Using the power of Slit-scanning, I’ve condensed my evolution animation into one single image! This is accomplished by feeding the video past a single row of pixels, which is then played out as this image as the video moves past it. Can you recognize any specific parts?
I was interviewed by WRIR (local Richmond independent radio station) a little while ago, and apparently its aired as the first episode of The Creative Habit! So if you ever wanted to hear me talk about my evolution project for 30 mins and say “right” 8 times in rapid succession, then click here!
Well, my Evolution! animation won the Best Virginia Filmmaker award, as well as the People’s Choice! You can look here for the full list of winners. http://jamesriverfilm.org/2012/12/congrats-to-last-nights-james-river-shorts-2012-award-winners/
Well, it looks like Dr.Carin Bondar over at Scientific American wrote up another little piece about my latest evolution animation! You can check it out here.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/psi-vid/2012/11/19/the-master-of-evolution-animation-returns/
Just thought I should mention that my evolution animation was selected as a finalist for the James River Shorts festival, so if anyone wanted to stop by the Virginia Fine Arts Museum here in Richmond on Nov. 30th to see me and the other cool shorts, I’ll be there! You can get tickets and more info at http://www.vmfa.state.va.us/Calendar_and_Events/Films/James_River_Shorts.aspx
As I mentioned in an earlier post, my original plan for my evolution animation was to have 5 of them, one for each group of people did the experiment with. As you can see in my tree of life image, each group I did the evolution game with stems from my starting salamander creature, and follows the exact same series of events until the last part, where they each deviate. The group in the animation everyone knows ends with the ‘ice age’ but there’s also the deep sea, the sky, the mountains and the underground. I intended to re-animate each group, swapping out the creatures as I went, and then make a different end-cap to finish off each custom animation.
I never actually finished any of these alternate animations… until now that is! This animation is from one of the groups from Lobs and Lessons, a program at VCU’s Mary and Frances Youth Center. You can see more about them here http://www.vcuyouthcenter.org/
With these drawings the group went through the same experience as everyone else, only instead of an “Ice Age” like the first animation, these creatures were driven “Underground.” Because of this they have their own special ending sequence! Enjoy!
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My original plan for my evolution animation was to have 5 of them, one for each group. As you can see in my tree of life image, each group I did the evolution game with stems from my starting salamander creature, and follows the exact same series of events until the last part, where they each deviate. The group in the animation everyone knows ends with the ‘ice age’ but there’s also the deep sea, the sky, the mountains and the underground. I intended to re-animate each group, swapping out the creatures as I went, and then make a different end-cap to finish off each custom animation.
I never actually finished any of these alternate animations, but I did come close with one of them. I’ve recently been trying to finish it up, and here’s a still of a tiny little creature in one of my psychedelic ‘underground’ scenes.
People had asked me what I used to animate the drawings, so I thought I’d do a brief run-down of my process.
At first I scanned all 460 drawings, which as you can guess takes a while. Depending on the colors used and how timid the artist was drawing it, the resulting image would sometimes be less than ideal. Lighter colors like yellow and pink are especially problematic, but I could usually get the drawings look decent. At first I would end up with something like this…
And get it looking more like this…
From here I “cut them out” in Adobe Photoshop so that the only thing Im working with is a nicely trimmed creature on a transparent background. From there, we move into Adobe After Effects.
After Effects is a program most people use for motion graphics and whatnot, but you can also do snazzy animations and special effects with it. Once I import all my cut out creatures and scenery I can begin. Normally you can move images over an x and y axis (up and down, left and right), and with a button press, you can go into the Z plane. This is how everything looks 3-D, with a virtual camera flying through a virtual space. In the image up there you can see how I set up all the objects in their proper spots and flew the camera through the scene, with things popping into view as needed. The view on the right is what the camera see, but the view on the left shows you all the elements lined up. You can see the bushes in the front there that block you view as the scene begins, and those two little rectangles on the bigger rectangle in the far back there are those two creatures in the tree that get eaten later on.
The camera itself has a bunch of controls that can do things like a “real camera”, and here you can see I have a really low F-Stop and Depth of Field enabled which will allow for the extremely shallow focus and blur that you can see in the animation.
But the main thing I used to actually make the creatures move is called the Puppet Tool. The Puppet Tool is now in both the newer versions of Photoshop as well as After Effects, and when you activate it, it breaks any image down into a series of polygons, like so.
It also works by the placing of “pins.” Here you can see the creature broken into polygons, and the pins Ive placed at his hips, shoulders, and feet. You can up the triangle count to get a smoother bend, but usually it isn’t necessary in something like this. Each pin adds a reference point that the others will bend around. You can use other tools like a stiffener if you don’t want to things to move, but because I wanted to extreme rubberyness I just tried to place minimal pins and let them do their thing.
By pulling a pin, you can see how the foot stretches out, but also how the head moves, as well as the rest of the body besides the area surrounding a pin. Again, this is something I want to give it those charming silly movements.
Look at him go! But that’s more or less “all there is to it.” Once I had my music selected, I went through and marked the timecodes on any heavy or interesting beat, and made sure to animate each little scene within those strict frame allowances. Once I was done with that, I just plopped them all down in a timeline, and they already synced correctly to the music because I had specifically designed them to!
Here is a basic tutorial from the handy guys at VideoCopilot if you wanted to try 3-D layers in After effects yourself, so give it a look if you’re interesting in getting into some basic After Effectsing. Good Luck and have fun animating!
Special thanks goes out to Dr. Carin Bondar at the Scientific American videoblog Psivid for her post about my animation yesterday! Touted it as “An evolution animation unlike ANY you’ve seen before,” Dr.Bondar congratualted me on my “remarkable achievement. His editing skills and creative vision bring the process of evolution to center stage in an entirely new form.” Aw, shucks!
You can check out the post here, http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/psi-vid/2012/02/29/an-evolution-animation-unlike-any-youve-seen-before/ as well as the animation as the video of the week over at http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/video-of-the-week/2012/02/29/evolution/
From there it bounced its way over to various other blogs from around the web, and overall people seemed to be getting a kick out of it! Starting tomorrow the animation will be playing in the Richmond Public Library here in Richmond, Virginia, so hopefully I have some stuff to post from that as well, and maybe some new creatures along the way! Stay tuned!
