What My Ears Hear Workshop
In the first lesson, I went through a number of exercises, having focused on Narrative Space and understanding how a series of sound and image tests can help build an environment. I went through an animation that Tom Denney created where he showed the same visual multiple times but with different background sounds to show different moods and genres. The first exercise was seeing which kind of sounds could be made from just using a piece of paper. This was actually quite a fun activity, as there were a lot of sounds that could be made, for example fire crackling, flapping wings and more. After this, we went around the campus in pairs and tried to record different unique sounds, which we then presented to the rest of the class. This was interesting for me, as it allowed me to see the different sounds which I could potentially use when creating my own final piece.
Homework Workshop
We were given homework, which was to create a narrative space
using sound along with a short animation or image, which had to be
at least 10 seconds long. I created a 3D animation based on The
Dog and The Shadow, one of the summer project ideas I had but
had done the least amount of work on. I used Maya and After
Effects to composite, and also added sound. I recorded sounds that
I could make within the house (using water/objects/my own voice),
and thought of various techniques that could be used for this pre-
visual animation. For the first one, I used a soundtrack from Rene
Aubry called “Seduction” as I really liked the happy, relaxing
emotion that it conveyed. The second sound that I tried to use was
very dark and eerie, as I tried to make the audience feel the horror
narrative. The third sound was relaxing and more organic, as you
could hear more of the sounds that nature creates (such as the
wind etc). The fourth sound was mysterious and suspenseful. All
four music pieces created a unique narrative space, displaying
different worlds and changing how the audience feel. I personally
liked the happy calm music because not only does it suit to the
scenario visually but it gives audiences comfort and happiness
when viewing it.
Xgen Hair with Sam
I found applying Xgen hair on the dog very difficult on my first
attempt. I wanted the description to be “groomable hair splines”.
However when using it, there would purple Xs on my object and so
it would never work. Having spoken to my personal tutor about this,
he advised me to update Maya 2018 to 2020. It took some time to
process, but updating to Maya 2020 allowed me to add “groomable
hair splines” that I wanted.