(Unmute to hear the sound)
Nothing from the physical world
This was a for-fun, small passion project with no client. My goal was to create YouTube videos with no real-life assets at all to learn and assess the current state of generative AI services: Midjourney, Sora, Chat GPT, Copilot, Eleven Labs, Runway, and Adobe AI were used. Of course, almost every asset still had to be heavily edited to make sense. However, orchestrating everything, I felt more powerful than ever as a single person doing it all.
Data visualization, generative AI, audio and video editing
Visualizing the data
One manually-generated part I want to highlight is the audio visualizer in both short form and long form videos, as I felt passionate about making it an attractive element. This was an entirely manual process.
The tools used are After Effects with a plugin called Volna. It's a line-drawing plugin that offers extensive sets of variable inputs.
After Effects also supports dynamic input and, more importantly, allows expressions to be written in javascript and some node editing.
So the first step was to convert the sound into numeric data. Two properties - frequency and amount are fed as dynamic input, while simple coding wraps them into a set of stylized lines.
Forming the sound
Now, onto the design. There are two audio visualizers with different equation values to juxtapose - distinct yet harmonious.
Part of the harmony comes from the lines reacting to each other by adding blending modes. Both visualizers have a degree of transparency, so the quieter parts of the spectrum will merge them, while bursts of larger volume will separate to create a sense of depth to an otherwise two-dimensional object.
The white lines are on the luminosity, meaning every cross-over with other bright pixels to create specular-looking strings. The colored lines are put on luminosity to make these dynamically changing colors adaptively react to both bright and dark backgrounds.
Circular format for visual focus
Finally, as the plugin is originally just a line drawing tool, I formed a circle for the short form video. The audio visualizer here acts as an event horizon between the foreground and background to attract viewers yet allow them to focus on the core content.