Week six of Digital Learning: AR we there yet?
This week in Digital Learning, we dove a little deeper into our exploration of micro:bit, namely using the micro:bit coding site to expand on our understanding of the device, then to apply and build onto this knowledge by using alligator clips to create circuits, then attaching the micro:bit to a moto:bit and adding motors to test some different functions. Then, for our next inquiry, my classmates and I were challenged by having to complete a homemade gif with AR as a self paced DIY activity.
So I have a confession: I’ve never been a huge fan of Photoshop. Like most things, I can get the hang of it with time and lots of patience, but the interface has always made me feel overwhelmed and a little bit bewildered. this definitely remained the case as I approached this assignment to create a gif using Photoshop. Thankfully, my professor posted a step by step video on how to formulate a moving image, which allowed me to pretty easily create the very base level bouncing ball gif.
The next step was to move over to Eyejack, which is an augmented reality app that allows creators to input a moving image (in my case a gif) over a static image in order to create a simple AR, an alternate view of the original image. When I had finished my gif and felt pretty confident in it’s format and function, I added it to Eyejack AR creator. This is when I realized I needed to gain a better understanding of the relationship between the gif itself and the image that would trigger the gif AR in Eyejack. As you can see in my background image above, there is only a white background to my bouncy ball, but I wanted to try to use a photograph as my trigger image, and hoped that the animation would simply sit on top of it as a transparency. Instead, when I input this gif to Eyejack with a photograph as the trigger image, the animation overrode the picture I’d used once the AR was active. To remedy this, I tried to go into Photoshop and add the desired background image, but like I said before, Photoshop isn't something that makes a lot of intuitive sense to me. So like any confused digital citizen would, I turned to Google. After a slew of searches, and a very unproductive few rounds of trial and error, I was still unsuccessful in trying to use a picture (taken from my iphone) in my gif. In retrospect, I realize that I might have been able to solve this issue by going into photoshop and deleting the background layer so that my gif could function as a transparency. But since I didn’t think of this until afterwards, I decided to do things my own way.
Since I had at least had some success getting my animations to function in Eyejack, I was ready to branch out and try to make a gif that was more visually engaging, and because I had so much trouble trying to use a photo, I decided to paint the entire project myself. This proved to be much more compatible with my understanding of Photoshop, and with this, the process became so much more enjoyable. I was literally painting and animating my own artwork, which is something I’ve always wanted to do! But even with this little victory, there were still times when the program pushed back so I couldn't achieve the exact results I had hoped for. For instance, on my “color waves” gif, I thought it would be cool to have the green form move kind of like a beating heart, growing and shrinking in size. Yet every time I tried to enlarge or shrink the object in one frame, the same changed applied to the other frames as well. Again, I tried to consult Google, but since I’m still not hugely familiar with the scope of functions in Photoshop, it was really difficult for me to figure out how to even phrase the question. The best advice I came across was to add a new layer for each frame, but unfortunately, that didn’t resolve the issue either. Next, I tried to get the object to rotate as it traveled across the screen, but I ran into the same issues as when I attempted to change the size, so I compromised and decided to just do a more complicated version of what had worked for me already. To animate the form in my first animation, “the mind at work”, I simply moved the squiggles across the stage in a circular motion, and in the second animation, “color waves”, I basically followed the same steps, but added nearly twice the amount of frames to make the movement more dynamic.
To troubleshoot the issue I’d had before with the trigger image, I decided to screenshot the starting point of my animations to use as the trigger so that the AR would flow nicely and look more crisp. This ended up being a pretty solid solution, and both of my painted gifs turned out quite nicely if I do say so myself!
In terms of the titles, characterization, and affects of my animations, these things all came about near the end of the creation process, where I’d gained some flow and felt more confident in what I was making. I decided to name my first gif “the mind at work” because the little moving object looks to me like a brain with the left and right sides separated by color, while the background is this flowy pink atmosphere. To me it sort of represents two ways that we can look at the mind: something organizable and categorizable, and something that is living, flowing, moving, and changing in every moment. In “the mind at work”, these ideas merge in a way that is both visually and conceptually engaging. For my second gif, “color waves” my original intent was simply to challenge myself to create something different, and perhaps more engaging and complex than the first. However, as I mentioned earlier, many of my ideas proved to be unattainable for this particular instance due to my lack of mastery over Photoshop and a time constraint that kept me from being able to take ample time to troubleshoot enough to get the desired results. Yet, in spite of those complications, I’m still happy with the result and feel like I did fulfill my wish to make a more complex animation, even though it wasn’t quite as unique from the first gif as I’d hoped. This creation is more focused on form rather than concept since my intent was to push the function a little further, so when the materials pushed back a little bit, I decided to compromise and turn it into a moving color study.
Before starting this project I was honestly a little overwhelmed, but by the end I felt pretty confident in the skills I’d gained. I still hope to figure out how to use Photoshop to animate in a more dynamic way if that’s possible, and if not, I will definitely explore the other Adobe applications that came with my Photoshop subscription so I can keep experimenting with animation, which as I mentioned before is something I’ve always wanted to do. This project has really opened a door for me, and I can’t wait to see what new creative endeavors it leads to! Onwards and Upwards! #artt2372
-Fai