Slug Numbers for Next Week

Monday.

so for monday we are looking at 180 leeches.

Aroused - Billie + Nick
Red - Purple - Yellow  80 total
Front of the neck
Girl - more pink
Guy - more orange

Relaxed - Jade
Green - yellow - cyan 50 total
lower back

Distressed - Billie
Light purple - red - light blue 50 total + 5 Dark purple/black EVIL leeches
Shoulder/ back

I know everyone can come in except Jade, will catch up with her today.  We were going to talk to Paul Hilliar about using his lab. will keep everyone posted.

Kids shoot

Have arranged for the boys to come back in next week wednesday morning to do the shoot with kids.

Shoot Planning

Mental State Colour

This is a graphic I've combined using a colour wheel and a diagram from the Designing Emotions book I borrowed from Edgar to create a reference point for how we colour the slugs on the body.

Contribution to hand-in May 24th

My part in this phase of our project involved conducted further research into more specific aspects of the project:

-Culture and Language
-Sociology
-Psychology
-Anatomy
-Chemistry
-Biology
-Cannibalism

This involved reading books and websites, aswell as conducting 5 of our 7 interviews with our experts and compiling research gathered at these.

I was also the photographer for this stage of the project, shooting all of our images and doing some of the editing. We took nearly 1800 photographs and large amounts of video footage for this stage of the project.

This work was then written and compiled into the report we handed in as my contribution to the presentation.

Leech Spine

Solidworks renders of the Leeches spine. Rapid prototyped, then inserted into the moulds with the gelatin.

The website

The website:
Well the presenting off the website was sadly a failure due to technical difficulties (It would only load pictures and video from certain computers). However, when the website does work it takes images from the server (as many as are put into the pictures folder) and turns them into a series of generative leeches. I have tried to reproduce as much of the detailing of the real objects with ridges and highlights etc, using generative techniques (so that the leeches different every time, and can scale to fit as many as are needed).

www.flesh2090.com/part2



when leeches are clicked on an image gallery opens up:



there is also a link to play our videos, and to download the workbook.





This site is somewhat closer to the group's aesthetic than our first site, but for the final website, I intend on making this 2D website 3D.

Final Fluid Renders

Houdini voxel fluid timelapse from Byron Mallett on Vimeo.

Since Houdini decided to take 30 minutes to render each frame, I managed to grab 8 frames and blend between them to create a timelapse. I think for next time, I'll start my renders at least a week early, maybe get some render farm time.

Final Video

FLESH from Meredith Crowe on Vimeo.


How I actually made this:

• Storyboard

• Took lots of images and videos of our models
• Exported videos from MPEGstreamclip as image sequences
• Pulled all photos (46,000 in the end) into iPhoto and arranged them into sets
• Cut out 80% of the footage
• Export galleries from iPhoto (about 50)
• Import individual galleries into MPEGstreamclip and export as clips
• Import clips into photoshop and fix lighting and colour to make everything consistent
• Import all clips into Premiere

• Find good music
• Cut and edit music to fit film
• Fix frequency levels and track speed
• Import to premiere

• Cut and order the whole thing together
• Rework audio
• Re-cut and reorder the whole thing together

• Try and render - fail
• Fight with premiere excessivly
• Ben does loading dance
• Win fight with premiere
• RENDER!
• Compress!
• Render as flv for website

Audio for Vid.

I'm having a bit of a freak out about audio for the stop motion, started to wish I had just committed to writing some a couple of weeks ago because its taken me just as long, and i dont have anything I'm happy with.

If anyone has any suggestions - songs or artists, let me know aseep.

continuation of the growth patterns of our slugs

Todays Shoot.

The photos from today are really good! And everyone's keen to help us out next time. We just have to keep in mind that theyr first years, and they go home for the holidays so ill grab their schedule off them and let everyone know.

Models and Film.

OK! so I've got at least four people coming in tomorrow, 2 guys, 2 girls.  3 of them are non european.  Starting shooting at 10.

They can shoot over the weekend too if we need them, but thats cutting it a bit fine.

I'm thinking about the video, looking at a combination of very slow video footage, and stop motion.  Have almost sorted the music for it too.

MORE fluid experiments - New direction

Done some rethinking about what actually happens to this sweat after it's emitted. I grabbed Byron Wood's leech model and I'm using it as a like a fluid guide. The goal is to have the fluid not just fill it like a mold, but almost flow into it's form by following a series of struts within the model before breaking the struts and filling the rest of the mold. It's sort of combining my work with growing fruit straight out a person's back but with fluids rather than plants. I'll also have maybe three variations of the leeches that I can copy along the shape of the outline that Kevin was developing, showing how these leeches can be grown en masse.

Technology wise, I think I've got the initial fluid filling the mold aspect working. Using the leech model, I can spawn a voxel fluid from a series of small bumps (they might be invisible depending on if they look horrid or not) and fill the container. This does look a bit artificial though, hence the idea to use an internal shell with struts that run through the center, giving paths for the fluid to flow through. Since this is a voxel fluid and not the particle fluids I was using earlier, it might be a bit hard to do the diffusion that I had in some earlier tests, though I think it might work with some more testing.

Here's a quick still I grabbed of some of the fluid being emitted.


I've layed out the emitters on the bottom in a line with varying widths. The goal will be to have a series of "pumps" along the bottom which will move the liquid around into the various struts inside the leech. Ideally, the emitters at the front and the back will contain different shades of green with extra blue or yellow. If the diffusion works then as the struts start to meet up, the shades will mix, forming a really nice forest green.

Timeline wise, I'm looking at hitting render on this either Friday night or mid-Saturday to allow a grace period to simulate and render this.

Fluid Diffusion experiments

Sorry I've been a bit quiet guys. I've been fighting with Houdini over getting fluids to combine and I finally had a breakthrough.

Here's a quick example of the diffusion working. I know it looks quite basic now, but the underlying tech seems to be all working (thank god).

Fluid Diffusion in Houdini from Byron Mallett on Vimeo.

Now that this is working, I can layer sweat glands along a surface and have them emit fluid particles. These then combine to form a fluid with a high viscosity and blended colours which then hardens to form a form which can be eaten.

Leech!

Some of the leech moulds.

Interviews and Monday

Scott and I have been going through the interviews and pulling quotes.  We are going to have a write up of them all, and look at doing voice over stuff in the video, but we don't know yet if this will work.

We are starting to get video footage on monday avo. have booked the room and camera. going to focus on close ups of the models, and how they interact and pull away from the skin.

Interview with Geoff Chambers

Interviewed Dr Geoff Chambers yesterday who is a microbiologist and evolutionist from the faculty of biological sciences VUW.  He was really really good to talk to!  Have the interview on tape, its about 45 mins, of which 20 are probably applicable to our project... sorry.  If you want the file, ill give it to you in class.  I'm hesitant to release it online.  Ive sent out more emails this morning, want to do more interviews by the end of the week if possible.