BUILD

The 3D Animation course, an academic-year course, I participated started from September 2019 to July 2020. During the fall semester in 2019, I modeled my first complete 3D character from scratch by following the illustration I designed in 2014. After that, I rigged the character to make it move and do some simple animations shown below. 3D rigging is the process of creating a skeleton for a 3D model so it can move. Most commonly, characters are rigged before they are animated because if a character model doesn’t have a rig, they can’t be deformed and moved around:

Exercise – Walk

Exercise – Grab

Exercise – Pose to Pose

For the next spring semester in 2020, in order to create a one-scene animation, firstly, I came up with my narrative and used handy tools such as sketch combined with some ready-made pictures to form a rough 2D animatic which is a preliminary version of a film, produced by shooting successive sections of a storyboard and adding a soundtrack:

2D Animatic

The story is about whether the girl has fulfilled her dream or not. The girl doesn’t say a word but breathes in almost every shot, which symbolizes her disparate kinds of mood. I then continued to model and texture other static items (including a guitar, the fragments of a broken guitar, a syringe, a rope, a spoon, a chair, a door, stage curtains, and a plastic bag with powder inside) and then animate the character with rough movements to test which shot is necessary and thus needs to be detailed later after finishing the 2D animatic. Before going deep into the keyframing part, I constructed a 3D blocking (or so-called stepped animation) which is an animation technique in which key poses are created to establish timing and placement of characters and props in a given scene or shot:

3D Blocking

Finally, after detailing the animating and modeling parts, I set up lights for emphasizing diverse atmospheres, designed the congratulation animation for the screen projection, and then exported the most time-consuming videos, which is called the rendering part. It took me around ten days to render this two-minute animation with the 1280 x 720 resolution. For the last step, I put all the rendered videos of shots together and edited their speed and sound effect to form the ultimate entire animation as shown in the top video.

TOOLS

• Maya: modeling, rigging, animation, and rendering
• Substance Painter: items and character texturing
• Adobe Premiere: image sequence exporting
• Final Cut Pro: video editing and compositing
• Sound Effects: https://freesound.org

PROJECT DEVELOPMENT

Link to the detailed documentation page.

LEARNING DIARY

Link to the learning diary page.

EXHIBITION

“Digital Fabrication Showcase 2021“, Väre arts building, Aalto University
Espoo, Finland, 11/2021

LEARNING DIARY

Monday 7.9.2020

• 9.15-10 Course program and assignments
• 10-11 Teacher introductions ; Emmi Pouta, Antti Salovaara, Ilona Hyötyläinen, Valtteri Wikström
• 11-11.30 Students introductions
• 11.30-12 Examples from previous courses

Today I got some brief introductions about the difference between functional wear and wearable technology from the previous student works and research shown by Ilona and Emmi respectively. Wearable technology focuses on integrating electronics and interaction with soft materials such as fabrics, yarns, lamination, pigments and snap buttons.

Tuesday 8.9.2020

• Lectures: 9.15 Antti Salovaara, 10.00 Elina Ilen, 10.45 NN Tuesday 8.9 at 13.15-17 at campus
• Demos by Emmi & Valtteri at Megatronic lab and Sewing studio: Team A at 13.15-15, Team B at 15.15-17 

Today I learnt how to apply conductive fabrics and yarns given by Emmi to form a soft circuit and built a simple e-textile with fabrics and some electronics (e.g. LED, resistors and a coin battery). The image below is my first soft circuit made of fabrics and yarns.

Thursday 10.9

• Students presentations- see details at assignments
• 13.15-14.30 Functional materials lecture by Ilona
• 15-16 Wearable teams are formed
• 15-17 Functional wear first tutoring, choosing topic
• Jaetaan kaikille tarvittavat aineistot

During the course given by Ilona, I knew the definition of the functional wear and the difference between it and wearable technology. Functional wear mostly focuses on creative pattern design depending on the categories (e.g. outdoor, indoor, team, winter, water, running sports or workwear).

I learnt how to get inspiration related to e-textile from a useful website recommended by Emmi for finding a topic that interests me the most.

Monday 14.9.2020

• Programming by Antti

During the course given by Antti, I had a chance to review the basic usage of some of the electronics (e.g. Arduino boards, breadboards, jumper wires, resistors and LEDs) and how to upload our codes to Arduino to let it follow our logic to blink a LED.

Tuesday 15.9.2020

• Programming by Antti
• Prototyping simple circuit to fabric at Mechatronics lab and Sewing studio by Emmi
• Laminations at Sewing studio, by Ilona
• Working in separate rooms/studios in smaller groups

Today I reviewed about how to add interaction to Arduino by connecting a button to the LED and optimize the code with if/else block so that there will be more conditions (e.g. only blinking the LED with a button pressed) for us to interact with the LED.

Thursday 17.9.2020

• Programming by Antti
• Prototyping simple switch / sensor from hand movement at Mechatronics lab and Sewing studio by Emmi & Valtteri
• Working in separate rooms/studios in smaller groups

Today I learnt from Emmi about how to design and make our pressing sensors with piezo-resistive fabrics. During the course, I made a pressing button in heart shape with non-conductive, conductive and piezo-resistive fabrics inside to form certain layers for the conductivity. From the pictures below, the multimeter shows that there is high resistance (around 2.5M ohms) between the two endpoints of the button. However, once I press the button, the resistance becomes smaller (around 3.3k ohms). 

Monday 21.9.2020

• At 9.15-10.15 lecture at zoom: Hydrophobic Surfaces in water-repellent and breathable clothing, Nina Forsmann, Chem At 10.30-12 lecture at campus: Footwear technology, Hanna Raatikka, room Q202

Today I learnt the fabrication process of making shoes and the components for footwear. Before the course, I hadn’t expected that there were so many layers and materials used for forming a shoe. A shoe consists of different kinds of upper layers (e.g. PA, PES, PP, PET, cotton, blends etc.), lining, reinforcing, cushioning materials, lasting sole, midsole, loose insole, outsole and grip. Also there are lots of conditions including shock absorption, torsion resistance, arch stability, antipronation, stability and water proof structure need to be taken into consideration during the design process.

Tuesday 22.9.2020

Today I got basic knowledge about functional details of various kinds of sportswear (e.g. hoods, font lists, pockets, cuffs, zippers, collars, pants, lining etc.). Some of them are designed for certain functionality. For example, zippers at the armpit are added for ventilation and lining materials can insulate our body from getting cold.

Thursday 24.9.2020

• First concept presentations by student groups / students, discussion and feedback
• 13.15-17 tutoring sessions by Ilona

After the concept presentation, I started to make a glove with a simple pattern to test if one of my ESP32 microcontrollers can read any analog values from my gestures and then send the signal to the other ESP32 board to light up a LED. The images below show that the LED is lighted up when I press my thumb.

The simple pattern I made for the glove:

I ironed some conductive fabrics on the surface of the glove:

Monday 28.9.2020

• Wearable teams tutoring sessions at campus, By Antti, Emmi, Valtteri and Ilona, room Q202

After confirming how many input and output pins I am going to use for my project and finishing some rough testing with Arduino, breadboards, jumper wires and a standard neopixel strip, I started to design each of the PCB shields in KiCad software by first connecting wires in the schematic view, defining the size of electronics and then placing each of the components at suitable position in the PCB view.

The main ESP32 shield for the belt controller (receiver) in the schematic view:

The main ESP32 shield (left) for the bracelet controller (sender) and the mp3 shield for the belt controller (right) in the PCB view:
I made the yellow holes big enough for hand sewing during the post-processing.

The main ESP32 shield for the belt controller (receiver) in the PCB view:

Tuesday 29.9.2020

• At 9.15-12 basic pattern making, at campus, Jane Palmu, room • At 13.15-17 Clo3D program presentation by Jane Palmu, room

After finishing designing my shields in KiCad software, the fabrication steps of my PCB shields were that first I milled the boards with a CNC machine, debugged the milled traces with a multimeter and then soldered certain headers on them. I fabricated 3 different shields which took me 12 hours in total to wait and do the post-processing.

How did I mill the shields with a CNC machine can be found here: https://fabacademy.wantinghsieh.com/assignment/06-electronics-design

The main ESP32 shield for the bracelet controller (sender):

The main ESP32 shield for the belt controller (receiver) :

The mp3 shield (not used) for the belt controller:

Thursday 1.10.2020

• Prototyping begins at studios, tutors available: Emmi at 9.15-12, Valtteri at 13.15-16, Ilona at 9.15-12

After finishing the fabrication, I connected the ESP32 microcontrollers to my customized shields and uploaded the code to the boards to test if the light patterns I defined work correctly with a standard neopixel strip connected by alligator clips.

Tuesday 6.10.2020

• Prototyping at studios, tutors available: Emmi at 9.15-12, Antti at 14- 17, Valtteri at 13.15-16, Ilona at 9.15-12

After that, I ironed some conductive fabrics in linear shape on the surface of the bracelet and belt controllers, handsewed the shields with conductive yarns and installed snap buttons for removability. For this project, I prefer to make every element removable so that I can flexibly replace or add new components without tearing down the existing ones.

Thursday 8.10.2020

• Prototyping at studios, tutors available: Emmi at 9.15-12, Valtteri at 13.15-16, Ilona at 9.15-12

For the light modules, I applied a simple pattern which requires only one piece of fabrics to form a triangular pyramid. I first sewed the triangular structure, measured the position of the light PCB, ironed conductive fabrics, handsewed the PCB and then installed 4 snap buttons in each of the light modules.

Tuesday 13.10.2020

• Prototyping at studios, tutors available: Emmi at 9.15-12, Antti at 14- 17, Valtteri at 13.15-16, Ilona at 9.15-12

After finishing all of the elements, I connected the glove to the bracelet controller, integrated the light module strip with the belt controller and then started to debug if there is any problem with the software or hardware part.

Thursday 15.10.2020

• Prototyping at studios, tutors available: Emmi at 9.15-12, Valtteri at 13.15-16, Ilona at 9.15-12

Today I booked Open Photostudio for documenting/photographing my wearable technology project (including a glove, a bracelet, a belt and 8 pieces of light modules installed on a dress) which I needed to finish within 3 weeks. Applying three-point lighting techniques learnt from videos on YouTube in real world situations are interesting and different from reproducing them in an animation. However, it is a bit difficult to photograph the color of the lighting modules and focus on the model’s details at the same time with some dim light on.

Thursday 22.10.2020

• At 9.15 final presentations at campus, room • At 13.15-17 building exhibitions

Today I learnt that my final project is more drama-oriented/better for art performance than the design for daily usage from Emmi’s suggestion during my presentation. For the interaction, Sofia suggested that I can come up with some other body movements such as touching legs or arms with my glove controller.

Nostalgic: Metal Casting Practice

“Metal Casting 101″ is one of popular courses in ARTS school of Aalto University. During its workshop week, I cast the final metal sculpture from an open source 3D printed model as a prototype which features obvious layer lines. The weight of the15-cubic-centimeter sculpture is about 3 kg. Although it took me a lot of time to polish the metal, I still had fun and gained special experience from the course. Looking forward to apply this casting technique to my future artwork.

Nostalgic: Metal Casting Practice

“Metal Casting 101″ is one of popular courses in ARTS school of Aalto University. During its workshop week, I cast the final metal sculpture from an open source 3D printed model as a prototype which features obvious layer lines. The weight of the15-cubic-centimeter sculpture is about 3 kg. Although it took me a lot of time to polish the metal, I still had fun and gained special experience from the course. Looking forward to apply this casting technique to my future artwork.

Moving Instrumentbot: v 1.0 Arduino / v 2.0 Pure Data Project

The instrumentbot is built based on the EFA robot as the starting point and then replaced the original Arduino UNO board of another two controller boards — ESP32 and Bela board for each version. The programming languages of these boards are Arduino and Pure Data respectively. There are also three new features added to the instrumentbot — remote control via WiFi(TCP/IP), a moving eye ball controlled by two servo motors and a speaker playing sine waves with several frequencies generated by Pure Data. These extra features make it more interesting to audiences to manipulate the robot intuitively by themselves.

IDEA

The idea is that the instrumentbot can go around by itself with its wheels just like a scary ​boy’s head attached to a spider body in the “​Toy Story” animation, creating an unusual artificial monster. It then plays the electrical sound while it detects the changing axis of the audience’s moving smartphone by receiving OSC data coming from any OSC application of the smartphone via its WiFi dongle, which makes it look like as if it was a live creature as well as making this moving instrumentbot be controlled remotely. Wekinator, which is an useful machine learning toolkit, is then used here to accurately output which axis of the moving smartphone is and then sends that axis class to Pure Data to control a speaker, two servos and two DC motors on the Bela board.

Figure 1. Images above show both inside and outside of the moving instrumentbot.

MECHANISM AND CONSTRUCTION

INTRODUCTION

Paintings and sculptures have long been displayed or installed on walls as decorative embellishments in public and business locations. Murals, for example, are often employed as an aesthetic element integrated into the environment and marked as true cultural artifacts and even monumental works. Apart from their cultural significance, murals could be created for the purpose of advertising or simply for arts’ sake [1]. These adornments, however, remain largely static and may become boring for their vast similarities.

Recently, there has been an increase in the use of digital display walls [2], such as interactive LED lighting installations [3] that provide audiences with chances to interact and play with them. Nevertheless, interactive walls of this type are usually configured in the form of flat surfaces—monitors or map projections. Once the electricity is cut off, the physicality of decorative objects disappears. To elevate human interaction with solid walls, I have constructed a tangible structure made of 3D-printed plastic and then incorporated it with numerous infrared sensors. “Stay True to Yourself” is an interactive sound and light installation. The lights on the structure that will be switched on by an intuitive interaction when people pass by it. It can also be used as part of the work that allows the human body to virtually “paint” the installation, symbolizing the quest of finding one’s true self.

This piece of work was exhibited in the public area of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Taipei, between 28th March and 10th April, 2017 [4] [5]. Approximately, 13,000 tourists from different countries visited the installation over a 9-day period [6]. It was reported on mass media that people found it engaging to interact with the device. The news coverage of the installation can be found on the website of Art TV Taiwan [7] and CBTV internet television [8].

Keep Walking: Converting Everyday Traffic Signals to Attractive Public Art

Traffic signals like traffic lights are functional facilities that people avail themselves of on a daily basis. In Taiwan, pedestrians often see an electronic pedestrian crossing signal in the form of a little green man who keeps walking when they are allowed to walk. Even though this little green walking man is helpful to road users, a rising number of pedestrians would be looking at their cellphones while crossing the street. Such a distraction would make walking at traffic signals rather dangerous as a consequence. The challenging task here has become how to make traffic signals more appealing in order to draw pedestrians’ attention to the traffic from their distracting electronic devices. In this project, I have transformed the dull everyday traffic signals into an attractive three-dimensional display (LED Cube) public art installation based on the theory of the LED matrix panel. The aim of the project is to get animated traffic lights imbued with a sense of reality for pedestrians in order to make them more aware of their immediate hazards from the surrounding traffic.

INTRODUCTION

“Little Green Man,” a 2D animated traffic light system in Taiwan, was initially introduced in Taipei City in 1999, and was later implemented everywhere in the country in a few years. The light displays an image of a little green man with a hat, animated in seven frames at varying speeds to suggest relative urgency [1]. From my perspective, the 2D traffic signal looks a little monotonous. I accordingly came up with an idea to replace it with a three-dimensional matrix light installation. This helps turn the traffic signal of “little green man” into a public art with more human touches. Since the traffic signal is part of everyday life in Taiwan, my innovative alterations of the little green man give pedestrians a refreshing experience in their mundane walks in the city. My project “Keep Walking” is a light installation that puts Taiwan’s daily traffic at the crossroads in perspective. Ultimately, this artistic rendering of the traffic signal is intended to become not only a public artwork but also a reminder for pedestrians on busy streets to become more alert to the traffic as a way to cut down traffic accidents.

Figure 1. The image on the left shows the Taiwanese little green man at a traffic signal. The picture in the middle indicates that the little green man walks gradually faster in accordance with the amount of time left. The picture on the right is the three-dimensional version of the little green man simulated.

This light installation was an invited work exhibited outdoors on campus at Taipei National University of the Arts [2] in Taiwan during “1st Kuan Du Light Art Festival (KDLAF)” from October 1st to 29th, 2016 [3][4]. Unlike lanterns at traditional lantern festivals [5], this exhibition where my light installation was on display featured the artistic nature of science and technological media. Therefore, artworks located at different sites on campus became the nighttime landscape art. The exhibition on the whole helped promote the appreciation of new media art.

Figure 2. The installation had attracted different age groups during the exhibition.

MECHANISM AND CONSTRUCTION

3D Green Man Cube (the prototype of “Keep Walking”)

The Arduino system as a computer software that controls the Arduino Mega 2560 has been employed to construct a small 10×10×10 LED cube as the prototype of the final large public art version LED matrix cube, “Keep Walking.” The volume of the prototype is about 30cm (H)*30cm (W)*30cm (D).

WORKSHOP

We held a workshop [13] where we taught the visitors who were interested in how it worked to create animation on the LED cube during the light festival. In the workshop, I supervised a session on building a 4×4×4 LED. Although people were afraid to use soldering irons at first, it turned out that they enjoyed soldering LEDs in the end. In particular, they were extremely excited about the result that their cubes could light up and simple animation was activated.

Figure 9. These images indicate the easy version 4×4×4 LED cube provided for participants in the LED CUBE workshop.

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

It is reported that the rising number of pedestrian fatalities in the US has a lot to do with the fact that people are using their smartphones while driving or crossing the road. According to the US Governors Highway Safety Association, 6,000 pedestrian deaths were reported in 2016. It was the highest number in the past two decades. The percentage of pedestrian fatalities was four times higher than the rate of overall traffic deaths. In fact, the ever-increasing use of cellphones by those who are walking or driving on the road is a major source of distraction that incidentally causes traffic accidents [14]. The purpose of my work is to make people more aware of their surroundings as a start and then convert everyday public facilities into dainty and appealing art installations. In fact, if devices like the little green man are able to successfully get road users’ attention back on the traffic from their cellphones, it is very likely that traffic accidents due to smartphone-related distractions will significantly lesson. In the future, I have plans for recreating the triple size of “Keep Walking” light installation in an area of open grassland for tourists who can slow down their pace and get immersed in Mother Earth’s nurturing and the charmingly blended artistic work in the open space.

Figure 10. The figures show the schematic diagrams of a giant size LED cube placed on the massive grasslands by affixing it with piles driven under the ground and constructed with iron tubes to avoid any natural disasters.

REFERENCES

[1] Wikipedia. (2018). “Xiaolüren.” [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaolüren.

[2] Taipei National University of the Arts. (2018). [Online]. Available: https://w3.tnua.edu.tw/.

[3] 1st Kuan Du Light Art Festival (KDLAF). (2016). [Online]. Available: http://kdlaf.tnua.edu.tw/2016/kdlaf-keep-walking.html.

[4] 1st Kuan Du Light Art Festival (KDLAF). (2016). “Publicity Film.” [Online]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwFNnrFyoQM.

[5] 2019 Taiwan Lantern Festival in Pingtung. (2018). “Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival.” [Online]. Available: https://eng.taiwan.net.tw.

[6] Arduino MEGA 2560 Overview. (2013). [Online]. Available: https://www.arduino.cc.

[7] Future Learn. (2018). “Persistence of vision: how does animation work?” [Online]. Available: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/explore-animation/0/steps/12222.

[8] Unity3D. (2018). “Features.” [Online]. Available: https://unity3d.com/unity.

[9] Wan-Ting Hsieh. (2016). “LED Cube Animation Code Conversion Tool.” [Online]. Available:https://codepen.io/cv47522/full/qBEwVEm.

[10] My Green Man Animation Arduino Code. (2016). [Online]. Available: https://github.com/cv47522/Arduino_Mega_3D_Green_Man_LED_Cube.

[11] Typhoon Database. (2016). [Online]. Available: https://www.cwb.gov.tw/V8/C/.

[12] Myo 101. (2018). “Using Myo.” [Online]. Available:https://newatlas.com/myo-gesture-control-armband-review/39103/.

[13] 1st Kuan Du Light Art Festival (KDLAF). (2016). “Events.” [Online]. Available: http://kdlaf.tnua.edu.tw/2016/kdlaf-1002.html#e0201.

[14] BBC NEWS. (2017). “Smartphone Use Blamed for Road Deaths.” [Online]. Available: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39453497.