Final project: Searching for Life

View on Youtube for 1080p.



Aesthetic

The short is meant to convey the wonder and mystery of space, as well as, have a small narrative about a computer controlling a spaceship possibly in search of life amongst the stars. The cellular automata I made, I wanted it to look like lights on a computer mainframe so I made each cell fade out like a little LED turning off. The music is a techno piece that I believe adds to the aspect of wonder, awe, and mystery.

Conceptual

For my final project I wanted to extend my previous project with fractal flames and incorporate them into a short animation piece with an outer space theme. I also wanted to make a cellular automata that looked like computer mainframe lights inside a spaceship. Basically, the whole idea was to take some generative art concepts and make them part of a larger piece of work.

Technical

The fractal flames were created in apophysis in 1080p. I rendered 200 flames but probably only ended up using 50 or so in the final piece. I used After Effects to create the motion in the flames as well as the light rays. The 3D parts where created in Maya, I made a spaceship model and modeled the interior spaceship set. I also did the lighting, shading, and camera animation. I made the cellular automata in processing based on Conway's game of life. I made each cell block a continuous color that is picked from a random set of about 6 colors mainly different shades of red, blue, or green. More cells are randomly placed into it to keep it from dying out. I then composited this into my maya scene so it appeared to be a computer mainframe.

Project 3: Fractal space

Aesthetic

For this piece I wanted to reflect the colorful beauty of outer space. I believe I achieved that with the latter half of my video with the different nebulae. The beginning animations have a more "computer graphic" look while the nebulae look more painterly and a lot like actual nebulae. I chose some ambient music as the soundtrack to the piece because I believe it reflects the ethereal aspect of space and the quiet beauty that is presented. The music chosen has some sampling from the movie Contact. It is taken from the part of the movie where Jodie Foster's character goes through the wormhole and arrives at the alien world and she says "I had no idea" because she is shocked by the beauty. So this kind of adds some more to the theme of the piece.

Conceptual

I wanted to take fractal flames and make a space-themed video out of them. So the flames would represent things like galaxies, suns, and nebulae.

Technical

On this piece I used Apophysis to create fractal flames with a space theme. Apophysis 2.09, the Flam3 renderer, and the RenderFlam3 script were used to create the animated fractal flame sequences at the beginning of the video, the galaxy-like animation and the sun animation (which is 2 animations, so 3 in total). Apophysis 2.08 3D hack version was used to create the nebulae seen in the latter part of the video. Each nebula consists of 3 fractal flames layered on top of each other in After Effects plus a star field layered behind that, which was also created in Apophysis. The fractal flames were layered in 3D and a camera was used to get some motion and a sense of parallax.

Project 2: Hypnotrance

Aesthetic

The colors, animations, and patterns that are created by the L-systems have a hypnotizing quality to them that draws the viewer in and makes it hard to turn away.

Conceptual

I designed this project so that it would be hard to look away from it. I wanted it to be colorful, interesting to watch, and have interesting patterns to look at. I imagine it being something that runs off of a projector that plays during raves or techno parties. It's something to get people into a "trance."

Technical

This work was created in Processing using code that uses string manipulation from axioms and rules that is used to draw lines on the screen at certain angles and points. There are 12 L-systems built-in, one of which generates a random L-system. The animation comes from changing the angle the L-system uses. Different increments to the angle each time the screen is drawn determines how fast or slow the animation plays. I had to make each L-system play at its own speed to see the animations clearly. Each animation will go through 180 degrees of rotation, once it has done this it will pick another random L-system to start rendering. The 'r' key on the keyboard can be used to pick another random L-system to play if you don't want to wait for the current one to finish. The random L-system uses a random string generator to create strings for an axiom, a rule F, and a rule G. F is a draw and move forward command and G is a move forward but don't draw command.

Program Download

Future work

I want to make the random L-system generator better. Right now it seems to only make circular patterns so i want to figure out how I can make more interesting patterns with random strings. I also want to make some of the L-systems draw symmetrically to balance out the image more.

Project 1: Seasons of Bubble Gum

For this project I made a program that creates art pieces made from circles. The program runs and circles of random radius between 5 and 200 are drawn in random positions within the program window frame. The color of each circle is randomized and so is the starting background color. All the circles also have an opacity of 75% so colors get mixed and the background affects the color scheme of each piece. The program runs for a random amount of time between 1 and 6 seconds, then stops for about 3 seconds so the viewer can look at the finished result before the program resets and starts making a new piece.

The intention is to have this program running on a plasma screen in a gallery where it continuously keeps making these art pieces. Aesthetically, the colorful nature of the work is meant to attract the eye and the overall feel and mood of each piece generating can change. The title "Seasons of Bubblegum" refers to the semi-clear circles being drawn and the mood changing from one piece to the next.

Program Download

Progress on Project 1