Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Spiegeltanz



"What can be more similar in every respect and in every part more alike to my hand and to my ear than their images in a mirror? And yet I cannot put such a hand as is seen in the glass in the place of its original; for if this is a right hand, that in the glass is a left one, and the image or reflection of the right ear is a left one, which can never take the place of the other. There are in this case no internal differences which our understanding could determine by thinking alone..."

Immanuel Kant [tr. Carus-Beck]

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Der dritte Mann (flying game)

Apaches (El Laberinto)



We never confess that we have married a woman we do not love, a woman who may love us perhaps, but who is incapable of being her true self. Swann says: "And to think I have wasted the best years of my life with a woman who was not my type." The majority of modern men could repeat that sentence on their deathbeds. And with the change of one word, so could the majority of women.

Octavio Paz [tr.L.Kemp]
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Click on image to view at full size.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Metamorphosis



In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora...

"In new bodies forms transmuted mind turns to tell..."

Ovid

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Empire Of The Ants



N.B.: The Times article, "Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Ants--Talking To Each Other"..." by Lewis Smith, February 6, 2009, may be found online here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5672006.ece

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night...(Slick 2)



It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness....

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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N.B. The rain effects were done in Sqirlz Water Reflections. The modeling was done with metaballs and rendered in Bryce. The image at full size and without the rain effects is available here on the same blog below:

http://burbankstomato.blogspot.com/2009/02/slick.html

Night Fountain



Oh in the deep blue night
The fountain sang alone;
It sang to the drowsy heart
Of a satyr carved in stone....


[Sara Teasdale]

Monday, October 5, 2009

The Island Of The Day After



....Roberto now cast the dice himself. "But those are old wives' tales! Like the story of the pregnant woman who saw her lover with his head cut off and then gave birth to a baby whose head was detached from its body. Or like the peasant wife who, to punish a dog who has soiled the kitchen, takes a hot coal and thrusts it into the feces, hoping the animal will feel the fire in his behind! Sir, no person of sense believes in these historiettes!"

Umberto Eco
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N.B. The animation used Sqirlz Water Reflections (among other programs). This is another seemingly simple Sqirlz animation program with deceptive versatility, available for free download at the Sqirlz site below:

http://www.xiberpix.net/SqirlzReflect.html

Saturday, October 3, 2009

The Museum (Partial Anaglyphic Images And Digital Trompe L'Oeil)



The animation above is a partial red-blue anaglyph designed to be viewed with 3D glasses, red left, blue right.

In this case only the framed picture within the picture is anaglyphic while the background is non-anaglyphic 2D, from a 3D render, then animated in Sqirlz Lite.

In effect this is a kind of digital trompe l'oeil with the anaglyphic section giving the impression of projection and depth in selected areas.

The first step was the larger anaglyphic image below--click on the image to view full size:



This image was constructed by yet another variation of mixed 2D-3D anaglyphization.

In this case the original was made by the 3D method, with images from two different camera angles as input into Anaglyph Maker, which automatically constructs the 3D anaglyph. The resulting 3D anaglyph was then separated into its red and blue elements in Corel Photo-Paint, and the whole image reassembled as an anaglyph with no masking. This intensified the depth and projection of the whole anaglyph.

The next step was the image below:



In this case, the anaglyph was framed in a 2D program--Photo-Paint again--and the shadow outside the white framing was added, another kind of trompe l'oeil, giving the impression of a picture peeking out of its ground or frame.

This image was then applied as a texture to the flat objects in the 3D render below, from which the animation above was constructed.



It is theoretically possible to construct such images using only 2D programs, as might have been done before 3D programs became readily available in 3D graphics. Though the process for anaglyphs is complex even using a combination of 2D and 3D methods and appointments, it is still much simpler than in 2D alone.

[copyright EAC]

Friday, October 2, 2009

The Flight Of Margarita III (Animated Anaglyphic Texturing)



The animation above is a red-blue anaglyph designed to be viewed with 3D glasses--red blue left, blue right.

In this case, two animations in the "Margarita" series--one made by the 3D method (the cube) and one made by the 2D method (the ground) were imported into a 3D program and used as textures on objects, giving the result above.

That animation was then reanimated in Squirlz Lite (the second half) and made part of the completed Animated .GIF.

Despite the small size (the mechanics of the site limit viewing Animated .GIF to 400 pixels wide) and .GIFizing an original .AVI file, the red-blue anaglyphic depth remains, and by texturing in effect turns a non-anaglyphic render in the 3D program into an anaglyph.

The image can also be viewed without 3D glasses comfortably enough and thus qualifies as an ambiglyph. Note that the non-glassed image also has depth, which is the result of the phenomenon of naked eye red-blue stereoscopy.

Unlike non-interlaced animated .GIF and raw .AVI files, Video and Flash do not have discrete frames. As a result, there are special problems in making animated anaglyphic videos. In the case above, for example, videoizing at this small scale (not shown) degrades the anaglyphic animation considerably (a problem to be discussed elsewhere).

Logically the process of using 2D textures in 3D programs (the ground animation above) is exactly complementary to using 3D images in 2D appointments.

[copyright EAC]