Category: SectionB

pliii – Tina Frank

‘pliii’ by Tina Frank is a project dedicated to her late friend, musician and collaborating artist Peter Rehberg. It is a continuation of the project they published together in 1996 titled ‘iii’. To create the images for this work, Frank recorded the on and off flicker of an LED lamp, then processed the recordings using various methods. After isolating the central visuals, she altered speed, frame, and color to create the movement that we see on screen.

I suppose what I admire most about the project is that she has taken something so mundane and turned it into a complex and dynamic work of art. I also appreciate Frank’s continued emphasis on the interaction between sound (which, in this project, includes high frequency waves from the same LED lamp) and visuals. It is clear that Frank is in tune with that which cannot be immediately seen or heard, and this makes her art-style distinct. Rather than being led by common aesthetics, she has built an artistic voice out of experiences that the majority of us cannot easily access.

[flash warning]

pliii (Trailer) from Tina Frank on Vimeo.

(above image sourced from sixpackfilm.com)

Looking Outwards 02: Generative Art

The project “The Orbitals (Variation B)” by Jared Tarbell is about a collection of particles operating on one simple rule: choose another particle in the system and orbit it with a fixed radius at a constant velocity. In this variation, a single root particle is instantiated in the center of the stage. All other particles introduced to the system fall into orbit at some level. I admire how the creator manipulates the work by finely crafting the semantics of each program. The results look random but organized, messy but beautiful. Tarbell creates his images by programming Java applets or Flash ActionScripts to construct visual images based on algorithms. Java applets are used to provide interactive features to web applications and can be executed by browsers for many platforms. In an interview with Jason Bailey, Tarbell explained his perspective on the relationship between art and math, “you can break the world down into these very simple rules that interact on orders of magnitude beyond what we’re capable of imagining.” Tarbell is a programmer and an artist, and his beautiful works seem to have minds of their own.

The Orbitals ( Variation B) August 2004 J.Tarbell

Project 1: Self Portrait

This is my self portrait. The most challenging part of this project is locating the shapes and lines on my canvas. The most difficult shape to code was the arc.

sketch
function setup() {
    createCanvas(500,300);
    background(120,120,150);
    text("Hi. I'm Jen :)", 10, 15);
}

function draw() {
    strokeWeight(0)
    fill(225,194,159); //1-beige
    ellipse(267,140,141,197);
    strokeWeight(0)
    fill(56,47,45); //2-brown
    ellipse(258,49,127,59);
    strokeWeight(0)
    fill(56,47,45); //3-brown
    ellipse(196,120,74,154)
    strokeWeight(0)
    fill(225,194,159); //5-beige
    rect(220,200,42,110);
    strokeWeight(0)
    fill(230,130,140); //6-shirt
    quad(201,252,201,300,306,300,290,252);
    strokeWeight(0)
    fill(56,47,45); //4-brown
    ellipse(196,241,43,135);
    strokeWeight(0)
    fill(230,144,151); //8-mouth
    ellipse(304,198,31,8);
    strokeWeight(0)
    fill(191,171,125); //7-nose
    triangle(301,136,307,164,295,164);
    strokeWeight(0)
    fill(255,255,255); //9-eye white
    arc(264,113,51,55,2.6,0.5,OPEN);
    strokeWeight(0)
    fill(0,0,0); //10-eyeball
    circle(275,113,35);
    strokeWeight(0)
    fill(255,255,255); //11-eye white
    arc(329,113,51,55,2.6,0.5,open);
    strokeWeight(0)
    fill(0,0,0); //12-eyeball
    circle(340,113,35);
    strokeWeight(0)
    fill(241,211,129); //13-hair tie
    ellipse(196,191,41,11);
    stroke(255,255,255); //highlight 1
    strokeWeight(5);
    point(330,110);
    stroke(255,255,255); //highlight 2
    strokeWeight(5);
    point(265,110);
    strokeWeight(2)
    fill(225,100,10); //13-hair tie middle
    square(192,186,11);
    stroke(255)
    strokeWeight(3)
    line(299,196,309,196)
    strokeWeight(1)
    stroke(100)
    line(301,136,307,164)
    strokeWeight(1)
    stroke(100)
    line(307,164,295,164)
}

My Inspiration

A project that inspired me a lot is Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studio’s collaboration movie “Up”. Released in 2009, the movie took the team 5 years to create. Besides the touching plot line of the movie, I also admire the movie’s stunning animation, including the thousands of balloons, the character’s realistic and detailed looks, and the beautifully illustrated landscape views. To animate the movie, the studio uses their unique software “Presto”. It is developed and used in-house by Pixar Animation Studios in the animation of its features and short films. Presto is not available for sale and is only used by Pixar. According to the movie director Pete Docter, the movie’s animation style took inspiration from “Toy Story”. New programs were made to simulate the cloth and other textures. These new designs would bring animation to new levels in the future.

Up ( 2009 film) The Balloon House

Favour -Looking Outwards 02

This project by Michael Hansmeyer is called The White Tower, and is a 29-meter tall tower which is entirely 3D printed. Things I admire about the project apart from its monumentality, is how the patterns were coded to create a spatial atmosphere. I enjoy that the shape was generated by code, because you can see how perfect each pattern is, how incredibly symmetrical each pair of pillars are, as they wrap perfectly around the structure, forming different kaleidoscope-like patterns. The White Tower will be 3D printed using a concrete extrusion process. In this new-age fabrication process, a robot applies 5mm thin layers of soft concrete through a nozzle. For the design process, digital technologies are used. It is not mentioned what the specific software is called but it is a generative modeling software which likely runs with Python as language. Without custom software, precise geometrical definition would not be possible. Michael’s artistic abilities manifest through the types of patterns used and how many are used at a certain time. The scale of these patterns also impact the design, as well as how the architect planned the pillar placements, bevels and embellishments to create different types of pillars on one project.

The White Tower- render

Blog 01 – Technical Art – srauch

I continue to be inspired by the VFX in Stranger Things, which is done by Rodeo FX using (from what I could discern online) Maya for modeling and Arnold Core for rendering. The most recent season, according to VFX supervisor Julien Hery, was the product of about two years of work.

The Stranger Things VFX inspires me for a couple of reasons. For one, the monster design is spectacular; it enhances the storytelling significantly. Secondly, Stranger Things works to bridge the gap between practical and computer-generated effects, and they do a fantastic job of it. They use VFX in such an artful and compelling way to make creatures that are completely fictitious, but move in their environment in a very convincing way, enhancing the immersion and worldbuilding.

You can see one of their completely CG monsters in this scene:

The continued improvement of visual effects such as these will broaden the horizons of future filmmakers and storytellers, allowing them to elegantly depict what before could only be imagined.

LO: My Inspiration

Turning Red, 2022, Domee Shi
While much of what I will talk about in this blog post is applicable to large scale 3D animation projects as a whole, for this post, I will focus on “Turning Red”, a film recently released by Pixar. I think that one of the most inspirational (and relatable) facets of 3D animation is the time it takes to produce- of course earlier steps in the creative process in itself are time consuming, but even aspects of the pipeline that one might not even consider, like rendering, are extremely tedious. In animation, the rule of thumb is that 24 frames are shown per second of film, and at studios like Disney and Pixar, due to the amount of detail packed into each frame, rendering one frame is a process that takes about 24 hours. As a result, it is no surprise that Turning Red took four years to complete (a relatively quick turnaround for Pixar). While Autodesk Maya is the 3D animation software most commonly used for feature length films and games, Pixar uses its own software (what is, essentially, the in-studio version of Maya), called Presto. That being said, of course, through the course of production, in order to better capture life, usually animators will homebrew their own scripts, whether it is to better capture the bounce of curly hair (as with Brave), or further nail down the way water moves (as with Moana). This pattern is really interesting, as each film that gets released by major studios ends up not only being a (usually) well thought out story, but also, a display of new 3D animation technologies that push the medium forward. Recently, I have noticed that 3D animation is becoming more and more stylized (a trend I hope to see continue!), and I’m excited to see the new technologies that emerge with said stylization.

A fully rendered, edited, etc. still from Turning Red, 2022

LO: My Inspiration

PANDEMIC (2020-2022) is an in-progress 1st-person 3D simulation game where the player acts as a virus, experiencing an abstract version of the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. An immersive art piece designed to commentate on the xenophobia and political turmoil brought forth by the pandemic, the game grows in intensity as the player progresses through the reality imagined by Chanhee Choi, a multidisciplinary interactive artist and Ph.D. candidate in the UW Digital Arts and Experimental Media department. PANDEMIC has been under development since 2020, and is set to release this year. The inspiration for the game stemmed from Choi’s personal experience with being the victim of an anti-Asian hate crime during the outbreak.

To create this unreal experience and environment, Choi used custom scripts to enable player control, created a multitude of 3D models as objects with unique in-game behavior, and programmed interactions with the player-controlled virus (I speculate that Unreal Engine was used to create PANDEMIC). She was possibly inspired by other immersive art games with the purpose of creating social commentary and raising awareness for real world problems that need mainstream discussion and attention.

https://chaneec.com/PANDEMIC

Chanhee Choi, 2020-present, PANDEMIC

project 01

My self portrait project!

sketch
function setup() {
    createCanvas(500, 500);
    background(249, 198, 187);
}

function draw() {
	background(249, 198, 187);
	strokeWeight(0);
	fill(239, 221, 199); //skin tone
	rect(200, 200, 100, 300); //neck
	fill(226, 189, 181); //skin shadow
	ellipse(250, 300, 110, 110); //neck shadow
	fill(249, 198, 187); //bg color to carve neck shape out
	ellipse(330, 385, 80, 320); //bg to carve neck shape (right)
	ellipse(170, 385, 80, 320); //bg to carve neck shape (left)
    fill(168, 142, 112); //hair color
    ellipse(250, 180, 250, 270); //back of hair
	fill(239, 221, 199); //skin tone
    ellipse(250, 200, 200, 250); //bottom of head/chin
    ellipse(250, 180, 200, 200); //top of head, to round out
    ellipse(150, 220, 60, 80); //left ear
    ellipse(350, 220, 60, 80); //right ear
    stroke(226, 189, 181); //ear x
    strokeWeight(4);
    line(130, 210, 155, 240); //L X
    line(135, 240, 150, 205); //L X
    line(370, 210, 345, 240); //R X
    line(365, 240, 350, 205);
    strokeWeight(0); //reset
    fill(168, 142, 112); //hair color
    ellipse(260, 100, 70, 70) //middle curl
    fill(239, 221, 199); //skin tone
    ellipse(274, 107, 55, 55); //skin to carve curl
    fill(122, 114, 105); //eyeliner color
    ellipse(200, 196, 55, 60); //L eyeliner
    ellipse(300, 196, 55, 60); //R eyeliner
    fill(234, 240, 247); //whites of eyes
    ellipse(200, 200, 55, 60); //L white of eye
    ellipse(300, 200, 55, 60); //R white of eye
    fill(113, 130, 154); //eyeball color
    ellipse(202, 200, 33, 33); //L eye
    ellipse(298, 200, 33, 33); //R eye
    fill(255); //eye highlights
    ellipse(190, 187, 15, 15); //L highlight
    ellipse(286, 187, 15, 15); //R highlight
    fill(168, 142, 112); //hair color (for eyebrows)
    ellipse(202, 150, 22, 10); //L eyebrow
    ellipse(298, 150, 22, 10); //R eyebrow
    fill(226, 189, 181); //skin shadow (for nose)
    triangle(250, 200, 235, 250, 265, 250);
    fill(186, 101, 101); //mouth color
    ellipse(250, 275, 35, 20); //mouth
    fill(250, 250, 242); //teeth color
    ellipse(250, 270, 30, 10); //teeth
    fill(103, 95, 130); //shirt color
    ellipse(250, 520, 250, 200); //shirt
    fill(129, 121, 156); //shirt collar color
    ellipse(250, 455, 115, 80) //collar
    fill(239, 221, 199); //skin tone
    ellipse(250, 445, 100, 70); //neck base
    fill(201, 199, 209); //for jewelry
    ellipse(145, 255, 10, 10); //L earring(s)
    ellipse(133, 246, 10, 10); //L earring(s)
    ellipse(130, 195, 10, 10); //L earring(s)
    ellipse(355, 255, 10, 10); //R earring(s)
    ellipse(367, 246, 10, 10); //R earring(s)
    ellipse(373, 232, 10, 10); //R earring(s)
    ellipse(237, 240, 10, 7); //nose piercing
    fill(125, 184, 144); //nose piercing jewel color
    ellipse(237, 240, 6, 4); //nose piercing jewel
}

Blog 01: Rebuild the Original 1910 Penn Station!

By Ilia Urgen

Since the last decade, a national movement to rebuild the long lost McKim, Meade & White Pennsylvania Station has made me come to admire New York’s old 20th Century architecture.

This movement was founded by Richard Cameron and James Grimes back in the 2010’s. Their vision of improving New York’s current, run-down Penn Station was to rebuild the original station, which had opened in 1910 was demolished in 1963 to make way for Madison Square Garden.

Cameron and Grimes’s extensive blueprints are pretty much the same as the original ones from the 1900s, but they are still bringing a touch of the 21st Century into their designs. These modern enhancements include sustainable energy, solar panels, LED Lighting, and even a rooftop garden!

Their work was fully enhanced through the use of standard CAD software, which allowed them to visualize the original designs with their modern design features.

Cameron and Grimes are trying to grab the public’s support for this massive $2.5 billion dollar project. I definitely support this movement, as it focuses on preserving the cultural importance of 20th Century architecture, while enhancing “the works” with 21st century technology.