We were given this quote:
“The chased runs on four legs and the chaser runs on two”. (roughly translated) With this quote we came up with various scenarios where we wanted to put the viewer in a position of being chased or being the one chasing. One our first ideas was to have a Mafia story where the viewer would have to chase a killer using different interactive tools.
After some feedback we realized that this idea would be difficult to achieve in the short amount of time that we were given. We did some more brain storming and came up with the idea the viewer should both chase and be chased. A scenerio we came up with was that the viewer would enter a room and follow a rabbit while being being hunted by a wolf. This would both address the ideas of the chased being on four legs as well as the position of power it puts the person on two legs.
We started with a couple of tests using the colortracking system with the webcam and the shadow of the person entering the room. Using a white ban along the bottom of the projection we were able to track a person walking across the area.
Next we concentrated on the animations of the rabbit and the wolf. We experimented with various mediums and styles for the animations.
We settled on a style and decided to do the animation by hand and drawing each of the frames. View video of first line test >> rabbit2000
With the animations done, we concentrated on the programing aspect and connecting the tracking to the movie clips.
We created a system that will allow us to map the animated figures to the visitor. We made three areas that would react to the movements of the visitor. At the bottom of the movie there is a white space and the camera of the computer tracks the white colour. It then notices if there is everything that is between the screen and the camera or anything casts a shadow on to the screen. Once we have the position of the person we can map the rabbit and the wolf.
We produced 19 different animations for the rabbit. We did this because there are many possible positions that the visitor can be in. For every combination there has to be a different number produced in the Max msp. For each number there is a movie that will start, if the number appears the movie will play.
We had to make a pretty complex system for the rabbit and the wolf.
In the end, the project that we created was both challenging for us in the use of Max Msp and allowed us to explore hand drawn animation. We think we addressed the issues of the project in creative manner and pushed our boundaries as designers.
Here are some videos of the final results:
