Stop-Motion Animators Use iPad to Paint With Light

In this short film, iPads create three-dimensional images out of light, using long-exposure photography and stop-motion animation.
The resulting animations are astonishingly versatile and beautiful. They include abstract alphabetic and geometric figures, but also dancing robots, blocky automata, and diffuse molecular effects.
The filmmakers also make terrific use of their landscape; some of the light figures are photographed reflected on or seen through surface. The ghostly city lights and shadowy iPad ?handlers? are also part of the film, and surprisingly moving.
The first half of the video above describes the process used to produce it, which Jack Schultz from design consultancy Berg compares to a virtual CAT scan. The filmmakers first created a software template that plots 3-D models and generates 2-D stills. They then replay those stills on the iPad in sequence. Helpers hold the iPad and move it through space, so the stills assemble themselves in space as if the iPad were ?extruding? the 3-D object. Long-exposure photography stitches everything together.
The film was made by Berg on behalf of creative communications giant Dentsu. Dentsu?s London agency asked: ?What might a magical version of the future of media look like?? Berg responded with this film.
Dentsu?s Beeker Northam writes that the project grew out of the meaning of each of the three words, ?Making,? ?Future,? and ?Magic?:
?Making?, with its emphasis on craftsmanship, understanding of materials and media, and collaboration;
?Future?, meaning something not seen before, something new and unexpected (not so much sci-fi, as near-future);
and ?Magic? ? surprising, culturally powerful, unusual, capable of delighting.

This is the first of two collaborations between Berg and Dentsu. I don?t know what these film costs or how long they took to program and photograph, but I see tremendous potential here. Light is the new clay.
Making Future Magic: light painting with the iPad [Berg London]Light Painting Video ?Making Future Magic? Is Made of 3-D and iPad Genius [Switched]
See Also:
Patina and use-wear by BERG
The City is A Battlesuit For Surviving the Future
Wired 14.03: How Digital Animation Conquered Hollywood
Equation: Quantifying Light = Great 3-D Animation
In Praise of Ralph Bakshi, Animation Pioneer
Big Bang Big Boom: Stop Motion Animation at Its Finest

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