Celestial Life Cycle

Tina and I collaborated on this project. We were asked to create a 1 minute experience of color by manipulating image or video at the pixel level.

We spent the first few days finding various inspirations. Tina found this link wherein the image was manipulated using circles that developed on the image over time, picking up color from its pixels. 

I then listed down emotions that I wanted to evoke through our sketch. We both shared our ideas and realized that we wanted to go with something that triggered a meditative experience. On talking about the ways we could create and code this experience, we agreed that it would be interesting to present the life cycle of something. We came up with the following life cycles as our options: 

• Butterfly lifecycle 

• Tree lifecycle 

• Flower lifecycle 

• Avocado lifecycle 

• Strawberry lifecycle 

• Star lifecycle 

On doing some brief research on all, we mutually agreed to go ahead with a stars life cycle and tie that in with a meditative.

We used the image below as our reference: 

We shortlisted 4 stages of the stars lifecycle that we wanted to include in our sketch and make it a total of a one minute experience. For the background, I manipulated the canvas at a pixel level to create the stars and the black background, while Tina put in the image, except for this time let the circles develop the image. I also added meditative music to make the experience more close to the emotions we were trying to evoke. 

• Nebula: The colors of the nebula are soft, naïve and full of hope

• Protostar: The colors mature in the protostar, developing drastic contrasts in bright and dark tones

• The Red Giant: The red star emits hot and powerful colors, embodying strong passionate feelings during the peak of life

• Supernova: Contrary to intuitive feelings of what “dying” looks like, the supernova emits the most beautiful explosion of colors

• Black hole: In the end, we go back to 0 – black, balanced, still and equitable.

Here is our final sketch, enjoy!