The New America
November 1, 2013 4:02 PM   Subscribe

Every frame of "The New America" was laser engraved into a block of maple then photographed.
posted by brundlefly (16 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
Very impressive.
posted by vrakatar at 4:18 PM on November 1, 2013


The imagery is really great--and the concept is genius--but the performances were wooden.
posted by Ian A.T. at 4:19 PM on November 1, 2013 [7 favorites]


Groan.
posted by vrakatar at 4:24 PM on November 1, 2013 [3 favorites]


Incredible.
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 4:25 PM on November 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


some of the pieces are on sale:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/166690806/randomly-selected-one-of-a-kind-laser
So you could even own a piece of the movie.
posted by mulligan at 4:31 PM on November 1, 2013


but the performances were wooden.

Ooh..BURN!
posted by eriko at 4:38 PM on November 1, 2013 [5 favorites]


It's pretty, I like his drawing style. I'm assuming the actual laser engraving part was relatively straightforward, just taking a computer animation and then shipping individual frames off to the machine to do the etching. Athough some of the fill work is quite nice, and not easy to produce consistently.

What I'd really love to see is some sort of animation that uses overdrawing to highlight the subtractive effect of laser cutting. Ie, the wood in frame 2 starts with frame 1, with extra stuff cut into it. And frame 10 is 1-9 with more. Areas would get darker, and more gouged, and it could be beautiful.
posted by Nelson at 4:38 PM on November 1, 2013 [2 favorites]


Nelson: every laser cut you layer does a pretty decent amount of damage. You could keep moving the laser focus down into the block, but it would be super tricky to deal with the increasing march toward ash.

Still, I like your idea.
posted by poe at 5:12 PM on November 1, 2013


How much wood did this take?
posted by double block and bleed at 5:17 PM on November 1, 2013


Yeah, fuck trees.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:27 PM on November 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


oh FFS. less wood than it takes to frame an applebees
posted by nathancaswell at 5:58 PM on November 1, 2013 [4 favorites]


I find the constant changing of the grain between frames to be distracting. An interesting exercise would be if this were done with a single maple log. Cut the first frame into the (cut) end of the log, photograph, plane it smooth again, cut the second frame, plane, repeat, etc. That way the grain would still be changing, but smoothly and more or less continuously from one frame to the next.

Nifty idea overall.
posted by McCoy Pauley at 6:51 PM on November 1, 2013 [2 favorites]


That was stunning. Thanks for posting this.
posted by spacewaitress at 8:13 PM on November 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


McCoy's idea of consistently changing grain was what I was expecting, I also found the flickering grain distracting, didn't realize kickstarter supported art projects.
posted by sammyo at 8:15 PM on November 1, 2013


didn't realize kickstarter supported art projects

here's a 2012 breakdown fwiw...
posted by kliuless at 5:14 AM on November 2, 2013


I agree. Incredible. The music was great too. I saw this and figured it was posted here already and of course it was. Just lovely.
posted by cashman at 7:13 PM on November 2, 2013


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