The Flower & Hummingbird - Or Crow & Plant?

Any ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ fans out there? I’m talkin’ about the old school ones - from, like, Season 4? If you loved the early seasons of that show as much as I did, then you’ll likely recognize the theme and song of this video.

I heavily leaned on Wade Robson’s Hummingbird piece that he did for the show years ago, using the song and many of the ideas for the dance itself. I must have watched the original 500 times, studying the two dancers - how they moved, how they embodied the dance itself.

Machinima in Second Life is amazingly addictive; especially for low budget creatives like myself. One of my passions from an early age has always been the dramatic arts, and my husband’s educational career actually started in technical theater. There is nothing like a live performance, watching all the ‘pieces of the puzzle’ come together to make a story unfold. Visual arts like these are always a fun challenge for me, especially with Second Life. In a virtual world where anything is possible, I’ve found it both easy and difficult to ‘draw a viewer in’ when watching one of my shorts. Why? Movement.

Our brains are so perceptive; we see so many things that our brains even filter out ‘stuff it thinks isn’t as important’. This was something I learned when doing region builds - our eyes catch the things that ‘don’t seem right’. Like gutters and downspouts on the sides of buildings…or dirt and dust…or ‘people filling the streets’. It’s the ‘power outlets’ on the wall or the ‘crowded-ness’ of a set of bookshelves that make things real - all the things that your eyes ‘see’, but your brain isn’t passing through as ‘important enough to care about’ all the time. It’s the ‘white noise’ of a set - all of these little details that help to draw us in. The closer those details are to ‘real life’, the easier it is for a viewer to absorb the story you are trying to tell.

Second Life makes it relatively easy to build a set - whether by our own mesh making talents - or by buying the items needed for the cost of ‘finding everything you need at Good Will’. You can control the way water looks, move the position of the sun, play with the depth of the sun, the overall color overlay of the scene in general, and it’s possible to even rez theater style lights that can show any color with a HEX code. The -set- isn’t the problem.

The ‘actors and actresses’ aren’t really the problem either. Second Life avatars look amazing in anything you put them in, and if you pay someone, you might even be able to get a talented mesh maker to craft a very specific outfit for whatever you are trying to film (for a fee of course). Their hair will look perfect, the make up won’t ever smudge - you can even ‘mount a light to highlight the features of their face’ (facelight) if needed.

So what is it? What’s the issue? Movement.

Movement is the bane of my machinima making experience these days. (Well, movement and FPS…but details, right?) The world is always moving; leaves flicking in the wind, animals flying or running across the grass, the way the chest rises and falls as we breathe, the way the corners of the mouth curl up at a smile, or even how the arms, legs, hair, and fingers move on the avatar that we are manipulating or as it’s interacting with the environment.

Dance videos are difficult because the creator has to pair up the musicality for the beats of the song with the movement of the avatars on the screen. The maker is also trying to get shots that make sense from one clip to the next - so it feels like you are watching a dance routine vs just a bunch of dancing clips smashed together. Many of these dances you can buy at stores all over Second Life, but it’s the animations for ‘everything else’ that are really difficult to find.

In the original jazz number, you can see Hawk flicking his hands back and forth (like a hummingbird). I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I could achieve the same effect - how to ‘translate what I’m seeing in to Second Life terms’ - and determined that I’d try to find a set of awkward sprawled out poses (for when the hummingbird is watching the flower) and make my own high priority animation of ‘hand flicking’. The idea was I’d have my bird avatar active the pose, and then turn on the ‘hand flicking’…to create that ‘humming bird like effect’ that Hawk is doing throughout the video. But guess what I learned? Making animations, even weird hand flicky ones, have alot of skills needed and elements to creating them. While this is something I’m sure I’ll have to dive into learning some day, today wasn’t it - Sorry Hawk :) .

The ‘Hummingbird’ became a ‘crow’ mostly because I found a good group of ‘hand heavy’ popping animations instead. I also I found a few good ‘viney - arm wavey’ animations that I could use to work with my ‘flower’ actress, but for the life of me, I could not find ANY contemporary animations (for couples) to give me some variety. I looked everywhere I could think of, and while I found a few, it wasn’t going to be enough to keep this going for many more dance videos. :) (Viewers would notice the same movements video to video to video). So…now what?

Here’s where that ‘old school’ Second Life knowledge comes in handy. Remember Bits & Bobs? Yup - they were perfect too. Oh yeah baby - I’m about to bring ALL those old animations back! Bit’s and Bobs, here I come!!! :)

This piece was also a really fun experiment in lighting - my husband flexed his lighting designer skills and I thought it added a really nice glow to the over all dance. I hope you enjoy it! :)