December 28th 2010

I think I’m going to start date-stamping my posts since lately I’ve been posting a day or two after my actual creative event.

Around 11am this morning I made my way to OTTO.  It’s the cool designer toys/books/home decor store that I mentioned earlier on Day 293.  I made an appointment with Pam, the owner, to come by and film their mobiles.

The day before, Jenny and I were visiting with them and I noticed their mobiles hanging from the ceiling.  I’d seen them a million times before but this was the first time I’d ever looked at them as a possible subject for Slitscan.  They have a naturally slow and smooth movement which makes them particularly good for Slitscan.  Not too mention that  OTTO has a bunch of super modern and stylish models to choose from.  I was pretty excited to see how each one would come out.

If your unsure of what Slitscan is exactly, check out my earlier posts for a description.  On Day 100 I give a fairly detailed overview and on Day 239 I talk specifically about the method I’m using on these mobiles.  At this point I have a bunch of Slitscan experiments you can see in my “The Year So Far” page.  Just do a “Find” for the word “Slit” and you will see them.

If you follow the blog you may know already that I’m prepping for a music video that I’m going to use the Slitscan effect on.  These mobiles might find their way in.  I may be purchasing one or two of them to take home and do some controlled experiments with.  I hadn’t thought about it at the time but as cars drove by outside they reflected light onto the wall behind the mobiles, veritably sabotaging my slitscans.  You can see them as the drastic lines going across some of the images above.  Also, I said yes to an offer of turning on some ceiling fans which I probably should have declined.  Some of the mobiles movement turned out more erratic than I expected.

One very cool thing that I’m very excited about is that I have a new software for doing slitscans which should considerably speed up my renders.  On Day 240 I found an amazing slitscan video called Slitscan Carnival made by a fellow Carl Rosendahl.  In his description he talked about developing the software himself and that he designed it specifically for his cameras video codec, which just so happens to be my camera as well.  He also mentioned that his renders went blazingly fast!  In contrast to my set-up, using after effects, which is arduously slow!

I messaged him soon after inquiring whether or not he would be willing to share his application with me.  At first he was a little apprehensive but after a bit of correspondence he accepted and sent it over to me!  I couldn’t be more excited to see how the render speeds compare.  For previous experiments I would have to wait a day and post a single shot.  With this software I may be able to produce multiple shots in a single day!

Alas, it is a PC code and I don’t own a PC.  My buddy Dean, who has the perfect computer is going to be available on Thursday so you might see the results a little after then.  In any case, I’m really looking forward to experimenting with it.

In the end, I think the mobiles came out pretty awesome and I see a bunch of potential in them.  I can’t wait to render them out as video!

Thanks Pam, for allowing me to capture these amazing mobiles!