Google Engage: Development 7

To drive this project further forward, I decided to investigate 3D printing the pavilion but after testing drawing the shapes I needed to build it in 3ds Max, I am thinking about going a different way. The program was too complicated for me, and even though I had a tutorial beforehand, I didn’t manage to create what I wanted and after an hour of pure frustration I had to give up.

The super weird shape I managed to make in 3ds Max..

So, even if I am not 3D printing anything I thought I could still build the pavilion digitally and use it for my explainer video as I am not liking the way the paper one looks. It would also be cool and more developed if I made something the camera could pan in to so it feels like you are walking through the pavilion- like how it is supposed to work in real life. Makes more sense. So I turned to sketchup instead and found that easier to master so after a couple of hours I had the model done. The design is different to my paper model though as I couldn’t make all the shapes I wanted and had to change around some things. 

Google Engage: Outcome 2

Having both my wave video and the built model of the pavilion, I put the two together in AE so you can see how the whole installation works. The waves will be projected onto the walls alongside some text that I have based my whole project on. As you walk through the pavilion you are surrounded by these huge walls that are 7-8 meters at their highest point, see the projections as you wander through it and also read the text to understand the purpose of it all. I want the experience to be like you are walking inside a crashing wave so scale is very important here and that nothing stands still.

Final DOOH- screen, by Lisa

Google Engage: Development 6

It’s time to do my explainer video for this project. A video summarising everything from research, development and finally outcome- kind of like a pitch, the information can’t be too heavy and the message needs to come through quickly. After doing some research on explainer videos and different styles before I start my own I have come to the conclusion that I want to mix digital with handmade as that is exactly what I have done as my DOOH mockup so it fits. At first I thought about stop motion but as I want my white background to be stark white, that’s not a good idea (it’s crazy difficult to achieve) so that’s where the digital comes in and the wonders of AE. But to not lose the handmade bit I have decided to make small figures out of paper as my actors for the video so I get that stop motion vibe with out actually doing it as a stop motion.

Hopefully it will merge well with my mockup because I am having that in the video as well and have to think of how I can balance this so it doesn’t look bad.

Google Engage: Outcome 1

For my abstract wave approach I started making some test videos to see how I could go about this. After several tries and experimenting in After Effects but not getting the result I wanted I felt a bit frustrated as I thought I could never get this to be what I wanted it to be. It either looked too light and flimsy or not regular enough but I got there eventually with the help of a tutorial that taught me how to transform sound into an abstract pattern that reacts to the wavelengths of the sound.

Wave experiments, by Lisa

Google Engage: Development 5

Inside my pavilion I want something that give the walls more life and I was thinking about projecting a wave simulation on them with text explaining the connection with the leather theme. I did a test in After Effects creating “digital water” kind of but it still looked too static and a bit dull actually as seen below.

Water mockup test, by Lisa

So I looked more into how other types of waves can be visualised to make the water projection more abstract and dynamic. From researching heat waves, sound waves, light waves, magnetic waves and radio waves I made this moodboard as a summary of what I found: 

Google Engage: Development 4

Today has been model making day and I feel completely creatively drained. I had planned to create shapes/ sculptures with lots of gluing together paper but after trying this method out for a couple of hours becoming more and more annoyed by the glue stains I managed to get on the paper and the overall panicky feeling I got when my glue-y fingertips continuously stuck to everything, I gave up. Instead I focused on folding only, creating shapes by bending the paper. This method was better for my sanity but it still took a lot of tries and tests before I got to a result I was happy with. It also works better visually actually as it looks more like big pieces of metal than what it did in my first approach, and that’s exactly what I want it to be. This model isn’t finished, I want to add light to it somehow (been looking into mini glowsticks and might go with that as I then can have coloured light). I’m thinking the glowsticks can go on the floor inside this pavilion to represent screens but I’ll have to try this out before making up my mind. I also need to make a little person standing in front of it for scale. One thing at a time though, now I need some rest. Phew.

Front and back of model, by Lisa

 

Google Engage: Development 3

In building my model I thought about giving it some texture to encompass the watery wave-y feel and looked up paper art and ended up in a Flickr group that displays paper folded in curvy folds. Got really inspired and tried it out myself!

Paper folding tests by Lisa

Admittedly a bit tricky and requires some patience but definitely something that will be useful in building my pavilion to give it more life. Fun as well! I could also think about combining this with cutting patterns in the paper and maybe having a light source inside the sculpture kind of so it glows.

Google Engage: Development 2

So I developed my bathtub idea further thinking about involving illustration and giving the campaign a very airy feel. Putting together this moodboard:

And picking up on some things in that I made a print of a bathtub that I thought I could use as seen below left.

Google Engage: Development 1

Making some decisions about the Google Engage project I have decided to define the “one bath a day for 40 years” analogy further. After making a questionnaire about people’s views on animal cruelty campaigns and how effective those types of visuals are, the results showed that my best bet is to focus more on facts and data visualisation- comparing numbers to something that’s easier to comprehend. The majority said they would be more likely to change their behavior based on facts than emotion and that blood and gore and sad animals just made them want to turn a blind eye to the campaign. 

Google Engage: Research 3

After getting feedback on the route to take with my leather project, I have decided to follow the path of bathtubs as it feels like the most relatable one and can be quite interesting visually because of the absurdity of it. The ideas I have for them so far are a bit scattered:

• Displaying taking one bath a day for 40 years through 14 600 bathtubs (365 days x 40 years). These can be shown on screens running alongside a wall.
• Or on the floor running down a street.
• Or displayed on a sky screen you look up at.
• Or one might divide the number of bathtubs with the number of tube stations in London (270) which equals 54 bathtubs that you place at each station. The information to go with it could be something along the lines of: These bathtubs are 54 out of 14 600 placed at 270 stations in London representing the amount of water it takes to produce a pair of leather shoes.
• Or making it into an art installation similar to the one in the gallery below with clouds on screens. By placing big screens like this in an open place filling them with images of 14 600 bathtubs and having maybe one screen explaining the leather connection.