I was interested in ragtime music which is energetic and has an active rythm. And my work for this semester is mainly about the expression of geometries and simple shapes. These elements consist of my work for visual music.
The work was developed in Unity. I developed a tool to instantiate VFX presets in the scene dynamically. So I can create animation varied from colour, speed and duration by changing several attributes.
Steve Swink used ADSR envelop to analyze filed to measuring the control of the game feel. So I wonder if I can use it to find the connection between sound and animations.
I use the method that measures speed as the Y-axis of ADSR envelop when examing the animation. I assumed that the combination of audio and animation with a similar ADSR graph can give the audience a feeling that they are related.
Another approach is that I group the notes by section, and make a longer animation to find if the feeling of connection still exists. I found the enter and exit point is important. If we build a good connection of sound and animation in these two points, the audio and animation clip can still have a relationship. Which enhance the emotional feeling of the audience.
https://youtu.be/lioNcs1fV-A
Reflection
The procedure loop animation in Unity. There are many attributes looped like the rotation of the main axis of all objects, the shift of geometry shape, the movement of the central object, the self-rotation. These loops of attributes are not started at the same time.
I found that we can stare at some loop animations longer than others, like many satisfying 3D animation loops and animated loading icon of games( Assasins' creed Origin, Move or die etc.) While the patterns of some loop animation are very obvious and I would stop looking at it after several loops.
I assume that besides the content of the loop animation another important reason is there is no certain start or endpoint in the loop. The loop patterns are harder to be identified, the attraction will last longer. So we would stare at them longer unconsciously. In my work, I tried to import many attributes to loop in different frequency and forms and keep the speed linear instead of ease in/out, so it's hard for the audience to find out when the motion pattern presented again.