Originating from a concept design that Dejan had sent (original work of Damjan Stankovic), this project was my visual response to some of the elements that were in the design. The metaphor was that of scanning for a virus in a spherical matrix of data – I looked at this file later and thought that it could be part of the ‘operating system’ of the 3d speaker. A virus in a speaker?

I was content with this file after creating a texture of an opacity map. I didn’t really know where to go with the movement of the file….I decided to take the RGB value (eg 255, 255, 255) of a single pixel from 750 images creating a data file with a value in this range. Then applied this data to the 3d inner square that is ‘scanning’ the file creating a movement that does look a bit strange but does give a good effect of linear scanning. The lighting of the file was very important as a slight glossy look helps to create the shape of the sphere and gives the object a digital glow.

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Infection_found

When an infection is found the object is zoomed up revealing the infection and then ‘quarantined’ and removed. This sequence was a series of compositions in AE of animated circles (with a glowing pulse when infection removed) and a textual overlay of the file type.

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The sound track (if you can call it that) was a recording from a digital set top box through a computer of 6 hours of TV in MPEG1 format – I decided to ‘scrub’ through the audio and let it stop for a second then continue on (as if scanning for something). Then realizing that this was not distorted enough added a tone generator in AE and parented its pitch and frequency values to the camera – so if the camera went one way the tone would go up etc. Giving a feeling of tuning analog equipment.

The final treating of this file was to add a channel delay so the edges had a colored blur. An effect used a lot to simulated busted tubes. Then at certain points a camera roll and malfunction effect was applied to give the feeling on the object being tuned.

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The color design for the speaker came from a building I saw at night – It was shades of grey and at the very top of the building was a neon strip that ran all the way around. I thought that this would make a nice 3d object especially if I could get a similar glow to the object.

This project was really just my introduction into 3d cameras in After effects and how to track motion. The speaker was modeled to look like a futuristic subwoofer that is more elaborate and complex.

Rendering (16:9, RLA+A) was completed in 3 stages – the speaker itself, the glass casing and the text were all separate so that I could play with the layers in AE. The movement of the cone was again assigned a controller so that it would move with the audio track.

If I were to do this file again I would add a camera shake to the animation as if the bass were so heavy that the camera was being moved as well as the audio track is very impactful.

Originally I wanted to attack this file with vector art but I felt that it should be left as clean as possible and let the object speak for itself. The final stage of this render was the top panel of the speaker (like an equalizer) it was completely made in AE, bent to match the curve of the speaker and stuck on to the 3d object (with blu tack). The whole animation was then treated to get more of a glow.

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The concept of a little seed coming up out of ground was agreed upon and I went straight home to start designing the seedling. It is obviously influence by Autechre’s Gantz Graf and clean modern vector styles but visually I wanted to push the contrast of heavy ‘harmonic distortion’ on a tiny little organic plant. Almost as if the plants DNA was being modified by sonic pulses.

Process.

The distortion map is created in after effects using ‘audio spectrum’ where a 16:9 map of the soundtrack was rendered (which was to become the base of all vector movements). To create harder and softer distortions on the plant the audio file was then filtered so that high frequencies would be the physical distortion on the plant and low frequencies would be the shake movement. After the seedling was satisfactorily distorted the camera move was exported in RLA so that the vector overlays could be matched. The overlays were to reflect a sort of monitoring system of the amount of audio and the plants distortions.

The audio sphere (or bass ball) is created out of the same audio map but traced around a 3d sphere (‘alpha infection’) and then treated in after effects to produce a glowing, pulsating ball which is wrapped around the plant.

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Sound (by Dejan Petrovic)

Doing a soundtrack for this piece was a bit of a challenge. The coffee-table idea bounced off our heads and we both had the same, yet different mental picture of how this animation should look like.

So it started with sound. Knowing Brad’s recent influences in music I’ve decided to go with the most unpleasant and distorted option I had up my sleave Malstrom synthesizer served me well in this case. And so I started.

First thing I had to visualise was the sound, a void would make just before the seed comes out. For this I used a very deep bass in Subtractor Synth. I had all sorts of ideas in my head but they would all take a very long time to implement, especially for this experimental piece.

soundtrack reason sound file

The idea in a form of a track bounced off couple of more times until we’ve polished it to our liking. At the same time Brad was constructing his little 3D world, and at some point it all seem to have merged into one. In our case it was very hard to tell which one should have been done first – sound or the animation so they were done simultaneously.

Enough talk.

Here is the source track in Propellerhead Reason | video file: harmonic_distortions.mov – (Right Click – Save As… )

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[e·the·re·al adj. Characterized by lightness and insubstantiality; intangible. Highly refined; delicate. Of the celestial spheres; heavenly. Not of this world; spiritual.]

I think this is great starting point for any design – I wanted to create a dreamy effect to the design sort of as if this ‘thing’ was able to create or interact with dreams in a digital way. I wanted there to be lots of light and elements randomly going on all the time so that it looked like it was in constant motion… I think the motion could be better as it looks a bit ‘I’m new to 3dish’ but I don’t really ever go back to old designs.

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Process

3D
I started with just a sphere in max and added a distort modifier using 750 happy snaps from my digital camera (30secs of video) as an animation map. After it was sufficiently distorting I added the inner rings which sort of make it look off balance but as the sphere is modified it goes outside the rings to balance the design.

Color
I wanted to the colors to look like dream sequences in anime films. There is always lots of glow and things are shiny and bright. The electric blue is used a lot in motion graphics now – especially cinema but I still think it looks good. Cinema! Put this on cinema!!!!

After effects
After the base animation was done in max I imported it into after effects and started throwing in vector stuff. I want to design something using the blue glow that appears at about 5 seconds in the background. Like a design using just a ‘gas’ effect – I don’t know how but it would look good. The 3d layer in afx was duplicated and the top layer used as a displacement map (gives it a shine). Then the running circular lines were made by using digieffect delirium ‘hyper harmonizer’ – it sort of gives it a different dimension instead of just a flat object.

Sound
I don’t have sound for this one. My vision for the sound was a slight melody using a glass sound but minimal. And when it explodes (throwing out the white glow) have a nice deep ‘digitally’ bassy/electonicy sound (like a scream mixed with a low tone).

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