February 24, 2014

I think I've found a good way to mix anaglyphs with painted/sketched elements: letting the anaglyphs come to the foreground, as they should, and putting the painted elements in the background. This is so far working out better than having the 2D/3D elements compete for attention in the same plane. Here's an example:

The roses and lemons are anaglyphs (best viewed with red-cyan 3D glasses). I need to work on the painted textures; there is a problem with the way the dark gray repeats, and I would like to add more conspicuous texture to both of them. The key roadblock I'm hitting here is that I really need to wish I could have the superior texture you get with Corel Painter and the ease of creating repeats in Adobe Photoshop in the same program. Gotta keep trying, I guess!

I learned last week that including strong reds in my patterns, like the red roses, creates a strange effect with 3D glasses on. I wanted to try to exploit this a little, to make it a fun eye trick instead of an accident that ruins the effect. Here are two variations:

(The repeat problem with the dark gray texture is more obvious in these images...)

If you have 3D glasses, put them on and look at the images above. See what I mean about the eye trick? The effect happens because your left eye sees the crosses as white, and simultaneously your right eye sees the crosses as black. You can get a similar effect with pops of cyan, but I found that red is much more obvious.

I'm ordering fabric swatches this week!! I'm so excited to see these designs in print! They will go to the printer as soon as I've fixed the repeats, and they should arrive within a week. I'll also be printing a few test swatches using anaglyphs of varying sizes and some straight red and cyan, to check their interactions with each other and with other colors, and to make sure the texture of the fabric I choose doesn't throw anything off.

I'm also going to be taking new stereo pair images this week - it's time to wrap things up with the roses. I am in negotiations to borrow antique teacups, teapots, and silverware from a local flea market so I can photograph them - hopefully that will work out! I would appreciate any help I can get finding items like these that I can photograph this week. I promise to be careful with them and return them promptly! If you or anyone you know has some props for me, please send me an email. :)