Project 2- Sound

For this project we were tasked with choosing a song, only instrumentals, and to make an animation for it. This project required much studying and analyzing into the music of our choice. Initially when picking music I had a hard time because most of the songs I picked were very repetitive. I needed something that had a wide variety of instruments so I could make a visual that represented every instrument. I finally got to a very interesting and trippy sound by Herbie Hancock called "Sly". This 80s funk/jazz fusion has many instruments including trumpets, sax, piano, and synth type pianos. Once we did this we had to analyze the piece by creating a music chart. From this we were able to identify when each instrument started to play, and how high or low they were played. At first I did not understand the need for this, and thought to myself that I was not a music major. However, when completing the list I realized that this exercise was giving us the ability to map out our animation based on when certain instruments played.

I wanted to be very creative and geometric when it came to this project. I figured shapes were the bast way to showcase the jazz style song, and try to accompany by giving it a trippy aesthetic. The next step was to create storyboard in which I spent much time and effort on. I really wanted to create a detailed and creative roadmap for this animation. I pondered for some time on how to animate with shapes, and what each shape did according to which instrument I assigned them. After watching many videos on YouTube of people creating geometric animations I finally was able to give each instrument a specific shape to represent it. From here I wanted to make sure that the shapes did not have similar motions so that way it did nit become repetitive and boring. Instead I looked back to the music and found that within the minute of the song I chose, there was a break in the middle. From this break the music sped up and got very crazy. This was my eureka moment. For my idea I planned to keep the animation simple within the first half, with mainly a black background with white shapes, and then the second half become colorful and crazy with the shapes going wild to the tempo. Finally the last step was to bridge these two ideas together. That is when I came up with the idea of a diamond that would form and expand, showing a rainbow of colors. The viewer will feel like they are going through a Tunnel and that the diamond is coming at them. At the end it would transport them into the second half of the animation. To give it a personal and rubust touch, I hand drew everything in the second half. From the shapes to the background, everything is handmade and scanned into photoshop to save and manipulate to animation in After Effects.

This project was really interesting and taught me a lot about how important sound is to an animation. Listening closely to key instruments and sounds can make all the difference when lining up your animation to the music.