How do you make an animation and a song match together, like the animation won't be too long for the song or the song too long for the animation, I'm planning on making one but I'm stuck at this XD (LOVE your Art, animations, and everything! *-*)
ANIMATING IN TIME TO MUSIC!!!
(rather than music made for animation)
Animating in time with music can be very difficult, but for me personally, I absolutely love doing it, even if it means putting a little more effort in keeping things in time with the transitions, beats, and certain groups of measures in a song. But how I start an animation that matches with the music, is because I literally imagined most of the animation simply by listening to the music. I’ll listen to the music, close my eyes, and see the animation play in my head as the characters move with the beat, transition in song, and escalate with crescendo. So I get at beats a basic idea of how the scene plays out with the music before I even start animating, or write a script.
I play violin and was classically trained in music for the violin for two years before I branched off on my own when I couldn’t afford private lesson anymore, but what I’m saying is, it’s very helpful to animate in time with music if you understand any form of music theory, but if you don’t, I’ll try to explain it as best as I can.
My animation Save Him was not animated to music, me and @haylizbeth just so happened to find music that fit so well with the animation that it might have seemed like it from time to time, However with Death by Glamour, and with my upcoming animation Megalovania, they are intentionally animated to the music, rather than animating and putting music in.
With Death by Glamour is was very difficult because I didn’t have an actual animation program, and I didn’t have any FPS at all being as I drew each frame individually in Elements 11, and then saved them into files, and put them one by one into my current video editing program Camtasia, so how I kept track of the drawing each frame of the animatic wasn’t in FPS, but literally by counting with the beats in two measures. Death by Glamour’s time is 4/4, so there’s 4 beats per measure, so I counted two measures to direct me to animate with the music, aka counting to 8 with the beat. And if you watch my Death by Glamour animatic, you can actually follow along and see what I mean if you count, “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8″ with the beat. or by counting one beat per measure like “1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4″ XD I made a lot of the attacks land on a beat, or turn with a transition, such as the pick up from Frisk getting kicked by Mettaton, Sans grabbing his head (for the pick up to the next 2 sets of measure) to transition to the start of the next measure where a new theme in the song plays, which animated is Mettaton’s heart coming up from their abdomen. If you want to see what I mean it’s at 1:48 of the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSTcRzpL7pQ&t=68s
Megalovania: with Megalovania, I actually HAVE an animation program just like Save Him, called ‘Toon Boom Harmoney Essentials’. Unlike what I had with Death by Glamour, I suddenly had a time line with FPS (frames per second), could put music into the program as I animate over it rather than separate, and there’s a tool that literally makes animating to music SOOOO much easier than trying to use all this basic music theory. (which is still helpful by the way) Which is called the SCRUB TOOL, and the SOUND TOOL!
The Sound tool allows you to play the animation with the sound turned on so you know where you are in the music and or Voice track that you are animating to by clicking the play button on the far left. The Scrub tool However is mainly meant for animating to a Vocal track to lip sinc animation to sound, however I find it incredibly useful when animating to music as well. What the Scrub tool allows you to do, is by simply dragging the marker on the timeline from frame to frame, you can hear the sound that plays on each frame without needing to play the animation, So it’s great to make sure things really aline with the beat or in a musical transition with the song.
For Megalovania I still use a lot of basic music theory such as what I was explaining with Death by Glamour, but these two simple tools, and having a FPS, sure making animating to music a WHOLE LOT EASIER! But counting with the beats per measure, following the transitions of the music, utilizing pick-ups before a new measure, and changing direction in animation with new themes in the music as well, such as the beginning theme of Megalovania is subtle, so therefore I’m going to make the beginning animation subtle with a build to a climactic fight, then a later theme in megalovania (such as the theme at 1:20, of the song) is a lot darker, so I’m going to follow the context of the song and make the animation darker too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcoqR9Bwx1Y
SO LISTEN TO THE MUSIC CAREFULLY AND SEE WHAT THE MUSIC TELLS YOU! Follow beats, measures, transitions, pick ups, and take follow the context of the different themes that play in a single song, and it will direct you through what the scene is suppose to do or look like.
Note!!!!!!: Sometimes a song might not allow you to do some things in a fight based on the limitation of how long the song is. And what I mean by that is, for example in Death by Glamour, I really wanted to put the “Essay Question” and “Take 5 break” in Death by Glamour, but there was literally no where in the music and thus animatic that I could fit it in without it disrupting the flow of the animatic, so unfortunately I scrapped those two things despite trying to keep my fight scenes as accurate to the game as possible. So animating to music (and in general) also takes some writing as well.
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