IOL Week 8: Stillness

In this experiment, I wanted to investigate how the concept of stillness may perhaps be used in an iteration of my project. Using the scene of Styrotumble as a basis, I sketched and conceptualized on a cityscape scene, with the human-like character perched above one of the buildings. I intended to give the scene a few subtle movements such as the twinkling of stars, fading in-and-out of windows, as well as a passing train. Very minimal movement of the character could also lend into the subtlety of stillness. Unfortunately, due to multiple schedule conflicts, I was unable to further polish and add onto the scene as I initially intended. In light of this, Istill tested mapping the city scene onto some polystyrene blocks. I had to use more projection-mapping techniques than usual, as my original scene in Toon Boom Harmony wasn’t aligning properly with the polystyrene blocks and vice-versa. Looking a bit bare without much movement in the animations, I tried to place in physical toy cars on the base of the buildings as foreground. I appreciated how the building’s light projections appear on the reflective surface material of the toy cars. This gave the city scene a sense of mixed reality, and interaction between the light-projections and the physical objects in its proximity.

While I was filming City Thoughts, I was still unsatisfied with how overly static the scene appeared. As I was adjusting the little lamps and flashlights I use to faintly illuminate the scene, I accidentally nudged one of the flashlights and it fell on the floor. It was a welcome accident, as the swiftness in which the light fell moved its beam across the scene and the toy cars, and reminded me of illumination movements on busy streets and highways. Trying to recreate this effect, I attempted to intentionally move and play with the flashlight left and right across the scene. Creating an impression of moving cars and lights despite the objects in the scene is not actually moving. Playing with an external light and the shadows it would cast on the scene reminded me of one of my earlier directions for my project in Illusion of Life. While not directly tied to movement and abstraction, this experiment led me to considering a possible future project in which I would use projection-mapping to create still landscape scenes on found objects. A project that could potentially involve moving lights and shadows on a static scene, possibly with a bit of stop-motion animation. In the realm of stillness, I believe that moments of pause gives necessary anticipation to any animated piece or movement study. I would keep this in mind as I move forward to my next experiment, as moments of stillness or pause will be integral in animated traversal movement, and between frantic moments of abstraction.