Device Progress – Endangered Species Clock

The big news this week is that the Red List rejected our application for an API token. Both Sara and I reached out individually, asking for clarification. We’re also looking to NYU resources to get a token. 

In the meantime, we’re looking at the Nature Reserve API as a substitution. 

For the final piece, we’ve been discussing making an auditory format clock. The volume of the call will match the species population size over time. We might also add a visual display to further emphasize the data. 

Bio Materials SCOBY study

SCOBY-

While playing with the SCOBY in class, I started to think about how it can absorb water and is somewhat translucent. This made me think of a photographic process called cyanotypes that was developed in 1842. The process involves painting a light-sensitive solution on anything that is water-soluble. After drying, the chemical can be exposed to sunlight and produce a brilliant blue color.  

For this process to work, however, I needed to do two things. First, I needed to dry the SCOBY completely, and second I needed to paint on the solution and let the SCOBY dry in a dark place again. 

I first made two tests: a razor-thin sheet, and second, a ball that I pressed cotton into. I figured the cotton could work as an absorbent material for the cyanotype solution to give richer colors. 

I ran into two significant problems with my test. First, neither test dried completely; I believe the drying process is prolonged with the damp, cold weather. Thursday morning, I moved the thin SCOBY off its foil and clamped it to a shelf. I’m hoping that this will make it dry faster. The second problem is the edges of the thin SCOBY stuck to the foil and ripped when I was trying to remove it. 

The good news is that my chemicals to make the prints came to attempt the track this coming weekend. 

Below are the images of my process. 

 
scoby

scoby

scoby

scoby

scoby

Sketch 4

This sketch escalated quickly! I have been toying around with the idea of pixel art. I love the simple aesthetic. I was drawing the other day and thought how pixel art might be a fun way to represent the sun and planets in our solar system. The blurred, fractured surfaces of my sketches reminded me of looking at the stars through an old telescope I had as a child. While drawing the planets, I got to thinking about traveling to each one and the vast open space that is space. This led me to do a little research on the distance between each planet. I found this fun calculator. The lengths are insane and difficult to wrap my head around to make it more manageable; I decided to make a “short” film of traveling through space. I calculated out 100,000 miles for every second of time. When it was all said and done, I have an 8 + hour-long piece. I’m still shocked at the magnitude of the solar system, but this sketch helped me wrap my head around the time it would take to explore it. Below are the pixel art sketches if you don’t have 8 hours to watch the film. 

 

pixel art of a planet

Sun

pixel art of a planet

Mercury

pixel art of a planet

Venus

pixel art of a planet

Earth

pixel art of a planet

Mars

pixel art of a planet

Jupiter

pixel art of a planet

Saturn

pixel art of a planet

Uranus

pixel art of a planet

Neptune

 

After Effects-Maya-Unreal Pipeline

 

Unreal

unreal

The pipeline seemed to be working perfectly until the end. For some reason, my comp layers wouldn’t link with the footage. I re-made the material multiple times to no avail. I think the next step is to toss everything and try the entire workflow again. I’m excited that I did get the camera movement working perfectly!

 

Time – Extinction Clock

Extinction Clock presents a segment of threatened and endangered species data produced by the IUCN Red List, a non-profit organization founded in 1964 that makes a “comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biological species.” – IUCN. 

For this piece, I am focusing on mammals data. 

The clock is broken into five faces: 

  • Vulnerable Mammals
  • Endangered Mammals
  • Critically Endangered Mammals
  • Extinct Mammals (since the last update)
  • Days until the list is updated

The combined surface area of the clock faces makes up 23% of the overall clock face. This represents a new study stating that only 23% of land remains “wild”, excluding Antarctica. According to the survey, this remaining wildland is primarily concentrated in Canada, the United States, Russia, Brazil, and Australia. The placement of the faces loosely represents the location of these countries on a flat map. 

A thin layer of wood veneer obscures the digital faces. This was both an aesthetic decision and to explore the idea that humans can easily overlook the continued and rapidly increasing extinction of species without conscious actions. 

The clock was intentionally left to be obscure to encourage viewers to read its documentation.

Extinction Clock

Extinction Clock

Extinction ClockExtinction Clock

Extinction Clock

After Effects to Maya Pipe line




The flow from After Effects to Maya worked perfectly this week until I tried to link the video content to the plane. At that point, the video wouldn’t connect. I re-named the files, re-imported them, and restarted the project to no avail.

I am looking forward to office hours to fix the situation. 

 

Mid-Term Storyboard

I’ve decided to lean into a project that I’ve been thinking about for a while for my midterm. The idea is to “capture” bears in the wild when they think humans aren’t around. Ideally, I would like to create a handful of 15-second pieces of bears acting like humans. I am modeling the camera work and narration of a BBC documentary until we come upon the bear for the character introduction. At that point, the camera will settle in and spy on the bear. 

When I was finally able to get the bear into Unreal, the textures were still missing, I felt that there was a problem going from blender to Mixamo, and I kept losing the textures in that transition. 
Unreal error message
Error 2 – When I tried uploading my bear skeletal mesh, I wasn’t given the option for “none” – I was forced to select a skeleton mesh of a character that I had already imported. When I did do that, this error would appear. 
Storyboard

Storyboard

Please excuse my horrible drawing. 

After Effects – Roto Brush

After effects

After effects

After effects

After effects

This week I did some tests with motion tracking in After Effects. I wanted to play with hand-held footage, aggressive panes, and shaky footage, as I was curious if the 3d tracking would still capture points. To my surprise, it worked completely fine. I then dropped some 2d assets in, did some basic roto brushing and exported them out.