Interactive Sound
Interactive on screen animation
Proposal
As a group we decided to incorporate elements of our courses into it. With us doing games design and web design, we chose to use flash. We will then animate characters in different states with music to go with the mood set in each scene. We will then overlay various sounds as sound effects. We then plan to put the character in each scene into different situations, these where chosen as sleeping, walking and dancing. Music will have to be written to go with these and switching of the scenes will be activated by stepping onto a pressure mat.
Risk Assessment
We have to make sure any risks are made clear and the best possible solution to providing the safest way for users is important. With there being pressure mats and computer equipment there will be wires trailing along the floor. To make this safer we will use some type of masking tape to cover the wires. This is very important. We will also stick the mats down as we don’t want people to fall over them; we are aiming to do this in the safest way possible without removing any part of the experience.
Idea Details
Firstly we decided on one idea from a collection from types of installation art. Claire did the main part of the research and showed us some examples and helped with our understanding towards what installation art is and how to do it. With experience from our sound walk and experiment time in the studio we planned out how to do this. One person would do research, one would do the animation and another would draw up some concepts; these three people would also help to record sounds done in the recording studio. One person would do the coding, one would do sound loops. We would all work together to put the sound into the application and arrange the mats. The initial set up time will take about 30 minutes to half an hour with some last minute code needed to function with the mats.
Set up of the mats, speakers and laptop – this was changed to a big screen idea which added a projector and whiteboard to the final set up.
As the person enters the installation there will be two mats on the floor along with a laptop, speakers and a screen. The bigger the screen the better it will be. So to achieve this we will try and book a room with a projector. On the screen there will be an animation of a man sleeping. When the person steps onto one of the pressure mats the animation will change, one pressure mat will show him in a ‘Winter Wonderland’ and another will show him dancing at a disco.
Winter Wonderland animation
Sleeping animation
Disco animation
Whilst creating the soundscape we decided to cut out any background sounds we decided only to have the noise we needed to bring it to life this was; some background music, this would keep it clear and nice audibly, and some sound effects quietly over the top, this would bring some life to the installation. We chose to have a recording room as all background noise would be cancelled out and we have found from time experimenting in the recording studio that it has really good acoustics and would help to produce the crisp sound we are aiming for.
The sound loops developed by Liam where done in garage band. For the sound effects we recorded these on location, luckily it was snowing which was a sound that we needed, this allowed us to gather some sounds of crunching snow. This we hope will allow us to make the animation come more to life.
The animations where done by Matt and he designed all 3 states of the character. Sarah produced some drawings of what it would look like. Everyone helped whilst I recorded some songs on guitar in the recording studio however the quality was not quite as crisp as we was aiming for.
Whilst recorded instrumental songs on guitar we found that the sound did not seem quite as professional and even though we got rid of reverberation, student and other environmental noises there was something that didn’t quite seem as clear. Unfortunately the instrumental tracks I wrote where not used but we can say that we experimented with this.
Contribution
I focused mainly on the code area of the design. I set up variables on the animation so that when pressure is applied to the mats, an animation plays and when pressure is released it goes back to another. This was done before we did the set up however we could only apply the action script to the file once obtaining the pressure mats. This was a problem as I had no previous experience with custom controllers. We had originally set the buttons up to test it as a variable, this put, as if the button is pressed down then the variable will equal 1, if it is released it will equal 0. I then put an ‘if’ statement stating if it equals 1 play the second animation if it equals 0 it reverts to the first animation. However when doing the pressure mats it was a bit more complex. I tried simply making it play an animation when the pressure input is greater than 512 (the halfway mark) this did not work so I had to try various things. In total I tried about 20 different methods before I got one that worked. The main problem throughout was the sound not attaching properly and looping. However I went back to my original variable idea of basically creating an on/off trigger which was what we wanted and we eventually got it working.
I also designed a 3d representation of the setup of how it would finally look. This didn’t take too long but I thought that having a 3d image would show how we wanted it to look finally.
Along with this I spent quite a bit of time in the recording studio, I recorded some songs to go with the animation on guitar. While these worked I didn’t feel like the quality was quite there that we wanted to go with the animation. These worked and had a nice feel and I took this into consideration whilst writing the score.
Evaluation
Overall it went quite well however I would have given us more time in the end to setup the final thing. Having no experience with pressure mats and not being able to get any information on them I spent the best part of an hour adapting to how the pre-written code was laid out. If I had more time I think I could have sorted this much faster. I think that the sounds we recorded on location were quite clear considering the wind and other background noise that was present upon recording. We worked well as a team and I think the final piece reflected this.
Whilst we all agreed that we wanted 5.1 surround sound, the program we used; flash, did not support this function. We had discussed a few ideas and this one was the one that stood out, mainly because it allowed us all to share some of our skills.
The timbre went well with the animation and I feel like the mood of this changed between each scene, this was what we was aiming to achieve.