I have always been interested in animation, but until now I’ve never set aside any time to learn what programs have an animation feature, nor how those features might work. I was excited to learn that Adobe Photoshop has the capacity to animate.
I have fairly extensive experience with Photoshop and other tools like it (especially CLIPStudio Paint), so creating a layered document to animate off of was not difficult or frustrating. Next, I learned where to find the animation feature (windows menu => timeline). Finding the animation feature again was mildly frustrating, because I’d forgotten it was called ‘timeline’. However, I remembered pretty quickly once I saw the ‘timeline’ option.
I already knew the basics of frame-to-frame animation, but I had never heard of the ‘tweening’ tool before. I had a great time watching the computer generate animation frames-- though the animation looked a bit stiff because of it. I learned about how you can adjust the number of frames a computer injects between the first and last frame.
I experienced a little bit of pushback from Photoshop as I was trying to play around with the CMYK channels. I really wanted to create interesting color palettes by changing the amount of Magenta/Cyan/Yellow/Black that was present in the image, so I tried to split the image’s channels. Unfortunately, splitting the channels created a greyscale image, which was the opposite of what I wanted. I couldn’t copy the colors of the image (with magenta removed, for example) from the channels, either (since channels are greyscale only). I wanted to avoid changing the image permanently, and I also wanted to avoid a million different layers of the same image with slight variations in color. I wanted something more flexible, that was simple but allowed for subtle variation without the clutter of many layers. Then, I learned about the levels option-- the levels function acted like an adjustment filter, where I could alter the CMYK presentation without changing the actual layer. I was super excited to play with this new feature! Through this tool, I was able to create more subtle (yet no less intense) color effects that worked spectacularly with the tweening function. The more frames I set the tweening tool to add, the more variation in actual color there was in the gif as the tweening tool had more frames to physically adjust the color to its final hue/saturation.
Here are a few images of the adjustment layers:
This last image is the image with all of the adjustment levels turned off.
I also played a bit with frame by frame animation-- I found that frame by frame animation was satisfying, and that I often needed to adjust the timing / length of time a frame was shown to create the desired affect. Using the tweening tool in tandem with frame by frame animation helped me maintain the color effects of the gif, as well as the smoothness of color transfers.
Here are some of the frames in which I balanced the tweening tool and frame by frame animation:
top row: frame animation
bottom row: using tweening tool with frame/frame animation layer
I found that creating an AR experience through Eyejack was pretty easy-- the most difficult part was sharing the AR gif with others. After a little trial and error, I found that I enjoyed using the QR code the most, as it was the most intuitive. I definitely appreciated how many different ways there were to access an AR artwork-- that way everyone can find the way that is best for them.
In the future I would like to continue to play with AR and animation. Since I already own CLIPStudio, I plan to learn how to use its animation feature. I’d also like to explore AR possibilities that aren’t linked to EyeJack or apps like it-- I think that having an app/downloading an app to a handheld device is somewhat of a barrier in terms of accessibility, so if there were another way to make AR more accessible I would like to explore it.
Through this exploration, I discovered what I think I might like to do for my Impossible Project. I’d like to create an AR experience that is user interactive, where the user can actually impact the animation / AR experience. I think the best way to do this would be to create multiple target images that correspond to specific physical objects. These objects will be arranged in various different patterns, which the audience can determine, and these different patterns will trigger various different animations on/of an image projected onto the wall.
See the image below for clarity:
Here are my animated GIFs:
Top GIF based on word HECTIC
