{"id":717,"date":"2010-01-26T16:55:08","date_gmt":"2010-01-26T21:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=717"},"modified":"2010-01-26T17:17:27","modified_gmt":"2010-01-26T22:17:27","slug":"fractal-animation-reel-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=717","title":{"rendered":"Fractal Animation: Reel #2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Allow me to play Film Class Professor<\/em>.\u00a0 Before we dim the lights and roll the film I will give a short lecture which hopefully will enlighten our understanding of these short animations posted below, or, at the very least, become the price of admission you will pay to sit in a comfortable seat and watch films and get a university degree at the same time.<\/p>\n

I went to YouTube and searched on “Apophysis Animation<\/a>“.\u00a0 About three hundred links came up.\u00a0 I sorted them by viewer ranking (number of stars) and then shortened the list by including only those less than a month old because I was interested in seeing the more current stuff.\u00a0 This came to 18 and I looked at almost all of them.\u00a0 Not all of them I watched to the end, mind you.\u00a0 Judging animation is more time consuming than still image art.\u00a0 A better review of course would have included a much wider time frame than just the last month.\u00a0 But let’s talk a bit about fractal animation and where I think it’s going and why.<\/p>\n

Jock Cooper, a fractal animator whose work I reviewed<\/a> a year ago and who had a short work<\/a> that I particularly liked, in part due to it’s spectacular fractal music accompaniment (which he also composed) left a comment to my last posting<\/a> on fractal animation where he said, “Yes fractal animations are basically boring. But I don\u2019t know what can be done about it. It\u2019s not like you can add characters and a plot.”\u00a0 An artist of Jock’s stature is worth listening to and taking seriously.\u00a0 If he’s not the best Ultra Fractal animator, he’s certainly one of them, as well a being a superb creator of non-animated fractal artwork.<\/a><\/p>\n

And he’s absolutely right in what he’s said.\u00a0 What can<\/em> be done about it?\u00a0 I salute those, who like him, have spent a good deal of time in mastering the technical complexities of Ultra Fractal animation.\u00a0 If most non-animated fractal artwork had that much effort put into it, the whole genre would be that much better for it.\u00a0 But fractal animation is a tough job and folks like him face some really serious challenges because you can’t simply make high tech cartoons with “characters and a plot” with fractals like you can with other forms of computerized animation.\u00a0 All of the good fractal animations I’ve seen have been multimedia presentations with carefully chosen musical scores that complement the moving images.\u00a0 Perhaps because fractals are so abstract, they need sound to help take up the slack that characters and a plot does in other kinds of animation.\u00a0 And even creating one minute of such a combination of engaging visuals and sound is no mean feat.\u00a0 It’s not something one can just pick up and play with for a few months and then win a contest<\/span> create something impressive.<\/p>\n

Part of the problem, as I’ve suggested, may be that good animation isn’t really about good graphics. What makes a short film interesting is what happens in it. It’s different than making still images which are intended to be stared at and focused upon. When someone tries to animate that in the form of a parameter sweep, deep zoom or fly-by, the viewer instinctively expects something to happen, some significant change to what they’re looking at to occur. Strangely enough then, fractals that look good as still images may not have any animation potential to them.<\/p>\n

And still images that don’t look so great may have a lot of animation potential to them.\u00a0 Daniel White’s Into the Heart of the Mandelbulb<\/em> which I discussed in my last post<\/a> is a typical depiction of the Mandelbulb, 3D mandelbrot formula, which really isn’t all that exciting, visually, when compared to most renderings of the common, 2D mandelbrot formula.\u00a0 But what made Daniel’s short animation interesting was the sound and the sci-fi\/horror theme of venturing into the unknown.\u00a0 He used sound dramatically as well as editing in a dark, blacked-out segment in which to build suspense.\u00a0 Those graphics wouldn’t impress too many in the fractal art world, but he used them to tell a short and simple “story”.\u00a0 What looks good in animation doesn’t seem to match what looks good in still fractal artwork.<\/p>\n

This shouldn’t be so surprising though. Consider photography. Many exciting still images are actually snapshots of athletes or other people engaged in vigorous activity frozen in time and presented in a completely different context than the moving image clip they would be a part of if they were animated, that is, presented as a short film clip.<\/p>\n

Or how about landscape photography? How many breath taking panoramic vistas would be more appealing as short video takes from an airplane? There are some. I’ve seen some clips taken from airplanes flying low over African grasslands while herds of antelope race along or as flocks of birds take off from lakes or rivers. But the subject of interest is the movement of the antelope or the birds and not really the landscape which forms the background. The background is more photogenic as a still image than a moving one. And I think fractals are, for the most part,\u00a0 more like backgrounds than animals.<\/p>\n

I hate to say it, but I think fractal animation is going to be short-lived and merely something of a fad. Abstract animation is a hard sell to any audience and today’s audience has been spoiled by a steady diet of 21st century Hollywood CGI and computer animation. Audiences aren’t wowed by moving fractals as much as they are by a gorgeous still image of one. Fractals look best when they can be stared at and studied. That’s why people paint sunsets. They want to stop the sun right where it is and savor that moment and then be able to come back again and again to look at that perfect and unmoving<\/em> sunset.<\/p>\n

Having said all that…<\/em><\/p>\n

Now it’s time for the fun part.\u00a0 Fortunately, in this online classroom, we don’t have to wait for the lazy graduate student in the projector room to come back from his smoke break before we can get started.\u00a0 We can start right away with a mouse-click.<\/p>\n

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(Apophysis Animation<\/em>)\u00a0 Has a nice soundtrack.\u00a0 That spacey, techno-dub, drifting thing has an abstract quality that fits in well with abstract graphics.\u00a0 This is not a bad music video, but that’s not saying much since most music videos incorporate imagery and music that blends together like oil and water.\u00a0 This one isn’t like that at all.\u00a0 I watched this one more than once.\u00a0 That pretty well says it all.<\/p>\n

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(Apophysis Flying Bird Anim…) <\/em>I love it.\u00a0 But why<\/em> do I love it?\u00a0 It’s a pretty, um, elementary<\/em> use of Apophysis 3D (is that 3D?).\u00a0 The music is wonderfully retro, but I’m 44, so my idea of retro might not be yours.\u00a0 I’m thinking old Kraftwerk<\/a>.\u00a0 This bird is timeless and almost a fossilized animation.\u00a0 And yet it’s not terribly old is it?\u00a0 It’s got a neat style to it.\u00a0 A good example of how animation follows a whole different set of rules than still imagery does.\u00a0 As a still image, this thing would not be too impressive, to put it politely.\u00a0 The guy made the graphics and the music<\/em>.\u00a0 A fairly talented man, I’d say.<\/p>\n

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(Julia’s Revenge<\/em>)?\u00a0 Well, it’s just a title.\u00a0 A few things to note.\u00a0 It starts and ends nicely and not just when they music cuts out.\u00a0 Again, the dreamy, spacey, driftin’ to alpha centauri on the old man river of the milky way<\/em> music seems to be suited to all sorts of fractal animation sequences like this one.<\/p>\n

I found this one to be like “geometric ballet”.\u00a0 In fact, near the middle when the camera pans out over a surprisingly flat panorama and the golden bubble appears, I was reminded of ballet dancers and point shoes and some very expensive scenery changes.<\/p>\n

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(The living fractal apophysis…)<\/em> Spooky music, eh?\u00a0 Works nicely with the octopus-o-saurus.\u00a0 Some bits were a bit jagged, at least when I viewed it on my computer, but the attempt to present an ancient sea creature swimming through a vast, dark sea came across pretty well.\u00a0 Finding an animal-like image that looks good and animates well is a tricky thing, I’m sure.\u00a0 At times I was confused by whether the creature was turning around or swimming backwards, or what.\u00a0 But that also added some mystery to the scene.\u00a0 After all, it’s supposed to be something we’ve never seen before.<\/p>\n

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(Alien Space)<\/em> This one’s probably the most well executed one from a professional standpoint.\u00a0 It’s got some rather good editing in it.\u00a0 The author obviously has gone to some effort to make sure the graphics sync reasonably well with the changes in the music.\u00a0 Once again we have the dreamy, dub-like soundtrack that fits with almost any kind of abstract animation.\u00a0 The narration is an interesting aspect.\u00a0 Of course, that’s all done by the musician and the animator has simply worked their stuff in around it.\u00a0 Perhaps narration is a good trick to remember and even a simple voice-over by any animator describing how the imagery was made or adding in poetry or quotations would complement fractal animation as well as music seems to.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if the Sun sequence was made in Apophysis (it looked awfully realistic) but Apophysis 3D seems to excel in making all sorts of spherical things.\u00a0 There’s a lot of layering and combining of imagery in this one.<\/p>\n

It gets a bit repetitive in spots, but then the whole thing is 9 minutes long.\u00a0 9 minutes is a pretty long time to animate without repeating something<\/em>.\u00a0 Still, this one is very good and explains why it was so highly rated on YouTube.<\/p>\n

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(My Best Apophysis Animation Yet) <\/em>Although this one probably looks a little plain after seeing some other ones like it, I think it’s not too bad since it syncs well with the soundtrack and ends (fairly) well, although a little off-time with the music.\u00a0 I particularly like the laser light appearance in this one and how in one of the pans where the camera pulls off backwards into space the animation really uses the 3D architecture of the imagery to it’s greatest advantage.<\/p>\n

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(You Appearing)<\/em> Hmmmnn… This posting is almost becoming a review of Apophysis music videos.\u00a0 The fractured imagery in this one at the beginning blends perfectly with the reverberated piano.\u00a0 Perhaps that’s what made me include this one: it’s got some very good moments in it as far as the use of fractal animation goes.\u00a0 Some of the “dissolution” sequences (where the element are moved apart) really shows how complex some of the IFS imagery can be.\u00a0 There’s squares, rolled up scarves, and wispy curly-cues all from the same image and each with different coloring.\u00a0 It’s viewable in higher resolutions but I didn’t try it as I’ve got an 8 year old computer with a fairly basic integrated video card.\u00a0 Resolution could be an important factor when viewing fractal animation I suppose, since a lot of detail is lost in the video compression used to create the lower resolution streams (smudges and stuff).\u00a0 And how good would most movies look if you viewed them through a smudgy, foggy window?<\/p>\n

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(3D IFS Fractal:\u00a0 Inside the Sierpinski Temple)<\/em> A silent movie, for a change.\u00a0 I can’t quite figure out what makes this one so appealing.\u00a0 It really shouldn’t be any more impressive than any 3D environment from a video game, but it’s got a style or mood –or something– to it that makes it interesting.\u00a0 There’s a simple video of the outside of the temple<\/a> which although it has the same Sierpinski structure, isn’t anywhere near as interesting as this little drive around on the inside is.\u00a0 Who would ever have thought the inside of a Sierpinski “temple” would be so much more interesting than the outside?\u00a0 Maybe it’s the lighting and shadows that gives the impression of exploring a secret, forbidden place, flashlight in hand in the middle of the night.\u00a0 Or it could just be that the Sierpinski architecture (from the inside) is of itself something of interest .\u00a0 Anyhow, it’s short and silent which suggests that plain fractal animation on it’s own can still be interesting.<\/p>\n

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(Fractale) <\/em>I apologize.\u00a0 I threw this one in for laughs.\u00a0 It’s got to be the worst fractal video I’ve ever seen.\u00a0 I believe the initial cover image (which is the only good point) is by Kerry Mitchell. \u00a0 I doubt he gave permission for it to be used as no self-respecting artist would allow their work to be abused like this (except for thousands of dollars, of course).\u00a0 Inside there’s probably even more examples of copyright infringement.\u00a0 See any else you recognize?\u00a0 But worst of all it’s just a slide show.\u00a0 Yaaaaaaaawn…\u00a0 And the music?\u00a0 Why do people even bother to make stuff like this?\u00a0 Hopefully whoever made this one gave up making videos after this.\u00a0 Don’t tell your friends about this one; we don’t want this sort of thing going viral.\u00a0 It’s not likely to.<\/p>\n

Well, that’s it, class.\u00a0 Congratulations on finding the easiest and most agreeable way to get a course credit in your entire college career.\u00a0 After viewing these examples does fractal animation have a future?\u00a0\u00a0 Sorry, does that sound like an exam question?\u00a0 I didn’t mean to frighten you.\u00a0 Come back next week when we “study” Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch<\/em><\/a> in cinemascope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Allow me to play Film Class Professor.\u00a0 Before we dim the lights and roll the film I will give a short lecture which hopefully will enlighten our understanding of these short animations posted below, or, at the very least, become the price of admission you will pay to sit in a comfortable seat and watch … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":707,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=707","url_meta":{"origin":717,"position":0},"title":"The Big Flat Plateau of Fractal Animation","author":"Tim","date":"18 January, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A few years back I was excited about the possibilities of fractal animation.\u00a0 Fractal animation, as I saw it, would be literally living and moving fractals.\u00a0 Fractal artists were about to become fractal film makers and the art form would take on a whole new dimension.\u00a0 And after seeing a\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 5 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 5 comments","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=707#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3651,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=3651","url_meta":{"origin":717,"position":1},"title":"“Special” Holiday Fractal Finds","author":"Tim","date":"29 December, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"There is fractal art and there is the analysis of fractal art, and then there's fractal events: contests, calendars and the occasional news item.\u00a0 But then there are those occasional \"things\" that just don't fall into the usual categories.\u00a0 Here are some of those high points --special finds-- of this\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 4 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 4 comments","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=3651#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/402px-Mona_Lisa_by_Leonardo_da_Vinci_from_C2RMF_retouched.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1851,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1851","url_meta":{"origin":717,"position":2},"title":"Hold on to your mind: Lloyd Garrick’s little video project","author":"Tim","date":"8 November, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Known as JackOTradez or FractAlkemist and probably a few others, Lloyd Garrick (a name he rarely goes by) has made a sizable collection of fractal videos using Fractint and some very effective musical soundtracks.","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1851#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/ship-thread.png?fit=769%2C271&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/ship-thread.png?fit=769%2C271&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/ship-thread.png?fit=769%2C271&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/ship-thread.png?fit=769%2C271&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1962,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1962","url_meta":{"origin":717,"position":3},"title":"ASCII: Wild Fractal Typewriter","author":"Tim","date":"24 November, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A new fractal program (alpha version) yFractalExplorer. It's real-time rendering abilities include displaying the image as color ascii art. A couple other examples of animated fractal ascii art which begs the question: \"Is fractal land ripe for an ascii art revival?\" Of course not, but it's still cool to look\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1962#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":217,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=217","url_meta":{"origin":717,"position":4},"title":"Three Cheers For Jock!","author":"Tim","date":"16 August, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Browsing fractal sites usually leaves me with a feeling best described by the fancy term, \"Ennui\". There just isn't much originality. I don't know why. Maybe most fractal artists makes fractal art for reasons other than creative expression or any of the usual motives that lead people to produce artwork.\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=217#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":335,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=335","url_meta":{"origin":717,"position":5},"title":"Image of the Weak: Fractal Art","author":"Tim","date":"28 July, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I used to go hunting for exciting new images. Now I'm content if I can just find something that looks different. I don't care if it's great or not.The Golden Age of Heroes is OverGuido Cavalcante summed it up quite well two years ago while writing on a related topic,\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=335#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=717"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":736,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions\/736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}