Moving towards physical reality

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After the experiments with the small animations within pictures, I decided the idea could take on a broader, larger scale. My intention is to have a physical manifestation of the digital materials I create, trying to blur the lien between the two planes. 

 I experimented with new images and animations, the aim being to make them longer and more expansive - closer to reality, but retaining some of the slightly disconcerting joltiness and unrealness of the earlier animations for the Seven Deadly Sins.

 I began with photos like this taken in series to capture the walk cycle of another student. Photos were taken at an interval of several inches of movement so that it would slightly jerky, reminiscent of an old film projector perhaps. 

 These photos were brought into photoshop and one by separated from the background using the lasso and pen tools to cut out the figure fro their surroundings. 

 Once this was done, I placed them in order and animated them into a series, so that when played at a speed of 0.01 seconds per frame, they suggested walking. 

 This left me with a walk cycle on a clear background, which left me to decide what to superimpose it on:


I wanted to keep the slightly jerky and unsettling motion of the animation as a nod to the seven deadly sins. The sins series of photos were meant to feel creepy and odd, and keeping this feeling helps to generate an uncomfortable feeling in the viewer. 

 I had several ideas for what setting to use for the animation, but settled eventually on a dolls house. Dolls houses have an intrinsic level of miniature reproduction and potential uneasiness, as the child has full control over the destiny of the occupants of their dolls house. Rather than using dolls, I would use people and video to blur the line between what is a toy and miniature, and what is reality. 

 I didn't have a dolls house to hand, so used shelving boxes as a stand-in until I could experiment with one. I first decided to experiment digitally, before making the transition to physical presence. 

 I shot a photo of the boxes, and super-imposed my earlier animation onto the image:

Imagining this actually being in front of my in the dolls house got me thinking about how to transition from the digital to physical. I wanted this piece to have a physical presence as an installation or moving sculpture, not just an easily destroyed digital manifestation of movement. I considered placing LCD screens in each box, but realised that would require specialist equipment. Using mechanical motion with mtors and actuators would not work either as the level of detailed movement required would be impossible to achieve with animatronics. 

 I remembered a technique I had seen once at a theme park, called 'peppers ghost' invented for use in theatres and haunted houses by John Henry Pepper. The effect allows a 3D projection of an actor to appear like a ghost on stage, by utilising properties of reflection and light in dark rooms. 

The actor is lit below stage, with a glass pane or thin screen hung at a 45 degree angle above them. This reflects their image to the audience, making them appear as a ghostly apparition - partially translucent and pale. The effect was popularised for this reason in theatre and haunted houses as an effective and relatively cheap way to create convincing ghost effects. 

Now that I had a technique that may possibly work, I needed a way to appropriate it to my task. The issue with using Peppers Ghost is that you require a whole room either adjacent to or below the projection area that is hidden from sigh. With the dolls house I wanted to use I cannot achieve this very easily without losing rooms to use, as if I use some rooms for projection then they cannot be also used for display. Thus I needed to figure out a way to reflect the light in a way that works more effectively. 

I drew some mockups to start with, trying to calculate the light bounces and different angles. I realised that mounting a projector above the audience may be difficult, whilst also bouncing light mostly downwards - this would require the dolls house to be very high above the viewer's head so that the reflected light hit their eyes. 


As I result I realised I would have to invert the assembly, so that the projector was below the house and projected upwards, reflecting the light upwards towards the viewer's eyes. 

I tested this with some still images first, to prove that it worked. My primary issue was with reflection: the plane panes of glass didn't reflect very well at all - instead light passed straight through onto the wall behind and the image was incredibly faint, only reflected by the smudges and fingerprints on the glass. 


To fix this and get an image that was usable, I researched several methods. Easiest to achieve was frosted glass spray, which is an aerosol which results in a slightly frosted screen when lightly misted over glass or perspex. I did consider using tracing paper, but thought it would be too opaque and ruin the effect. The test with frosting spay on a section of glass was incredibly successful, resulting in a crisp image:


Having a black background to the image meant that anything black didn't show through as it was not reflected by the glass. Only lighter portions such as the boy and his suit effectively reflected to the audience. The frosted portion is on the left:


The final step would be sourcing the dolls house and finalising what footage to place in each room…