SCMURAL PROJECT
"Panorama of Scenographic and Cinematographic Principles" a learning corridor mural for the Schoolf of Creative Media of the City University of Hong Kong
Tjebbe van Tijen/Imaginary Museum Projects (with the assistence for 3D models and measurements of Tamas Walickzky)
SCMURAL1: first stage, project proposal spring 2011 SCMURAL2: second stage final visual content (except doors) summer 2012
2011 April
2011 May 15 - 20
   
2011 May 27  
2011 May 27 - June 3  
Information exchange with Genesis about the idea of making angling panels and the consequences for the standard hanging system as used by Genesis.
Also the print size and how to cut up the panels comes into view. A series of questions posed by Tjebbe van Tijen at May 27th, is answered on June the 5th. Main question posed to Genesis: "1) the HPL plates measure 120 by 240 cm. 2) the images printed on the material are 100% edge to edge (please check this for us, it is essential for our understanding) 3) the favourable thickness of the layers but backup layers you use for full plates is 9mm (taking in account that the plates will be mounted with some sort of metal slot system at regular intervals) 4) the metal montage slots can be montaged, or be adapted in such a way to be montaged away form the edges of the HPL plates 5) these montage elements are screwed with self threading screws with a length of approximate 6 mm onto the HPL plates We have a 2D model that makes it possible to derive exact measures from it." Answering email of Genesis/Tony Cheung June 5th: "1) the HPL plates measure 120 by 240 cm. The actual size is 1220 x 2440mm and become 1200 x 2400 after refining edges. 2) the images printed on the material are 100% edge to edge (please check this for us, it is essential for our understanding) To be printed on 1200 x 2400mm 3) the favourable thickness of the layers but backup layers you use for full plates is 9mm (taking in account that the plates will be mounted with some sort of metal slot system at regular intervals) 4) the metal montage slots can be montaged, or be adapted in such a way to be montaged away form the edges of the HPL plates 5) these montage elements are screwed with self threading screws with a length of approximate 6 mm onto the HPL plates For 3-5) After consulting our technical team, here is our installation proposal: - 12mm HPL backing will be screwed on directly onto the wall - 1mm digital printed laminate to be stick on top. So total thickness is 13mm - This is the best & feasible way to accommodate your design especially for the door."
2011 June 15 - 29
Print size and resolution need to be tested and the question whether enlarging some details can be done without having unwanted digital artefacts (pixelation) showing up. It becomes clear that a print resolution of 300 ppi (pixel pro inch) can niether be handled for such a big work by even a powerful computer, nor by the the High Pressure Laminate (HPL) producer, who is printing by using a so called RIP (Raster Image Processor) software, which is rendering the original picture down to the capacity of the printer and the special paper used for producing HPL. A test print of 1200 x 1200 mm is made in Thailand by Wilsonart(Thailand) and delivered o the same day that Tjebbe van Tijen is leaving Hong Kong after staying for 6 months there. Two smaller size samples from the big print are also made and taken to Amsterdam by Tjebb, as a reference.
2011 August 25
Complete set of measure drawing made by Tamas Walickzky send to Genesis to make their mounting plan
2011 September 5 - 30
During the month of September a set of drawing (A3 size at 300dpi) for mounting the panels are sent to Tjebbe van Tijen in Amsterdam by Genesis. These drawings do not give all the individual dimensions and real position of the panels. Many of the measures are there only by deduction. There are some questions, some mistakes discovered. A double check by Tams Walickzy comparing his 3D model with the panel mounting plans of Genesis. It is only by the end of Septmeber that the emasures seem to be firmly established, with the beforementioned problem of not having indvidual pael measures in mm.
2011 September -October
   
2011 October 28
As it becomes clear that there will be not enough time to produce the actual HPL panels, a decision is taken to put up a temporary photo-print of the mural for the opening ceremony of the new SCM building. When these prints are mounted it becomes clear that the measure problems - as noted before - do have consequences for doing this quick job. Genesis solves the problem by extending the original panel print files at the left/right sides with a few centimters and then cutting the panels together on the spot. Noted points were problems occur are in section A1 and E5. (See elsewhere for a full exposé).
2011 November 18
During a short stay in Hong Kong Jeffrey Shaw Ryamond Lam and Tjebbe van Tijen meet and taking in account the problems with the drawingsas supplied by Genesis as a basis for precise measures of print files - as have showed up with installing the temporary photo-version - it is decided that a more safe method would be to first mount the borads onto which the HPL printed layers are fixed, measures these and supply exact measured print file size for each panel to Tjebbe van Tijen, after the actual montage of all these mounting boards. At this stage no mention is made of a needed vertcal bleeding. This wish only comes up almost half a year later.
As there is also concernabout how to negociate with Genesis about the accuracy of the printed colour in the end product of HPL, a test file is produced which is printed by a specialised firm Ecellent Colour in Wanchai/Hing Kong. The choice is for human face/skin colours, as they are the most critical. Tjebbe van Tijen goes to the printer and looks at the print out in a special controlled light viewing box.
During the month of December and the subsequent months of 2012 there is very little contact - apart from regular inquieries by Tjebbe van Tijen. Gnesis seems to have started to work on the measuring and production of the boards - according to the dates found on drawings received in June by Tjebbe van Tijen - in early April 2012.

Unfortunely it is only in the first week of June 2012 that a request for a quick delivery is given, at first without having the necessary measurements of the boards, as decided in November 2011. With some delay because of mounting panels that did not have the right measure or otherwise, it is at June the 9th, that all the measures are taken by Tamas Walickzky and transferred to a software measures system. The time schedule proposed was not realistic, though a lot of work has been pushed into just over a week after the final measures became available.
2012 June 9-11
 
Production details SCMURAL2 (June/July 2012)
Content:

- Measure and mounting principles
- Database of measures PDF link and Overview of final print Files
- Scroll 1 (lay-out of scroll over the wall with angles and corners and montage principles)
- Scroll 2 (comapres master measure file of panels based on Tamas Walickzy his measures with the panel mouting drawings of Genesis)
- Scroll 3 (the actual panel measurement files of Tamas Walickzky)
- Print file measurement and the system of margins + maximum production size of HPL panels
- Paper template method for positioning HPL prints with margins on the actual mounting panels
- Explanation of the problem of comparing small size measure documents with thereal size 'measure master system'

Explanation of measure and mounting principles in 16 points

Overview scroll with up/down extra marges and (of course) no overlaps left/right. This is generated from my 'master measure file' which is 1:1 and almost 30.000 mm at 150 pp1. That is a file when not opened with a storage space of approcimate 14 Gigabyte and difficult to handle as it is at limits of what Photshop can do. Still it is the only way to generate accurate print files on the basis of the measurements made by Tamas Walickzy of the mounting panels for the HPL prints by Genesis. There is a series of scrolls below that give the necessary information to understand the principles of doing the fitting on the panels. These principles need to be understood before starting the work.

The image content of the mural has been made in a few steps:

1) concept design of how the scroll would go along the walls
2) making of scroll content as one band with an equal height and now angling and corner situation yet
3) only after having received the precise measures of the mounting boards placed by Genesis and done by Tamas (June12) could I make a model based on the concept design
4) I have made a model that connects all the measures of the boards as if they were next to each other on the right and left without any space.
5) This model has a series of frames: a) the panels as measures; b) panels with the requested margins of 15mm at the left/right side (+ 30mm in tota)l and 10mm at top and bottom (+ 20mm)
6) There are 17 panels and so 17 layers in my master measure file and in this file I can switch on and off for each panel the actual size of a panel and the print size with the margins. All the measures and positions have been constructed by steering Photoshop with numbers only, because dragging layers in such a huge file and with so many millimeters is bound to fail
7) For each print file the layer with the actua panel measures + the margings has been generated by what is called in Photoshop a 'merged copy' of all visual layers; this technique enableb me to compensate th spots were angling of the striaght version of the scroll would lead to loss of image content. I did recreate at all points were a change of angle occured special overlayed elemnts so that gyhe angling scroll (that was a straight line at first) has become a continuous angling band of images without any loss.
8) The print matgins used now are such that small deviations of measures can be compensated by on the spot trimming of the image content.

IMPORTANT

9) The trimming needs to take in account the artwork and can not be done just from a measure point of view. In Scroll number 1 this is explained. If no attention would be paid to what I call 'visual continuity' the artwork will be damaged visually. The human eye is very attentive to continuity of forms that are sperated by small oids (as is the caser with the HPL mounting system put in place). When an object in the image has a line that crosses over two panels a few millimter difference will look uglky, the line appears as if broken. I propose that the measuring in the vertical plane will be done from the bottom part up of the HPL prints.
10) As the mural passes doors and goes around corners, 'visual continuity' is not everywhere critical at the same level. In scroll number 1 I have indicated the differences.
11) The swinging doors in the middle will not ne covered. I have created at the left and right hand side of the doors a speical kind of image ending. Attention must be paid not to take off too much at these nedings on the left and right hand endings of the scroll.
12) Thje first pannel A1 should not be trimmed at the left hand(beginning) side. As the image dsiappears behind a wall a bit of image loss at the right hand side of panel A1 will not be a problem.
13) At the other end a similar situation occurs in reverse. The right hand side of panel F1 should be trimmed as little as possible and this can be compensated by triming part of the left hand side of panel F1 that disappears into the wall (virtually).

14) scroll 2 has two layers: the top shows the panels and their file numbers and the the light blue indicates what sticks out at the top and bottom (the 10mm margins); right below it is a montage I amde as a general control of how the measurements of Tamas compare with the ones supplied by Genesis (send to me June 5). As the premises of the Gensis drawings are not teh same as the measurements taken by Tamas, I had to develop a special method to make this comparison.

First, the Genesis drawings of the mural have always limit themselves to the construction of the HPL mounting. Individual measures of each panel can only - and not always - be derived by calculation. This has posed me great difficulties already last year and this next phase the same difficulty remained. Also the digiatl scale of the drawings (A4 size 300 dpi) has limited my control/comparison of measures by Tamas and Genesis.

Nevertheless, I have used a method that is approximate and shows that their is NO great difference between the two measure outcomes. With a few exceptions though. Panel D3 has a msitake of over 9mm, which shows up. The method I used is importing the PDF pages of Genesis in Photoshop with a resolution of 1200 ppi and cutting out the panels from the lines indicating their position. Next I have pasted these cut-outs into my 1:1 master measure system, whereby of course I had to enlarge a lot these cut-outs, but all the while reatining their angle and aspect ratio. Of course a part of A4 (horizontal format) drawing is only farction of the real big 1:1 file of the panels with their height of 120 cm.

15) Last in scroll 3 I put on one line all the measuremtn files as I have received them from Tamas. It is these numbers I have used. Now I need also to make a note here on the limits of the measures as taken by Tamas, when I applied a simple mathematical formula (Pythagoras) to derive for the sides of the rectangles and four point polygons, the resulting missing length and angle in the fiels of Tamas did not always match with my calculations. This is documented in the PDF file I did send before, which I will also put on this web page for download.

The differences were never very big and as far as I could discover all fall withing the chossen extra margins of 10 and 15 mm at the sides of the HPL prints. It seems sometimes as a needless seriers of exercises, but I am afraid it is not so. This for two reasons:
a) I had no opportunity to control certain measurement when I felt not secure implementing them, being even at another continent and not even having see the construction, just measurement (sadly all of us forhot to ask or supply me with some pictures of the actual situation ofthe mounting boards);
b) neither gensis nor Tamas have had the equipment to estabish a fixed basline for all measurements. I do not know if Genesis did control if the floor pof the SCM cooridar are really on one level, and Tamas could only estbalish a baseline for each panel. That confronted me with a relative psitionihg, not an absolute one, and when it came to doing the angles, I felt a need to do three double control, as in the construction process of my 'master measure file' a slight difference in an gle over a great length could have made things go wrong.

16) The question of Genesis for having markers on the HPL prints, surpirsed me and I have already answered that question in extenso, do not want to repaet it here. I did however suggest a simple way to measure, nd just note here that the margings on the sides are always the same so there is measure to the print files and NO we will not print markers on top of artwork. We have pencils for that.

Tjebbe van Tijen/Imaginary Museum projects, Amsterdam Monday 25th of June


A report of the databse I made for all the measures can be dwonloaded here: SCMURAL2measurementReportSml.pdf

An overview of all the prin files sent is here: SCMURAL2printBatch.pdf
SCROLL1: layout of scroll over the walls
SCROLL 2
SCROLL 3
Print files and margins: below the system of measurements is shown, with the measures as taken from Tamas + the added margings at top/bottom and left/right. Next picture shows the HPL production measures and how in the vertical plane ther is no space for a marker. My argument is that such markers are not needed and can be measured with a simple tool from the adge of the print. Last picture shows how non rectangular pictures are fitted ready for HPL production.
Paper templates: one possible method for taking measures and applying then by using heavy paper templates, the most secure metho: try if it fits first with a paper template before you cut and/or trim!
Genesis measure compartison problem: the line of pictures below shows the big difference in resolution when checking the Genesis measures for the mounting of the mural within my 'master measure file' even after using the maximum of enlargement for rendering (without distortions) from a PDF to a Photoshop (Genesis = 300 dpi I render 4x that to 1200 dpi and still it is just a white object on the green coloured surface of my real scale file. NB When the drawings supplied by Genesis would have been of a much larger scale (1:1) many problems would NOT have occured. I understand that this is the first time Genesis does such a big mural, which task is very different from their regular installation of decorative HPL panels in buildings.