My reiteration of animation for 300. This one breaks down the structural components by assigning them very simple forms. 

The grid pattern in the back grounds the movement of the sphere in the foreground by offering a visual cue against which the sphere moves. The camera moves in a simple linear path; however the interaction of the sphere with the trellis-type arrangement in the background is where the structure of the video starts to come through. 

I synchronized moments in the animation where the camera movement slows down with the points where the sphere is intersected with the trellis grid. This motion represents the occurrence of penetration between two solids, which is directly reflected in the 300 video, when the moments that are recorded in slow motion are when King Leonidas is forcing his spear through enemy soldiers, an act of penetration.

In addition, this motion is repeated a couple of times in the video, and establishes what could be continued perpetually as a rhythm of entrapment through penetration and escape between the two solids. This was a prominent component of the way the scene in 300 was structured.

New Render - Surface

2B - Surface Fabrication

Moving forward towards creating a surface that will relate to the video and my previous animation, I started by taking snapshots of the video at the points where I had originally diagrammed them for my first animation. Here you see 10 shots arranged on artboards in Illustrator. Image below:

Then I paid particular attention to the hierarchy of the visual representation of each frame, this time noticing the red cape as the most prominent feature of color throughout the scene. So I drew vector paths over the cape forms to create a set of base geometries that could start to inform my surface contours. I also drew over dark spots in each frame, provided mainly by the body figures that King Leonidas is approaching with each stride; however, I ended up abandoning those forms and looking at just the cape:

So, working still in Illustrator, I took the corresponding cape geometries from each scene and laid them out independently, spaced them evenly and blended them to create intermediate geometries for transition:

Finally, I went into Maya and started to take each of these pieces to fabricate my surface. The way I wanted to do this was to treat each piece as a cross section of a lofted surface, so that the contours of each piece start to form the combined piece. Here's a couple shots of the workspace:

And, ultimately, some rendered views of the resultant form:

 This piece is particularly interesting; although the form was continuous and the cross sections lined up consistently, there was a hiccup along the line where certain contours cross into each other. This might be the way for me to incorporate the "pulse" motif that was discussed last class. I will start thinking about how to move along the surface and "film" it.

An interior view of the surface, "tunnel vision."