Breaking Down Walls
Design concept: Holding tight to her freshly picked dandelions, a young girl considers her big aspirations. As she dreams, her surroundings come to life—the dandelions sway and lights and bubbles appear on the utility fixtures. She chips away slowly at the wall that holds her back, revealing a sparkling universe behind it. As her confidence grows and her dreams get bigger, the wall falls down in larger pieces. The quote at the end is by poet Mary Oliver: "One day you finally knew what you had to do and began."
Project details and challenges: This animation was created around the existing wall stencils (girl and dandelions) for Monticello Glow Fest in February 2025. Being new to 3D animation, the most significant challenge was recreating an entire brick wall and learning how to get the physics correct to knock the bricks down. The location of the wall was also a major stumbling block. A permanent grill and a concrete pillar were directly in front of the wall, causing the projector to cast a shadow. Having a minimal budget, scaffolding to raise the projector was not an option. My initial solution was to place the projector on a picnic table that was directly behind the grill, but ice and snow accumulation shortly before the event made that an unsafe option. The operating temperature of the projector is 32°F, and nighttime temps were forecasted to be around 10° below that. Not wanting to risk damaging my equipment but again having a minimal budget, my solution was to house the projector off to the side of the picnic table in an outdoor shower enclosure with propane heaters. Having the projector at such a skewed angle made alignment of the animation on the wall quite difficult. Unhappy with the results during the event, I went back in the summer to set the projector on the picnic table as I intended so I could get a recording of what I had initially envisioned. That video is what you see above.
Love Sweet Love
Design concept: Reflect the groovy qualities of a mural by Cey Adams located in Saint Paul, MN.
Project details and challenges: This was a personal project to practice my animation and projection mapping skills. Coming from a graphic design background, my challenge was to gain a better understanding of how the colors on my monitor translate to colored light that would overlay the paint on the mural. Shining pink light on yellow paint makes a yellow-tinted pink. How tinted it looks is determined by how bright the projector is. On that note, the other challenge was a very bright security light on a building directly across from the mural. It didn't complete wash out the animation, but it did make it significantly lighter.
Black Daze
Design concept: Emphasize the graffiti style of this mural with bright color and movement.
Project details and challenges: A personal project to practice mural animation and projection mapping complex surfaces. My biggest challenge for this project was time. When I first selected this mural to animate, the security light to the left side of it was broken, so I thought the mural was dark enough to project onto. While out aligning the projection, the security light came on, completely washing everything out. I kept an eye on it (it's in my neighborhood) to determine how long after sunset I had to try to align the animation and record video of the projection before the light came on. I determined I had about 30 minutes. The other challenge is it's on a very busy road, and even though the animation is only 40 seconds, cars were constantly driving past, making alignment and recording video an extreme challenge. Luckily, the evening I recorded this the light came on about 30 minutes later than I had anticipated, giving me extra time to make changes to the animation on the fly (removing a part that was only partially visible due to the light on the right side) and export a new version.
Flower Blur on Lotus Arch
Design concept: The concept of the arch was to create a projection installation that was not only calming and meditative, but could be interacted with without blocking the projection.
The projection was an exploration of the distortion of natural elements and the passage of time.
Project details and challenges: Everything about the construction of the arch was a challenge! Particularly how to make it modular so it could be easily disassembled. Ultimately, made out of wood, the pieces are very heavy and awkward to carry and, as I'm not an expert carpenter, it doesn't go together as easily as I had envisioned. The goal was for it to have the ability to be set up by one person, and unfortunately I wasn't able to make that happen.
The challenge of the projection was the complex shape of the arch and that the SVG file that I used as the mapping mask needed a lot of adjustments due to the imperfections created during construction. I designed the arch templates in Illustrator, but cut the pieces out by hand with a jigsaw, so the finished arch isn't a perfect replica of the template. In a perfect world I could just import the mask and overlay it on the arch, but instead I needed to fiddle with all of the edges to make sure that it aligned well.
Breaking News
Design concept: To express the feeling of being overwhelmed by receiving nearly constant news alerts, along with the desire to detach from them and difficulty with doing so.
Project details and challenges: A personal project to practice video composition and projection mapping unique surfaces. The only challenge was the limitation of my equipment, leading to a somewhat dim projection.
Arbor Flow
Design concept: As we navigate life, we can become fragmented and pulled in many directions. When encountering rising waters of overwhelm and doubt, we may become so consumed by the sensation of drowning that we overlook lifelines that are offered to us. With practice, we learn to float through the turbulence. As the water recedes, we are gently drawn back to ourselves, returning to center.
Project details and challenges: This was a personal project to practice my animation and projection mapping on natural elements. The complexity of the branches and leaves tends to swallow any fine detail, so the challenge was to make the animation detailed enough to be interesting, but not too detailed that it became muddy.
There is a Reality
Design concept: Visuals that complement the song.
Project details and challenges: I first created this animation in 2024 for Greenway Glow in Minneapolis. Looking at it again with fresh eyes, I made some edits that reflect the progress I've made in my skillset and style. The original is over 4 minutes long and eventually I will be reworking the entire piece. This projection was to test the brightness and contrast of my choices on the surface. I wasn't anticipating the metal of the car to be shiny (not all train cars are), and the reflection of the projector lamp affected the visibility of the center of the geometric animation.