Project 2 Final - Motion Diagrammed

The Social Network Rowing Scene - Diagramming Motion

I decided to take a slightly different approach to the final version of the animation/surface study. The motion of the act of rowing is an interesting study compounded by the cinematography the director used to capture this action. With this in mind, I wanted to try to diagram that sequence.

First, I started off by trying to break down the essential parts of the rowing action. I took still images from a video of someone rowing.

 From this sequence, I tried to diagram the essential movements and elements to the action.

In looking at this, I decided that being too literal about the human body being evident, I isolated the body and it's actions alone as seen below.

Using Rhino, I lofted these curves after aligning them to create a surface. My hope was that this surface would be a sort of flow diagram of the action happening while rowing. I wanted to try to animate through using this surface.

I lofted the curves to yield a surface. I arrayed a series of planes to take splined segments from, which produced a sort of still-frame moments of the rowing action.

Now that I was given these moments, I arranged the pieces and surface into ways by which I could begin to animate the essense of the original video. The original video clip, in my few was about capturing the motion and action of rowing. This action happened as a tension between two points, the opposing row teams, on a line. The camera worked in line with this motion, panned around the line, ran on oblique to the line, and through the line. Through my animation, I wanted to diagram that sequence.

Physical Model Images

Digital modeling is much more expressive than physical, I've concluded. In these images, I show the model constructed out of two colors of chipboard. The space looks like it could be inhabited and an actual beginning of a built form. 

Animations & Space Creation

In order to create space, I had to break down the animation I was creating to a simple form. I simply analyzed the camera paths that I used in my various camera cuts to then use as curves within a modeling program. I chose Rhino for this process as I ran into issues trying to import a .dwf file into Maya. 


The curves created from the camera paths were fairly diverse. I had one long, swooping curve created from the pan-around camera I used in the opening of my animation. The others were fairly close in proximity and scale but varied in their form. It is interesting to see what form was created from lofting these various curves together to make one solid form. It almost forms what looks to be a large, cantilevered open air market... in a way. The closer, smaller camera path curves serve to anchor the larger sweeping camera path which forms the expansive "roof-like" figure. 


Looking at these images, I can begin to imagine taking 5, 6, maybe more camera paths to create a much more complex form. I chose to take the images from a ground plane perspective such to create the illusion of approaching the model as an object in space. 

Animation & Process Videos

Dissecting the Animation Process - Time/Space 


For this attempt at the animation, I decided I would try to compile separate camera cuts. I highlighted different camera paths and approaches to the rowing sequence, as to dissect the movements used in the film scene. Each camera cut, I put into iMovie to make one complete Quicktime video. 

I took some video of my process, as well. I tried to show how I took each camera path segment to compile them into one video in iMovie here: 

In EIAS Animator, I took screenshots of my camera paths. From those screenshots, I traced over them in illustrator to have curves by which I could loft when I brought them into a modeling program. I get into the process a little bit more in this video: