WORK > PLAY > WORK > PLAY >>>
Posted: September 12, 2023 Filed under: CgRyan, Isadora, Pressure Project I, Uncategorized | Tags: Isadora, Pressure Project, Pressure Project One Leave a comment »My goals for Pressure Project #1 were to deepen and broaden skills working in Isadora 3 and to create a motion piece that could hold attention. The given Resources were 6 hours and a minimum of using defined Actors: Shape, Projector, Jump++, Trigger Delay, and the Envelope Generator, and that would auto-play.
PROCESS
Pressure Project 1: TAKE 1 took 3 hours, and though I learned the basics of scene transition and shape control and video placement, I was not satisfied with how the scenes progressed and connected: I had not taken the time to create a defined concept. (When feeling “time pressured” I sometimes forget what one of my most respected design teachers at ArtCenter said “To save time, take the time to create a concept first.”)
Pressure Project #1 – TAKE 1
CONCEPT
I am both a designer and an artist, and creating a balance between personal work [PLAY] and paid client projects [WORK] has been an ongoing battle over my careers. I decided I wanted to symbolize this “dance” between WORK and PLAY in my motion piece. Conceptually, I think of WORK as a rectangle, or a “frame” that defines the boundaries of both Resources and what the Valuation criteria are. When I think of PLAY, I think of circles, more open and expansive, and playful. When I think of the combination of these 2 concepts, I see a choreography between grace and collision, satisfied expectations and for serendipity. When deciding on the pacing and transitions of the whole, I wanted to create an “endless loop” between WORK and PLAY that symbolized my ubiquitous see-saw between the two poles. An endless loop would represent “no separation” between WORK and PLAY: my live-long goal of to have work that feels like PLAY, and to WORK meaningfully at my PLAY so that it is worth the currency of my life force: time and energy.
Concept: WORK > PLAY sketch
ADDITIONAL TUTORIALS
I found an additional Isadora tutorial “Build it! Video Porthole” by Ryan Webber that demonstrated skills I wanted to learn: how to compose video layers with masking and alpha channels, and another demo of the User Actor. From this tutorial, I was inspired to use the Alpha Mask actor to make the WORK > PLAY > repeat cycle explicit. I decided to use the letters of the two “four letter words” to explicitly to represent my history as a communications designer, and to alternate between a more structured motion path using the squares and a more playful evolution as the piece transitioned to circles, then a finale of a combination.
LIMITED REMAINING TIME: 2.5 hours
To respect the time limit of the project, I used an application that I use in both personal art “play” and client work, After Effects, to quickly create three simple animations with the WORK + PLAY letters to use with the Alpha Mask actor.
After Effects alpha masks
To save additional time, I used a combination of motion pattern videos I have used in earlier projection mapping projects. I used the Shapes and Alpha Mask actors in Isadora to combine the elements.
Scene 1 – 3 stills: videos in alpha masks
To create the endless “loop” transitions between the three scenes, I used the Trigger Delay actor on each of the three scenes, using the jump value of “-2” to return to scene one.
Scene 3: Trigger Delay and Jump++ to return to Scene 1: “-2”
To export the Isadora project to video to post online, I used the Capture Stage to Movie actor. I look forward to the next Pressure Project!