Ritwik Kaikini : Project 2 Tape Mapping (Electrofly)

Ritwik Kaikini : Project 2 Tape Mapping (Electrofly)
February 12, 2017

Concept:
The origami bird design was conceived by Kuo Wei Lee. The notion that this bird can be folded and feels like paper makes us feel the softness and vulnerability of this bird. I wanted to understand the world through the bird's eyes and point of view. How would this bird enjoy flying above a downtown humanistic setting? Would it face any difficulties in its flight? How do we fly along with this bird? I wanted to show a journey of the bird along with another character, the devil, who tries to disrupt his flight. The aim was to make an audio visual narrative.

Process:
The process for the tape mapping has been documented in the video. We made sure the resolution of the projector matched the tape design and first placed the tape line design on the wall. Then we used  thin masking tape on each line to make the first design. Then I used a cityscape backdrop image on a quad underneath the bird. This outlined the environment.

After some experimentation, I realized we could make the bird fly by playing with its wings and masking out specific portions of the wings and placing these wings at separate positions.
Each masked element of the wing had a different bpm of the strob effect to make it an illusion of flapping. The first hurdle was getting to have each masked wing to strob at a different bpm rate than the other.
To be able to acheive this, you can duplicate media or any animation you want and then set the duplicated media to have a different bpm (as the below figure shows). Then I applied each duplicated material to a different wing.


After several iterations, I was satisfied with the flapping (though it can be still improvised, lots to learn!). I checked BPM sync on each of the strob material effects. The wings flapped in a coordinated manner. 
After achieving the flapping illusion, I moved on the the aerodynamics of the bird. As the bird moves through the clouds and the air, wind flows over its body and the bird changes the flow of air.
To achieve this I used the 'line patterns' material in the effects and made a quad with bezier points(10 by 10 subdivisions). Then I placed this bezier quad over the bird's body and changed the direction in the line animation to give a sense of direction or flow.
I tried other materials on each bezier quad like bar code and shapes, which gave an illusion of movement and speed.
I introduced another character shaped like a face with a red strobe ball inside his eyes to show the devilish side of any journey.
The devil's face was a bezier made in a geometric shape. I pulled out the tendrils to various points on the towers of different buildings. This was to make a sense that he survives with the electricity from nature through lightening and from the civilization of buildings. (see picture below)


The flash lightening effect was made using the material 'wobbles' at a very high speed and with high noise ratios.
I placed triangles on each of the tips of the tower to give an illusion of the tower heads sourcing electricity and feeding it to the devil. 

Interpretation:

I had to make an electronic soundtrack music which sounded groovy, absorbing, dark at times and happy too. The music was made on Logic Pro X using various synths and drum plugins. After lot of iterations and building presets, I syphoned out each of the settings and edited the whole compilation on iMovie to make an animated narrative of the whole scene. 
The result is the above video which I named 'electrofly' symbolizing electricity and flying.

Music: Electrofly by Synctote : https://soundcloud.com/tornpages/electrofly
Tape Design: Kuo Wei Lee
Software used: MadMapper, Logic Pro X, iMovie