A different kind of zooming hypercomic: The Formalist

Merlin · Post by **Merlin** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:00 pm

An idea I've wanted to do something with for a while and have now finally got round to finishing:

http://e-merl.com/form.htm

(The artwork for the Queen of Clubs - from the playing card jam that I did ages back - was originally intended for use in something similar).

The inspiration for the subject matter (and title) of the comic comes from something Scott drew on a table cloth at San Diego during the summer.

Post by **Greg Stephens** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 10:12 pm

Supergroovy.

William G · Post by **William G** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 10:38 pm

"Now it's just confusing and upside down"

Very funny.

losttoy · Post by **losttoy** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 10:50 am

Praise for Daniel and his stories/art/experiements/innovation has been spoken before by people more notable and wiser than I. I liked this hyper-flash-comic quite a bit and am always amazed by his work. I even showed it to my wife who enjoyed quite a bit as well. However the cube head person ... I think it looks femine and my wife thinks it looks boyish. Is it either?

Keep up the good work Daniel! I will be waiting to read in awe and amazement.

Merlin · Post by **Merlin** » Tue Nov 23, 2004 12:28 pm

> I think it looks femine and my wife thinks it looks boyish. Is it either?

In my head The Formalist is a guy, but I'm happy to leave it up to individual interpretations. The actual model I used was of a man wearing trousers but no shirt, which is what gives the character his slightly odd silhoutte shape.

William G · Post by **William G** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 10:37 am

How did you do the walking part?

Merlin · Post by **Merlin** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 10:55 am

> How did you do the walking part?

A small band of expertly trained squirrels piloting a human suit.

> How did you do the walking part?

No? Oh, okay.

Actually I did it in Poser, using a tweaked version of one of the walk cycles built into the program. I rendered out the animation as a series of still images which I then put through a batch process in paintshop pro to convert them to high contrast black and white images.

I then took those images in as sequence to Flash and traced them using the bitmap trace function. The last bit is tedious as you have to trace each bitmap seperately frame by frame. I think there are some third-party aplications you can get which will do that final stage for you, but I've never got round to tracking one down.

The nice time saving bit was that I only animated one single loop of the walking movement and then just zoomed and scaled it in flash so it looked like the camera was panning through a much longer walking scene.

William G · Post by **William G** » Sat Dec 04, 2004 12:27 am

nifty. Squirrels are well trained.

Merlin · Post by **Merlin** » Sat Dec 04, 2004 7:20 am

Well, I'm an expert.

(It's all done with mirrors. And nuts. Lots of nuts).

collegepros · Post by **collegepros** » Fri Jan 28, 2005 7:33 pm

that's absolutely incredible. i've never seen anything like that before. thanks for the link

BuckBeaver · Post by **BuckBeaver** » Sat Jan 29, 2005 9:55 am

I hadn't seen this until today, very nice Merlin. Thanks for sharing!

Rip Tanion · Post by **Rip Tanion** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 11:19 pm

BuckBeaver wrote:I hadn't seen this until today, very nice Merlin.

My first time, as well. Quantum physics meets comics. My head is spinning...like that cube from "The Corbomite Maneuver". Wow.

If you had unlimited bandwith, and infinite time (and eternal patience) to work on it, that thing could go on forever.

kingotho · Post by **kingotho** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 8:33 am

Bloomin Awesome. Very cool idea, and executed masterfully.
-KO

Zwol.org

A different kind of zooming hypercomic: The Formalist

A different kind of zooming hypercomic: The Formalist

It's a fractal comic!