by Christoff Linde
https://christoff-linde.github.io/lyric-video/
This project was part of VIO202, a module I took during my BIS Multimedia studies at University of Pretoria. The assignment was to design and create a lyric video for any song of our choosing. To showcase the video, a companion website was to be developed that ties in with the aesthetic look and feel of the original album cover.
I chose Disillusioned by A Perfect Circle as my song as it is one of my all time favourite bands and albums.
The project started out with storyboarding ideas for the lyric video, experimenting with different layouts, colours and fonts. I chose a clean and precise font to match the original font used on the album cover. Keeping the colour palette simple yet striking, I used the main colours prominent on the original cover.
Actual creation of the lyric video was done entirely with Adobe After Effects. After Effects was chosen for it's superior capability to create motion graphics.
To minimize the initial download size and consequently maximise performance, I opted
to export the After Effects video to .SVG with the help of the Bodymovin Plugin.
The .SVG animation is then loaded with .JS in the browser as a .JSON file.
All further styling was done with .SCSS, compiled to .MIN.CSS. Interaction
is handled with .JS.
I made use of GitHub Actions to serve as a CI/CD Pipeline that publishes the website.
Throughout the project, I learnt how to create and animate motion graphics in After Effects, and exporting them for use in a interactive web-related context.
Learning how to perform basic DOM manipulations using Javascript is another concept I had to becode familiar with, as well as adding interactivity to an otherwise mostly static page.
With GitHub Actions I learnt some of the basics of setting up and managing a simple CD/CI Pipeline.
The implementation of the project is not perfect, and some improvements can be made. For e.g., the Javascript can be updated to use the latest ES standards. State management for the animations and interactive elements could be improved to improve the readability of the code.
As an alternative to the .SVG animation HTML Canvas could potentially be used,
which would provide easier interaction, something that exported Bodymovin format
does not necessarily provide.