INTERACTIVE SOUND
PROPOSAL
For this project we have to gather in small groups and think of and evolve ideas for a sound installation, that would interact with the user. After deciding upon a final idea we are to develop it into a full on working product, of which is then set it up in a room and tested by a teacher/overseer.
IDEA DETAILS
Our first idea was a car which would be constructed out of cheap random materials that are classified as good for the environment. Each part of the car would produce certain animal sounds relevant to the part of the car it is e.g. the Horn would be a Moo, the wheels would have hamsters running around in them and so on.
Our second and final idea was to have a room rigged up with two pressure mats with a laptop screen/tv screen/projector placed infront of it, when you step onto the mat, an animation would take place with appropriate background music and sounds reflecting the animation. We had the idea to keep the animation dumbed down due to the more immersive visually it was the more it detours from the actual sounds.
SETUP (Right)
The image to the right is the 3D render of how we imagined and planned our sound product to look like. Two mats placed in line with each other in front of the screen, one to the left, one to the right.
In front of the mats is a table; on top of which is a laptop that will produce the animation. To the side of the laptop are speakers that will produce the sounds/music relevant to what mat you step on and to which animation that will appear on the screen.
NO MATTS ACTIVE (Below)
By default, no mats will be stepped on; when this is true the little monster, lays in bed snoring to a lullaby-esque music, thus reflecting the inactivity of the mat.
LEFT MATT ACTIVE (Below)
When the individual that is interacting with our sound installation, places his/her feet onto the left mat, the animation of the monster sleeping transitions into a disco in which the monster begins dancing to a new song relative to the scene and animation.
RIGHT MATT ACTIVE (Below)
When the individual places his/her feet onto the right mat, the animation of the sleeping monster changed into a winter wonderland based scene, in which the monster happily trots through the snowy wilderness to an appropriate snowy music theme.
IDEA THEORY
For our design we planned to keep it simple:-
EMPTY ROOM
Due to our installation being based on animated and sound related actions, we needed a basic empty room so that we could safely have enough room for the mats and distance between the screen.
LOOPING MUSIC/SOUND
As the scene involves a looping animation that is changed to another, whenever you step onto one of the following two pads, so a looping music and sound track is needed to accompany it to reflect that interactions within the scene.
LOOPING ANIMATION
The animation displayed on the screen is needed to loop as it is triggered to change whenever a mat is stepped on, if it did not loop, the transition of one to another would not be as smooth and visually pleasing.
SIMPLE ANIMATION/DESIGN
The animations look and feel was to be kept simple as to not detour from the sounds and music itself, as people may be more interested in the visual then the audio missing out on the full point of our installation. Also by keeping it simple we allowed ourselves to have more time to work on piecing it all together to fit our final needs and expectations.
MY CONTRIBUTION
For this project, each member of the team were given their own job. Since my key area of skills revolve around animation, it was obvious and of best choice to leave that job in my hands. Due to Claires research I kept to the idea of keeping it simple as to not detour from the sounds and music that would go hand in hand with the animation, as I usually put a lot more detail into my animations personally.
I created 3 simple animations for this project on behalf of my contribution, the default no mats active, left mat active and right mat active. No mats active was simply the monster fast asleep in bed, reflecting the inactivity of the mats. When you step onto the left mat, the animation cuts to the monster doing a very simple lifting and lowering of the arm dance along with the animation of the light glimmers being reflected off the disco ball.
And finally for when the right mat was active I had to create an animation in which the monster is walking through a winter wonderland, which has a random snowball being thrown across the screen during the motion.
EVALUATION
Strengths
Overall our project went extremely well right to the end, development was fun and interesting. Working as a group is always a great experience and this was no exception as we know what each of us likes and dislikes and this helped us settle an overall level in which we could work to our best and most resolved, I don’t remember having even one argument, we gave ideas said what we liked and dislikes and went with the best by all.
Although this went well to very end, it was the end which in fact created the problem. Due to being only able to have the equipment we needed for our project whilst in uni, we had no definite thumbs up saying it would work on the day. We had everything perfectly set up…everything worked perfectly before but then on the day, nothing worked, so we had to go through it all and see what was up with it and even had a teacher puzzled as to what was wrong.
Eventually we figured out another way to get it working but it really affected our overall speed and aim, which came to be a disappointment. Next time to avoid this, we may have to invest more money into making a clone of the project as a backup incase the original were not to work straight off like this one did to us.
Other than that, the project went extremely well and I will hopefully look forward to doing something like this again in the not too distant future.
RISK ASSESSMENT
Our sound installation was kept very simple and safe, the only danger that could possibly arise from the area we placed our installation would have been tripping over one of the wires that rigged the mats to the laptop but we thought ahead and gaffer taped the wires over the ground so that there would be no trips or wired related accidents/problems.
PROPOSAL
For this project we have to gather in small groups and think of and evolve ideas for a sound installation, that would interact with the user. After deciding upon a final idea we are to develop it into a full on working product, of which is then set it up in a room and tested by a teacher/overseer.
IDEA DETAILS
Our first idea was a car which would be constructed out of cheap random materials that are classified as good for the environment. Each part of the car would produce certain animal sounds relevant to the part of the car it is e.g. the Horn would be a Moo, the wheels would have hamsters running around in them and so on.
Our second and final idea was to have a room rigged up with two pressure mats with a laptop screen/tv screen/projector placed infront of it, when you step onto the mat, an animation would take place with appropriate background music and sounds reflecting the animation. We had the idea to keep the animation dumbed down due to the more immersive visually it was the more it detours from the actual sounds.
SETUP (Right)
The image to the right is the 3D render of how we imagined and planned our sound product to look like. Two mats placed in line with each other in front of the screen, one to the left, one to the right.In front of the mats is a table; on top of which is a laptop that will produce the animation. To the side of the laptop are speakers that will produce the sounds/music relevant to what mat you step on and to which animation that will appear on the screen.
NO MATTS ACTIVE (Below)
By default, no mats will be stepped on; when this is true the little monster, lays in bed snoring to a lullaby-esque music, thus reflecting the inactivity of the mat.
LEFT MATT ACTIVE (Below)
When the individual that is interacting with our sound installation, places his/her feet onto the left mat, the animation of the monster sleeping transitions into a disco in which the monster begins dancing to a new song relative to the scene and animation.
RIGHT MATT ACTIVE (Below)
When the individual places his/her feet onto the right mat, the animation of the sleeping monster changed into a winter wonderland based scene, in which the monster happily trots through the snowy wilderness to an appropriate snowy music theme.
IDEA THEORY
For our design we planned to keep it simple:-
EMPTY ROOM
Due to our installation being based on animated and sound related actions, we needed a basic empty room so that we could safely have enough room for the mats and distance between the screen.
LOOPING MUSIC/SOUND
As the scene involves a looping animation that is changed to another, whenever you step onto one of the following two pads, so a looping music and sound track is needed to accompany it to reflect that interactions within the scene.
LOOPING ANIMATION
The animation displayed on the screen is needed to loop as it is triggered to change whenever a mat is stepped on, if it did not loop, the transition of one to another would not be as smooth and visually pleasing.
SIMPLE ANIMATION/DESIGN
The animations look and feel was to be kept simple as to not detour from the sounds and music itself, as people may be more interested in the visual then the audio missing out on the full point of our installation. Also by keeping it simple we allowed ourselves to have more time to work on piecing it all together to fit our final needs and expectations.
MY CONTRIBUTION
For this project, each member of the team were given their own job. Since my key area of skills revolve around animation, it was obvious and of best choice to leave that job in my hands. Due to Claires research I kept to the idea of keeping it simple as to not detour from the sounds and music that would go hand in hand with the animation, as I usually put a lot more detail into my animations personally.
I created 3 simple animations for this project on behalf of my contribution, the default no mats active, left mat active and right mat active. No mats active was simply the monster fast asleep in bed, reflecting the inactivity of the mats. When you step onto the left mat, the animation cuts to the monster doing a very simple lifting and lowering of the arm dance along with the animation of the light glimmers being reflected off the disco ball.
And finally for when the right mat was active I had to create an animation in which the monster is walking through a winter wonderland, which has a random snowball being thrown across the screen during the motion.
EVALUATION
Strengths
- Our sound installation was rather unique, from what I saw from the other groups, nobody else created both a visual and audio interaction, which made our project stick out more and perhaps even more interesting, dependent on the individuals preference who engaged with it.
- Keeping it all simple made it all look overall better than if we made one area with more detail then the other, we created a perfect balance of audio and visual, that all our group could have agreed on.
- Our group work went very well, considering we as a whole are very close friends meant that we had more of an understanding of what we all wanted and lowered the amount of disagreements we may have encountered being paired up differently.
- Considering we could only use some of the equipment within the Universities premises on the day, made it hard to arrange it all and almost cost us our project
Overall our project went extremely well right to the end, development was fun and interesting. Working as a group is always a great experience and this was no exception as we know what each of us likes and dislikes and this helped us settle an overall level in which we could work to our best and most resolved, I don’t remember having even one argument, we gave ideas said what we liked and dislikes and went with the best by all.
Although this went well to very end, it was the end which in fact created the problem. Due to being only able to have the equipment we needed for our project whilst in uni, we had no definite thumbs up saying it would work on the day. We had everything perfectly set up…everything worked perfectly before but then on the day, nothing worked, so we had to go through it all and see what was up with it and even had a teacher puzzled as to what was wrong.
Eventually we figured out another way to get it working but it really affected our overall speed and aim, which came to be a disappointment. Next time to avoid this, we may have to invest more money into making a clone of the project as a backup incase the original were not to work straight off like this one did to us.
Other than that, the project went extremely well and I will hopefully look forward to doing something like this again in the not too distant future.
RISK ASSESSMENT
Our sound installation was kept very simple and safe, the only danger that could possibly arise from the area we placed our installation would have been tripping over one of the wires that rigged the mats to the laptop but we thought ahead and gaffer taped the wires over the ground so that there would be no trips or wired related accidents/problems.
ABOUT ME
Hello there, my name is Matthew Hardiman and i welcome you to my University Portfolio Site. I am currently studying a BA(hons) in Games Design and have many skills, both in and out of that area.
Any questions or help, contact me:-
EMAIL: duoversity@gmail.com
MSN: animattions@googlemail.com
Facebook: Click Here
Twitter: Click Here
Hello there, my name is Matthew Hardiman and i welcome you to my University Portfolio Site. I am currently studying a BA(hons) in Games Design and have many skills, both in and out of that area.
- Animator
- Artist/Designer
- Scripter
- Writer
- Web Designer
- 3D Modeller
- Sound/Video Editor
- Composer
Any questions or help, contact me:-
EMAIL: duoversity@gmail.com
MSN: animattions@googlemail.com
Facebook: Click Here
Twitter: Click Here