Journey Across Space
Concept
When we where assigned the project of lighting up the room, I knew where to start first. Finding music. Nothing ever looks that great when you looking at it in silences, watching images and animation scroll around without having some kind of music in the background. I spent some time on YouTube, finding a song that would be my inspiration for my work. I usually base everything from traditions, to what the imagery would look like, all from the song itself. So when I came across the song, "HYPERDRIVE - Epic Powerful Futuristic Music Mix | Epic Sci-Fi Hybrid Music" I knew exactly what I was going to do; Space. When listening to the song, I usually let my imagination take over and I heard and felt was like I was traveling across the universe. So I had the idea of space, and traveling, but I didn't know exactly how to portray that in a unique way. My fellow students, Victor, from the graduate class, and other fellow classmates, gave me the idea of telling some sort of story. How I should start my story at one end of the room, then move it across the walls and end at the other side. I loved the idea of taking the viewer across space on a journey....a Journey Across Space.
Process
Once I had my idea down it was time to start the most important step, edge blending. After helping the professor set up the projectors and map out the room the way we liked, as well as sending a few hours fixing one projector I got to work. Spending around 6 hours I moved from between the four work stations, edge blending the room to make sure I had a nice seamless edge throughout the room. When the edge blending was complete and everything looked good, I saved the MadMapper files and moved my work to After Effects
Once the lion signature was completed I started on the main story-telling piece of the project. This is where I ran into two trouble spots. My first idea was to have MadMapper run AfterEffects inside of them, but when I tried that, the image became so pixelated, it just looked awful. My second options was to have one long composition, almost 5,000pix in length, where it would be cut up into pieces and then imported as a movie file into MadMapper and plained that way. But again, it was all pixelated and didn't look right. So I found myself talking to Victor, from the graduate class, about my problem. He gave me the idea of having each of the wall compositions be one long file, but have then all black out when they are not needed. This was a great idea! The only small problem was, I would need to have four people on each station, and press play at the exact same time. But that was pretty easy.
First thing I created in AfterEffects where all the compositions; Back Wall, Comp 2, Lantern Wall, Lion Wall, Comp 3 and Front Wall. Then a master composition that would hold all the other comps, but I could see how it all worked together. As well as how everything was timed in sync with the music.
I first got to work on my Lion. The geometric tape Lion was a design I created for Project 2 and I knew before I even came up with my design I wanted to use it for something. So I decided that it would be a form of a signature, because I am apparently known for my lions in the class (lol). The first thing I started with was talking to Jeremiah because I wanted to do something similar to what he did with the lion for Project 2 with the different shapes of the lion faded and changed different colors. I used his same technique for the Lion face. Having it grey scaled, and fading to different shades. I put the Lion into Photoshop first, each shape in the face being a different layer. Imported the layers into after effects and used a wiggle code effects; wiggle(5, 60). 5 for the speed, and 60 for the range of grey scale I wanted.
When the face was finished I found a gif image of a purple nebula online and masked it out so it just appeared inside the lion and put it on repeat. Then for a final touch, I decided to create the Leo Constellation inside the lion. It is a lion after all. I made ellipsis, put a two glow effect on each circle and made them look like they where flickering like stars. Then used a line, adding the same glow effected and added a Trim Path add-on to make it outline the Leo constellation.
Of course the first thing I started with was the Back Wall. This was the wall thats the furthest away from the main door of entry. This is where the story would start, and with the beginning of the music starting slow, I decided to start the journey I would take everyone with a Galaxy. The Galaxy was created in AfterEffects with Cinema 4D plug-in that comes with AfterEffects. Of course I did seek the help from tutorials online to help me out. The music is slow, and the turn of a galaxy is slow so I thought this would be perfect. Using the rotate tool, I rotated the galaxy and keyframe it so it would move slowly. I also scaled the video at the end so the galaxy would be spinning as well as zooming it before fading to the next scene.
The transition from each scene of the story shouldn't be just a simple fade, thats not how your travel through space anyways. I used the same idea that Star Trek's Enterprise, and Star Wars Millennium Falcon use to travel around space; hyperdrive or warp speed as Star Trek calls it. I used different effects and presets After Effects have to first create as stary background. Then another preset called Echo to create the effect of the stars zooming past you, before slowing back down as if your coming out of warp speed. This is the main transition used to go between every scene of the storytelling.
So after coming out of warp speed from the galaxy you are taken to a planet that is slowly being destroyed. The planet appears at one of the main beats of the song. At first I wasn't sure what to put on the lantern wall, and rumbled through a bunch of ideas before coming with the idea of traveling to an alien planet. I spent a lot of hours rumbling through YouTube to find a planet animation that didn't consist of any planet from out own solar system. Everyone already knows what are planets look like, so I needed something different. Most of what I found where a lot of still images, and I didn't want that for my project, thats boring. So I finally came across this video that I used for this section of the wall. It also helped that the video had complementary colors from the purple and blues from the galaxy.
After you visited the planet and saw it break apart from some unknown force, you are shot through a warm hole. The wormhole starts right as the music picks up to a very fast beat. The twisting and turning of a wormhole at a fast paced seemed to just make since. Plus you can't travel through space without having the joy of riding through a wormhole. The wormholes where created in AfterEffects using Cinema 4D as well as Video Copilot's Element 3D plugin I got from watching a tutorial on how to make wormholes. It started with making a cylinder ring, that was connected at the ends to make an endless loop. I then applied four different nebula cloud textures to the ring which stretched the texture out to fit around it. Making a cool affect as if your flying forward. I placed a camera inside the ring and moved it around as well as the direction so you not just traveling in a circle. You get the feeling of flying all around.
After you come out of the wormhole you are transported to a supermassive black hole. At first I wasn't sure what you where going to come to at this part of the journey, but 'seeing' a black hole seems pretty cool to visit if your traveling through space. I spent time online looking for a black hole animation that looked cool, would match the rest of my project, and wouldn't look too fake. I found a lot of silly, lazy looking black holes that just didn't peek my interest. But finally I came across this video that had a supermassive black hole, having light beaming out of it into space. The movement and speed of the light and puffs of cloud that came out of the black hole matched up perfectly with the music. Plus it fits perfectly into the pace where it would go.
Finally after your journey across space you journey ends at a White Dwarf Star thats has come to an end of its life. This 10 second section ending of the song isn't the original ending. The music actually stops with the black hole before continuing on with a new chorus. I ended up editing the end of the song to have this part play, plus i liked how it sounded and the explosion of the White Dwarf was perfect. For this explosion I used two different videos. One video I took the beginning of the explosion, with the star glowing and shaking. The second video i took the back half of the explosion, with the bright white light that fads to a beautiful nebula. At the time the music drops to silence, I scaled the video down at that lest second, before scaling it back when the white light appears.
With the white light William gave me the idea to have the white light wash over all the other walls and fade back down to the Front Wall. I loved the idea and gave it a shot. Adding a white panel to all the other compositions and faded them so the back wall faded first, then comp 3, then lantern etc. It turned out to be a really cool effect.
Everything was finally finished after that! I rendered out a total of 7 video files as mp4's. I then took the four MadMapper files, one for each computer station. Put the video files corresponding with one of the four MadMapper files. Put everything into a folder labeled, 01, 02, 03, 04, to match the computer stations, and then put one file on four different USB Drives to keep everything separated and organized. I would then have each state load the MadMapper file, import the video files that go with each projector. Once everything look good I made a preset in MadMapper, so when the project is ready to be played, I would have four people press the preset all at the exact same time.
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