| Out | Tuesday, October 22, 2013 |
| Part A Due | Tuesday, October 29, 2013 |
| Part B Due | Tuesday, November 5, 2013 |
| Questions Due | Tuesday, November 5, 2013 |
Check the calendar page of the website.
Based on the readings and Sharon's and Fritz's slides, on the bone/muscle/membrane structure and wingstroke sequence, create an illustration of a bat wing in flight. Show two or more stages of flapping flight, emphasizing the anatomical structures that you feel are important to the part of the stroke that you are showing. Imagine the force of the wing against the air and hypothesize, after watching videos of bat flight, what the relationship of the flexible forms of the wing to the flow might be.
Don't just show the bones and muscles in a certain position, make your illustration FEEL like the anatomy is acting against force, with force. Practice making the movement with your own arms, feeling the strain of muscle against a rope or exercise band. Understand the anatomy of the bat in relation to human anatomy, as a way of connecting with the bat's physical experience.
Your illustration should encode the strains and exertion of force by visual emphasis: a color code, line weight, emphasis of volumetric form etc. Try also to have a graphic representation of the "pattern" of the stroke sequence: scooping, flexing, folding etc. Be ready to suggest an explanation of the stroke pattern and the changes in wing form in relation to the forces of flight and aerodynamics.
You can execute your illustration in traditional 2-D or Physical 3-D materials, or in digital 2-D pr 3-D. The scene should be visually conceived as a 3-D situation however, and your choice of medium should be one that you feel confident about your ability to suggest 3-D form and depth. The second part of the assignment will be to recreate your illustration in the Cave, and this might affect (but does not need to limit) some of your visual choices in the current phase of the project.
The primary focus of the assignment is anatomical structure. Simple flow issues should play a part in your thinking as you build your wing and show it in action, but complex aspects of the flow need not be indicated, unless there is particular phenomenon that you want to highlight. The full interaction between form and flow will be the focus of our final project beginning in a couple of weeks. This assignment concentrates on the Form that generates the Force. Study all elements involved in how the form moves and actuates and try to show all of those in a clear manner. You must make some decisions about which elements should dominate the composition and why, but try to relate your reasoning back to the science of bat flight.
If there is a part of the anatomy you would like to pay special attention to, especially if its role in the action seems vital to the flight capability of the bat, you might try to depict that part in greater detail. A fully naturalistic scapula, to name a particularly ambitious focus, could be drawn in the midst of an otherwise abstracted anatomical structure. You will need to support your choice of that particular piece and the function it plays in the kinematics of the bat, and specify the active anatomical connections between the piece you are working on and the rest of the wing's structure.
It is possible to approach this assignment through fully realized naturalistic form as outlined below, but you can also experiment with abstract or simplified depiction as a labor saving strategy (particularly relevant to eventually recreating your illustration in the cave), and also as a way of showing stress, contraction of muscle, bone flexion etc. For example, bones can be drawn as simple lines rather than elaborately modeled forms, but might also be flexed or color coded to suggest reaction to force generated by muscle or air pressure. An abstract approach will most likely be necessary in dealing with the wing membranes, which are broad, complex surfaces difficult to describe with CavePainting strokes. In this case, a mesh, grid, or pattern may be a better choice to describe the wing surface, and could contain a gradient suggesting varying forces.
On the other hand, anatomical illustration clarified to the point where we understand muscle and tendon attachments, active versus inactive muscles, bone articulations and structure, etc. is actually really valuable to Sharon. Take this assignment as an opportunity to explore that level of illustration for a very specific part of the bat's anatomy. Pick the correct frames to work in for showing something interesting. If you want to show bone flexibility, pick a frame where it's really bending. Try to work abstract expressive principles like line weight and linear gesture into your naturalism to reinforce the sense of movement and force
As with all assignments to date, legibility is a key factor. Sketch on paper or in the Cave, both ahead of time and during the execution phase to test ideas and visual relationships.
Translate your design into CavePainting. You should concentrate on making sure all the key elements of the bat's body that you need are visualized in all frames, but highlight the ones you think are acting at each step in the wing beat. Your animation should make clear what parts of the wing are doing what at each point in time.
Due to the copy/paste issue with the frame-by-frame module in CavePainting, it will be ok to hand in ONLY 2 FRAMES. Make sure they show all the anatomical and kinematic elements they need to make those 2 frames stand in place of a full animation. We don't want you to spend time repeating parts of the bat's anatomy in 15 or 20 frames but, creating 2 that show all the important stuff will be a challenge. Make sure you start this second part early so you can refine your sketches up to a presentable illustration.
Questions are due, emailed to the TA, by 11am on the date listed above. Most of these are very short questions intended to help guide you through the assignment. They should not take long to answer. Most of the time, a very brief, one sentence or less, answer is sufficient.