Live Visuals
Animated Visuals for Live Music
This reel is a collection of animated visuals I have created for live music.
Most of the visuals were synchronized to particular tracks, where the artist would listen to a Click-track to keep in sync. From the audience’s perspective, these dynamic visuals combined with the artist’s performance and stage lighting create an exciting and memorable experience.
Metroplis by Fritz Lang, is a classic and easily one of my favourite films.
The design and aesthetics alone made me want to recreate some iconic moments from the film and animate them.
These clips and others were used as part of a live A/V show for the local Cardiff band ‘Albatross Archive’. With the help of a click track, I would cue up animations I made which would syncronise the band’s performance live.
The idea of these clips was to take the audience on the same journey as these workers. Starting with the grand Metropolis cityscape, down the elevator, past the machinery until reaching the heart machine during the song’s dramatic climax.
The Visuals were all drawn in Illustrator and then animated inside After Effects.
- Music – ‘I Still See’ taken from the Ribcage EP by Albatross Archive
Click here to listen on Spotify
Below are gifs of some other visuals I created for Albatross Archive and their application in a live space.
Left – ‘I Still See’ performed in Acapela Studio and Broadcast on Made in Cardiff TV for their ‘Unsigned’ show.
Middle – ‘Again Fail Better’ performed in Gwdihw, using a multi-screen setup. The top screen is the main visual, but the bottom is a box with secondary visuals projection mapped onto two sides.
Right – ‘Folded Away’ performed in the Moon Club. A full-screen visual that was operated with a Midi Controller to add additional effects and movements to the cube on the fly
Albatross Archive – In The Dark (Live)
The above video is a live performance of ‘In The Dark’. This song is part of a larger 30-minute live narrative, somewhat inspired by Alice in Wonderland, as this character explores the unknown going through a dark abstract world looking for a way out, unbeknownst to them that a strange creature is observing them.
This video is my favourite use of Syncronised Visuals from this overall narrative.
This performance was recorded on 29/09/2014 in Brewhouse, Cardiff, a show organised by Big Scott.
I also collaborated with Philip Blake, who is an electronic artist and drummer performing under the name 5th Spear.
Using an iPad and MIDI controller through Resolume, I would technically be performing the visuals and reacting to the music on the fly.
In this Video recording [Below], I took a series of clips from the film Labyrinth and mixed and distorted them to create an abstract performance.
- Music – ‘As a Phoenix Takes Flight’ is taken from the ‘Human Imperfections EP‘, which can be found on Spotify.
[Below] snippets from a gig we played in Bristol CHK One, highlighting the stage setup and some of the visuals being performed.
Rather than hiding in the shadows sat behind a laptop, this setup had me (left) standing on stage with my laptop, iPad and MIDI controller to hand.