TREATMENT:

TLE is an audio/visual experience 
which is realised completely using 
3D animation and 2D compositing, 
with the objective being 
experimentation with the use of 
audio waveforms to manipulate the 
behaviour of characters and lighting.

As the primary design approach, the 
musical track itself - its instruments, 
sophisticated rhythms, bass-lines, 
timbre (texture) and most 
importantly the actual audio 
waveforms themselves - became the 
basic building blocks of this abstract 
musical plot.

With the aid of a recently developed 
audio-control method coupled with 
traditional animation and modelling 
techniques, a mode of converting, or 
transposing sound to vision has been 
employed to achieve a rhythmic and 
unified composition.

Some of the 3D attributes that are 
audio-driven;
¥ Camera - lense size or 
perspective, dolly position.

¥ Geometry - symmetric 
complexity, shape, scale, color level, 
animated texture, behaviour.

¥ Lighting - color intensity, 
fog noise level, animation, scale.

¥ Environmental fog - color, 
noise level, layer height.

¥ Paths - (for camera, geometry, 
lights, particles) shape, animation.

Using creative license, and a method 
developed to extract animation out of 
music, this palette of dynamic 
attributes were juxtaposed to 
generate a series of rhythmic
visual-engines (Tiny Little Engines), 
which provided an environmental 
repetition as musical sounds 
re-occur.

Interacting with this Orchestra of 
Shape and Color, the camera and the 
viewer are moved via undulating 
pathways of loops and vortices 
which pass through a continuous belt 
of colored fog as our journey unfolds.

RATIONALE:

By challenging the potential of 
animation in this hybrid form, TLE- 
by unifying parts of the music and
visual creative process' - provides 
examples of a rhythmic symbiosis of 
stimuli that is expressed in a dynamic 
formula of linking and transposing of 
ideas or information of two different 
mediums in a mathematically correct 
and compositionally appealing way.

FINAL TRANSPOSITION:

(See scroll left of frame)

When the audio waveforms 
were not, or could not be 
driving 3D and atmospheric 
elements, a system of 
transposition developed 
especially for TLE was 
employed to animate these 
elements manually which 
allowed a seamless 
integration of audio and 
non-audio driven components.

Brief descriptions of the 
Final Transposition tracks 
are as follows - starting 
right to left.

- All tracks described 
below are highlighted in 
Pink on the Final

Transposition.

11) The primary and multi-
purpose ABC track contains 
visual reference to 
different instrument sounds 
and rhythms by use of alpha-
numeric keys, each key 
representing a single music 
beat of 8 per line (Bar) with 
Bars of 2, 4, 8, 10, 12, or 
16 representing scenes.

7+10) Final animation 
timings are displayed in the 
FPS and MIN-SEC tracks.

3+4) The look and feel 
of characters and sounds are 
shown in the FONETIX and 
VISUALIZE tracks.

5+9) The styles of character 
animation for each scene, 
using gestural strokes, are 
shown in the FREEFORM and 
loosely in the WAVE tracks.

8) Background color rhythms 
are shown in the XYZ track.

6) Background and character 
color schemes, which give an 
overall flow or feel are 
documented in the RGB-HSV 
track.

1+2)Scene numbers and names 
are shownin the first two 
tracks.

The Final Transposition is 
the basic foundation for 
the technique employed in 
realising TLE.

PRODUCTION CREDITS:

* DESIGN & ANIMATION;
Adem Jaffers
©1998

* PRODUCTION FACILITY;
Unreal Pictures
Inkind support :-)



* ONLINE FACILITY;
Icon Digital & Comcopy
  ONLINE OPERATOR;
Mike Swift

* MUSIC
  WRITTEN & PRODUCED BY;
The Visitors - Andrew Till,
Ollie Olsen, Geoffrey Hales

* PUBLISHED BY;
Psy-Music / PolyGram Music
Taken from the CD Psy-033
(Psy-Harmonics Volume 3)
"Hacking the Reality Myth"
©Psy-Harmonics
- Australia



* PRODUCTION STATISTICS;
3D software- 3dsMax
Grading- Digital Fusion
Disk Playback- DPS Perception
Network Render Engine- 966mhz
Render time per frame- 8:24sec
Animation Duration- 8:30sec
Total frmae #- 12,685fr
Database size- 5.2gig
Production duration- 22mnths
Hardware Platform- WinNTv4

* SPECIAL THANKS TO;
David Nelson &
the Unreal Pictures crew,
Psy-Harmincs crew,
James Murray &
the Creative Access crew
my Mum, Dad, Jeff jaffers 
Zenep Jaffers and 
Melanie Carr