Category: Animation

Ancient Egypt parallax

I’ve been designing Egyptian foliage for Seder-Masochism. The ancient Egyptian graphic style is pretty flat; there’s little if any perspective to give a sense of depth.

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However, animation can give a sense of depth without compromising the graphic style. Thanks to the magic of parallax, each still frame looks authentically flat, but in motion the scene looks 3-D. Nothing overlaps anything else but there’s still a foreground and background.

plants3Just one of many reasons animation is cool.

 

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Chad Gadya cycling backgrounds

Which 24-frame cycle do you like more:

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Cycle A, “Clouds”, or…

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Cycle B, “Waves”?

I personally prefer Cycle B, because I like backgrounds where everything is moving – I feel it gives it more depth. As a 2-D design the clouds look nice, but in an animated cycle their stillness bothers me. I did make a version with moving clouds, but on this 24-frame cycle they had to be very dense to repeat:

ChadGadya_BG7

Cycle C, “Repeating Clouds”. I still prefer Cycle B. The sky pattern might be a bit unconventional, but I think it’s stylish. Also I don’t like all that white in the background of A and C.

The palette is limited to 10 colors because this is destined for Embroidermation. The animated GIF doesn’t have great color fidelity; thread colors will look better and have more contrast between foreground and background.

If you have an opinion on which of these you prefer, please leave it in the comments and maybe it will help Theo and me settle our argument.

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resampling DST files

sampling_demo3

Our Quilt Plotter’s rather frustrating software automatically resamples DST files, for no explicable reason. While we struggle to communicate with its manufacturers to overcome this “feature,” I attempted to explain the problem in pictures.

1. A line, or vector file, is not a DST file yet. A DST file is comprised of many points, like so:
1. A line, or vector file, is not a DST file yet. A DST file is comprised of many points, like so:
2. This has a high sample rate, because there are many points spaced close together.
2. This has a high sample rate, because there are many points spaced close together.
3. Above is a lower sample rate, with "stitches" in black. There are fewer points and they are spaced further apart. The machine always, always, automatically RESAMPLES DST files, which inevitably degrades line quality. Here's a resample at the same sample rate (frequency/spacing of points):
3. Above is a lower sample rate, with “stitches” in black. There are fewer points and they are spaced further apart. Here’s a resample at the same sample rate (frequency/spacing of points):
4. Every time the path is resampled, it moves further from the original line. This happens even if it's resampled at the same sample rate, as shown here.
4. Every time the path is resampled, it moves further from the original line. This happens even if it’s resampled at the same sample rate, as shown here.
5. Same sample rate, worse fidelity because of resampling.
5. Same sample rate, worse fidelity because of resampling.
6. If we resample enough times eventually our path won't resemble the original line.
6. If we resample enough times, eventually our path won’t resemble the original line.
7. Not what we want.
7. Not what we want.

 

 

 

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THIS is what we want the machine to read. We can control all the points in the DST file in Mathematica. We just want the machine to not resample them, to keep the points in the original file we give it. Here the points are evenly spaced except at corners and curves to preserve fidelity.
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Water Wheel

water wheel5
click for animated gif

Back on the Quiltimation front, I was wondering if I could arrange animated frames on a quilt in a mandala/medallion pattern, rather than left-to-right cells. This would essentially be a quilted phenakistoscope, with the animation emerging as the whole thing is rotated (we’d keep the camera and lights stable, and rotate the quilt).

water wheel6
click for animated gif

 

The saturated colors here would be lost, although I could use a few colors of thread. The elements are early Leviathan designs, and Water from Chad Gadya which is still in (very slow) progress.

 

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