loop

As I shift my creative focus away from traditional 2D/framed media and towards 360° video and VR, I find myself in need of good ambient sound more and more frequently. In the world of traditional motion design and film, good music was king. Adding a catchy tune to a piece could make or break its success, and entire careers were built on the ability to sync up visuals to the rhythm and sounds of the audio track.

Now, with the advent of Virtual Reality the priorities have changed. Establishing audience's sense of presence is the key component of crafting a successful experience. Generally speaking, it is a good practice to take your time immersing the viewer in your world - and well-crafted soundscape is as important as the visuals in establishing the believably of the virtual world.

While nothing will substitute a good audio track created by a professional sound engineer, Ambient Mixer is an online service that's ideal for rapid prototyping. It comes in extremely handy whenever you need to lay in a basic atmospheric sound, but still want to customize it to fit your particular needs.

It's a new month (well, almost the end of it) and a new Bowerbirds song time. This time I have used some of the techniques quite familiar to the followers of my tutorial series. The overarching principle remains the same - a video loop revealed by mixing Cyan, Magenta and Yellow inks. It's quite a jump from the April one and we're already brewing some ideas for June :)

Inspired by the cross-processed photos and CMYK printing, I have developed a visual effect for "digital polaroid", based on the ink bleed transitions and used it to reveal the video over the course of a three minute song.