Pyro Paper Planes - Endless Blue
8This is an original animated music video for the Digital Motion Graphics course at St. Lawrence College. There were many steps in the making of this project. My goal was to compose a piece that appeals to both the calculative and artistic characteristics of art. I decided the theme would relate to two theoretical mathematic infnites: Time & Space.
The Creative Process
For everything to synchronize, I needed to create a musical piece that I could easily map to my animations and remain at a consistent pace. At 120 bpm, there is a beat for every half second. This resulted in the project evolving naturally throughout, as a new element to the animation and music could be introduced organically every 16 seconds.
In order to visualize space & time, I decided that both elements should have their own principles of design. Space is represented by manipulated textures and voids that appear during the course of the animation. Time is symbolized by a consistent revolving clock.
The clock presented an interesting a challenge. While visually simple, animating the hands was an interesting task. Due to the continuous motion of the hands, I needed to compose a looping animation. To accomplish this, I created a null object with an angle control. On the last frame (8 seconds), I added a keyframe to the rotation controller with a value of 1x (one full rotation). Finally, I pick whipped the shape's rotation controller to the null object. Both hands would rotate a full cycle. In order to increase the minute hand's cycle rate, I simply multiplied the expression.
After pre-composing these layers, it was time to loop the animation. This was a surprisingly complex process. To loop the animation, I enabled Time Remapping for the pre-comp. After doing so, I added the code "loopOut()" to the new Time Remap expression. To avoid the loss of a frame for every loop, I created a keyframe a step before the final keyframe and proceeded to delete the last keyframe. This allowed me to loop the pre-comp for the entire duration of the project.
An effect I found very fitting to the project was CC Radio Waves. This effect would consistently produce ever expanding polygon shapes, useful for a variety of effects in the project. Firstly, the effect is used prominently in producing the cogs of the clock. Secondly, the "ripple" also utilized this effect as a quickly expanding circle (with the addition of an echo effect). The "signal" was also a consistent pulse from this preset (with the addition of Time-Reverse).
CC Radio Waves proved to be essential in creating not only shapes, but textures that would contrast the clock. These textures were distorted even further with CC Flo Motion. With both effects combined, fractal images were produced. This produced some mesmerizing effects, including a "tunnel" like infnitum.
For the illusion of movement, I implemented the very fitting CC Starburst Effect. Over time, I increased the speed and decreased the scatter to give the illusion of motion. To give a depth to the project, I enabled 3D for every pre-comp and moved the camera towards the textures. Finally, I rotated the camera to disorientate the audience. This allowed the clock to continue rotating consistently while still changing its orientation.
Finally, to complete the project, I applied minor opacity transitions for every pre-comp. I decided that the clock needed to exit the picture rather than fade out. To do this, I simply applied two pixel polly effects, and instructed it to occur at the end of the piece. The piece concludes with the clock exploding, giving a final sense of closure.