Last one! I've pulled out all the stops for this one!

This is my last project of the semester! Since I'm not planning to take any more art classes, this might be the last thing ever to appear on this blog. However, if I ever make anything remotely computer-artsy again I will post it here.

I have been building up to this video for a while. I had the cup idea over "Spring" (Easter) Break, the made the Pong video to see if it would work. Then I made a better one, Snake. Tetris was the 1st one that used different lengths for different pictures, and the sound was much more advanced. I was going to make a video of the cups coming in and out of the fence like a wave was going through them, but I could tell as soon as I looked at the pictures on the computer screen that it wouldn't work, so I never made it into a video. Then I made that short, simple video of the bouncing cups to test out more realistic (non-videogame) motion. The throwing video tested if it was practical to have people as part of the animation interacting with the cups. Now, everything that worked (except writing music, which I only did for the Tetris video) has gone into this video. I also made Windows sounds into a simple kind of music (at the very beginning of the video), emulated the motion of a liquid (blood), utilized a prop (that gun/blaster is actually a tripod), had one of the actors record his voice and put that into the video, and made a better finishing screen in Photoshop. The sounds effects for this video (other than the recording) came from 3 sources: system sounds from Windows XP, system sounds from Windows 95, and sounds from the Pinball game that is pre-installed in most Windows XP machines.

So without further ado, I present the video Why Your Mother Told You Not to Stick Up Your Middle Finger. It's somewhat dark humour, but it's a cool video. Due to the fact that there's a link to this blog from Mr. Sands's Art Blog, to avoid any controversy and to allow this to be shown to any audience (in other words, to make it "school-appropriate"), I have censored this video by putting a black square over the middle finger when it appears. I do have a non-censored version; it's on Vimeo. The black box is the only difference. Nothing else was changed in the slightest. The uncensored version doesn't have the word itself in it.

In case you don't get the "Game Over" screen at the end, it's just an allusion to the Snake and Tetris videos. It adds to the dark humour.

I would like to recognize the 5 people (including me) who have been involved in making this video and explain exactly what each of them did:

I, Daniel Ghan, came up with the concept of the animation. In making the videos, I moved the cups; I controlled how each video went and what each frame looked like. However, I don't claim to have come up with all the ideas that went into the videos. I also put the pictures together on the computer, wrote the music for Tetris, and found the sound effects for all the videos.

Ed Cain took all the pictures. He has been my partner from the start and worked nearly as much as I have. We brainstormed new ideas together.

Mark Nashland is the actor who appears on the right side of the last 2 videos (he's the one who gets shot). We recorded his voice for the last one.

Dillon Hayes is the other actor.

Mr. Sands is the art teacher. He provided the cups, which were left over from previous years' Art 1 classes that made designs in the fence with them. I was in one of those Art 1 classes, and remembering that project undoubtedly helped me come up with the idea of using them to make a stop-motion animation. The 4 people named above are all in his Computer Art class, which gave us the motivation, cameras, tripods, hardware, software, and time to make these videos.

Throw Test

Whoops, I forgot to post this...
This is similar to the last one, but obviously we've finally added the human element into this. It turned out pretty decent, although occasionally there'll be a bit of a jump.

Motion Test

Bounce Test from Daniel Ghan on Vimeo.

The main purpose of this video was to test how well we could emulate realistic motion using the cup animation. I thought it was okay.

We were going to make one to test if moving columns of cups further into/out of the fence could create a 3-D wave effect, but it failed utterly. We looked at the pictures and couldn't see the effect at all, so we didn't even bother making a video out of it.

Cup Tetris!

Cup Tetris from Daniel Ghan on Vimeo.

At last, the long-awaited Tetris video is here! We filmed it over 3 days (which is why it jumps a couple times). I wrote the music myself (well, arranged it; the tune is the famous Tetris music everyone knows) just for this video using some old software from an old computer. The software allowed me to adjust the tempo, so when we sped the game up on the 3rd day because we were getting tired of taking pictures and just needed to make the player lose, I did a few calculations and set it so the change in the music's timbre and tempo coincided with the speed-up of the game. The sound effects are system sounds from Windows 95. This video was done entirely with Windows Movie-Maker, Midisoft Recording Session (to write the music), and Windows Sound Recorder (to record the music as a last resort to convert it from .mid to .wav).

Cup Snake

Untitled from Daniel Ghan on Vimeo.

As promised, another stop-motion animation! This one was actually probably easier to make than Pong, so we were able to make it longer. The sounds, like last time, came from C:\Windows\Media.
Ed and I will probably make another of these soon. Hopefully we'll be able to get more people and more time and be able to make something besides simple videogames. In the meantime, vote for my medal!

Vote for me!

Here's a link to vote for my medal design!
http://www.medaldesigncompetition.com/Contents/En/DesignDetails.aspx?d=75
If you don't feel like signing up to vote, please click the link anyway. More views will put my design closer to the top of the page, which will increase my chances of winning.

Illustrator Tutorial

Mr. Sands had us do a very basic tutorial for Adobe Illustrator. This comes from a screenshot I took of my work on the program.

Pong!

Cup Pong from Daniel Ghan on Vimeo.

This is an idea I came up with over Spring Break (which was last week), filmed Monday (with a partner), and put together yesterday. The sounds came from C:\Windows\Media (they're system sounds from Windows XP). There will probably be a better one (not Pong) next week.

Olympic Medal Design

This is the final product of the medal seen in my last post. I've already entered this into the competition and have recieved an E-Mail confirming that it's valid. I will post a link to vote for this (or another medal if you like another one better) as soon as the voting opens.
Basically, I finished the curler, added the mountains, added colour, added the Olympic rings, and added the lettering. Every visible layer has Bevel and Emboss turned on. I also messed with Opacity to emphasize the illusion that the curler is close and the ski jumper is distant.

In Progress...

Mr. Sands has allowed anyone doing well in his class, including me, to do basically whatever we want (as long as we actually make computer art). I have decided to enter the medal design contest for the 2012 Youth Winter Olympics. Here's what I have so far:

Obviously the curler needs work. These are the only athletes I'm planning on putting on the medal, but there might be some other people.

Unbelievable School

As promised last week. Basically this is a picture I took of the school put onto a cloudy background and blended in a bit.

Reverse Engineering #2

Mr. Sands gave us a day for catching up, and for those of of us who weren't behind, he assigned another reverse engineering assignment. He showed a picture similar to this one and gave us a picture of a lion to work with. I used Blur to soften the image, a Radial Gradient to make the blue edges, a brush for the snow, and Saturation on the eyes.

Ideas...

Mr. Sands has assigned us to brainstorm 10 ideas for a picture entitled Unbelievable School and gave us a link to a website for the general idea. At least one of these will probably show up on this weblog next week:

1. A school on a floating island.
2. A campus that is being rolled up, like in the movie Inception.
3. A school on top of a skyscraper or two. Unfortunately, the ideal buildings for this idea were destroyed in 2001.
4. A school hanging upside-down from a cloud.
5. A school built the right way up on a cloud.
6. Wayside School (sideways).
7. A tiny planet made entirely of the school grounds.
8. A tiny school (probably in the middle of a forest of grass).
9. Hogwarts (if I can find a way to do it without plagiarizing).
10. A floating school.

Advertising the Revolution

Mr. Sands asked us to create 3-D images of one of our simplified images. Since the idea was basically to have a logo, I think the assignment implied advertising. You can't really advertise a revolution the same way you would some other things, so I started with making the ring, which looks a bit like the rubber bands some clubs at my school (in particular, the ones that send money overseas to stop genocides or whatever). I then tried to Warp the image and make it into a banner:

I don't know how to make good wrinkles in Photoshop yet.

After this I needed one more, so I made a pop can, although I can't imagine why a logo for the Middle East revolutions would end up on a pop can:

I created the can and ring using a basic Photoshop tool. I thought the ring turned out well and the banner and the can turned out okay.

For Mr. Sands:

The 3-D shape generator on Photoshop gave me mixed results. It worked well for the ring and can but not for a hat or cone. If I did this again I might try to figure out how to change the colour of the pop can. The hardest part was trying to Warp the logo so that it looked like it was on a banner. I learned how to use the "3-D shape from Layer" feature in Photoshop.

Theme Project

As anyone with an Internet connection, newspaper, television, or radio knows, the Middle East is currently experiencing a wave of revolution that has deposed the formerly permanant "Presidents" of Tunisia and Egypt and started a civil war in Libya. Mr. Sands had the class make a picture with a theme, so I chose the situation in the Middle East. I found pictures from the Internet of protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain (where thousands of protestors are being attacked by government and Saudi forces), Iran (where protests against Ahmedinejad's rigged election in 2009 have been revived), Jordan, Algeria, and Morocco, made a collage out of them, and used some layer effects, the select tool, and Copy and Paste to make the word Revolution. Mr. Sands then had us reduce the picture to only 4 colours. With a picture as detailed as this one, it didn't work very well:

If you blow it up a bit you might be able to see the individual photos. I did this using the Threshold filtre. Mr Sands also had us simplify the picture. This was really easy to do; all I had to do was change the opacity of one of my layers:

And then we had to create one with simplified shapes, like a logo. I applied a Cutout filtre:

It worked much better than the 4-colour one.

As usual, the 6 answers:

I thought my original picture turned out quite well. The layer effects I applied to the text layer really worked in setting it apart from the background, especially combined with the 25% opacity white layer I had on top of the background. I tried a number of things to make the 4-colour one that didn't work, including using Cutout and trying a bunch of colour settings. The Cutout did work for making a logo. If I had to do this again, I would not arrange the photos in a way that would allow really obvious transitions like at the bottom of the 't', 'i', and 'o'. The hardest part was easily making the 4-colour picture. It still didn't turn out well. To make these, I discovered Layer Fill (which was set to 0% for the text layer) and Cutout.

Dragosaur

This is exactly what it looks like: a picture of a dinosaur with dragon wings added on, then set against a background. I had to colourize the wings, which was a pain.

You Just Lost the Game

This is probably the most immature thing I've posted on here so far, but it was the 1st idea that came to mind (the topic was "Game") and I was pressed for time. It's a funny idea, if you know what the Game is. If you don't know what the Game is (it doesn't refer to the soccer match), try http://www.losethegame.com/ (I haven't actually been on this site because the school system censors it. I'm not responsible for anything that might be on it. I am responsible for making you lose the Game, though).
This is supposed to suggest someone far away (it's night-time there and day in the stadium) hacking the advertising boards around the stadium. I had trouble finding good pictures, but I thought it turned out fine in the end.

I'm supposed to answer the same 6 questions for this picture and the last 2, so I will answer them collectively below:

The Hue Jitter worked great in the Disco pictures. The picture I took for this picture was too dark, so you can't really see the hacker or the back of the monitor. If I had to do this again, the 2nd picture would have fewer music notes, especially since they interfere with the lightning effect. This picture would be totally different because I don't really like the concept as much as I did when I first thought of it. The 1st picture would have something for the dancers to stand on (like what I had in the 2nd one) and maybe the disco ball would be different. The hardest part was finding good pictures, especially a good pop texture for the 1st 2 and a good picture of the advertising boards in a soccer stadium for this one. And from these projects (and the tutorials leading up to them), I learned a lot about how to manipulate brushes, especially with spacing and Hue Jitter.

The party's starting to warm up!

Same picture, with some obvious modifications. I thought the dancers needed something to stand on, so I added a gradient. This assignment was supposed to have a "Music" theme, so I added some music notes. Finally, I replaced the original disco ball with a much more colourful version. Every brush I used employed Hue Jitter.

Disco

This is what all the brush tutorials have been leading up to. I used Hue Jitter, which gave me the different colours for the Lego blocks, to create the electric effect in the dancers, which are the outlines of me and a girl in my class. I set the jitter to 50% and the brush colour to red (ff0000) and cyan (00ffff) and set the controls for both size and opacity to Pen Pressure (I used a tablet) to create the illusion of depth. To fill the dancers' outlines, I used a brush I made from a picture of sodapop to fill them with pop. The only reason for this is the assignment had to have a "Beverage" theme. Then I used Outer Glow, setting the colour to white for the disco ball and, again, red and cyan for the dancers. The lightning going between the dancers and the ball was a spontaneous idea, but I think it really brought out the effect.

Grunge

I made a brush using an Internet tutorial, then put it to use.