EXPERIENTIAL STORYTELLING

This project was based on an effective memory centered around the concept of light. We had to narrate the story and then develop an animation with our focus being on the light element of the scene. I wrote this bit about my time vacationing as a little girl in Hilton Head, SC, underneath the Spanish Moss trees. "As I drifted along the path, I could hear the moss crunching beneath my wheels, giving me indication of its past departure from the skies above. Although my motion was cyclical, the colors engrossing the scenery broke my repetition with their ever-changing shades of green, ranging from a midnight moss to chartreus. My speed determined how light between the branches gave a shattering illusion of being underneath a dome of gemstones - where the floor mirrored the sky, and I lost track of time."

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Spring 2019

TILT BRUSH VR PROJECT

For my Performance and Narrative in VR, I decided to go with a Highlights for Children picture find as our first Tilt Brush VR Project. I used to play these all the time in the magazines at the dentist's office, so I thought recreating one in 3D space would be an interesting find. And a great way to learn the intricacies of Tilt Brush.

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Spring 2019

FIRST YEAR M.F.A. - 2017-2018

EXPLAINER VIDEO

The explainer video was a Design 6400 project essentially 'explaining' our life/work thus far in the grad program. It gave everyone in the class to see where we were in our skill sets and talents related to animation. It also was process of learning how to edit and shoot for a project based on your own characteristics. 

Spring 2018

RUBY BRIDGES PROTOTYPING (10W)

In moving forward, we considered the direction of our project and how to best present key moments within the narrative. Previous prototypes served as technical exercises, and the next step was examining how to bring forward the narrative itself and place the user within. The 10 Week prototype extended the first scene of Ruby walking up to the school. The user begins with the same Prologue with audio of Ruby Bridges from an interview. This Prologue now includes two historical images from that period of time. The scene fades into the user sitting in a car with a government official and Lucille Bridges. As the car slows, the official turns to direct the user and Lucille offers her hand to exit the car. As the user reaches out to touch her hand, the camera will rise indicating for the user to stand as well. The camera then moves along the sidewalk through the crowd in short segments. Each segment is broken by a fade to black, another clip of audio of Ruby speaking about the experience, and upon fading back in the mob is closer, denser, and grows slightly in size. The scene ends with the user standing on top of the steps of the school before fading in to the next scene.

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Spring 2018

RUBY BRIDGES PROTOTYPING (6W)

A continuation of the four week prototype, this project took the technical skills we gained and applied it to the Ruby Bridges narrative.  We worked on creating a framework for the full experience. This included a functional start menu, introduction featuring an audio interview of Ruby, a Prologue sequence with the user seeing from Ruby's point of view, and an interactive sequence to give background and historical context. We spent the first four weeks of development working on the Prologue, then took feedback we received from that level to adjust it and form the interactive scene. 

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Spring 2018

RUBY BRIDGES PROTOTYPING (4W)

The first of many to come! This project started off as a team effort in creating some sort of simulation where our user goes into a historical narrative scene. Abigail Ayers and I picked the true story of Ruby Bridges as our starting point, and this is where our efforts got us to in a matter of weeks. We had a 4 week prototype, a 6 week prototype, and then a 10 week prototype. 

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Here is our 4 week prototype, just simply getting some data and mechanics functioning in Unity since this was truly our first dive into the software. 

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Spring 2018

STARGAZER RIG BUILD

Working on this class film, my main goal of the project was to be the character rigger. We had one character in the project, Kai, and I had to rig and PSWs on him. This is the final break down of that process, along with the trailer for the film below. 

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Spring 2018

STARGAZER TRAILER

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Spring 2018

BATON CAPTURE

This project consisted of our motion capture class each taking on getting data from a prop of our choice. Although the focus was on the prop, I still wanted to have access to human data if I wanted to play with it afterwards. With the prop, I was able to adjust it in relation to hand placement depending on the data, and adding particle effects to give a 'fire' illusion. 

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Spring 2018

JELLYFISH CAPTURE

This project consisted of getting 'multi-segment' props into a scene. I decided to do a jellyfish with tentacles, but during post, the capture of the tentacles wouldn't show enough overlapping motion, so I chose to use rigid bodies, and then duplicate them around to make multiple ligaments. Here is a test of where that prototype ended up. 

Spring 2018

CHEERLEADER CAPTURE

This is the motion capture class's 4th project due before going on to the task of our final project. For the fourth project, I captured some of the Ohio State cheerleaders doing their routines. I then in post had to clean the data using animation layers and the story tool. This requires me to take 3 of their takes, and merge them together into on synchronized take so it looks like a one solid, fluid motion, rather than 3 takes combined. This will help me in my 6400 project for data editing. I need to practice my skills more in editing animation and seeing how performers move. The ways they jump, land, have overlapping action, and make it seem 'natural'.

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Spring 2018

MERGED CAPTURE

For the final project, we had to take aspects of previous captures and merge them together through the story tool and mix sections together to give off a flow of motion. I took the top half of the 'cheering section' from my cheerleader capture,  the bottom section from a peer's tap dancing section, and the arm movement of the baton twirl project, and merged them all together into this energetic sequence. 

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Spring 2018

BEATS PROJECT

This project was assigned as part of our 6400 Graduate Design Studio. The goal was to create an animated music video to an instrumental song of our choice, with specific emphasis on the beats, and two weeks to complete it. Our team of four was largely 3D based and chose to view this assignment as an opportunity to explore methods we had not worked with yet. We hosted an open call within the Dance Department at OSU and captured data from three different dancers. My job within the team was to capture the data in the motion lab and then making accessible to the rest of the team as we animated this process.

Created by: Abigail Ayers, Breanne Butters, Tori Campbell, and Kevin Bruggeman.

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Music: Oriental Uno, by Beats Antique. Listen to the full song here.  

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Autumn 2017

FACEWARE PROJECT

This is an ongoing project I created to challenge myself in learning the medium of facial capture - using both Faceware live and Faceware Analyzer/Retargeter. I took a scene from the movie The Social Network and challenged myself to a dialogue piece that shows fear and anger portrayed by both a male and female character. I continue with cleaning/polishing this piece, but have updates here to show where I am at. The top video shows the head-cam video placed on the character rigs and how it is working with Analyzer/Retarger. The bottom video shows the left side data using Faceware live to the improvements I found with the right side data using Analyzer/Retargeter.

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Autumn 2017

DSN 6200 PRESENTATION

This class was a foundation for graduate studies - getting us ready to talk about designing at a higher, academic level, and how to apply that to our work. The project prompt was "to create a successful creative project for this class would be one that utilizes one or two ideas developed from class discussion and course texts to create a new art or design work. As with the conference paper, the work should reflect your own interests but take ideas from the everyday." I created an understanding of how I balance my time as a grad student, on both social life and academic life. This helped me stay balanced throughout the semester to achieve what I believed to be a healthy lifestyle. 

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Autumn 2017

"ROLL-A-BALL" UNITY PROJECT

First grad school project EVER! We started just following the Roll-A-Ball tutorial from the Unity website, but could design it our own way. So I created our player to be Luxo from the Pixar short, and being able to jump on top of the Pixar ball. It was a good introduction into Unity with C# coding and designing. 

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Autumn 2017

"BROKEN BRIDGE" UNITY PROJECT

This project was a collaborative exploration with Abigail Ayers and Joseph Chambers in our first Unity class. We all designed our own level that focused on simple mechanics of a bridge theme. My level relied on the intro level, to showcase how the player moves within the space. 

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Autumn 2017

"WITCHIN" UNITY PROJECT

This project was a collaborative exploration with Abigail Ayers and Joseph Chambers in our first Unity class. We all took different aspects of the narrative that we wanted to focus on. I contributed to the layout of the environment and the model of our 'witch', along with incorporating new animated moves, while Abby and Joe focused heavily on the mechanics and paths of play. 
 

Autumn 2017