IOL week 8 - Metamorphosis
Aim
In this week, for experimenting with metamorphosis, as there is a young bird and an old bird in my studio work, I decided to work with the same. In the studio animation, the young bird sees the watch for the first time and likes it a lot, but eventually gets separated from the watch. In the end, the old bird finds the watch. For this week’s experiment, I decided to work with the contrast of young and old in my animation and did 2 experiments in order to portray the contrast between the ages with the help of metamorphosis.
I planned an experiment where the bird flies and is young and as it lands it gets old. In the second experiment, the young bird in the ancient environment blinks its eye, and when the eyes open, the bird has turned old and the environment has become all modern with high rise buildings.
Method
In order to do this experiment, I used the young bird and the old bird from my studio animation, made a flying animation for both the birds, and merged them into one scene. I did this experiment in Maya. The bird flies from one direction and is young, but as it is close to landing it gets old.
For the second experiment, I created two background environments, one the ancient environment, and one modern, with high rise buildings. In the experiment, first the young bird is sitting on the fence in the ancient environment and blinks its eye, as soon as it opens its eyes, the bird is now old and the environment is modern.
During the creation of the metamorphosis experiment, I was also mindful of the fact of not using post production methods to create the effect.
Result
In the end of the week’s response, I had two iteratively developed experiments, which conveyed the aging of the bird in a given lifespan.
Reflection
Conceptually, this week’s experiment metamorphosis experiment, made in relation to my studio work is also symbolic of the passing of time and old age. The first experiment where the young bird is flying is symbolic to the energy levels associated with a young bird, as the bird ages, and its energy level drops, it lands on the fence. This is also the case with humans. During young age, humans choose do high energy tasks and remain active, while in old age, they mostly choose to slow down, have contentment in life and avoid high energy tasks and have rest.
Similarly, the second experiment is also symbolic to passing of time and old age and the passing of a whole lifetime in the blink of an eye. A person’s life also flies by in the blink of an eye and we don’t even get to realise it. In the experiment, the bird blinks its eyes and its old age arrives. Time and environment changes, but the bird still remains there.
Technically, this week’s exercise of metamorphosis, as also being insightful, was a little challenging to achieve technically, as merging the two animations of old and young in both experiments, required quite some time. As the placement, timings, size and scale had to be kept into consideration for both of these experiments. The experiments did not turn out to be very smooth initially, due to frame mismatch, size issues and so on. But these experiments took patience and to create and in the end gave amazing results.
I also plan to use the metamorphosis exercise in the future for developing more insightful concepts. Inspired from this exercise, I am also planning to create some life-related animations using metamorphosis.
Documentation of work
Documentation of work for this exercise and work in progress screenshots of this week’s works are contained in a PDF document called ‘Documentation of work’ attached with this post.