APD Week9 Play and Abstraction

Theme

Play and Abstraction

Context

This week's lecture discussed the ABSTRACT conception and intrigued me, conveying feelings without specific explicit instructions. I found that particle effect animation can be more abstract. According to Taylor-Turner (2009), there are also the classifications of non-objective, absolute, or concrete animation, which use imagery that is entirely free of icons and symbols and instead uses shape, light, colour, movement, and time. These animations DO NOT make references to recognised forms which are called abstract animation. Ryoji Ikeda's abstract work "micro" (2015) uses the sound of scanners, infrared, radar and other electronic devices to compose music and create stunning and magnificent special effects. This inspired me to make an animation that uses abstract animation to summarize a feeling. Instead of using animation to tell stories, they explore conveying feelings. My response to this week's theme is to present concrete animation in abstract form. It was designed to test the 3D expansion of particles to render images. So the basic shape and colour of the Milky Way were used in the response. I make short films without storylines to convey the feeling of cosmic effects. I hope this content can arouse the audience's deeper thinking about the universe, life and nature, etc.

Methods

This reaction was generated by Red Giant's Trapcode 3D particle rendering plugin in the post-AE effects software. First, I summarized the motion of the Milky Way and the diffusion rhythm of particles and selected a suitable base map. I then used its properties in AE to visualize the animation through the Form effect. The cosmic track was also used to make the listener more aware of the vastness of space.

Reflection

The visual sound looks good and I'm sure it conveys the feeling of the Milky Way moving. After costing plenty of time on picture searching, my goal was to simulate more sound clips. Having spent a lot of time conceptually, my goal was to compose more movement nodes. To better get feelings, morphologies can be enriched to express different camera motions. Its particle visual effects look good and I believe it represents the sense of space. To better convey feelings, we can enrich more morphology to express different emotions, such as distortion, explosion, spiral, and so on. However, due to my computer equipment, this special effect only uses the X-axis and Y-axis rotation of the Form effect, but the simple change is enough to make the vastness of the universe. Our earth is just a drop in the ocean, let alone the even smaller human beings. This experiment also made me feel that life is short and precious.

Reference

Dentry. T., What's Up with Abstract Animation, Animatic Magzine, n.d., 2009, viewed on Sept 26th.
Ikeda. R., micro, Youtube, 2015, viewed on Sept 23th. <https://youtu.be/fL_A3v8nZrs>
Takamasa A., rhythm variation 06, 2013, viewed on Sept 24th. <https://youtu.be/AovB1kid35o>

Youtube Link: https://youtu.be/dbb_lictcys