#selfd

A redesign of Misfit’s costume, done by @prefertoimprovise that’s based on the burnside batgirl- but, well, not quite batgirl.

Misfit’s costume will be shifting at some point in her main verse to something like this. Headcanons coming soon.

I updated the end of my self-directed animation in order to alter the text included to make it more accurate for the art gallery.

Hannah had spoken to Susan, the museum curator, who said she was interested in me developing this idea more and maybe actually projecting it on the opening evening for the exhibition. 

She also asked for some screenshots of the video which she could then use for advertising material in the brochure for the Text Art Archive exhibition. In order to do this I simply altered the text from ‘text archive’ to ‘text art archive’ so that it was more precise. I could then take screenshots of some sections of the video in full-screen mode, and crop them in Photoshop and then save them at 300ppi and as jpeg files for best quality use.

When I first started to work on the self directed project I had completely no idea where to even start with it or what to do. At the start it was a struggle as there were so many possibilities with what I could do, that I couldn’t build a solid concept about what I wanted the topic to be, or what kind of product that I wanted to produce. 

My first ideas were much too vague as I thought I wanted to do something app related, however after presenting my ideas and talking to my tutors, I realised that some of the app ideas had already been done, and that I wasn’t interested or enthusiastic about my app ideas as much as I should’ve been. I then decided to base my idea around something which I enjoy doing more. I conducted some research into projection mapping as I knew I wanted to learn how to do this, as it was something different, as I had just completed the BBC project using app design. 

What caught my eye during projection mapping research was the outdoor projection mapping onto buildings, and how the projections moved around 3D objects. I really wanted to try something like this and then thought that I could relate the project to the Bury project. I thought about how I could also use some ideas from the text archive in this project as well. I then came up with the idea to project onto Bury Art Gallery itself, in order to advertise our exhibition there. The problem was that I didn’t know if I would have enough time to create all of the animation, and be able to project it in time for the deadline as we only had a few weeks. In order to overcome this, I decided to create an animated prototype of the projection instead.

I then took some images of Bury Art Gallery, at an angle so that it would appear to look more 3D and I could animate the text more onto the building, and began to work on top of a photograph in Photoshop and After Effects, as I also enjoy learning more about animation, and also kinetic typography, as I showed in some of my research posts. 

I edited the image of the art gallery in order to make it appear as it was at night time, as this would be when the projections would be made, and then imported it into After Effects and began to add the text, using masks, paths, layers, and custom fonts and colours which I had already researched and chosen for my ideas. I used all neon theme as it would stand out better, and edited the opacity so that the animated text would look more like realistic projections. I then angled and animated all of the text across specific parts of the building, using masks to cut out holes around the windows etc so that the text would only appear where I wanted it to. 

It was difficult animating the text, as I had to focus on the speed that it moved, the angle which it was positioned on the building, the path it needed to move along, and how it would gradually get smaller as it moved into the more distant parts of the image. I had to conduct a lot of research into animating text and making it 3D in order to complete my project.