Matt Rodenbeck BFA Illustration Thesis Fall 2017

Synesthesia

Synesthesia is a project examining my personal synesthetic experience and how I might best express those experiences through motion graphics. Using five songs, I explore different approaches to this core concept.

Two of the five songs are my own works, while the other three are my own edited versions of clips from prominent musicians in the genres I outlined at the beginning of this project. The genres are as follows: Bitcrush, Funk, Glitch and Electro Swing. Each piece focuses on a different aspect of motion graphics, as this world was still new to me when I set out on this project and I wanted to get my hands into as much as possible. BITCRUSH focuses on color and some basic vector effects and my first-ever use of a particle generator! FUNKYA focuses on vector artwork and animation. GLITCH focuses more heavily on video effects and typographic treatments. SWING focuses on bringing all these things together (except particle generators). The title piece is less important than the others, but it represents the neural activity that causes synesthesia to happen.
The colors and patterns are like neurons lighting up and reading letters as more than what they are, a very literal representation of my color-grapheme synesthesia.

There are numerous tweaks and fixes that could be made, but this project has lit a fire in me to continue exploring this world and the potential applications of this new skill set. Post-college I am interested in pursuing either broadcast design (title sequences for tv shows, news graphics, etc.) or UX/UI design in apps and/or video games.

28 albums

Fall 2017