Rae, Nick, and I had this idea to create a 360 experience. We wanted to simulate what it would be like if dinosaurs were to have a house party.
We started by shooting a 360 video using the Ricoh THETA V. Unfortunately we encountered some issues during shooting. The tripod that we have was stuck in an angled position.
Tripod stuck on an angled position
Luckily, we were quick to adapt and used a kitcher towel roll as a stand to hold the camera. Thankfully, it worked well.
After we shot the background video, we started working on animating the assets that we have. Previously, we had bought assets in the form of PNG images of dinosaurs. We then used the puppet tool to animate it, making them dance.
Animating the assets and putting them in the background video
After animating, we used the Ricoh THETA app to inject 360 metadata so that it will be viewable on youtube. We then uploaded it to youtube and voila! The result can be viewed below.
Throughout the years, Indonesia has been an inclusive melting pot of different cultures, religions, and ideologies. Indonesia currently holds the rank of the largest Muslim population in the world. What is so interesting to me, is that Islam came to Indonesia not by war, but by trade. The people of Indonesia are people of inclusivity and open-mindedness. Or at least they were.
Starting during the mid-2000s (with the help of the internet) fundamental Islamic conservationism is on the rise. This culminates in the 212 Movement, a large-scale demonstration against Ahok, Jakarta’s first non-muslim governor ever since the country’s independence, who had been accused as a suspect in a blasphemy case.
There’s also this whole thing with the 2014 elections, the 2019 elections, and the 2019 Revision of Criminal Code Bill, but I’m not gonna get into that for now
Since then, Islamic conservationism have become more and more mainstream. Public television is now heavily censored. The image below is a screenshot of the live coverage of the Miss Universe pageant show. It’s going semi-viral on Twitter.
Censorship on the 2019 Miss Universe Pageant
This is one of my biggest fears: Censorship
We’re seeing it happen in many other countries including China and Saudi Arabia. I am very fearful that Indonesia is next.
So, I thought, what’s the best way to face your biggest fear? Make an AR app that turns it into a reality of course!
Recently I made Halal Vision, an augmented reality mobile app that tries to emulate what it would be like to live in a world ridden with religious censorship.
Below is a demo of the app:
With this app, I try to emulate a world where things that are not in accordance with Islamic law are censored, such as pork, alcohol, homosexuality, and revealing clothing.
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of working with Cy and Stacy on a stop motion animation piece.
We brainstormed for a while, spitting out random ideas and things that inspire us. After some time, we found this stop motion video made with post-its to be an idea we can explore on.
Before starting to shoot, we created a rough storyboard to have a general idea of what the piece is going to be. But we specifically leave room for improvisation, because we wanted the piece to reflect our personality.
Post-its used for the shot
After doing a rough storyboard, we started shooting right away. We shot the piece using a Canon 5D MK IV, attached to a laptop running Dragonframe, a stop motion capture and editing software.
Working hard shooting the piece
After the shoot was wrapped, we edited the video using Adobe Premiere Pro. We added sound effects to make the video more alive. The sound effects were a mix of sounds from freesound.org and our own recorded voices that we distorted to add a comical element.
Finally, the final piece is done and can be viewed below. I hope you find this interesting!
