Decomposition of the soundtrack

These days I'm working on how to decompose the piece of music which will be used as my soundtrack.

The animation I'm going to do is describe the music through motion graphics. It seems like paint something while listen to the music, and the things I draw is what I imagined, and I have to show a variety of timbres and rhythm by the movement of graphs. Because my project isn't a traditional animation work so there isn't a clear storyline in my animation. My storyboard cannot be made by using traditional ways. Actually all of my animation in this project is basing on the soundtrack.

So where I should start? How can I draw a storyboard without a clear storyline? In the beginning I tried to separate the music into few pieces. And then I listened each piece and repeated it again and again. At meanwhile I tried to draw something on the paper to record all the image which were fleeted in my mind. However I found this is too hard. And then I got an idea, I decompose the music in an application called Audio. I detach every single timbre I could hear from the soundtrack and organize all the same timbres into one single group. And then I got many groups with different timbre.

Here is the screenshot. The green track on the top row is the original music and there are seven tracks with different color under the green one. They are the pieces I detached from the music. Each of them contained certain timbre in it and each kind of same timbre will be set into a single group ( track ). Therefore you can understand here is seven different timbres in the entire track.

From now I can have a visual cognition on this music. I can see how these different sound composed the whole track. For example in the first part the focal point is the guitar's sound and from the 40 seconds the sound of keyboard appeared regularity. I can have a intuitive sense about it.

I think this is a good entry point for my project. I can see the structure and I can see what kind of the sound is the leading role in certain part. So next I have to figure out how to express these sounds by using different stuff and what kind of movement will be appropriate for certain sounds to make people feel good when they connect the visual part and the auditory part.

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Exploring the issues around combining motion graphics with live action

Motion graphics, as a new form of graphic design was born in the 1950s. Since the 1960s, due to the advancements in digital technology, a huge change emerged in the industry of animation and film with the development of computer animation. The boom had also affected the field of motion graphics. It became possible for a Graphic Designer to change his or her role into a Motion Designer with the newly evolved tools of moving image.

A large number of excellent motion graphic works have emerged and the applications of motion graphics have become more widely used. In the era of which special effects and compositing technology become more and more advanced, the technique of combining animation and live action is already maturing, and has already been applied to a large number of film and advertising productions. In such a context, motion graphics, as a branch of animation, is also beginning to combine with live action.

This article focuses on discussion around the technique of combining motion graphics with live action. I will explore how to express emotion and narrate story by using the technique, and what kind of visual experiences it can bring to audiences. I will also analyze the difference between motion graphics and traditional animation by documenting the approaches and process of my own practice, which will be a music video, made using this technique. Moreover, I will ask questions for some unresolved issues at the end.

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