Party in the Quantum World By Bryan Leow and Vanessa Wong

DA9012 MEDIA ART NEXUS

MAY 2020

Party in the Quantum Realm ARTWORK BY BRYAN LEOW & VANESSA WONG

DA9012 MEDIA ART NEXUS

ABSTRACT

Abstract You’re cordially invited to our quantum house party! Inspired by the idea of the superposition principle, party guests and objects here do not adhere to physics as we know it. In this house party, while the rooms are entangled to one another, the guests exist in different states at the same time - however when finally being observed, only one state will remain.

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CONCEPTUALISATION

MOODBOARD

Ideation CONCEPT Party in the Quantum Realm is an interpretation of concepts rooted in Quantum Superposition and Quantum Entanglement.

Quantum Superposition

Quantum Entanglement

Inspired by the theory that entangled particles remain connected so that the actions performed on one affect the other even when separated by great distances, the characters portrayed share similar appearances but perform different actions in separate rooms in the house. The characters also echo the theory in Quantum Superposition where a system is in all possible states at the same time until it is measured or observed - towards the end, the characters will all converge into a single entity when they realise that they were being observed by the viewer, and thus we have a character in one known state.

Similar to the characters, the objects found throughout the house are entangled to one another, where the action of one object will affect the other. Throughout the animation, objects are seen defying the laws of physics, and disappearing and reappearing in different rooms.

Hoping to apply these ideas to recognisable and relatable settings along with a sense of humour, the animation is set in the context of a modern-day house party with guests and objects that seem normal at first, but upon close observation, behave like the particles discussed in Quantum Theory.

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REFERENCE ARTISTS

TAKADA BEAR

Reference Artists

Originating from Nagoya, Japan, Takada Bear is a collection of fun and quirky animated characters. We were inspired by the fun nature of the characters and their random actions.

JORSH PEÑA Jorsh Peña is a Mexican artist and illustrator based in Tijuana, Mexico. His works can be described as a mix of warm geometry with a mystical vibe. We were inspired by the clean vectors displayed in his works.

Image of Takada Bear works

CAMILO HUINCA Born and raised in Santiago, Chile, Camilo Huinca’s work is rich with colour and content, and contains brightly illustrated narrative that speaks for itself. Camilo is fascinated by everyday scenes, moments, and personal habits. We were inspired by the vector graphics used and the colours in his works.

Image of works by Jorsh Peña

Image of works by Camilo Huinca

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Sketches & Process CHARACTER SKETCHES

PROCESS

BACKGROUND SKETCHES The design of the background is inspired by 70s American interior aesthetics which we found appropriate since we are using a grunge colour scheme. We made three rough sketches that helped us arrange the objects within the three different rooms before we started vectorising. We also planned out the proportion of the rooms in relation to one another to ensure that the composition looks interesting but also balanced.

Keeping the theme of a house party in mind, we wanted the characters to look like regular party guests with each of them having unique appearances and little quirks.

Image of character sketches

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Image of background sketches

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PROCESS

STORYBOARD

PANEL 1 The animation will start scrolling from left to right of each room. There will be a pixelated border separating the different rooms.

PANEL 2 The animation will continue to scroll from left to right, showing different characters and objects.

PANEL 3 Characters and objects will start to glitch out and disappear. The rooms themselves would then disappear.

PANEL 4 After the rooms disappear, there will be a blank screen with one character remaining, he will be waving.

PANEL 5 After a few seconds, there will be an effect, as though the viewer has turned off the television, there will be a spark and the character will disappear.

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PROCESS

VECTORISING

CHARACTER PLACEMENT

After sketching and planning the look of the rooms and characters, we used Adobe Illustrator to digitalise the sketches.

Placing the characters beforehand helped us to plan the colour palette for each character, their actions, and ensuring that the characters with the same actions did not appear too often.

SKETCH

VECTOR GRAPHICS

Image of character placement

OBJECT MOVEMENT PLANNING Many objects move, teleport, and swap with one another within the different rooms.

Seemingly inanimate objects like bottles, rubber ducks, and plants move on their own. Cups, glasses, and shampoo bottles constantly teleport in and out of the rooms.

Occasionally, two objects swap with one another into different rooms. Some objects just will just glitch about randomly. These changes reference different ideas of Quantum Theory like Quantum Superposition, Entanglement, and Quantum Tunnelling.

COLOURED VECTOR GRAPHICS Image of object changes

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PROCESS

TECHNIQUES & PROTOTYPES

DUIK BASSEL 2 PLUG-IN Installing the Duik Bassel plug-in helped us with animating our graphics; it allowed us to copy and paste multiple keyframes at one time, and made the overall process more convenient.

PUPPET TOOL The Puppet Tool allowed us to manipulate certain points in the graphic - wanting the characters to perform actions such as waving, tapping their feet, or very simple dance moves, we had to use After Effects’ Puppet Tool to move the characters’ limbs. We first had to separate the characters’ limbs into different layers so that we could later rotate and move their limbs to perform different actions.

Image of Duik Bassel interface

Image of Puppet Tool interface

LOOPING

GLITCHES & EFFECTS

We also had to loop the animations with a built-in feature from After Effects. By enabling Time Remapping on the different assets, we could have them perform the same actions throughout the two-minute video.

The character and object glitches were done in reference to a tutorial by Youtube Channel SonDuckFilm. We shifted the colour channel and added a wiggle animation to distort the colours. We then added a block fractal noise and programmed it to generate endless random noise. A displacement map is then put over the noise to create a blocky distortion effect. The borders are done in the same way, but without the colour shift.

The television glitch effect seen in the ending sequence is made using a free After Effects template made by RocketStock. We added noise, tuning, turbulence, and rolling bars to make it as distorted as possible while emulating the static within old television sets.

Image of Time Remapping interface

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PROCESS

CHARACTERS

Final Assets BACKGROUNDS & OBJECTS

Image of characters

MUSIC

Image of backgrounds

PARTY ON XANOX 5 BY LOBO LOCO 16

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DOCUMENTATION

Documentation JPEG STILL

CDL PREVIEW

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BIOGRAPHIES

Biographies BRYAN LEOW EE KWANG

VANESSA WONG

CONTACT

bryanleowek@gmail.com

CONTACT

vanessafaithwong@gmail.com

PORTFOLIO

www.bananaleow.com

PORTFOLIO

www.tinyurl.com/vanessasportfolio

Bryan is an Interactive Media student with Product and Experience Design background.

Specialising in designing interactive experiences, he wishes to inspire joy, surprise, curiosity, and awe through his concepts that manifests as physical products, devices, and installations. He believes in design being a service for the people, and that design can make the world a better place.

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Vanessa is a Visual Communication student, specialising in Graphic Design. With a keen interest in both digital and traditional Illustration, she particularly enjoys subverting everyday actions, routines, people, and objects.

Through her works, she hopes to create stories that different people can resonate with.

Thank you for viewing!

2020 MEDIA ART NEXUS