emulsa

A motion piece for a darkroom printing app called Emulsa: three dark glass panels under a red safelight, a film strip of negatives on the left, the easel in the middle, a contrast dial, an Expose button, a timer ring and the process list on the right, and a drying line of finished prints along the bottom. A virtual cursor plays one whole print and a caption under the work area names each step. Frame 08 is picked on the strip and projected onto the easel as a negative; the contrast dial turns from grade 2 to 3½; Expose runs a 12-second exposure and the paper goes blank, the image latent; the sheet drops into the tray with ripples and the picture comes up in the developer, dense areas first, then the stop bath and the fixer, each change of chemistry sending a soft sheen across the tray while the timer ring fills step by step. The cursor switches the room light on and every red surface turns to its true tones; the print flies up to the drying line, the clip snaps shut, the count goes to 08 / 36, the line moves on and a fresh sheet loads frame 09. Everything is one pure function of time on a 1080 × 1080 stage that scales to any window, with the room's glow and film grain running on past its edges. The negatives, the developing print and its tones are computed from six black-and-white photos on a 2D canvas; the rest is HTML.