GERLAGER    

Woodworking Project

June 15, 2009

There’s something exciting about a hands on project that’s different from digital work. Being able to touch and hold something physical sets off different emotions than looking at a computer screen. I get the same great rush every time I set up my screen printer and begin mixing my inks. I think it’s programmed into us as humans. Anyhow, I decided to try something new this summer and start a woodworking project.

I took one wood course about seven years ago and I’ve seen Norm Abrams show enough to know that I’m equipped with neither the right tools nor the experience, but I’m confident beginners luck will be on my side.

The only teaser that I can give out right now is that it involves driftwood and a dust mask. Stay tuned.

Processing

I had a few minutes the other day, so I decided to start looking through Ira Greenberg’s book on Processing.

So far it’s just been basics, but I wanted to post these (basically premade) images as a reminder to myself that I need to make something much more original.

Motion Tracking + Masking Tests

May 8, 2009

The goal of this series of tests was to setup and connect multiple motion tracking points and fill the resulting triangular “cells” with different video. After Effects doesn’t allow point manipulation of objects/masks, so I had to figure out a way to create the triangles that the connected tracking points formed using the motion tracking data.

To do this, I worked with each triangle individually. I created three solids (black rectangles) and set their position and rotations to match the position and slope of three lines of the triangles. I lowered the opacity of the rectangles and assigned the multiply blending mode. Using the Alpha Levels Effect I was able to make the overlapping area pure black and everything else pure white. The resulting comps worked as my track mattes for the second video.

Here are a few of the steps I went through:

Bananas + Scanner = (let’s face it, I’m not a math major)

May 7, 2009

This next project that I’m working on is going to be a motion piece made up of a few seemingly unrelated scenes. One of those scenes will include images of scanned banana cross sections. I highly recommend using a scanner to create images. The setup time is unrivaled and it’s possible to achieve some surreal effects rather easily.