HOME
VIDEO

The previous video series began as a documentation of environment art. The work below documents my process of creating an avatar through which users may traverse and interact with those environments. 

Please allow a minute for moving images to load.

Documentation, Physicalized Frames 2019

Still, Physicalized Frames 2019

Above is documentation of an interactive animation system developed in the Unity Game Engine. My goal has been to create an animation and interaction system that allows the user a high level of control of their avatar. 1600 PNGs of two legs in every possible position within 170 degrees of motion were animated, rendered, and exported from Blender. They are represented above as square pixels, carefully hand-placed in colorful matrices. Waypoints can be placed on the matrices by users, between which a small single pixel sized automata moves. Users may dynamically place waypoints, altering the movement of the automata. As she passing over each frame, their alpha values become zero, and white spaces appear on the matrices. The frame corresponding to the automata's position is displayed through the leg's movement.

Still, Physicalized Frames 2019

Rig Development Documentation, 2021

Rig Development Documentation, 2021

Documentation of the development of a new rig for the interactive animation system. This system allows more freedom than previous versions as well as interactions with the 3D physics engine in the unity game engine. The feet and pelvis are mapped to respond to inputs from omnidirectional joysticks. Users are able to switch between controlling the rig's pelvis and legs with the use of a deterministic finite state machine.

Rig Development Documentation, 2021

Rig Development Documentation : Mask Sketch, 2021


An early sketch of a finite state machine. In 2018 I was still in the early stages of teaching myself to code, and having a hard time understanding standard visualizations of state machines and behavior trees. The idea of programming patterns for rudimentary AI was fascinating but seemed almost unattainable. I have progressed to implement a state machine for an outwardly more simple system - the rig. Above is an interactive sketch, please feel free to zoom in and click and drag to navigate! The goal of the rig is to create a tactile experience for user's interacting with the program, my programs and scripts are a bit quirky and may not follow every industry standard consensus for best practice. Struggling through new technology has been a fundamental aspect of my practice these past few years. From teaching myself digital animation to programming, the iteration, and prototyping have opened me up to new avenues for art making and modes of thinking. The usage of hierarchical state machines for the small (bending a leg) to the large (simulation of supply and demand) is an exciting possibility I am pursing.   

Rig Development, Magnitude Clamp, 2021

The rig is a multi-layered system full of nested objects. Each segment of the body is represented by two points. These two empty objects   act as virtual joints. Their relationship is defined by a script that clamps the magnitude between the two points and draws a line from point A to point B, rendering the body. When the maximum magnitude is reached a coroutine runs to prevent point B from straying to far from point A. ​​​​​​​

Physicalized Frames, Sample Code, 2019

The above code is documentation of the system that allows the automata to move between waypoints placed on the matrices of  frames.