Pressure Project 1 – Fireworks
Posted: January 30, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Interactive Media, Isadora, Pressure Project, Pressure Project One Leave a comment »When given the prompt, “Retain someone’s attention for as long as possible” I begin thinking about all of the experiences that have held my attention for a long time. Some would be a bit hard to replicate such as a conversation or a full length movie. Other experiences would be easier as I think interacting with something could retain attention and be a bit easier to implement. Now what does that something do so people would want to repeat the experience again and again and again? Some sort of grand spectacle that is really shiny and eye catching. A fireworks display!
The Program
The first scene is setting up the image that the user always see. This is the firework “barrels” and buttons to launch the fire works.
The buttons were made as a custom user input function. I did not know there was a control panel that already has preset buttons programed. If I had known that I could have saved myself 2 hours of experimenting. So how each button works is the Stage Mouse Watcher checks the location of the mouse in the stage and if the mouse clicks. Then two inside range actors are used to check where the mouse is in the x and y axis. If the mouse is in preset range it triggers a Trigger value actor that goes to a Toggle actor. The toggle actor then turns a wave generator on and off. The wave generator then sends its value to a Value Changed actor. If the in the x bounds, the y bounds, and the mouse clicks triggers activate all at once, then the scene is moved to launch a firework.
The scenes that the buttons jump to is set up to be a unique firework pattern. The box will launch a firework to a set location and after a timer the sparkle after effect will show. Then after it ends the scene ends.
Upon reflection, one part that could have helped retain attention even longer would have been to randomize the fireworks explosion pattern. This could have been done with the random number generator and the value scalar actors to change the location of where the sparkle explosion effect ends up and with how long they last in the air.
Pressure Project 1: “About Cycles”
Posted: September 13, 2023 Filed under: Isadora, Pressure Project I | Tags: Au23, Isadora, Pressure Project, Pressure Project One Leave a comment »Recording of the Pressure Project:
Motivations:
- Learn about Isadora
- General features/ways to create in Isadora
- Ways to organize objects in Isadora
- Ways to store information in Isadora
- Control flow
- Engage with the subject of “Cycles”
- This class uses cycles as an integral component of its processes. Therefore, focusing on the idea of cycles for this first project seemed fitting.
- Because this project encouraged the use of randomness to create something that “plays itself” (once you start it) and holds the viewer’s attention for some time, playing with indefinite cycles seemed appropriate.
- Find a “Moment of Joy”
- The “Side Quest” for this project was to invoke laughter or a moment of joy.
- When I started my 6 hours for this project, I was in a little bit of a bad mood. Consequently, I was not in the mood to create something joyful. Therefore, I decided to challenge myself to take something negative and turn it into something positive—since this artwork would feel more authentically “joyful” to me if that “joy” came from a genuine determination to find that joy within an honest acknowledgement of both the good and bad.
How the Project Supports those Motivations:
- The Storyline
- The beginning portion employs Sisyphean imagery to convey feelings of being trapped in cycles and not making any noticeable progress.
- I experimented with the number of times this scene would play to try to play it just enough times that the viewer could think that this scene was all there would be—a psychological trick that would hopefully invoke negative feelings corresponding to this theme.
- Since the animation was relatively abstract (there was no person figure included, for example), I was glad to hear from the people who watched it in class that they realized that this reference was being made.
- Eventually, it is revealed that the rocks that are rolling backwards are rolling backwards into somewhere new and exciting.
- The rock is traveling to these new places over bridges created by other rocks that had arrived there before. (I am not sure from the audience response whether this part came through, consciously or subconsciously. If I were to continue working on this project, I would change what the rocks look like to make it more obvious that the bridge is made of those rocks specifically.)
- This animation of the traveling rock cycles indefinitely, with the background effects randomized each time. (This, combined with the effect of the Sisyphean section of changing the location after the viewer starts to think that section will be the only one, had the interesting effect of causing the in-class audience to not be sure for some time that this section would repeat indefinitely. While this has some obvious drawbacks, it does arguably complement some of the themes of this piece.)
- While I want each viewer to come to their own personal interpretation of this piece, I am hoping it can encourage viewers to consider the idea that, even if we cannot see it, in the cycles in our lives we are stuck in—even the ones where the negative effects far outweigh the positive ones—we still get something each time, even if that is just a little bit more knowledge that we can use to get just a bit further next time.
- The beginning portion employs Sisyphean imagery to convey feelings of being trapped in cycles and not making any noticeable progress.
- The Technical Aspects
- This project did give me the opportunity to experiment with a variety of Isadora “Actors.” My favorite one (which this project used for special effects and textures) was the “Explode” Actor.
- I used User Actors (which I found could be used similarly to classes from more traditional object-oriented coding languages) frequently to keep things more organized and to limit the amount of copied and pasted Actors.
- I experimented with Global Values (which have some similarities to global variables from more traditional programming), the Calculator Actor, the Comparator Actor, Actors that handled Triggers, and the Jump++ Actor for control flow, especially to repeat Scenes.
- I tried to automatically set the Global Value at the start of the show, but some unknown aspect of my logic was incorrect, so I did have to remember to manually set it each time I played the show.
- Much of the control flow resulting in the final effect on the Stage could have been accomplished with just the Counter Actor, Actors that handled Triggers, and the Jump++ Actor. However, I specifically wanted to learn about Global Values using this project, and there is some symbolism involved in the fact the Scene itself truly does fully repeat (rather than just a set of steps within the Scene). This does raise an interesting question about how the way something is done can in itself be part of an artwork—but is that worthwhile when it takes more time, is less clean, and ultimately results in the same user/viewer experience?
Isadora File Documentation/Download:
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!
Lawson: Pressure Project 1
Posted: September 12, 2023 Filed under: Nico Lawson, Pressure Project I, Uncategorized | Tags: Isadora, Pressure Project, Pressure Project One Leave a comment »For pressure project one, I was inspired to create a narrative as opposed to an infinite loop. I have recently been interested in outerspace and interstellar processes and decided to create an animation of a supernova, albeit in a simple, geometric representation.
To create a sense of time and scale, I played with trigger delays, envelope generators, and the fade in/fade out aspects of the jump++ actor. Playing with the fade in and fade out aspects of the jump scene actor helped me to create the perception of a camera zooming out to show the entire solar system. Trigger delays and envelope generators allowed me to establish movement of particular elements and create a sense of passing time. Because I did not yet know about the spinner actor I used a wave generator to manipulate the planet shapes’ horizontal and vertical positions long an elliptical pathway. To prevent them from traveling together in a straight line, I gave each planet a different scale limit and used trigger delays to offset the initiation of the planets’ pathways. For this reason, the planets appear to move in a random pathway across the screen, rather than circular orbits.
To create the sun’s “explosion,” I used an envelope generator to increase it’s scale over 10 seconds. In the next scene I used the shimmer actor to disrupt the pointed red shape and the dots actor to disrupt the yellow circle. The seeming “fizzling” of the sun was achieved through the cross-fade between scenes.
If I was to improve this patch, I would want to first, reduce the load on the Isadora program and offset the limited power of my computer’s processor, and second, create an orbit for my planets using the spinner actor. I might also use the explode and particle actors to create a “real” explosion of the sun rather than the illusion that I created using the shimmer actor. Additionally, I think that I could use the layer functions and blend mode of the projector actors to allow the planets to disappear and reappear around the sun, rather than showing up as bright spots when the images overlap.
Upon further reflection…
From a storytelling and pacing standpoint, I wish that I had allowed the scene in which the planets appear to stay longer. For me, the scene jumps to quickly after the last planet appears, rushing the story rather than establishing the presence of a solar system. For similar reasons, I wish that I had used a similar strategy of trigger delays and envelope generators to allow the stars to appear at the end of the story. I think that the narrative would have had a more satisfactory ending had I allowed the stars to slowly establish themselves rather than appear all at once. It would have also been a more satisfying final image if I had used a particle generator to create a background of smaller stars- this would have created significantly more depth to the screen.
PP1: Breathing the text – Tamryn McDermott
Posted: September 12, 2022 Filed under: Pressure Project I, Tamryn McDermott | Tags: Pressure Project, Pressure Project One 1 Comment »For this project, I decided to use some of the digital assets I created (video and audio) for a project I did in the motion lab last spring. I did not know Isadora at the time and so this provided me the opportunity to set up in Isadora from scratch and play with the assets in a new way without relying on someone else to set it up for me.
Initial structure and approach: four scenes, use Text Draw actor, play with integrating video, text, and audio, use pacing in an attempt to affect and engage viewer
Scene 1: Introduce breathing book structure and layer in shape actors with random movement and scale
In scene one, I had challenges with getting the different shape actors to actually show color variations in the final output even though I had them set up within different user actors. The color remained white no matter what in the final stage display. The layering and actors worked well here although I would have liked to include more randomness in the scene and possibly integrate some of new randomness techniques based on video sensors into the scene.
In this scene I used the random actor to select between 14 different videos that would be layered in pairs and change positions, however the random actor favored the number 15 for the video selection field and so most of the time video 15 layered over itself from varying starting positions. Again, with more time, I would have introduced another method of selecting random numbers between 2 – 15. I think it would have been cool to have the audio files trigger this in some way, but I would have to think about this more to figure out the best approach.
In the screenshot below the text draw actors are not working. I had to create workarounds since none of these actors would show up when I exited the scene and returned. There was a bug that prevented it from working on both my laptop and the ACCAD lab computers. Only the video would display on the stage. As a workaround, I generated a .png of the text “stop” and then used that as a shape actor and animated it to correspond with the repeated “stop” audio file. Below are the screenshots from the first and second patches, the second one being the working one.
Below is the working scene with the substituted image of the word “stop” I wanted to animate.
Finally, in the last scene I wanted to end on a calming note after the stop scene so here is the final scene with again, the text inserted as an image that I animated since the text draw actor did not work for me.
I learned a lot from this project and hope to be able to get a response from the Isadora team on the text draw actor bug I ran into. I also want to experiment with sensors and introduce more randomness into my work.
BUMP: Willsplosion PP1 by Emily Craver
Posted: September 3, 2022 Filed under: Emily Craver, Pressure Project I, Tamryn McDermott | Tags: Pressure Project, Pressure Project One Leave a comment »I wanted to find a pressure project 1 to bump and take a closer look at it to inspire and give me some ideas about how to approach mine as I start contemplating ideas and directions. I was drawn to Emily’s project because she integrated both sound and an element of humor using text into the final experience. I want to use one of the text actor features in mine too. I also found some actors in her patch that I want to experiment with such as the “Explode” actor. In addition, I appreciated her organization within each scene and want to be mindful in my own work to develop an organizational system that works and keeps things clear so I don’t get lost.
Emily’s post left me wanting to see/hear the outcome. This means that when I post mine, I want to share a video of the final outcome much like Tara’s that Katie bumped. What is the best way to set up to do this? How can we export and save the content from a projector?
Willsplosion: PP 1 | Devising EMS (ohio-state.edu)
Pressure Project One
Posted: September 10, 2020 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Pressure Project One Leave a comment »In this Pressure Project, while learning more of how the Isadora Program works, I was exploring chaos and randomness, and how to continually bring something new on screen before something would fully repeat itself. I went through and created figures that zoomed across the screen, that consistently changed in color, size, and shape. I wanted bursts of shapes that were stationary in their horizontal and vertical positions, but also rotated in order to keep the mind focused in different places. Overall, I learned much of how the program worked, and made some fun chaos in the process.
