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Animusic :

Imaginative instruments come to life and perform a series of music videos in a captivating new DVD entitled "ANIMUSIC: A COMPUTER ANIMATION VIDEO ALBUM." This is the first commercially available work by ANIMUSIC®, a computer animation studio specializing in music-driven animation. The DVD features seven videos of never-before-seen instruments playing on their own, often in incredible feats of coordination. The original score for each piece is performed on a different stage with different instruments.

The video album is truly unique and defies categorization. Here's how some people have described it:

  • A cross between "Toy Story" and a Pink Floyd concert
  • "Close Encounters" meets the New York Philharmonic
  • More mesmerizing than Cirque du Soleil
  • Rube Goldberg's New Lounge Act
  • Part laser-light show, part "Fantasia"

Whatever the comparison, ANIMUSIC's content is an intricate melding of music and visuals that entertains viewers of all ages. And since the music is instrumental, language is not a barrier. ANIMUSIC videos have gained popularity around the globe, with a considerable following in Southeast Asia.

Steven Churchill, a veteran animator who created the popular "Mind's Eye" video series, says, "I believe ANIMUSIC is very special. The technological innovations accomplished with this are impressive. What they've done here takes our Mind's Eye 'video album' concept a big step farther, combining music and animation in such an integrated and dynamic manner. I love the imagination that was put into creating the various instruments -- the rendering is great . . . and I totally enjoy the music."

ANIMUSIC's founder Wayne Lytle is an award-winning pioneer of music animation. Lytle's animation and software skills have landed him work creating special effects for Hollywood feature films, including "Starship Troopers" and "What Dreams May Come." But he has since found a deeper gratification in fusing his passions for music, animation, and software, and watching people's reactions. "The response we've been getting is just overwhelming," says Lytle, "and from such a diverse crowd: musicians, professors, teenagers, little kids, grandparents -- I'm just blown away."

The Debut DVD

The first DVD from ANIMUSIC ushers in a new genre of entertainment: perfectly synchronized musical performances by virtual instruments. While music videos have been around for years, ANIMUSIC represents a dramatic convergence of the worlds of music, visual arts, and technology.

The ANIMUSIC disk takes full advantage of the DVD platform by including multi-angle "solo-cams" allowing viewers to switch between individual instruments, an enlightening and entertaining full-length director's commentary, and over 250 production stills showing how the instruments and stages evolved. Sample video clips and still images can be seen on the Web at www.animusic.com.

[Note to editors: High-res photos are available at www.animusic.com/press/ ]

Breakthrough Technology

Wayne Lytle has created complex new software called MIDImotion that allows MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) data to drive the movement of graphical objects with extremely precise and realistic motion. In most animation work, the visual elements and sound are handled separately, and changing one often means substantial work to the other in order to keep the picture and sound synchronized. With MIDImotion, any change in the musical score will automatically update the corresponding graphical instrument motion, saving vast amounts of time and effort.

MIDImotion takes synchronized musical animation to new heights, resulting in exact note-for-note animation of music that far exceeds the musical correlation achieved by others, including animation giant Disney.

Background

Lytle began to envision synchronizing music and animation with software in 1982. It wasn't until 1989 that he first began experimenting with music-driven computer animation. His first full multi-instrument music animation "More Bells and Whistles" premiered in the Electronic Theater at the computer graphics trade show SIGGRAPH in 1990. It has won numerous awards and has been screened in several different countries. In 1991 Lytle received an award from IBM for his early work in music animation.

In 1995 Lytle founded ANIMUSIC to realize his dream of producing original music animation content. Computer artist David Crognale joined him to begin their first project for a client. In 1998 ANIMUSIC began production on the video album DVD. Lytle designed the musical instruments and produced the music. He worked closely with Crognale to evolve the intricate details of the instrument and stage elements, which were modeled by Crognale. The entire project spanned three years.