Hi.
The idea behind this collab is to piece together a ton of 3s music videos. As long as they're all at 160BPM, they'll flow together, yet it'll all retain a crazy frantic pace.
Who can join?
Anyone. Since each part is only 3s, it'll almost definitely be good enough to go in, as long as you put in a modicum of effort. And if getting your 3s snippet of music is tricky for you, I can help you out there.
Why should I join?
Maybe you don't want to spend a massive amount of time animating and would rather just to a 3s snippet of something? Maybe you want to try a new technique, want to make sure it's seen in the portal, but don't want to dedicate a whole feature to it? Or maybe you just want to be involved with cool experimental things?
Getting the music
Okay. First choose a song that has a short snippet you like the sound of. Now, find out the current BPM.
(One way is to use my BPM counter - just start the music, open the page, then start clicking to the beats. Make sure you do it for 10s or so to get a representative number and maybe do it thrice, to check. You'll probably find that you get slightly different numbers due to human error. Use your judgement and work out what it's likely to be.
Now, open the file in a sound editor. I suggest Audacity - it's free and cross-platform. In Audacity, select everything (ctrl+A), then go to effect>change tempo. In 2nd row of boxes, put the current BPM in the left-hand side, then put '160' on the right hand side. This should ensure that the rhythm remains fairly constant throughout the movie. Note - if the original tempo was under 90ish or over 260ish, it may be an idea to halve or double that number. Assuming the song has 4 beats per bar (which I'm asking you to stick to), halving/doubling the BPM is almost a matter of personal taste and shouldn't affect how it flows too much.
Now, use the mouse to select portions and hit delete to remove everything other than 8 beats, which will give you a 3s portion.
Animating
Now animate whatever you want, using that 3s section as a soundtrack. Experiment with lip-synching or a new technique, just animate a grid of pixels or do some free-association. Subject matter is entirely up to you.
Animate at 30FPS.
The size is 600x370, but don't feel like you need to fill the frame or even do a background necessarily.
If you use Flash 10, export it as a CS3-compatible file. Flash 5,MX,MX2004,8 or CS3 are allowed.
Please name your symbols using this conventions: [username][whatever]
(so my symbols might be 'Bezman_cat', 'Bezman_lips', 'Bezman_movingWings' etc.)
Animate everything within one movie clip.
How I'll mix these
I'm not entirely sure. I'll put them all together, trying to get the music and graphics to flow. If your efforts look awesome and work as a loop, I may use them to help the movie flow from one piece to another. For example, if your effort was just a man walking to the beat, I may have him staying on a bit longer than 3s. If you draw something that works as a background, I'll leave it on for longer. I might have 2 music clips running alongside each other or one repeating if it works. I reserve the right to mix it all how I see fit.
Remember
- if you have any questions or issues, ask and I can either help or answer you.
- It should be awesome.
