 Hello everyone, how you doing? Thank you. My name is Mary Randall and this is Kristin Arrow and we're here to talk to you about a project that we've been working on. It's a visual arts project that's going to be shown in a gallery next year. So we have a teaser here to show you and then we'll explain everything around it after that. This project started quite a while ago and it was these driftwood structures or these creatures, these things, these beings on this beach on an island. We did a number of residencies and so we isolated this photography to get these sort of lone sentinel sort of creatures out of these driftwood beach. It was a very sort of isolated beach and it was quite desolate and lonely. And so initially we sort of tried to make these creatures that lived there. We made them out of photographs of the driftwood. We did 3D scanning. I presented here about four years ago to try and get this project happening but it never quite worked. We couldn't quite work out what to do with them because they became anthropomorphic very quickly. They were characters doing the Pixar sort of type movements whereas they were trying to be more visual arts maybe and more ethereal sort of beings. It just didn't become serious. It looked really silly I think. And so therefore you know we left it go for a while and then we just picked it up recently and so I'll put it on to Mary for the why. So yeah I came onto this project and I have a background in film and TV and advertising but ultimately I'm a visual artist and so I always draw on visual language to be able to communicate with my audiences. So I guess the brief was when we sort of like decided to work on this project. I've got the one line synopsis here which is a short film about a mesmerized crab adrift in the void. So that's what you've just seen. And so if we look at break that down there's a couple of interesting words there. So what we were planning to make was an immersive mesmerizing and potentially disorientating experience for the audience. So that's like a different kind of experience that we're trying to create as for so that you can experience the same thing that the protagonist or this crab is experiencing. So the definition for mesmerized as you can see here is to capture someone's attention to basically hypnotize them so that you can get them to do what you want them to do. And we're using the typical tools that we'd use to communicate with an audience. So that's the visual design, the shot composition and movement, motion design and sequencing. So we talked about the wash and the how and now I suppose it's the why. What was the theme behind this? And we sort of playfully call this crabby noir for a while there because of the way it was starting to look. So I often talk about this and I use a more elaborate way of describing it as being the seductive dance of compulsive desires. And what I'm talking about there is this idea of addictions because they sort of keep you locked in the sycophant cycle, this loop that you can't break free of. And there always be these these temptations. So if you're trying to give us smoking, for instance, there'll always be this little thing inside you this little voice that's saying, you know, it'd be so much better if you just had another puff or do this or whatever. So, you know, that in a sense is what we've tried to create with this experience. And the shadow creature, this the shadow crab in this particular story is all about trying to distract you. Well, I refer to it as the exquisite distraction, because it is such a dance, you know, this tango that we have with ourselves in order to try and break free of this sort of sycophant cycle so that we can evolve and go further. So when we're talking about sort of an altered state of mind or trying to, you know, sort of communicate that experience, we drew on one of the earlier sort of examples of this, the cabinet of Dr. Caligari, where they were trying to portray the the perspective of what it was like to be a schizophrenic. And so they take they'd gotten visual reference from schizophrenic patients. And then they created this distorted world. And and so we've sort of drawn on that in a range of different ways. And I and we've also drawn on on and these exoskeleton creatures, these crabs and these peacock spiders. And the reason that we chose them specifically is because they do this this thing called signaling these displays where so that they can lure mates. In fact, when we're having lunch, we're watching a pigeon try and do the same thing. And it's really interesting to sort of see the different ways that they try and lure these creatures. And so that's what you saw in that teaser. We picked that particular sequence because there's always a scene in a film, where it defines the theme of what you're trying to create. And that's what we picked out. We picked out the most important scene. And and we tried to explain what this idea of desire was about. There are other things that we drew on as well. As I said, I've got a background in film and TV. And so this idea of the one point perspective, which is the signature shot of of Stanley Kubrick, he's done in all of his films. And he uses it whenever he is trying to sort of communicate this altered state of this altered perspective. And the interesting thing about the research that we ended up doing when we're looking at these creatures was that scientists are pretty obsessed with the one point perspective as well. And when Chris talks later about the peacock's body or CY. We also want to as we as we've been talking about, we're always trying to create this distorted perspective to try and you know, communicate that experience. And so this really interesting circular camera shot from the Haunting of Hill House was another sort of example where you can got an over the shoulder here. And we've sort of like gone for a PRV shot with the way we've communicated this. But the but again, it shows this larger understanding of the environment that this crab exists in. Jordan Peele is also another really exciting director that plays around with distorted perspective, again, to alter the view this experience that we're trying to really pursue. So this is the impossible focus shot. He used this in both us and and get out where he's composited two shots in post, because obviously the extreme close up is very shallow depth of field and then he's combined that with a long shot. So that everything's in a focus all at once, which is, you know, an interesting way of trying to communicate these ideas. And over to Chris for the rest. Yeah, so Mary was the why and what I'm the how how do we do this thing? How do we conjure this crab conjuring in a crab, I guess. And so we talked a lot about whether it was the mind of the crab in the soul of the spider, maybe or the mind of the spider in the body of the crab or what are we trying to who's conjuring who and what are they doing. But in essence, it's like a transposed motion motion from one source to go to the next source. And as you'll see in a second with this these movies, it's loops within loops within loops. We're talking about the addiction cycle and being stuck and trapped in these little things like the Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill. And so I'll play these things. I don't know if you know what peacock spiders are, but they're they're beautiful, tiny, tiny little spiders are Australian and they're becoming internet sensation, I think maybe just in Australia, I suppose I'm not sure, but everyone sort of talks about them because they have these unique dances. And it's the male is the colorful version that females are quite bland in these peacock spiders. And they all have distinctive unique dances. Um, and they're trying to hypnotize to mesmerize to lure. And they're discovering new species all the time. I think this was the Sparkle Muffin one and he does his own little dance and everyone's got their unique little crazy loopy thing. They're just beautiful. And they remind me of little puppies, perhaps I'm not really sure, but there's something about them that drew us to say, Well, we want the crab to move like that, not like a crab crab. This is my one of my favorites, I think it's just so simple. And then he does the side to side. Yeah, there we go. And and to me, that's a mesmerizing motion. It's just a simple little loop. And you're just drawn to it because it's repetitive, repetitive, repetitive. And I'll just play the rest of these guys. But and there's one coming up in a second, which I think is my favorite. It's the simplest one of all. This is the guy, yeah, he's and it's nutty. It's really, really funny. And so, you know, we were thinking that that's the motion we want to do because it's not a complicated motion. It's not simple, but it's not complicated. And we can construct it quite, quite easily. And then after their dance, they do the final consummation. Ideally, the prey or the female has been mesmerized and hypnotized. And they're in a trance like state. And that's when they move in. So I think that's in that. And so that's the size of the spiders, you know, they're really, really, really small little things like five millimeters, I think to maybe to one centimeter. And that's why this incredibly shallow depth of field. But anyway, so that's the spiders. And so the crab, I didn't know this, but crabs do lick and clean their eyeballs with their mouth. That's where I got that first animation from. And they move in a certain way. And so you can see that he does a slow motion to the side, he'll stop for quite a while, and then do a really, really fast moment movement when he's out of the way. I'll show that I think that loops around. And so that's what my sort of goal was to try to do to try and combine these two forms, these two motions or these two sort of styles together. And yeah, and so initially, and so it was a gallery project, it was an art, visual arts project in a gallery space, we were going to do multiple sort of interactive displays of these mesmerizing motions. And that was going, we were going to use Unreal, we started to use Unreal quite heavily, because it was VR interaction. We were doing PVR materials from Substance Painter. We're doing lots of lots of animation loops. And Unreal has a very nice sequencer. So you can layer these things with additive motion. And we're possibly doing a swarm of crabs as well. And so Unreal was the perfect choice. But we, and Blender 2.8 wasn't out yet. So we were doing some tests in Eevee. And then I would go and sort of reconstruct the whole thing in Unreal. And then Mary would always say, Oh, can we just have the one from Blender? Because it looks cleaner and crisper and simpler. And I get really upset because I'd spent all this time recreating it and layering these animations. But once 2.8 came out, and we sort of looked at Eevee, it was just really simple. I was really having a tough time of getting the same look in Unreal. We just dumped it. And we went back to Blender, because we were sort of recreating the thing I've already made. So it was a bit of a waste of time, but it was nice to sort of get a structure. And so this is the sort of system I developed. So we have a, I don't know if you use the NLA editor, but we have one small loop of seven frames or just one step of the crab. And so that just does one movement. And typically you would push, repeat, repeat that little clip over and over. But in this case, it would just loop back to the start. So I thought that was quite limited. But then I researched it quite a bit more. And we just have one little clip of seven frames, then we extend the end of that. So it sort of lasts forever. And then he can keep walking. That's great. So very, you know, and crabs are quite robotic creatures. So we could get away with a lot doing this. We wanted the simplest sort of method. So that was good. But then these other things you can do with actions is that down the, right down the bottom, there's an animated strip time. I don't even know what that meant or what it was. But essentially we can control that, that animation with a curve, with animation curve, which you'll see in a second. So there we go. And so you can slow down the walk, you can go backwards forwards, you can make it really fast, really, really slow, just by this control curve. And that was the answer. And so with the crabs, they come to a gradual rest, which is called a moving hold. It almost comes to a stop. And then it does a really fast motion out. So you can see here that I just trying to get a bit of a moving hold, coming to a rest with just a slight touch of motion to get that movement, that crazy crab movement. And if the cycle, the original cycle is strong enough and it doesn't slide at all, then there isn't much slipping of the feet at all, even as much as you can speed it up and slow it down. So the moment there's just a complete stop, but here is the moving hold. Just make a slight little adjustment and you'll come to a gradual, gradual, gradual. So it was just sensational. Really, really, really easy solution, which, and I don't know how I came up with it or what I saw online to do it with, but it was a really nice solution. And so I then used that as well for the thorax. We didn't get too far with the thorax peacock spider thing. And so I did one loop of the thorax doing that. And I think that's like four frames, I think it was. And then I used a curve to say, well, I want to speed it up or slow it down and then do a really fast wiggle. And that's what the curve looks like for that. So these small little rest spots, and then sync that up with the music. So yeah, complicated, I suppose, but simple, I suppose. I'm not really sure which one it is, but really beautiful, really, really hidden little feature that made it really nice. And so I then added another noise action on top of that. I could draw it in or draw it out or speed it up or slow it down and start syncing these up. Really, really nice stuff. And so that was the system that I developed. And then this is the real-time aspect of it. We sort of, because Mary wanted to be included in the cinematography. Now I was happy to do the rigging and the grunt work. And so we had one scene, and basically we started at zero and went to 3,000 or something. And we had the crabs doing that walk cycle and I attached them to a curve. So they walked along the ground up along the stick. The other crab walked along the stick as well. And so we got to the point where it was a live scene. We didn't storyboard at all. We just made the live scene so then Mary could come along and play with the cameras while it's like doing a live vision switching, I suppose. And actually I did storyboard quite a bit. Which I ignored, I think. So we're sort of last-minute people. That's just how we worked. Unfortunately, that's how I always work and we wanted to be able to have as much creativity at the end that you do at the beginning. And in a traditional animation cycle or production cycle, there's no spontaneity at the end. It doesn't exist. You've done your storyboarding, pre-production, production. You're in post. You can't go back and change the character or change these things. You can't do that. Whereas we wanted to use a real-time strategy to be able to have this creativity. And yeah, and this trailer, we didn't quite finish it. We didn't quite get there but that's the scene. It's a live scene. And here is the crab rig, which I really struggled with. I really had a great difficulty with it. But it worked. It was good in the end. So he is stuck, sorry, like a path constraint. He moves with his little walk cycle along a path, which is sitting above the stick and animated it with the curve. So he just comes to these little moving holes, these little rest spots. And then I had, I think, the base level of the crab. And that's the sort of moving along the actual stick itself. So he's attached to a curve but he can sort of move and he's stuck there with shrink wrap constraints on each foot. Then I've got the body on top of that when the legs are stuck to the stick. And then the feet. I sort of spent a while thinking, well, I wanted to have the feet being able to move, but then the parent of that is the shrink wrap. So those things are stuck to the stick but the feet can then have an extra layer of motion on top of that. So, yeah, multiple sort of levels just to give us the flexibility we want. But it's all about, well, and the next version of this project is the intricacies of getting this motion, this peacock spider motion, which we couldn't quite get to. We just got the scene working, got him walking. And that was cool. Yeah, and that's him. And yeah, once again. And so the, we didn't, we had the shadow crab was living in a big pile of driftwood on the beach. And I think this sort of teaser has been a process in reduction. We had all these ambitions and it just got smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. In the end it's just a stick. It's just one stick in blackness. Because they couldn't, the shadows and Evie, I had a great, quite a lot of struggle with, with so many different sticks and things around. I just couldn't control the shadows in time. So we sort of got rid of that. But I go to the next. And so on to Mary, I guess. Well, I mean, this is for both of us really because a part of the journey that we're taking with this is that, you know, we've done the teaser. It's a really great proof of concept. But the next phase is working out what the next, the end, the ending is going to be. So I don't know if anybody watches the, the World Blender meetup days. But during this, the one last year, Chris demonstrated this thing called the eyeball tunnel, which is something that I'm just fascinated with. And it's the, it's the shot in the middle. So that's where we sort of started with. And it's a very exciting sort of aspect of this, this crabs journey, I suppose. And so we're drawing on a couple of different references for this, which is Andy Goldsworthy, who's an environmental artist and emcee Escher, who I assume is a national of yours. And, but we're actually going to go to Spain next week with one of our original collaborators who lives in London, Hi, Robin. And we're going to, yeah, work out what that next phase is going to all be about. And that's, that's a really exciting. So yeah, so I did the Blender meetups for a few years in Brisbane. And I kept showing eyeballs and sticks. And I didn't know where it was going. It was sort of doing this practice lead thing and it'll emerge from what we're doing. But no one really, really knew what I was talking about. They thought I was a bit deranged, I think, because it just didn't make sense. And I was showing the eyeball tunnel when I animated it with, and they all looked at, like a creature that was going through this tunnel and it didn't work. But it's finally coming, coming true. And it's something that we couldn't have planned two years ago or a year ago to get to the end, we just couldn't really do that. I don't think. And so it's emerging in the opposite way that it's supposed to, I suppose. And so we're really trying to visualise. So essentially the shadow crab lives on a pile of driftwood sticks with eyeballs. It's like an eyeball kingdom, I suppose it is, and lures the other crab into that. And then that, the normal crab goes into the void, the eyeball tunnel void thing, or whatever it is. And yeah, and so, yeah, so one more, one last slide, I've got to say, I teach Maya, I teach Maya back in Brisbane, Australia. And we actually went to Blender for a while, and then back to Maya again. And so in this, I've been teaching Maya while going to Blender and doing this project and I just lost my mind. Because when you teach 3D software, you have to use default hotkeys. You can't do any custom hotkeys, it has to be, you know, factory presets. And so when Blender 2.8 came out with the industry compatible keys, that was great. But the one thing I really liked about Maya, and I still like about it is the marking menus. I don't know if there's Maya users here who use them, but the shift, right click and the right click, marking menus are really, really fast. And so I spent quite a while to make Blender work like Maya, but to make the Blender Pi menus exactly like Maya. So I made my own custom ones using the Pi menu editor, it's a plug-in. It's $10, I'm not sure what it was. Excellent plug-in, fantastic. So I could just move back and forth between them, same hotkeys, same marking menus, same everything. And that, for me, that made quite a lot of difference. I'll share a video of that online on my website. As a Maya, you know, Maya Blender person, I don't know what that is. That was really helpful, amazing. So just one last shout-out to our global audience, which is Chelsea and Michael. Thank you for helping and supporting us through this journey. And I suppose Bill and Steve as well, who've, we had a number of sponsors throughout this process and that's been really, really helpful. Otherwise, we probably wouldn't have done it. That's true. Thank you. All right. So thank you for listening. Thank you. Thanks.