28 Oct Ocean backdrop experiment
As I move forward on my undersea diorama series I find its time to get serious about the backdrops. I found some really terrific psychedelic plastic material that looks a good deal like water. By overlaying it with some blue acetate the effect is even stronger.
I wanted to back light it with color changing LEDs but ran into some trouble getting a good sequence of colors. I face pressure daily to get with the times and start programing my own electronics for these pieces, but its just not in my nature to turn to my computer to solve tangible problems in the studio. The LEDs I chose for this project come with a handy little sequencer that you can program (with actual buttons) to output all sorts of patterns. A gentle color shift selection was really nice, except that the reds were out of place for an underwater scene. I struggled with this until it finally occurred to me: Connect the “red” signal wire back to the “blue” contact on the LEDs! Worked like a charm. Shown in the video below is the result with two parallel rows of the LEDs with the blue and green lines crossed between them to change up the pattern even more. 
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