New York, 1856

human · Post by **human** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 7:19 am

This is an attempt at atmospheric day-for-night scenery

The original was a woodcut almost certainly based upon a photograph.

I used several filters to remove the woodcut grooves and then darkened it and lowered the contrast.

I then painted gaslight into the windows and added streetlamps.

(Of course, it looks a lot better at full resolution.)

By the way, you're supposed to gather from this scene that the tallest skyscraper in Manhattan in 1856 was Trinity Cathedral!

human · Post by **human** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 7:23 am

Whoohoo, my old forgotten friend Autodesk Animator to the rescue. It's likely the ideal codec for this animation.

Here are 30 frames at 1920x760, only 794Kb.

http://generalpicture.com/animation/tri ... screen.flc

Note that QuickTime can open this video.

Feedback welcome.

kevin · Post by **kevin** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 6:30 pm

Beautiful. I viewed the clip with QuickTime and it is darker than the picture you posted so that the outline of the buildings isn't very distinct. I think you may want to lighten it a tad. A Ken Burns panning would look very cool with this.

human · Post by **human** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 8:32 pm

kevin wrote:Beautiful. I viewed the clip with QuickTime and it is darker than the picture you posted so that the outline of the buildings isn't very distinct. I think you may want to lighten it a tad. A Ken Burns panning would look very cool with this.

Aha, thanks for the feedback on picture quality. I will definitely look into this.

Re: panning. Even cooler than a kenburnsian pan would be one with parallax perspective, where I isolate three or four layers of the city and float them on different depth layers... but I haven't had the guts to commit myself to trying to achieve that...

human · Post by **human** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:26 am

OK, now this represents a dream I've had for years... animating a Broadway omnibus.

I found it quite tricky to pull this off. (I'm sure you can imagine.)

It's not quite done with it... still have to animate the horse leads and reins... not looking forward to it.

This will of course look better under forward motion and against a nocturnal urban background.

PS: You can expect the animation to run extremely ...s l o w l y... in your browser.