Monday, September 10, 2018

Ethan Christopher Projection Mapping Assignment 1

Concept

One of my favorite parts of campus that I believe to be severely underrated is the greenery around and behind the McDermott library. I took a snapshot of the side of the library that I thought would make for a visually compelling setting. One of my favorite things the library provides is access to the streaming service, Kanopy. Kanopy's library has documentaries, educational films, and classic cinema. My concept came from an idea I had for a classic cinema film festival to promote Kanopy. Using the library as my hypothetical location for the event I created two compositions for both marketing purposes and a display at the event itself. 


Image result for kanopy


Technique
I followed the MadMapper online and in-class tutorials pretty much to duplication. However, I did toy with some things and try to experiment. In my first composition I used snippets of classic films projected onto various surfaces in the library area to grab the attention of passers by. This would be a great way to market the event if there were volunteers with flyers nearby. I layered placeholder quads over the desired spaces and after sizing filled in my media. For some clips I used an add blend mode and others were multiply- whatever looked best. 

For my second composition I did the same process for the "logo" in the upper left hand corner but tried something less geometric. I loved the idea of projecting on to the lush plants but doing this in MadMapper was not easy. I had to create a mask with dozens of points on it to give the mask a curved edge appearance. It seemed impossible to mask around every individual leaf so I softened the edges but the only way to get rid of the harsh lines was to use a dark media. I went with the glowing blob thing (the name has escaped me) and chose the multiply blend mode to make the background blend in more. The subtle reddish glow gives the leaves  that are almost not noticeable at dark a new dynamic function in the environment. Another subtler touch was the cloudy ground below that I added to balance out the other elements in color and placement.

Interpretation/Final Products
I think the composition that utilized the actual movie footage turned out great! The second could use some more work or conceptual tooling. In the future, I will take shadow into consideration a little more when taking my picture and/or planning a physical project. The overhang creates a lovely darkness that makes it easy to project under but in my second mock-up it is not fully clear that the pillars are present. I am pleased with the outcome, considering this is my time using MadMapper.





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