Project: Ink & Tatoo
Date: 05.18.2019
Processor: Moon
Description:
Ink & Tatoo is a projection project aiming to imitate the traditional tatoo in the style of ink. Additionally, it is animated to show the drawing process of tatoo. Through animation, it adds on to tatoo’s charm and conveys stronger power. Tatoo is designed to be in the shape of branches and flowers to better match the ink style. It is designed to map on one’s shoulder.
Video:
Process:
I first started with building the effect of stroke of ink. By using Noise and controling the strokeWeight, I got the effect of ink droping down on the white canvas.
However, feedbacks I received suggest that it looks more like blood as it simply drops down without shaking, the path is too straight for ink feelings. Then I reached out to Moon and was suggested to make the stroke a class and then add random forces to the particles.I then make the stoke I had before a function to call in the class to make the code clearer.
After I got the random forces applyed to the class. I got the effct below which looks like some kind of ancient Chinese drawing.
I was quite satisfied with the ink effect now and finally got to the part of designing pattern of my tatoo. I searched on Pinterest for inspirations and try to imitate.
To have the natural feeling of tree growing. I wrote several move functions in the class so that I could call in draw.
Then I drew the tree according to the inspiration I found through controling the direction it moves through time(frameCount). I also add some randomness to the branches so that each time it drew it was slightly different yet still in the shape of branches.
Then I try to add some flowers to the branches. For the flower part, I chose the plum blossom to fit the overall styles I got now. And I got the effect below.
To make it more intereating, I make the flowers falling down after some time after it comes out.
Difficulties:
I met the biggest challenge with mapping the tatoo on my shoulder. I tested first with madmapper yet somehow it doesn’t work on my computer. There is only 40 minutes left at that time. I really want to keep my original concept of tatoo, so I decided to derectly project it onto my shoulder.
It works in some way and really adds more to the traditional tatoo as it seems to give it life while the braches are stretching. Yet the effect is not as good as excepted since it is really hard to map exactly to half of my shoulders without having the rectangle shape of the computer seen on body. I then make it growing on my neck instead which somehow is scary to some of the audience.
Reflection and future development:
What really makes me sad is not even the “scary” comment I received, but the fact that I could have done better. During the projecting process in the last 40 minutes, I kept regreting sleeping for the 3.5 hours the day before that day. I have some problems with time arrangement during final time which really stressed me out. Yet I do see great potentials of the moving tatoo concept, the effect of the growing tree really adds a lot to just static image of tatoo. Also, the ink stroke works really good. As a result, I do not regret proposing this topic as my final though the effect I want to achieve as in the inspiration I found is a little challenging. The concept itself is worth developing further.
For future development, I would like to have the projection part worked and also have the interaction part(people moves while tatoo always be in the place where it should be) done if possible. It would even be greater if I got more patterns and the image moves a little even after it finished drawing the shape.