The painting “With Light Performance” was designed to be divided into several segments. In addition to the live painting and animation segment, we explored forms of live animation using various elements available in the Multibrush software.
The aim was to create a layer of real-time animation that could be improvised during the performance, resulting in a raw and spontaneous form of motion and animation that existed only in that specific time and space.
While there were several potential approaches to this concept, Multibrush is not an animation program, so we had to devise creative solutions to work around this limitation. I often find that such constraints force me to think outside the box, leading to unconventional techniques and solutions.
In the context of animating with a non-animation program in VR, I revisited the essence of animation and considered how I could simulate a flipbook-style animation in real time. After all, traditional paper animation can be achieved through body motion alone. Here, the animator’s hand and finger movements could replicate the flipping motion. If the flipping speed matches the refresh rate of the human eye, separate drawings are perceived as animated. This principle of finger flipping motion can be easily extended to moving the entire body through the animation in virtual reality.
This approach led to the creation of separate VR animation frames interspersed with black-painted fields, evenly spaced in virtual space. By moving their virtual body forward or shifting the entire scene forward or backward, certain animated motions could be perceived.
The video above demonstrates how the separate frames are positioned between black spaces (the black shapes are highlighted at the end of the video to make them visible) and how motion can simulate animation in VR using the Multibrush software.
The video below illustrates a segment of a live painting/animating session. The animation was reconstructed using the load function of Multibrush, which gradually builds the VR artwork in the same sequence it was originally created. During the performance, several of these load animations will be used as alternate methods of creating motion.
The video above is another load animation created live during a performance.
Bellow is a practice load animation of a teacup inspired on the Alice in Wonderland theme.
During performance sessions these body and load animations would be looped and enhanced using visual effects using vj software like Resolume or VDMX.