Guest Article: shiftedShapes Talks Liquid
Today’s guest article was submitted by shiftedShapes and originally appeared as a post on Floasis. It presents his analysis on the underlying structure of the liquid illusion, what skillsets are required to achieve the illusion, and how the illusion can be enhanced.
shiftedShapes is a practitioner of tutting, botting, waving, liquid, and more. He can be found on the West Coast Poppin forums. Note: The original article did not appear with the youtube links.
Hey guys, glad to see you are preserving liquid and trying to progress it.
I have been thinking about liquid again lately as a bunch of the disparate concepts that I have been working on, converged into a scalable system for generating the liquid illusion.
Here are the necessary techniques to create the framework (wire frame):
- fixed point (extrapolated to fixed line, fixed boxes, or fixed cubes for a higer dimensional illusion)
- figure 8 (duh!)
- spherical body segment isolation (a subset of these is commonly used for cobra and snaking)
- multitasking (the ability to have multiple isolated parts interacting)
To create the undulating texture generally associated with liquid the following techniques are required:
- undulating joint isolation (including the fingers and diaphragmatic breathing isolations). This is really two or more adjacent isolated body segments moving in a figure 8 pattern.
Once you have mastered the techniques required for the framework and texture, you will be able to create a high-resolution illusion with potentially very great complexity. Multi-layered waves (undulations) will move along spiral paths through a right angle framework that is transforming orthogonally. If you follow the rabbit far enough down the hole, you will get here, and it keeps going. Tracing back the roots of liquid and waving, you will see bits and pieces of these techniques. Part of the reason there are arguments about where liquid came from is that people talk about different things when they say liquid. None of these historical influences, however, have captured the full breadth of techniques required to create a fully realized and scalable liquid illusion. That is for you guys going forward to accomplish.
Eventually you can take these techniques that are all ultimately concerned with spatial control and add in temporal techniques that relate to the speed of movement and stopping. These are usually grouped under the bopping umbrella and include speed control, vibration, dime stopping, second-order techniques likeanimation, and third-order techniques like tremor stops.
Of course, sound adds another dimension, and all of these illusions can be enhanced by pairing them with sound effects or music.
/manifesto
I love the liquid illusion, and it will always have a special place in my heart, even though it is just one infinitesimal slice of the infinite pie of geometric patterns.
-sS
