APD - playing with sound

This week I wanted to take the sound prompt and use it to practice something completely new in After Effects, and incorporate play as experimentation and learning in this exercise

I had this idea of having a 3D object in space giving off the abstract interpretation of a sound. I recorded a few sounds on my phone (a match being struck, water pouring into a glass, a mortar and pestle, and rosemary burning) and chose to use the match lighting sound for this experiment

I consulted YouTube tutorials firstly on how to construct a 3D shape in After Effects using 2D shapes with the Stroke tool, and then compiling this 3D shape into a Pre-comp. This 3D shape is a transparent shape, which was what I wanted for this experiment

The next thing that I wanted to do was have a particle simulator emit sparks from a single point on the shape and continue emitting sparks from that point as the shape spins in space

The first method that I tried was by manipulating the Position of the Particle>Producer to line up with the corner of the cube. This was successful except for the fact that when the clip played, the composition boundaries cut off the particles creating a weird cropped effect

The next thing that I tried was creating a Null Object>Path>Mask, using the Pen Tool to draw a path out for the Particle Producer to travel along. I drew the path points on one specific corner of the cube as it spins in space

I then copied and pasted the Mask Path onto the Null Object Position. I added a Solid Layer with the Particle effect, and copied and pasted the Null Object Position onto the Particle Producer Position.

Now, the sparks are emitting from the point I want and isn't being cropped weirdly.

The only issue left is that the mask path keyframes do not synchronise with the path of the cube corner that you visually can see. I will have to adjust this further

After rendering and exporting the final AE file as a mov. file, I edited in Premiere Pro the film clip over the matchlighting sound I recorded, synchronised and exported this first experiment