digitizing
modelling
texturing
programming
sound
setup
task
duplicate the head of a live performer and animate its facial gestures in realtime. be as realistic as possible but also find ways to extend and finally abstract the expressions of the real protagonist. the animation is to be controlled by a joystick and various paramters extracted from a live generated soundscape.
claim and ideals
the idea was not completely new. already in 2004 a rather similar project was realized by alex evans from bluespoon. the fictituos character "sam" bangs his head to electronic music. even back in 1986 rebecca allen realized singing heads for kraftwerks "musique non stop" video. contrary to common believe the main character of the famous 1987 tv-series "max headroom" was not animated.
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| "sam" by bluespoon | still from "musique non stop" |
from an an aesthetic point of view we've been impressed by the work of francis bacon who is well know for his self-portraits. and on the other hand one may remember those creepy scenes from the matrix trilogy where people were transformed into "agents".
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| self-portrait by francis bacon | still from "matrix reloaded" |
with all those fine references in mind we started our work on imago. the first step was to create a realistic 3d model which we could abstract later on.
> digitizing