DIGITAL MEDIA:
Funny Images
One of our first Narrative projects for Digital Media was to use Photoshop to composite multiple photos together into one funny photo. I think I misunderstood this assignment, because I thought I could only use photos that I took, which is wrong. I don’t take a lot of pictures, and none of them are particularly funny. Oh well.
Image 1: The Robot from my failed Narrative 1 movie overlooking the iconic Thin House in London, England
Image 2: Various pictures I had in my camera roll looking out of the windows of Doune Castle in Scotland, where most of Monty Python and the Holy Grail was filmed
Multi-Layered Art
The second Narrative II Digital Media project was to create an artwork out of laser cut wood. We had to design each layer of wood, so that when it was glued together it would create a piece of art. I decided to take the “3-d” aspect of the project to the extreme, and designed a fully 3-d sculpture of an airplane.
Step 1 was to design each layer. My project looks very weird at this step, because it just looks like a bunch of concentric circles. That’s because it is.
Step 2 was to take every single piece and lay it out so it could be cut out on the laser cutter. It might start to make a little sense at this point, with every single piece laid out. I did screw up a little at this step. Most of the wing segments were supposed to be cut out six times, but for one of them I only laid out five pieces, so only five were cut.
Step 3 wasn’t to assemble, despite what you might expect. While we waited for the pieces to be cut, we had to produce a video using Adobe After Effects to show each individual layer in 3d. Mine was a real pain in the ass because my plane has over 115 layers that I had to animate by hand.
Here is a screenshot of my computer screen while I was working on this:
But wait! There’s more! I didn’t just use one screen, because that would be incredibly painful. Instead, I utilized the secondary monitor that we are supplied in the Digital Media classroom, which made the whole process much more bearable. It was still incredibly slow, though:
Step 4, the final step, was to glue the actual physical model. I haven’t done this yet, but I will soon. Probably.