7
Nov 30

Dandy Andy’s Final Performance

 

Dandy Andy, a clown once in his prime, perfomes his final act for an audience of none.

Approach him and you begin to hear the echoes of his laughter and pained cries as he jiggles from the rope that he dangles from, his old show’s promo playing on a broken television beneath the stool he flung himself from.

The installation was designed part for video sculpture and part for the ITP Halloween show.

Software

Using a Kinect in tandem with Jitter, while the background music was generated through MaxMSP loops to create randomized skipping beats and reactive audio.

Animations

Animations were created using puppeting in Adobe After Effects, while Dany Andy was hand drawn in photoshop. The promo was designed in Flash and After Effects.

Audio

Audio was part self-recorded, part remixes of old vaudville music, part SFX libraries.


2
Jul 09

Mellifluous

 

Mellifluous is an interactive narrative where anyone can step up to the installation and become a maestro. As you conduct you unfold a personal audio-visual narrative of unique otherwordly characters and weave their unique sounds into a mellifluous song. Conduct the story as you conduct your own song.

Standing up to a tree in the woods, as you wave your hands, the Kinect reads your hand gesture and opens up the windows to the worlds of each individual character. Depending on the other characters that you awaken at the same time, the narrative changes and so does the song.

[…video coming soon…]

Software

The software was written in C++ in OpenFrameworks, using ofxQTKitMoviePlayer to play the different animations, and ofxKinect to help communicate with the kinect. Taking the data from the kinect we calculated blob measurements.

Animations

Each animation was created in Adobe Flash and each background was painted in Photoshop.

MORE HERE

MORE HERE

Physical

The tree was constructed to fit over a large monitor. The tree itself was made in illustrator and then fed into a laserprinter, printing out each part of it in components. 

 

Using foam, the tree was snuggly fit onto the monitor, making it perfect for easy removal and reassembly.


Jun 25

Paracosm

An immersive narrative, Paracosm explores an alternative shadow world and our interactions with it through an interactive story played on a handmade touchable. Touchtable logic is controlled through C++ and characters are brought to life through animated charcoal sketches.

PREMISE

In the dark lurks another world removed from our own. There children go to play their games, unaware that within the same shadows, Shades cultivate, hungering for those foolish enough to enter into their darkened realms. Foolishly the children do not heed the warnings of their parents who desperately want them to return to our world. The fireflies bridge the two worlds, casting light within the shadows. Remember, the children do not come willingly, you must play their game of chase. But be careful, the light that can bridge the worlds can also aid the monsters.

What is Paracosm?

Paracosm
noun, a detailed imaginary world involving humans and/or animals, or perhaps even fantasy or alien creations. often having its own geography, history, and language, it is an experience that is developed during childhood and continues over a long period of time: months or even years.

Paracosms have always been an integral part of my growth and creativity. Since I was young I had stacks of notebooks with secret languages written with entire grammatical systems and dictionaries, philosophies about different nations pouring through what their theoretical religions were, their cultural practices, their military systems. I built paracosms within paracosms, drawings and writings attributed to worlds that sometimes I was certain existed apart from within my own mind. My friends and I had a secret society of members who wholeheartedly believed we were each from a different planet born under a different sign, ecosystems built entirely out of the belief that what we were creating was not creations, but an extension of our reality. While I’ve long since come to terms with what is real and what is imaginary, I still firmly believe that what we imagine very much closely resembles what we interpret and translate from our reality.

To me, the concept of Virtual Reality was never meant to be a form of escapism as much as a very tangible way to explore the limits of creativity. Storytelling, the ability to create and expand upon the imaginary and use it as a way to connect and expose remains very important for me. Without coming off too heavy-handed I always felt that storytelling aimed to communicate and educate in a way that other forms of education do not.

Our Paracosm is playful, dark, explorative. At its most basic it is a toy that explores the interplay between light and shadow, at its most complex it’s a layered narrative with moral ambiguity. We are still iterating as we go on, and plan to build it up beyond its basic interaction. We hope as it progress we continue to bring others into our world, a world that slowly becomes theirs.

ANIMATIC/STORYBOARDS

 

From the beginning I started working on the concepts in charcoal. I always feel there is something romantic and sinister in charcoal. It is a very messy, hands-on way of expressing art, and it allows for a level of fluidity not caught up in detail. The added texture lends to an imperfect aesthetic and yet comes off as very captivating. One thing that I feel some of these game aesthetics lack is that kind of texture. Most of the animation for the game are done with charcoal and touched up in photoshop for a bit more fluidity and evenness in the motion. Rather than a storyboard, I felt that expressing our concept in the form of an animatic would be more appropriate. Concepts a bit vague to describe through static images become clear in an animatic and it expressed both the visual tone we are going for as well as the auditory element which I feel solidified the concept. 

The animatic served as our storyboard. Rather than drawing out boards I felt it was more necessary to depict the actual interaction.

Software

Developed in C++ with the aid of OpenFrameworks, we created Paracosm in three stages. 

1) Implementing the particle flocking to fingertips and OPEN_GL shaders.

2) AI development and general interactions with the children and monsters. The motion lent well to general game mechanics, getting the animations to run smoothly and at the correct frame rate. 

3)Associating our program with the touchable, allowing for multitouch capability. 

My partner worked on the OpenGL shaders, I worked on timing the animation and the game mechanics. Together we implemented the multitouch TUIO communication. The most frustrating process with working in OpenFrameworks is that it is still part of a DIY community. Trying to combine code became an arduous process because each library would be only compatible with a certain version of OF or Xcode. We finally got something working, but it was always a terrifying prospect to try to get it to work cohesively.

We used a program known as CCV [Community Core Vision] to read all the blobs and help us with calibration. It really eased the process and instead we use an of TUIO library in order to speak with CCV.]]

HARDWARE

When it came to how to construct our project, our initial challenge was building a touch table. Peau Productions served as a great resource when it came to the construction of our table and directions. While I had build my own defunct table before, this was the first touch table I had ever built with multitouch functionality and key directions. The process ended up being the most arduous and time consuming component of implementing Paracosm, largely because calibration was so key. Still, it was perhaps one of the most satisfying pieces once we got it working. For the touch surface we are using a Diffused Surface Illumination (DSI) Table. The materials used were a projector, IR camera, IR LEDs, projection surface and a specialized piece of Enlighten Acrylic.

Equipment List:

Enlighten Acrylic 18x26

.315in 2-Bar LED Emitter Kit

850nm Projection Film

Computer

Projector

⅛” top piece Camera

Camera mount

Camera visible light filter MDF box 


1
Jun 24

Paradox, Imagine Cup Spring 2011 FINALIST

PREMISE

“There is a fountain that can teleport you to the future. You find out that your once sunny world becomes an uninhabitable and decrepit slum. If you continue to be passive towards your world, this is its future - but it’s not too late.

It is up to you to change the tides of fate. Explore your world and learn new skills to help transform the present of the world to help change its future.”

Features

- Play as a boy or girl

- Explore different and unique districts and tackle the challenges that plague them.

- Gain SP or Social Points in each district by aiding others. This will grant you special skills and tools you can use throughout the world. It allows you to explore and unlock secrets in the present and future.

TRAILER

BACKGROUND

During my Spring 2011 semester at ITP I joined a group of students who were participating in the Microsoft Imagine Cup Spring Competition. For those unfamiliar with Imagine Cup, it is a game development competition where you must create a game designed for education or social change. 

The team consisted of two Computer Science students looking for game designers and artists. They had sent out an email and then went through a selection process based on the different candidates. My friend and I were both selected from ITP.

I became head Creative Director from the game, creating most of the story, characters, music and visual assets. It was a lot of work considering the deadline was two months away.

We never would have imagined that our game made it as far as it did, placing 5th in the US, and we hope to continue working on it for the fall competition.

STORYBOARDS

The first deadline was for the storyboards.

The boards were whipped within a night’s time. I went with something bold, bright, that showcased ideas for what the game would look like and the story it would tell without getting too focused on the art elements of it. 

Much to my surprise, it not only got us into the next round with great standings but we received a personal invitation from the President of Marketing where we were allowed to present a demo of our game.

AESTHETIC

For the game itself I decided on a very Nintendo sort of aesthetic. Inspired like the Zelda DS games, Professor Layton and Animal Crossing, I wanted to go for something easy to model in 3D, colorful and accessible to kids.  For the fast graphic iteration, it became incredibly necessary to make quick and easy assets. Everything you see is modeled in Maya 2011 and imported into XNA.

Main Characters

MUSIC

The music was composed using the midi keyboard instruments in Logic Pro. For a simple children’s game it worked perfectly, creating easily engaging catchy tunes.


5
Jun 22

Message In a Bottle

Message in a Bottle  is an interactive installation is inspired by the tradition of the “message in a bottle”, wherein, a personal message is sealed inside a glass container and thrown out to sea in the hope of it reaching a reader at the end of its maritime journey.

The viewer is presented with a simple glass bottle and a plank of wood. Five distinct quotes surround five separate areas of the wooden platform. Upon being picked up and moved across the plank, the bottle triggers different sounds. The five auditory signals serve as another form of guidance, each relating to a certain quote. When the container is placed on one of five specific points, an image or animation is projected into it. Each one of the five locations has its own set of imagery evoking a different character’s life. Every time the bottle is placed on a point, a new aspect of that person’s story is revealed.

Software

The software was written in Processing in communication with Arduino. Relaying the signals of both the magnetic digital controls [on/off] and the analog numbers read by the range finder, the software was written to randomize what images are show in each of the different locations the bottle is placed.

When placed in each unique location the images in the bottle are randomly displayed to tell one complete story before looping through the randomization again. Video and Images are read all through image sequencing.

Hardware

We used two Arduinos to communicate the software data. Sensors included:

RangeFinder: The RangeFinder tracks the location of the bottle so that as you move the bottle, the music shifts to give the wielder clues as to where they may find another story on the map.

Magnetic Sensors: The Magnets were unique switches that allowed us to make the bottle the only control piece,  allowing for only the bottle to unlock the animations.


4
Jun 21

GamePainter

GamePainter is a system for adaptive and conversational gameplay, aiming to close the gap between those who develop games and those who play them.

GamePainter allows one person to be a level builder. They are given the ability to alter the landscape of the game in real time, creating evolving 3D landscapes simply through painting.

I created a mock touch-table. Using a camera and some glowing paint that was illuminated through black light, I allowed players to move paint on a table. The more pronounced and the brighter the paint, the higher the mountains they created in a digital game that someone else could play.

The game itself is a simple collection game. The other gamer would roll a ball in a 3D to collect points by tilting the gameplay field with a wiimote without falling off the field. The challenge became keeping the ball on the field while the field was constantly being changed, making it much more challenging for the player as the playing field was being altered.

When tested it showed that it created a constant dialogue between the level designer and the gamer, allowing for the painter to decide if they wanted to help improve the gamer’s score, work against them or simply use the paints to create a piece of art and act oblivious to the gamer. 

GamePainter was my first final at NYU’s ITP, and the project itself allowed me to utilize my new skills in both hardware and software development.

HARDWARE

While I wasn’t certain of it yet, when I first constructed the game, it was actually my own version of a homemade touch table [As you will see with my other entries, I have started to become somewhat of an expert at touch table design and construction]. As mentioned above, I used illuminated paint, using the illumination as the way in which the touch was read. The closer the paint was to the surface of the acrylic, the brighter it appeared to the camera.

Software

Developed in Processing which is a rapid-prototyping Java environment, It allowed me to quickly get my hands on creating very visual applications easily. As you can see with the iSight above, I created an application that allowed for me to read depth using the camera. The application doesn’t have to work with just the paint, in fact one could simply change the environment by sticking their face and limbs into the camera’s view.

On top of it, one can also see the ever evolving landscape that the game is played on. As is shown,  the environment evolves, effecting the way the ball moves through the environment as it moves over a pixelated square affected by the camera input.


Jun 21
My Illustration Blog