Done!

Finished...still had problems in the end with the dimensions of flash animation when loaded in the web browser but fixed it by embedding the flash file in the html file using Adobe dreamweaver. This keeps the original dimensions and looks a bit better.
Also made a dvd case cover and a dvd cd cover. Not perfect but looks alright.
Through out the year i learned a lot of new things and had a very good experience.
Now waiting for new Challenges next year. Hope it is going to be as interesting as it was this year.

animation pages

5 days left

Ok. My work is almost done. There's two things left to do that is to make a few more animations and to make a page flip animation.

this is what i done so far:

*A flash file containing an image of a book as a base/background (made in illustrator)

*A page corner curl animated button which curls when the mouse is over it and straightens back when the mouse is away from the corner.

*five videos i took in Canterbury placed in a book as pictures with masking tape(made in photoshop) in the corners . footage was cut in Adobe Premiere and using adobe After effects i edited the coloring and gave an old film flickering effect to connect the begging and the end of the video for looping.

*A strange background music (Dictaphobe - tango doerell) to give a surrealistic feel.

* A button next to each of the videos. When you hover over it the background music stops and the sound from the video starts playing in normal speed (all video playback speed is edited) when the mouse is moved away from the button the sound stops and the background music starts playing.

*Animation made in flash to kind of represent the video also i am sticking to the surreal theme (influenced by Salvador dali artwork i saw in Rotterdam) well i would call my animations soft surrealism compared to Salvador Dali.

To do this i used a lot of Action scripting. I didn't import my video into the flash file. All of my video and sounds are streamed from a folder next to it.
also the animated buttons, sound and ect. was done with action script 3.

List of software used:

Adobe Premiere cs3
Adobe After effects cs3
Adobe Illustrator cs3
Adobe Photoshop cs3
Adobe Flash cs3
Audacity

Page curl

Using a photoshop plugin called AV Bros page curl i managed to save a few days of work because i don't have to draw it my self. using this i am going to make about 10 to 15 images from small curl to big and then animate it in Flash and make a button out of it.
Then place it in the corner of my animated book.

sample:

ActionScript 2.0 or 3.0 ?

Well i chose 3.0

why?

Because it a bit better for my project. But was it a pain to make the video loop with no short freeze frame in the end... With a lot of research and hitting my head in the screen i did it! its perfect now! first of all i used this AS(action script):

import fl.video.VideoEvent;

player.fullScreenTakeOver = false;

player.source = "testmovie.flv";
player.autoRewind = true;
player.autoPlay = true;

function Loop(event:VideoEvent):void
{
player.play();
}

player.addEventListener(VideoEvent.AUTO_REWOUND, Loop);

which was alright, the video was looping but it had a short freeze in the end so with more shouting at my computer i came up with this (just bits and pieces from the net that i managed to put together)

import fl.video.VideoEvent;

player.play("doors_final.flv");
player.autoRewind=true;


function again(event:VideoEvent):void {
player.play();
}
player.addEventListener(VideoEvent.COMPLETE, again);

and i am very happy with this! its a perfect loop especially when i made the beginning and the ending of the video the same.




about ActionScript
ActionScript/flash tutorials
ActionScript/flash tutorials2

As always..

So as always when it is one or two weeks till the deadline i change my ideas about the project. When Paul Crawley showed me this website
i thought..well i can do that! So now my rich media project is going to be even richer!
I am going to use flash to animate a page flipping book in which there is going to be abstract video representing flow. The video will be edited in after effects to make it look better for looping. Also there is going to be a different audio loop on every page. And may be a few illustrations? so its flash animation, video, sound and may be a few doodles...

Now i am looking into Flash action scripts and ect.

Wednesday filming

So i did some filming just a test to see how it come's out. I placed the Canon xm2 camera on a tripod not to far from Canterbury college doors to film the flow of people going in and out. I filmed for about 30min (just couldn't sit longer doing nothing). Then exported it from camera to computer using iMovie. Because there was some kind of an error with my USB key now i have 20min of footage. So after that at home using adobe after effects i adjusted the color curve that it would look nicer and changed the speed i also used "frame blending" mode so it would have this blurry looking motion trail on moving objects (people). All this can be done with Final cut pro but i am just more used to adobe products. So here is a smaller, compressed version (just to make the file size smaller) of what i got. Also added some strange/interesting(?) music in background but i`m not going to use it in my project..or am i?

Slow motion

Oh the wonders you can do with a 1000 frames-per-s camera...if only we had this in college or i had the budget to get it... the whole new world would open!

Quite Disgusting footage but still made me smile how capturing such a simple thing in such a detailed way can reveal things you never seen before (and may be don't want to see?) A campaign to encourage people get flu shots, classical music in the background in my opinion a very nice touch.

Adobe After Effects tutorials

One of the best tutorials i found a year ago are made by a guy Andrew Kramer.
He has his own website which is HERE
Loads of free tutorials and even found a few that are going to be useful for this brief.

Time variation (manipulating time, slow motion/fast motion)
videocopilot.net (time variation)

And the basics for the same
videocopilot.net (time remapping basics)

Audio Edit

About the software..

Today I tried editing sound for my video. I downloaded this sound editing software called Audacity. Its free so I don’t have to worry being a “Pirate”, simple, with straight forward controls has effects like fade in, fade out, echo and more. If you download a plugins from their website it even supports VST and can export audio to MP3 or WAV . I am going to use MP3 for my blog and WAV for my video because it is not compressed and has better quality. By the way if you don’t know what VST (Virtual Studio Technology) it’s a interface for integrating software audio synthesizer and effect plugins with audio editors.

About the band and the song..

The song I chose is played by this band from Croatia called Lunar. Their compositions tend to be fairly calm and restrained, but there are some bits and pieces that get a little more intense and rhythmic. They manage to get this sound that I would call experimental and that is perfect for my project. I chose their song called Dance floor Zgaba because it has a repeating guitar riff and this kind of repeating melody which gets stronger with every minute it just has a flow.

What I changed..

I made just slight changes in the song. I cut a piece of song from the end and pasted it in the begging. Then I reversed it and merged it with the begging which just in my luck fits perfectly. By this I achieved this effect like turning a record back which gives this feel like in movies when the time is going backwards. I did this because my plan is that the end of my video will go backwards in the begging (just the very end) and then there’s going to be a flash and the video will start. I am going to do more editing later like adding low deep sound in the middle where everything in my video will stop. I will update this post later to add more information how I edited the song.

Stop Motion

As i mentioned earlier i am thinking of using stop motion in my project. Nothing much too complicated just something to fill the video because for now my main idea is manipulating time of the video and stop motion does the trick. I am thinking just setting up my Nikon d80 camera on a tripod back in the garden with manual settings (i don't want that every shot would have a different exposure) and take pictures of sun's cycle trough the day. I am still putting my whole idea together but i know that it is going to have a very close bond with music. I think i already chose a song and might try editing it that it would suit my idea perfectly. Next time i will try to put some pictures or videos of me doing that.

This is just a video i found on youtube of a similar thing i want to do.
Please ignore the bad music at the beginning.

KOYAANISQATSI (Life out of balance) and POWAQQATSI (Life in transformation)

After watching these two wonderful pieces of art for three hours i admit in the end i got a bit tired but the wonderful composition of music and great images hypnotized me and influenced my further work a lot. So i made a crucial decision that i am going to stick with video for this brief, i might also add some stop motion to. I started looking into slow motion and other ways of manipulating time of video footage. As i thought if i want to achieve good quality video with slow motion effect i must look more into camera shutter speed settings and frames per second combination's. Now i`m doing research about that and trying to find a manual for the college Canon xm2 camera. I am going to add a few short clips from the two movies i mentioned earlier.

Director: Godfrey Reggio
Cinematographic: Ron Fricke
Composer: Phillip Glass

Koyaanisqatsi ( Life out of balance)




Powaqqatsi (life in transformation)