Interactive Architecture Reflection

Shawna P.
Interactive Architecture
Photoshop, camera, WavePad Sound Editor, iPod Touch, Flash (sort of), and Windows Movie Maker
November 28, 2012
Technical
I took forty or so pictures of Lisa walking up the stairs that I wanted to feature in my interactive architecture assignment. I edited each of them in Photoshop by adjusting the colour to eliminate the yellow hue and to remove Lisa from the background. I made a glowing footprint in Photoshop using tutorials that I had found online that involved using a gradient map and gaussian blur. I distorted each footprint to make it appear to be on the staircase behind Lisa.
I also recorded sounds with my iPod from my piano that I could play while Lisa went up the stairs, then edited them to get rid of any background noise in WavePad Sound Editor.
Idea/Concept
I decided to animate the stairs so that they would light up when someone walked on them and play a note, eventually playing a tune by the time you got to the top.
Of course, this would have been much easier if I could have just gotten Flash to work. Instead, it decided to crash on me so I had to put it together in Movie Maker, and the sounds do not match up as I intended. I would have liked a button at the beginning so that you could click on it and watch Lisa go up the stairs quickly (‘Too Fast") and another button where she went up at the right pace ("Perfect Speed").
Influences
I once went to a ballet in Toronto where they had frosted glass stairs. As you climbed them, you could look above you and you’d see the shoeprints of the people climbing the stairs above you. That encouraged me to animate something similar, only this time the shoeprint would linger on the stairs and light up.
Composition
Lisa’s footprints are the main focus of the animation because they light up. The sound enhances this effect because each time she puts her foot down, the shoeprint lights up and a note plays. This is the main piece, the part that makes it interactive, so I want it to be the focus. Its colours differ from that of their surroundings, making them stand out. They also fade as time goes on, and because they are always moving they capture your attention.
Motivation
I always thought that it would be neat to have light up stairs, and this was a way to test my photoshopping abilities to make something light up in a real-world setting. I had to use a few filters and brushes and feathering to achieve the effect I wanted, as well as altering online tutorials to my needs, which helped me learn more about making objects glow. I want to use this technique in future pieces, so I wanted to include it in my interactive architecture so I could learn how to do it.
Critical Assessment
The animation runs smoothly and does actually seem like she is going up a set of stairs, which is what I wanted. I was surprised with how well the glowing footprints looked, and how well they turned out when I was saving the pictures of them because I slowly reduced the transparency with each picture and the effect turned out better than I had originally imagined.
Of course, I was upset that Flash would not work for me and would have greatly preferred to put it together in there. However, with the resources I had, I am glad that I was able to produce a solid animation that ran smoothly. If I had additional time, I might have changed the ‘slow’ footprints to green instead of yellow to better introduce the fact that it is the ‘perfect’ speed.