Sound Map Animation

Have you ever wanted to create a visual representation of the sounds around you? With this tutorial you can do just that!

By creating an animated visual sound map you can create a better understanding of the sounds around you and how they can be interpreted in different ways! By using photoshop, illustrator and a few simple steps, you can create a beautiful sound map animation.

First you should take a walk around your neighborhood and gather sounds via a recording device. Take a variety of sounds so that when you create the composition later you will have many to choose from.

The sounds can be put together using garage band (by importing the different sounds) or through a variety of other downloadable music creation programs.

In illustrator begin to create the symbols for your animation. Using the shape tool you can create different shapes of different colors and shapes. Think about how you could visually represent a sound. What would it look like? Would it be big or small? How would it interact with other shapes?

Save each shape separately in a tiff file to save for transparency.

Once you have all of the symbols in separate files you can import them all to photoshop. Within photoshop it is important to put each shape on a different layer. You can also begin to arrange the composition of the sounds. When all of the shapes are there you will need to open the animation tab which is located in the "window" tab on the top right of the screen. You will see a series of frames, and each frame can be changed depending on length. To start creating your animation you will need to hide all layers that you don't want visible at the start. With each addition of movement you unhide the layers on a new frame. For example the first frame would have all of the layers hidden, whereas the second frame would have the first frame unhidden. Do this until you have completed your animation.

The last step is exporting the video! You can do this by going to file>export. Once you have your video you can play it with your sound piece for a visual and sound experience.