Animation Exercise 4: Audio Synchrosis

The video

How it was made

The first thing that was required for this exercise is that I needed to get an audio track for the main centerpiece of the motion graphic work. I went ahead and downloaded a quick Drum and Bass track from Freesound. Now I had to look for a good animation preset that will make the graphic stand out and move accurately with the track. I went with a lightning horizontal effect, and tested it with the green color palate. The best part about this technique is that the animation is created for you, eliminating the hassle of keyframing the Synchrosis entirely. In the attribute editor, I modified a few things so that the lightning would strike from vertically instead of horizontally for more depth. I also attempted to modify the conductivity state, forking and size of the lightning to make it stand out more. This is what’s going to form the basis of the synchronized track.

I also took into consideration the length of the track in relation to the video. Ten seconds seems like a reasonable length since the track is short and I plan to include video credits of the track’s source anyway.

Now it’s time to make this composition stand out. I duplicated the synchrosis lightning and positioned them either side of the original so that they all point downwards. I also changed the lightning’s color from green to blue to give more realism to the composition.

I’d let the lightning dance around for a few seconds, just as the clip is about to end before I can start to put together the end credits that would show up for the remaining half of the composition. I turned on the proportional grid so that the text should be aligned in the center or within the piece, displaying the title of the composition and the music source.

The end credits sequence was something I had planned for a while, since the audio track was shorter than the composition itself. I ensured to animate the opacity of the credits, bringing it in at the right time to inform the viewers of the composition.

Once I was done, I proceeded to render it twice in both MP4 and MOV files, the latter will be to post onto my box account for the uncompressed audio advantage. Here should be the icon for the MOV file.

Overall, this exercise was a more simple composition compared to my other pieces. The only real effect was the mentioned required synchrosis preset, which looking back at it looks like it could do with a bit more tweaking to make it look more pleasant to look at should I attempt this next time. I should also point out that upon looking back at the composition, I also noticed that there wasn’t any other nice effects accompanying the synchrosis, which takes away from the composition a bit in terms of quality. I would hope to point out those flaws next time, but other than that, it’s a fairly nice attempt.