[FHNW] Week 4 — Time:Designed

This week, we’re starting another workshop with Gregory Vines and Ted Davis which focuses on the topic of time, motion, film, and moving imagery. To my surprise, we’re not using AE, nor p5js (but something similar that also works with processing…? Ted designed a software that transfers score into rhythm, then plug artwork in.)

| 7.11 |

This morning, we took a tour of the history of film, and Gregory demonstrated to us how and which certain visual principles were developed.

Gregory gave us a simulation of the first Muybridge invention of film,

# note: Eric Dyer’s zoetrope, Andy Warhol’s 24-hours Empire State Building #

A visual principle that I found particularly intriguing is that our eyes require a sense of interruption in order to process visual information better. This is so that the interruption enables the eye to see a fading image, which crosses over with the subsequent emerging image. This is why the first version of the Oculus Rift had to be changed so that the images were not merely continuous.

It was also interesting to discover that USA uses 30 frames per sec while Europe has 24–25 frames per sec…it’s all dependent on the capacity of electricity.

We’re starting our own project, in which we’re choosing a 2-letter combination, with 25 frames per second. I’m choosing the 2-letter combination “ah”.

We were given a rhythm map, to assign each letter in the combination to a certain number of seconds, and creating a pattern, or a score, for the piece.

Visualization of the rhythm we want our letters to appear.

We decide on 3–4 scores that we want to focus on. It’ll be good to be selective in every phase — a lot can be discovered through pushing the boundaries with certain limitations.

Up next:

• 800 x 800 px
• letters have to be touching or overlapping (can change, shape, size)

Gregory: “It’s impossible to design score and artwork at the same time. You need some constraints in order to make a decision.”

I created many iterations of the “ah” combinations, and played around with the different qualities of them. I really liked the one that had a lowercase Hoefler “a” and an oblique Helvetica “h”. However, after talking to Gregory, I decided to scratch that idea — not that it’s not feasible, but rather that it’s beautiful in a very static manner. It’s very appropriate as a logotype, but in this particular situation, it would not convey as much interesting movement (in flashes).

Instead, I’m now planning to explore more with overlapping the letters, and possibly collapsing a capital “H” into a capital “A”. I’m looking into slab serifs, and more geometric typefaces, so they don’t have a humanistic imperfection which would bring in another element.

In order to achieve this effect, I need to manipulate certain characters so that some forms overlap the way I want them to.

| 7.12 |

After talking with a fellow designer, I had a great idea: to remove the horizontal in the “A” and just play with the movement of the verticals.

| 7.13 |

Today I’m going to narrow down my work to 3–4 versions that show different characteristics that I like. Currently I have (filename):

• a7h7 — the balance is nice, but letters are a little too respectful of the space and not really asserting dominance in the space; inverse, black background, increasing size of letters, taking over 80% visual space, hanging off an edge
• a19h19 — cut the protruding parts from “H” and inverse colours (verticals of H become white), fill in triangle in “A”
• a10h10 — laughing feeling; the joy that can be delivered is interesting; can be scaled down a little bit; make extremely small

We’ll be introducing sound and colour today.

** side note: we found out why the .png files have been exporting with 801 px — I’d been moving the dartboards manually, and sometimes the positions are on decimal pixels and thus Illustrator automatically adds an additional pixel.**

I’m doing some recordings of the sounds, making sound banks for each letter. For the “A,” I manipulated the sounds mainly by the pitch of the sounds and sometimes by intensity, whereas the “H” was mainly manipulated by aggressiveness (as there’s no concrete sound that is present — it’s merely air being blown).

I’m still trying to figure out if there’s a good way to post .gif files on here so it’s easier to see process.

# note: William Wegman — humourous films with dogs, Peter Campus, 1840s — mixed films front and back; Lumière brothers (CNN of France) French inventors and pioneer manufacturers of photographic equipment who devised an early motion-picture camera and projector called the Cinématographe (“cinema” is derived from this name) #

# Save as 16-bit in Garageband/Audition for .wav files. #

I’m going to stick with the minimal idea. I really like the fact that the letters are so tiny, that you’re forced to give it attention — the opposite of the bold and large. I’m not yet sure whether I want to open up the door of playing with colours yet — there’s just so much you could play with then.

Ted suggested that the order of “A” and “H” would work better as ‘clapping elements’ if I swapped the order, as our hands don’t start off as being closed when we’re clapping. Food for thought: what is it trying to mimic? Is it working? Perhaps I’m trying to imitate clapping otters and they do start off clapping with their paws closed…

I’ve been recording all kinds of weird things. Clapping, snapping, glissando, … maybe it’s time to actually observe clapping/laughing to get a better idea of the rhythm. I noticed that the construction of a laughing noise is based on a high contrast between the intake of air (inhale) and the intense breathing out of air (exhale). In other words, the rests between each laughing noise is significant and needs to be emphasized. However it’ll be difficult to make it sound natural with the strict rhythms that the software imposes…The laughing rhythm also tends to be quite sporadic and builds up after a while, then dies back down.

I ended up downloading a number of existing sound files on the internet, mainly of laughing noises.

The final product I made today resulted in a file named hahaha.mov. It consists of a black modified helvetica “H” and an “A” that looks like an upside-down “V,” both letters on a white background, and situated on the bottom of the black frame. The “H” is silent. The “A” is accompanied by clapping sounds that I recorded.

Here’s another one that I quite liked — the one with minimalistic features, as it’s vying for attention due to its minuscule scale. It’s accompanied with a baby’s laughter. Gregory and Ted both mentioned that the curve in the “H” creates kind of an elastic effect. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, but let’s just stick with it for now. The centered positioning for these guys seem to be working quite well.

I think I’ll also revisit the gestalt concept with inverse colours as below:

| 7.14 |

# note: put file “background.png / .gif / .jpg (1280 x 720 px)” to see the animation in context. #

Crit:

• annoying little thing — glitch is freebie?? I guess so…I really wanted to hear it with the silent “A” though.
• a8h8 — clicking sound is nice
• a8h21 — fix details, make symmetrical, many things happening
• a21h21 — clapping
• a24h24 — too aggressive, letters cut off (for Gregory, “A”, for Ted, “H”..)
• tiny_ha_hahaha
• tiny_ha_tinycling — comical

| 7.15 |

I’ve narrowed it down to 5 (including one freebie). It’s time to make the difficult decision of which one to scratch…and also play with the background.

Some samples in my background bank right now:

In context:

I think the idea is quite interesting (and comical) but I’m not quite achieving the effect yet with this background. It might be due to the large scale of the ants in the photograph. Maybe I’ll try to create my own backgrounds

Some of the backgrounds I’ve created:

In context:

Where would you feel alone?

• desert
• ocean
• plains

This afternoon:

• a8h8_blop — changing rhythm, variation

• a27h27 — change thickness of “A” to match “H”, shift A up

• annoying_little_thing_bugbg — put in lonely background (refer to above)

due time — 1:15pm

I really love this.

# note: tineyes.com for sourcing large size images in reverse #

In the end, I decided on:

• final_a21h21 (1)
• final_tinycling_desert (2)
• final_a28h28 (3)
• final_annoying_little_thing (4)
• final_a8h8_blop (5) — which I omitted for the sake of this presentation because I felt that the “pleasantry” of the video didn’t illustrate enough variation from the tiny cling, despite the fact that it uses my favourite sound clip

Feedback and Final Notes:

• make sure you export and hand in the right files…!!
• tinycling in the desert was not as well-received as possibly annoying little thing if it were in the desert — the latter would’ve seemed like more of a cry for help
• can try playing around with the new app