Talasumi Documentation

TALASUMI

and other known and unknown creatures

Have you heard about elves? Dragons? Mermaids?Yes?‌ What about karakondjuli? Samodivi? Talasami?

Wise people say they are hiding somewhere because people have stopped looking for them...

Bulgarian Mythology is a rich and diverse mixture of Slavic, Thracian, Protobulgarian and many other less prominent cultures. This book is a collection of some of the most popular mythological creatures that still appear in legends and songs.

The Content 20 CREATURES

THE BOOK CONSISTS OF THOSE 20 CREATURES:

Zmei Horse Lamia Stopan Hala Chuma Karakondjul Talasum Stia Vgraden Samovila Tangra Sluntse Krali Marko Luna Trifon Zarezan Zvezdi Perun Kosmichesko Durvo Kuker

WHY EXACTLY THOSE 20 CREATURES? As Bulgarian mythology is mixture of several different cultures, there are representatives from each one: there are Slavic ones like Perun or Samovila, Protobulgarian like Tangra, Thracian ones like Trifon Zarezan or many other local ones that appeared as a mixture of all those characters.

THE RESOURCES FOR THE TEXTS ARE SEVERAL BOOKS ABOUT BULGARIAN, SLAVIC AND EAST EUROPEAN MYTHOLOGY:

Luckily, there are so many books

etnografia na Bulgaria

Special thanks to Bilyana

about Slavic and Bulgarian mythology

Miladinovi, D. i K. Bulgarski narodni

Mancheva(having studied English

in the Staats- und

pesni. S., 1961, 646-647, ЦбНУ, 9, p.

Philology, Master, working as an

Universitätsbibliothek Bremen that I

130, Veles; Shapkarev, K. Sbornik, 8-9

English teacher at the moment) for

could use in addition to the

Ivanichka Georgieva, Bulgarska

encyclopedias that I had.

narodna mitologia, 1993, Izdatelstvo

Halanskiy, A. Iujnoslavianskie

“Nauka i izkustvo”

skazania o Kraleviche Marko. - Ruskiy

Zdenek Vana, Mythologie und

filologicheskiy vestnik, 27, 1892, 1

Götterwelt der slawischen Völker. Die

Basanovich, I. Materiali po sanitarna

geistigen Impuse Ost-Europas

editing the text and providing insights about the content.

TEXT STRUCTURE

the name converted from Cyrillic to Latin letters plural of the word to make it clear when it appears in the text

where it can be found

appearance of the creature

legends and superstitions associated with the creature

The Content 20 ILLUSTRATIONS

The idea about the illustrations for the book was to illustrate the text, but not to reveal the creatures themselves and to serve as a marker for the mobile application. This way the creatures can be “discovered� is using the app, moving around the images on the pages.

Several different kinds of illustrations were used for the pages:

More realistic illustrations showing the places,

Traditional patterns that were used on clothes,

The same traditional patterns, but

where the creatures can be found (for example

carpets or other handmade home objects.

monochromatic. The application built with

mountains for the samovili, a crossroad for the

Those patterns also very often symbolize

Unity and Vuforia is very good in recognizing

karakondjuli or a village for the zmei)

natural elements like plants, mountains or

patterns with good contrast. Which means

thunderbolts and even though it is in a more

having many different colors does not help as

abstract way, they can also be connected with

much as having many corners, details and

the areas where the creatures can be found.

shapes does. And keeping them monocromatic

They are always very bright and colorful.

on a contrasting pattern makes them easily recognisable even with poor lighting conditions or on shiny surfaces. This is why at the end I chose to work with monocromatic patterns.

PATTERNS

Still, accordintg to the traditional style there have to be many colors. To preserve that I chose to use different color backgrounds for each page. The color harmony derives from one knit piece of cloth in my own home archive. < Many of the patterns are inspired by this book: Katia Matrova, Bulgarska vezba, 1982, Durjavno izdatelstvo â&#x20AC;&#x153;Technikaâ&#x20AC;?

COLORS

<The color harmony of the book

FONT

Marta is a beautiful serif font created my Michael Chereda and distributed by Fontfabric, an independant type foundry, launched by designer Svet Simov.

In addition to the beauty of the font, the second main reason is that this font also provides beautiful Cyrillic letters.

Image from http://www.fontfabric.com/marta-free-font/ >

The Animations 20 MOVING CREATURES

The animation went through many experiments. Usually augmented reality applications use 3D objects and animations but here I wanted to created a 2D animation, so that it blends as much as possible with the pages of the book. This is why instead of 3D animations I had to create many spritesheets with all the frames of the animations.

For creating the animation I tried using several techniques:

HAND DRAWN ANIMATION: using Photoshop Advantages: the movements look natural, I have freedom over every parts of the objects and this way I can animate freely every part of the objects and make them more lively Disadvantages: this takes a lot of time and the characters have to be quite simple without many details; also the lines are rasters and they are not very flexible for creating spritesheets with different sizes for the different device resolutions I might need for the application.

HAND DRAWN ANIMATION: using Wacom Inklink Advantages: an interesting tool that gives the feeling of working on paper and also digitalizes each frame, it is fast to redraw frames Disadvantages: sadly there is a very big difference between the image drawn on the paper and the digitalized one. The offset sometimes reaches 3-4 mm, which is a big difference for small details on an object and makes this technique fast for testing movements, but not useful for final animations.

ANIMATION WITH BRUSHES: using Adobe Illustrator Advantages: smooth movement + creatures with many detailes (I wanted to cover their bodies with patterns resembling the traditional patterns) + keeping them as scalable vector images (perfect for an app that has to run on many different screen resolutions) Disadvantages: less freedom to control each part of the creatures, but to solve this, I split the creatures into several parts that I could animate separatedly.

<2D versus 3D objects* *the 3D objects are from project created in University of the Arts Bremen - Betwixt

The Application

The application was developed using Unity 3D and an additional plugin for augmented reality, Vuforia (vuforia.com). At the moment there is an Android application and the project can easily be exported for other platforms as well (< the image on the left is the icon of the app).

21 spritesheets with the animations were created as well as 21 illustrations to be used as markers. More about the markers on project blog: https://talasumi.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/about-ar-targets/ (< the image on the left is a marker, more here: ).

The difficulties that I had with the app was optimising all the animation spritesheets and making them look sharp. The image on the left shows some of the experiments I did in order to find the best settings, but I am still researching.

The Book

The content of the project can exist on all kinds of formats - books, posters, cards, website or anything. My focus was on creating a book to give the feeling of a very traditinal object (in contrast to the application that was playing the animations), but still all the other formats also exist. The cards and posters are used for presentation purposes, the book as a main object of the project and the website to show the entire information in one place.

(The website is to be announced soon)

PRINTING THE BOOK

sharing this printing technique with me!

I was choosing between three printing

Siebdruck: Again, many colors, many

techniques - digital print , risography and

copies, keeps the texture of the paper,

siebdruck. Each of them had its advantages

good coverage of big color surfaces, but

and disadvantages for my project.

takes time for preparing and I would use it

Digital Print: The texture is too shiny, but

after I have a final version of the book and

it depends very much on the paper. It if

print many copies.

very fast for prototyping and testing

ASSEMBLING THE BOOK

different versions.

Risography: Many copies, many color combinations, but I am not sure the raster of the colors matches the clean style that I am aiming at/there is a risk that the raster can make the illustrations mor difficult for recognizing.

Many thanks to Lulu Mendelova for

I tried different techniques like Coptic binding or Japanese binding (and different patterns for Japanese binding), until I created my own pattern with a thicker rope that gave me most freedom for opening the book and stretching the pages so they can be scanned well.

All together 20 ILLUSTRATIONS 20 STORIES 1 BOOK 1 APP

HOW IT ALL WORKS

Animation revealing the creature

A mobile application scanning the pages

Illustration on the page

Description of each creature

THE PROJECT ONLNE: The book: https://issuu.com/denytodorova5/docs/book_merged?e=14127007/36086218 The app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Samovili.MythologyApp Video about the project: https://vimeo.com/172248894 More details about the project can be found on the blog: https://talasumi.wordpress.com/

The Future

Music

More

At the moment I am preparing several

I am in touch with three Bulgarian

I am planning to send the project to

copies of the book for the Bulgarian

musicians, trying to collect different

several Bulgarian organizations that are

Sunday school â&#x20AC;&#x153;Rodna Rechâ&#x20AC;? in Bremen.

songs for the different creatures of the

working with developing and preserving

application. At the moment I have the

Bulgarian culture and traditions.

main theme from Konstantin Kuchev which is used for the video.

Resources: Halanskiy, A. Iujnoslavianskie skazania o Kraleviche Marko. Ruskiy filologicheskiy vestnik, 27, 1892, 1 Basanovich, I. Materiali po sanitarna etnografia na Bulgaria Miladinovi, D. i K. Bulgarski narodni pesni. S., 1961, 646-647, ЦбНУ, 9, p. 130, Veles; Shapkarev, K. Sbornik, 8-9 Ivanichka Georgieva, Bulgarska narodna mitologia, 1993, Izdatelstvo “Nauka i izkustvo” Zdenek Vana, Mythologie und Götterwelt der slawischen Völker.

Die geistigen Impuse Ost-Europas Katia Matrova, Bulgarska vezba, 1982, Durjavno izdatelstvo “Technika”

Many thanks to: Biliana Mancheva (editor of the book) Konstantin Kuchev (music for the video) Ivana Staneva, Timo StĂźber and Antonio Palacios (helping with shooting the videos) Vihro Laskov (feedback for the photos) My mentors in University of the Arts Bremen for providing useful feedback about the project.