Week 1
Hi!
I'm Chontel Cox and I am super excited for 241.
A few facts about me:
- I have a twin
- I have 2 horses, 2 cats, 2 cows and 1 dog
- I love poetry and l'art pour l'art
I am really intrigued in learning new tools to help me make a VR or AR room, as these tools will be used a lot in my future career path. Further, it will be exciting creating something innovative and unique. I love anything to do with art; art galleries, archives, its history, storytelling and all of arts physical mediums. Thus, I would personally be super interested in merging concepts of art galleries with AR.
An idea I think could be extremely effective is to zone in on one particular artwork in a group and see how we can bring aspects of it to life to make the work feel more sensory. Even though artworks are predominately visceral, many art historians and scholars claim even 2 dimensional artworks on canvas should still be provoking multiple sensors due to the way colour and form is shown. - Promoting loudness or quietness or even quite possibly taste. When you see brushstrokes the viewer can immediately have an understanding of what it feels like. Bringing these concepts more to the forefront with enhanced illustration could bring more meaning out for regular public viewings of a work.
Additionally, enriching an artworks story in a niche way could work well, depending on the specifics.
Week 2
Reflection
Snapchat Filter
Creating my snapchat filter was a super exciting experience because I always thought creating something like that was unachievable and sort of a mystery. I had never used Studio Lens before, so all the tools were brand new to me.
For my concept the brief said to be creative, so I decided to go for a picnic theme because I thought the idea was original in comparison to other snapchat filters already been done before – further, one of my favourite pass times is to have picnics with friends and family. I decided to create a composition in the lens based on the hierarchy of what a normal picnic layout would be like. The real life background is blocked out and I covered it with a grass background image. Masked to the face is a picnic blanket and then above the masked face I bound foods and drink to specific areas of the face, so it looked like they were sitting on a blanket. I also added a picnic basket onto the forehead to tie it all in together, and make it look like the user was balancing it. At first using Studio Lens was a bit difficult, trying to navigate the buttons and where they are located; additionally, finding the specific tools required to create the vision in your mind. However, it became pretty easy once I had time to just play around and experiment with through trial and error – but also the demonstration really helped a lot that we did in class. Although the images used here are not my own, I arranged them dynamically to create a new image that is unique. Plus, I wanted the filter to have authentic elements and not illustrative. I wanted to gain the understanding of the tools required to code for a snapchat filter too. I first thought about creating it so that when you smile or raise your eyebrows, text appears and says ‘Lets Eat!’. However, I came to the conclusion that it would make the composition of the lens look too crowded. - So I decided it would be a great idea to use audio to enhance my lens. I wanted to use a munching/ chewing sound to really encapsulate the whole essence of a picnic. This part was rather hard. I trialled a few of the audio buttons out in my coding; there are so many I didn’t know which one was the correct one to choose. However, the ‘Play’ one finally worked. I attached it to when the user smiles by undergoing ‘SmileStartEvent’ with the audio attached and the ‘SmileFinsihedEvent’ to conclude it. I used the mouth as a trigger because chewing is an action that comes from your mouth so it made the most sense in my scenario.
Alongside the process of creating my Picnic Face snapchat filter I wanted to also have a go at drawing my own images in illustrator and transferring them across. I created different waves and merged them together with light opacity to establish depth in the waves for an ocean. I did head binding and set the finished wave image on a top overlay too, this does not move on the picture plane. Further, I made a blue background which you could still see the everyday world through. I found this really interesting as it taught me a lot about the value of opacity and how it really changes the whole effect of an aesthetic outcome when using your camera and filter. The blue enhanced the ocean feel and made it more encompassing. Since I did not want to put text on my Picnic Face filter I was working on I wanted to try it out here. I created a code trying to follow what we did in class with our taco filter. I made it so when you smile the words ‘ocean eyes’ pops up above your forehead. It was unusual how the text was miles away from your face and you had to change the view; carefully positioning it as it would be too in front of the camera to even be seen. This filter could’ve been really intriguing if I got the waves to be animated and move, but I was limited in my knowledge. I might trial this more in the future.
I think making multiple filters was helpful in the process of learning how to manipulate images and effects in alternative ways and concepts. However, I decided to pick my Picnic Face filter as my final one as I spent a lot of time on this filter, positioning objects to establish a new realm on on your face and environment – transporting the user. Further, the audio took me a while to wrap my head around. Upon reflection my limitation involved was that I wanted to make my basket above my Picnic Face only appear when you smile and the crunching noise starts. However, it kept coming up with errors in the script code I wasn’t sure how to solve in the end. This filter made all my friends laugh and smile and I guess that was really a main aim; as well as gaining myself some new skills.
Final Product:
Here is my snapcode:
Snapchat Image:
Other Attempted filter:
Week 3 and 4
Week 3 and 4 was ensuring we have a solid group for the rest of the semester, and brainstorming conceptual ideas we could do with augmented reality and the art gallery. Mia and I went together to figure out interesting ideas that could merge from artworks.
Mia and I worked through a lot of ideas - however we decided we liked the Julia Morison work of Monochrome in Liqueurfaction. We will pitch this idea to the rest of the group to see what our final concept will be.
Week 5
This week I have been undergoing my parts of the brief one for my group project involving the art gallery and augmented reality. I have been coming up with ideas to go onto my 2 panels of the artwork we have chosen to use for our AR. This artwork establishes the Christchurch earthquakes, the feeling and conceptual idea of liquefaction and things disappearing.
My idea I have been working on is that there will be lots of tiny squiggles different shades of brown that will have opacity and mingle around the picture plane. There will then be objects ie. household objects lost in the Christchurch earthquake that hold value to individuals like photographs, armchairs, beds, favourite shoes etc. This will give more emotive ideas to the pieces and enhance the artworks meaning. There will be drop shadows on the illustrations and they will be made in illustrator. My next tasks will be to find out how to make objects move and mingle. Further, how to attach them to an AR and how to attach the to the canvas' when a camera is pointing to it. My next stand up will show my progress and my group will meet this week to discuss our style.
Week 6
I have created and established my two canvas concepts not only on paper; but adobe illustrator. Additionally, I have undergone the the second brief. Within this, the work I did was writing what we would change and how as a team my group will adapt but use our same idea of the artwork in the art gallery. I also changed and re wrote our project aims as we needed to make it more clear and ensure our AR visuals will tell a coherent narration which will evoke emotion. I am now looking at softwares with other team members in my group to find what will work for us and our project. I have never created an AR scenario like this before so it will be a fun but challenging task.
Week 7 and 8
I have been undergoing and figuring out how to use unity and also have been getting feedback on my first iteration of my canvas' and changing aspects of it to make it more suitable to the brief. I have made my buildings and objects more warped to show liquefaction and disintegration of things you have held dearly more clearly.
I have also created a Trello to ensure everyone is up to date in the group and it will make sure everybody is accountable for their work and understands what we are up to in the week and what we are doing to move forward.
Week 9 and 10
I have been finally learning how to do unity, had a meeting with the teachers and figured out how to do unity. This was a big challenge. I created a group unity project and started trying to figure out how to put our illustrations in.
Week 11 and 12
These weeks were a big struggle as my group could not figure out how to use unity to our advantage and how we wanted to. I spent many hours doing this and it was rather tedious and I had tried so many tutorials. We started using StudioLens instead of unity. I added in everyones illustrations into StyudioLens and atttatched them to a frame I have at home to work as the canvas mock up. I then found sounds for the Lens' and underwent videography of them and of myself using the filters for our video presentation assignment. I then gave these to Mia to edit. Overall, this project had a lot of challenges and was confusing to navigate. However, it was an interesting learning curve and having plan B's were necessary for our success.
