southeast Alaska during the summer months of 2005, in order to accentuate the themes of fear, anxiety, social isolation, and emotional introversion that I planned to address in the voiceover component of the video.

As is also characteristic of my process, many of the subtleties and nuances were not planned, but added intuitively during the process of creation. This is true of the childlike voice accent in the primary voiceover, the addition of the whispered sub-voiceover, and the entire ending, which I will get to in a moment.

I had no consideration for those “readerly” people when I created this video; the complexities are so great and the ambiguities so abundant that the majority of meanings and interpretations gleaned will likely originate with the viewer. This does not bother me, in fact I would prefer it this way, in particular with this genre of autobiographical self-portrayal, with which I am very much less than comfortable with, especially with myself as subject.
[See post to watch Flash video]

That said, here is the complete text to the whispered vocal track. Note that this probably says more about me than the greatly pre-cognated and somewhat more understandable baby-voice track.The artists fought on in martial law, only their feet touching each other, their love reinforced with every stick, broken and crackling underfoot like malignant tumor growths, infuriating with metastasis. My hand raised to scratch an eyebrow, and all of the dolls were suddenly still, like deflated balloon animals. The snarling and clawing incessantly pounded through my head, … why wouldn’t they stop fighting? Poor wretches bathing in sunlight, they will soon die of banjo tumors. Plucking away at their heart-cockles, the lifespan pointer goes round and round. Fire and light, fire and fright. Seesaw of horatio goesleft and right like the sauce on your relationship with your mastication.

Fluff pouts of grandeur shower the doused spectacle of hairy toes in rotten grass. Gritty personalities squish with the rhythm of monstrosity and subjective horror pain. Morning lives in on molestation end forgiveness end. Tired like jangacalla on the eve of death’s burial. Flinch and pull out your guts. but then fear not, flowers bloomed there in the carnage, and great feasts were had by hummingbirds humming in the air like the tears of opera singers gone with the winding of music boxes in a candy store, sitting shyly in a corner, your erection growing inexorably without your control.

fire at your friends with the will of suppressed nations. Social and kinesthetic retardation backspace to remove the mark of unintended consequences on the forehead of your doom. UP is the cleft in subtlety, down is the hatred of burning of impermeable kinder boxes. burning man falling from the straw hat of an obfuscated peasant looking at the grey overcast sky and wondering just what the purpose is to life after death if death ends before life even begins. Even looking at the ceiling doesn’t bring comfort or solitude.

Chocolate seamonkeys whirl in a vortex of gregarious emotional substitution. The junk blown home surrounds quickly and smothers intellect with mud on the carpet drapes bellow. I can see the alcohol seeping away from your skin, like talcum from a chamber pot. Subtle choices of grandeur adorn even mundane objects of rapture and excitement … on Cunnilingus Island.

Lampshades of poison infect the dermis-parts of even joking weekly whales of men; grandparents who squint and buy only larger glasses, but not thicker because they don’t understand the true point behind apology and efficaciousness.

Did you see what just happened now? Mercy on the face of mitropia. Soft choirs of alarm sounding out across the peasant country is the will of the testament swinging on the beziere curve of Gonzo. your future slipping under your skin, ready to peel off the one worn since those days of incessant cares. these are not my edges, they are the scars which I cannot see, graduated to another plane of thought, the old tread underfoot (this line written by Yazmin Shaw).

The wasteland after the hurt of buggering by seldome seen bunnies: I am strong enough to see, I am strong enough to grip the aids virus nerve between two fingers and pushing my way through the crowd into a great hall of specter quality, where the picture of night sat with softness and revelry.

Where does the toffee go when it searches for innocence? Gangrene at 24 frames per second.

Those last words and the ending footage seem to me to be very confusing. I’m still not sure exactly what it means. Here is a quote from my notes made during the process of creation (regarding the ending):
This will be significant of your own struggle with the auto-representational nature of the project you’re doing, and hopefully make apparent the fact that you are a subject and are represented, not true/authentic; there is no authentic in media portrayal. is there an authentic self represented in social interaction any more than in movies/films? both are an act of representation. I slit the throat of the me in the film, and raise my arms to the fetid green of the projection screen, mirrored by it and afraid, but laughing.

A word on the technical aspects of Solus in Tenebrarum.
It was created in the midst of a convoluted workflow between Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 and After Effects 7.0. The primary editing of the background video footage and sound was done in Premiere, and then imported into After Effects, where all compositing, video effects, titling, and final composition of footage occurred. All rendered files were output to HuffYUV, an excellent fast lossless Win32 video codec, as the artifacts that DV introduced to the footage was unacceptable. The beginning title was rendered in 3D in Blender 3D, an excellent piece of free open source software. The title was then displacement mapped to give it the moving texture of the water in the layer underneath it, then duplicated and blurred, and then alpha track-matted, to the blurred layer, and blended with classic difference mode to the water layer. All footage was also converted to 24p from 30i in After Effects using the Reelvision Twixtor plugin. I then rendered the entire video with a 3:2 pulldown and authored to a 16:9 DVD for presentation, as the DVCAM decks in our screening room will not output 16:9 video footage with the correct aspect ratio, which is also unacceptable.