Editing in Progress

The filming on Saturday went very well I feel, Piotr's editing the footage now. I should hopefully be able to see how it's going at some point today.

Being the 'Creative' or 'Artistic' director of a project is not something I'm used to. It feels distinctly strange not getting my hands dirty (metaphorically speaking) for once.

It's definitely been a learning curve over the course of this project. I've found myself for the first time ever doubting myself a lot more than usual, and thus spending a lot of time researching and not much time making which feels quite wrong. I've definitely learned that it's best to just run with ideas than to worry as much as I have.

I've also learned that when you make a video at this level of standard that there is a LOT involved. I'm used to being able to jump in head first, pursuing a chaotic method of creation. This means I could rely on myself, be in charge at pretty much every step of the way. Relying on and organising such a large group of people never even crossed my mind before. Fortunately Piotr is very experienced in this field and already had contact with the people we needed.

It's a very strange sensation to come up with a central idea and then, with exception of being involved with the fabrication of some of the project and providing feedback or input, completely letting go of the project to other, more experienced hands. Obviously it's necessary, but it takes a hell of a lot of getting used to.

Making the ferrofluid took a lot of hard work and research, but except for that I have to give my thanks largely to the team I was working with - who were all absolutely amazing people. I'll have the full list to upload here soon.

Ferrofluid Test 7

I couldn't be bothered with the text overlays on this one, as they are all just quick tests

Ferrofluid is easily cleaned up with a dab of white spirit.

Ferrofluid still reacts from quite a distance

The mirror works as a surface but is perhaps not suitable because of the 'infinity screen' effect it produces.

Test 6

Test 5

Test 4

Test 3

Test 2

More testing:

Ferrofluid tests 1

EUREKA!

It's alive:

Ferrofluid

So the oil and printer toner particles was a no-go. The picture that was posted up earlier represents the lacklustre result.

My mother (Zoe Gaffen) has been an absolute star helping me with this bit. She studied bio-chemistry and has access to a laboratory, and helped clear me for access to conduct some experiments under her supervision.

Firstly, what was going wrong with the toner/oil solution;

To understand this, first a base understanding of the chemistry of ferrofluid must be known. Now mine is hardly stellar, but it should be able to provide a mildly adequate description:

• Ferrofluid is a combination of three parts, the ferrous particles, a surfactant and a carrier. The ferrous particles are the 'tiny magnets' that cause the fluid to behave the way it does. The surfactant is used to dissolve the particles into a liquid (the carrier). The 'liquid-like' behaviour works because the particles are dispersed evenly through the liquid, causing it to take on magnetic properties.

The oil didn't work because although vegetable oil has a little oleic acid in it (one form of surfactant) it needs to be mixed with the ferrous particulate before the carrier is added. My mother seems to think that a 5% particulate, 10% surfactant and an 85% carrier mixture will work best.

Some photo's of the different mixtures to come and a quick description of what does/doesn't work about each one.

More GIFs

Just had a Material-related meeting with Sam, Sam and Andreas.

Looks like production is going forward, no official date as yet. It looks like I'm about to get involved in making some animated GIFs for the video pieces on it. It also looks like I might be doing some hard-coding for the actual site.

It looks like the site that will be going up at the moment is going to be a stop-gap for a larger affair - a nice looking, streamlined and without complete functionality to showcase the potential of the magazine.

Looks like I'm about to learn some more HTML and javascript. Yummy.

Learning Outcomes (so far)

So far I have:

• Expanded my knowledge of Tesla Coils
• Learned how to make 'Hot Ice'
• Learned how to make Thermite 
• Streamlined and honed my ability to write treatments and pitch (something I find difficult due to my verbose, expressive nature) 
• Improved (slightly) my layout skills and critical eye through the formulation of treatments and layouts for the Material website
• Increased my knowledge of electromagnets and construction thereof (including safety implications)
• Improved my ability to animate

That's all I could think of for now, I'll be sure to highlight any further skills acquired in future posts.

McQueen Animation

A larger post will come soon. All three projects have now been approved and are ready to begin construction.

However I was pretty excited by the progress I made on the pixel animation yesterday. This is a days' work (roughly).

I can't be bothered to export it any bigger right now. Maybe later. This is by far the most detailed pixel animation I have ever made - doing it from a video clip has felt like the animating equivalent of life drawing. All in all I'm pretty happy with the result, but frame rate may have to be dropped for the final outcome as this is very time consuming!

I chose to use Alexander McQueen's 2010 Spring/Summer collection as it is both very recognisable, and designed by somebody from 'my endz'.