Every creative already felt they were not good enough to create what they wanted. I certainly had the feeling. But sometimes it is not a skill issue, but a tool issue.
Here is the brief: create a soundwave animation that connects with the brand. There needs to be at least two sets of lines right next to each other, one thinner and one thicker. Here is an image as a reference:
Since the brief is for a video, the first attempt was to do it in After Effects, which already has an effect built just for that called Audio Spectrum. The problem with this effect is that it is not so customisable; for example, it cannot add more lines to be next to each other.
The other approach to create the soundwave effect on AE is to create a shape line, apply the wiggle effect to its Y scale and duplicate it as many times as you need. The result you see below:
I felt that it was missing something, you know, that flair. The issue I felt was that the lines were random; they were not connected to the music, and it didn’t feel like a real waveform. So it was time to try it in a different tool.
Davinci Resolve is a great video editor tool and very powerful VFX as well, and an app I was also familiar with. Davinci was able to customise the lines and also move it in respect to the music, not just randomly. The problem was that the animation felt stuck, since the way Davinci does it is that it works in a sort of timeline, so the lines move from right to left, but they do not move up and down.
Neither of the two tools that I am very familiar with was enough for what I was envisioning for the motion. They did their job, but didn’t feel quite there yet. So it was time to try a tool that I wasn’t quite familiar with.
Cavalry is a very powerful tool that can create lots of vivid motion, but it is a bit confusing to master at first. It is a mixture of AE and Davinci, in which it works in layers but also in nodes. In the end, it was the perfect tool for what I wanted to create. You see the result below:
This is the importance of expanding your horizons. To try different things and even different tools. The importance of experience. To know what each tool can do for you and what it can’t. If one tool is not doing what you want, open up another. Ditch After Effects and go to Rive or Davinci. Not enough? Try Cavalry.
We rather assume that, in our creative world, our creativity is our limitation, but sometimes the tools don’t help us very much. Just keep trying.