The Avalanches: Frontier Psychiatrist _ Video _ Stop Motion Animation

This is a visual representation of Frontier Psychiatrist by the Avalanches. This was created in response to a university brief which asked that we 'map', or visually represent a song of our choice. As the song deals with psychiatry my intial thoughts were of testing and different therapies used to treat psychiatric conditions. The classic Rorschach or ink blot test sprang to mind and inspired me to use ink in some way. Coupled with this was a desire to represent brain actrivity and perhaps how the brain may respond to the music. I created this animation with this in mind, assigning a different coloured ink blot to the different eloements of the song, i.e. drums, vocals, scratching, melody etc. To create the visuals I photographed ink as i gradually spread it out on a traditional letterpress slab. I then created a stop-frame sequence of these which showed the ink spreading and hence mirroring the idea of brain activity spreading through the mind. I then looped these sequences over and over again. The animation is a bit sketchy but it was my first time using After Effects so I'm quite pleased with the result...but I am sick of the sight of it now!

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Mitchell Pearce
• Graphic Design
• Stop Motion
• Stop frame
• Avalanches
• Video
• Brain Activity
• D&AD
• MMU
• Mapping

[thatsupergirl]

Great song choice and representation. What course were you studying? And did you just use AE for composing the images into a sequence, or was it for adding additional effects?

[mitchellop]

@thatsupergirl Thanks. I study Design & Art Direction although the course has recently changed its name to Graphic Design. AE was used to create the sequences from the stills and then used to arrange the composition. There are no additional effects other than altering the blending modes.

[XxKIDYODAx]

awesome,nuff said

[thatonekidathishouse]

i just love this song all in general

[AnemicChia]

Really wonderful! Very creative and exciting, and it fits the music well. My only wish is that you had utilized the whole picture plane, and perhaps not made everything so centralized. It would be nice to see things popping up at the edges, almost exploding outward. But other than that, really excellent animation in conception and execution, I can tell it was a lot of time and effort well-spent!

[thewaronterror]

I love it.