Animators working in short film formats are continually challenged to develop new looks to catch the visual attention of increasingly sophisticated audiences. With the addition of digital tools and just plain innovation, there is an exponentially increasing number of ways to achieve a new, fresh look. Here is how four projects -- a CGI film envisioning music, an Estonian television short, a funky TV commercial and a promotional CD-ROM -- have recently seized these opportunities.

Harmonic Voltage. © 2001, Animusic.	Stick Figures. © 2001, Animusic.

Animusic
Wayne Lytle, Animusic Founder and Director
Animusic, Cortland, New York

Wayne Lytle first began to envision music animation in 1982, in the very early days of MIDI. In 1989 he began coding his first MIDI-driven experimental animations, introducing More Bells and Whistles at the SIGGRAPH 1990 Electronic Theater.

Music animation has continued to be his passion, and to this end he formed Animusic in the mid-'90s. Animusic produces computer animation video albums, released on DVD. A video album is comprised of several "pieces" -- or "singles" (in record industry lingo) or "animated shorts" (in film industry lingo).

As Lytle explains, "In each piece, the goal of Animusic is to create virtual instruments that give the illusion of creating the music heard on the soundtrack. The music is created on synthesizers, and the animation is all data-driven computer animation."

View a QuickTime clip from Animusic's Future Retro. © 2001, Animusic.

Musical instruments are modeled using commercial 3D animation software, and then animated via proprietary algorithmic animation software called MIDImotion™, created by Lytle. MIDImotion analyses the MIDI data in a pre-process and calculates all motion for a given time range. For each frame, the entire musical context is taken into consideration, including not only the notes currently sounding, but those that have played recently, and those coming up soon. This allows for accurate motion-planning.

There are about a dozen different algorithms applied to create the object motion. These include algorithms for percussion instruments, sticks and mallets, vibrating strings, and various more general music-based motion. Typically each instrument will use several algorithms simultaneously in layers.