Etude Overview

Etude 1

Anaglyph Images

Statement Of Intentions

My initial thoughts on this project were just about producing an anaglyph by researching the area and finding out how they were produced. When I got into the project and I found out how relatively easy they were produce using Photoshop, the brief changed slightly to accommodate a wider concept. The concept that I settled on was to produce one or more pieces of anaglyph art that when viewed in 2D were as good as when viewed in 3D, the reason behind this thinking was, that if I was a commercial artist then I would want my art to be sold and hung on walls. I felt that if you had to wear the glasses to truly appreciate the piece of art then it was unlikely that this art would make a private collection.

Conceptualisation Of The Work

The purpose of the Etude is as my statement of intentions in that I was looking to explore the area of anaglyphs artistically. I was trying to produce work in an organic way in order to follow the natural flow and progression of ideas. Ultimately I was hoping to produce a piece or pieces of art that work well in 2D and in 3D with the glasses.
This work is relevant for the 3D hybrids module because the action of taking photographs of 3D objects such as fruit basically immortalises them in 2D thus making a hybrid. Following that initial process, the idea of then using stereo pairs within the art piece you are creating, will make the picture appear, when wearing the glasses, as a kind of 3D image again.
As far as my larger project is concerned I'm not sure at this stage whether this study area will have any relevance, my project ideas are quite organic and therefore I haven't settled on my final idea piece yet.
The target audience that I had in mind for the piece/pieces of art that I was hoping to produce will be the homeowner, probably a couple with their minimalist lifestyle, I guess in a way I was hoping to produce lifestyle art, the type that wouldn't look out of place on the wall of a fashionable city crash pad.
I think that because anaglyph has been done by many that it isn't a new concept, and whilst I set out ultimately to do something for myself in terms of artistic learning and development the subject matter that the work is based on may not appeal on a wider plain. I think if this subject was analysed by an art critic the response would probably be a little blasé, although having said that I think that for the audience the interest might last a little longer, if the pieces/pieces brighter up the walls then it has achieved what was set out to do.

Documentation of Technical and Artistic Process

See blog entries below

Technical Analysis

See blog entries below

References

http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/photoshop/ht/3danaglyph.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaglyph_image

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscopy

http://dogfeathers.com/java/hyperstar.html

http://www.colorstereo.com/anaglyph.gal/ana_dir.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/anaglyph/

http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/du_hauro.htm

http://www.jonathanfesmire.com/art.html

http://search.deviantart.com/searchcraft/?section=browse&qh=boost%3Apopular+age_sigma%3A24h+age_scale%3A5&q=anaglyph&offset=24

http://www.ray3dzone.com/plychm5.html

http://www.jfedor.org/red-blue-quake2/red-blue-glasses.jpg


How Successful Is The Etude?

I think the study has gone reasonably well. Whilst I'm not technically minded in terms of setting up equipment etc. I think that the advances that I have made towards making some reasonable anaglyphs has been fairly good. I have to say that my picture taking method with the camera is a bit hap-hazard and given more investment in equipment and an additional camera I may well have cobbled together a piece of equipment that you could place/secure the two cameras on with the facility to adjust the angle of convergence. I'm not sure that the moving footage anaglyph's worked all that well but I think it is more a case of the subject matter being poor, with the solitary person on a plain background. I think on reflection more texture perhaps should have been used. 
I'm sure there are technical packages that you can download to assist it the process of creating motion anaglyph's within a software such as Maya although I didn't really research plugin's for Maya purely because I wanted to work through the process myself using After Effects, I think this gave me more of an understanding. I did, however find, that during my explorations that I preferred the still images. You get good results from the still images reasonably quickly, which makes the process worthwhile. 
I think I successfully achieved the intentions that I set out to conquer and I think that whilst on the motion anaglyph's I went round the house in terms of filtering I think the experience was invaluable. The apple pictures that I created were interesting and therefore I felt that this was a good theme to stick to when creating further pictures. I think the pictures would appeal in 2D without the glasses as they would in 3D with the glasses.

Experimentation

I have been experimenting further with the use of the apple and an additional item, again overlapping images to create impossible art pieces. Again the idea is that they look good 2D or 3D. I think this piece works well., the apple seems to be a good solid form and with the transparency adjusted creates and interesting container for the guitar.



I would like to do a sequence of apple pictures with various objects contain within it, I think it would make a nice collection.

A bit of history

I though it was important to give you and small background history of who invented the anaglyph.

The anaglyph method of stereoscopic photography was invented /patented by Louis Ducas Du Hauron in 1891. He was the first person to produce a print of an anaglyph image in red and blue colours.
Louis was a french scientist who published a book in 1869 called 'Les Couleurs En Photographie' which made some major theoretical proposals to aid the advancement of using colour in photographs.

The idea of the anaglyph's whilst specifically linked and patented by Louis Ducas Du Hauron, was made by W. Rollman in 1853. He theoretically illustrated the idea in a line drawing using red and blue lines on a black field, he used red and blue glasses to demonstrate the effect.

Information taken from http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/du_hauro.htm

Anaglyph Artists

I've been searching the internet for interesting anaglyph artists to see what kind of content is out there. Here are a few links to good anaglyph art work.

Jonathan Fesmire

Deviant Art

Arthur Girling and L.P. Futo

After looking at some of the art work by other people I realise that perhaps I should be a bit more technical in the taking of my photographs. At the moment I'm guessing the distance and convergence of the two photos, I think it would possible make better results if I worked on measuring the distance with more accuracy.

I quite enjoyed my last picture of the apple inside the apple and I think I might do some kind of composite piece again in anaglyph format. Perhaps I could create a realistic 3D piece with a person or guitar trapped inside the apple and see how that works. This idea is appropriate as I'm hoping that my second etude idea will cover forced perspective photographs.

Overlapping Experimentation part 2

I have desaturated the picture I took in Photoshop, I also decided that four angles (eight photos) of photography is too much. It causes too much of a wash of colour. I have taken the 4 de-saturated images and played with the size and positioning to produce an art piece. I took out a lot of the scene and focused on one major item, the apple.

Here are the results.



I think it works very well, it give the illusion in 3D of one apple being inside the other and in 2D it is a very interesting work in it's own right. Again it may well work better in 2D with Photoshop filters on. I did sharpen the edges in Photoshop to make the fruit stand out more.

Overlapping experimentation

Well I've done a still life with a few objects to experiment with mixing the anaglyph idea with overlapping several images. The method I used was to take two photos from the front, the side, the rear and the other side. Make each set of two photos into a fully merged anaglyph and then overlap each anaglyph one by one, using the multiply colour blend function in Photoshop and then merging each picture down on to the other until all four anaglyph are incorporated.

I set out to produce a piece of art work that will function as a 2D piece and a 3D whilst wearing coloured specs. Here are the results of my work. I think critically this piece works better in 2D with Photoshop filters on than it does with the 3D specs on. I think the difficulty is that if you get the subject correct then the specs makes the outcome of the work very effective, but if you don't it all looks like a bit of a blur, the specs also make you go a little crossed eyes if you wear them for too long. I'm losing the ability to see straight.

Here are the results of my experimentation:-



This is with a dry brush filter



This is with a glass filter



I think maybe I've got the similar problem to before in that the scene is too busy, the most effective of my pieces so far is the chilli peppers picture. The only other relevant point is that I haven't de-saturated the pictures that I have done, I think I will try this with the photos I have already taken and see if there is any improvement to the overall look of the piece.

Alternative test footage

Here are a few other tests of moving footage that I have done.





I'm not sure they work too well, I'm finding it quite difficult to get the cameras in the correct place.

As I mentioned earlier in this study I would like to do a still picture with either a lot of blue or red on to see what happens. I thought I'd do a picture with some red objects to see what the outcome is, I think the result is quite interesting. If you add some standard Photoshop filters to the picture it makes some interesting results. I think the piece below works quite well as a 2D and 3d piece. I would still like to experiment with the overlapping several anaglyphs to see what happens.





I think it is important to look for some anaglyph artists to compare their art works to mine to see if I can get any insight into the type of subject matter that they might use. Maybe this will give me some helpful pointers.