See Hear Part 1 - Developing Ideas & Experimentation

After creating ideas in my sketchbook, I began to experiment with 'materials'...digital materials that is.

I found this video tutorial on Youtube on how to create fractal art with Photoshop. I thought that the idea of repeating an image of a microwave with it distorting as it repeats would be interesting.

As fun and interesting the imagery that could be created with the basic techniques shown in the video, I felt that  it didn't suit the sound design. My section of the sound design is much gentler than the imagery suggests. Also the microwave was already going to be a simple white line drawing so to have a photo realistic image would not fit with the style of the animation we had planned to create.

To try for something gentler, I decided to experiment with the spectrogram that can be viewed on Adobe Audition. The spectrogram is essentially a visual representation of the frequencies involved in a sound. I thought of the idea to pan along it as the sound played.

Adobe Audition Screen Capture

I zoomed into the image on Premiere Pro, set some keyframes to pan along it and added a fade in/out. I liked the gentler, more atmospheric effect from this in comparison to fractal microwave imagery.

The following tests stemmed from ideas that I made in my sketchbook.

I decided to try and create some imagery on Photoshop that had a similar effect as the spectrogram. I had not used Photoshop much for 'painting' but only for editing photos so it was good to play around with some of its tools. The idea I had for the lines would be that they could gently float up and down. I wanted to stick with warm colours as I felt it represented the major chord sustained in the background.

Research image that I took inspiration from.

Attempts on Photoshop

Another thing I wanted to try was to create a radial audio spectrum on After Effects since there are tutorials on Youtube for how to do it. This is when a line reacts in ways that match the frequencies in a sound. I thought that it could be used for one of the sounds in my section and that it would be nice to have it bubbling away softly. The following clips are anything but bubbling away softly but purely test pieces for learning how to do it.

Radial Audio Spectrum created on After Effects w/ colour change & fades added on Premiere Pro.
Note: There is sound.

  

Same After Effects footage but with other effects applied