CPS Week 8 - Time

Content:

Slit Animation Video 01: https://youtu.be/8oDjgt9kCHk

Slit Animation Video 02: Above

Interactive Panda Slit Animation 03 (DOWNLOAD LINK): https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZjHH8tmDN0IDhdgNSuyYTeZUwsXZWgD9

Theme:

Time - to consider the material possibilities of time and its ability to enact change.

Context:

Mob Psycho 100 II Opening - https://youtu.be/epZaT8B31-g?t=20

The subject of time had me think back to older forms of animation that involve user interactivity to create the illusion of time, rather than the captured time in recorded animations. The use of varying types of animation in this anime opening sequence was the key that pointed me towards these older forms of animation.

Animated Optical Illusion. How To! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvNjsOl1Ag0

A great reference on understanding slit animations and how to create them yourself. I used this to provide the basis of the slit animations I produced.

Method:

I will produce an interactive slit animation that highlights the ability for the audience to create their own perception/illusion of time through interaction and change to the base image.

Response:

After creating the X number of frames in the animations, I created X frames of the black bars that were slightly offset and deleted the intersecting areas covered in black on each corresponding frame. In my first two Wave examples, I animated the black bars moving over the compiled base image, starting slow, speeding up in the middle and slowing down again.

In my third example I catpured the key frames from a panda walk cycle I had previously created and applied the same technique to create the base image, then imported the bars and base image into Adobe Flash/Animate. By making the black bars an interactive component through actionscipting, the audience can click and drag the bars to create their own illusion of movement as they would with a physical slit animation.

I had initially wanted to create a physical slit animation, which I may still do in the future. The key barrier I encountered was finding out how to accurately transferr the black bars onto an acetate sheet. Drawing the black bars with permanent marker wasn't accurate, I didn't have paper thick enough to cut the white spaces from a printed template and printing directly onto the acetate has a potential for risk.