How I Find Art for My Music & Request Permission + Adding Visualizer Effect

do you know this situation you spend hours on a song getting it just right and you want to upload it you need a video and you quickly scramble something together but then it looks like this

wouldn't it be nicer if it had an original engaging artwork and some subtle movements some life maybe some effects to do justice to the work you put into the creation of the song during the last months i found some

great resources and learned quite a few tricks i want to show in three steps how i find artworks and process them in a way to make my music videos visually interesting with relatively low effort

step 1 is visualizing your song how does your song look like what's the atmosphere think about keywords does this song want to sound close and intimate or far away and grand

down to earth or dreamy which emotions does the melody the chord progression and the instrumentation evoke think about landscapes think characters

animals or emotions movie scenes you associate with it colors it doesn't matter it can be anything don't force yourself to be specific the neurons inside your brain

are great at connecting associations to a bigger coherent picture with the result of this little imagination exercise in your mind you can then proceed with step 2 find an

artwork personally for this i go to the website artstation.com you can find amazing concept arts character design illustrations and more a big plus for me

is that on art station it's very easy to contact the author and ask for permission to use it once you've found the great artwork and the artist's contact information go send them a quick email keep in mind

that these people put just as much work into their art as you put into your songs so always ask for permission first seriously people are great so don't be shy to reach out to them in over 90 percent i got a response

within just a couple of days and my request has never been denied you can pretty much always find their email address in the about section on their ad station profile i will show you how i approach the

artists feel free to take it as a guideline and adapt it to your own style this is my style keep it short friendly personal yet professional use their name

and mention the name of the artwork so it gets clear which image you want to use i want to tell them in one sentence why i picked their image and not others i want to show that i am interested and

not just send out mass emails to everyone emphasize that you will give credit and do it to set expectations right i tend to give a link to my youtube channel so they can see what i do with my other videos

and in case my track is already finished and prepared i attach the dropbox link to that too [Music] just like in live you want to make the other person feel comfortable and appreciated

finish on a positive note and send it out in most cases this will already do the trick give a few days and if you still have no response consider writing a quick follow-up mail and send them a direct message on art station maybe they just

didn't see it in most cases you should now have been able to easily get a stunning artwork and the permission to use it i usually want to do one more step

step 3 breathing life into the artwork in most cases these illustrations have not been made for video specifically so they are not animated maybe we can improve them just a little bit i usually add three types of video

modifications subtle movements video overlays and effects adding just a tiny bit of movement to the picture helps increasing the perceived depth and dynamics of the scene

i sometimes add fade ins and fade outs at the beginning and end of the video as well as soft zooms this works particularly well with atmospheric tracks and epic and grand images i used fading

and zoom outs in my lord of the rings cover of pippin's song edge of night when using multiple images you can also use transitions to toggle between them most video editing programs have presets for these

video overlays are simple and powerful especially for us non-video pros they're just video files that you can put over your image and blend them together i like using them for weather effects like rain or snow it's easier for me to just look for an

overlay than playing around with an effects generator or particles some overlays you can find for free some you have to buy let's say you got a snow overlay and you want to use it over a picture

simply drag it over the image and play around with the blend options that every good video editing program should have the blend modes multiply or add usually work best resize and rotate the overlay try

different things until the result is satisfying then it should look something like this and to me that's good enough effects are generated by your computer giving them a lot more flexibility and tweaking options

unfortunately that makes them also way more complicated than video overlays i want to keep it simple so i will only show one fantastic and free plugin that i use all the time it's called sabre by video

copilot with this plugin you can create gorgeous special effects that are also sensitive to your music and move with it like a visualizer see the red circle on the monster's

forehead it was already in the artwork so i wanted to enhance it for my video this makes it way more epic and alive like it's going to eat you saber is a plugin for adobe after

effects but the general concept behind it can be applied to every video editing program so i think even if you don't have after effects this will still be helpful to you you can achieve similar effects differently as well but this is what works for me the

easiest way i drag the artwork and my song into the video project and add a solid black layer on top onto this black layer i drag the saber effect then just like with the video

overlays you have to find the right blend mode in this case add works well i use the path tool and follow the circle on the artwork this tells the saber effect which shape

it will have i go to core type and set the preset from sabre to layer mask the effect will now follow my circle path i play around with the color

and try different presets that come with the plugin once it looks good i want to create the visualizer effect so it moves to my music i right click the song layer go to keyframe assistant

and convert audio to keyframes these keyframes will tell our effect when the song goes louder and how it should move now i need to connect the glowing effect

to the music keyframes i want to link the glowing intensity to the music for that i have to go to glowing intensity hold the alt key or option key on mac and press on the

stopwatch symbol it will now appear as an editable parameter in the effect layer drag the spiral icon of the glowing intensity to the slider parameter of the

music the effect is moving now i think that a different preset might work a little bit better in this case so i choose the arc generator in the end

the glow intensity now moves with the music but it's a little bit weak you can simply add or multiply values at the end of the formula that we've created when connecting the effect to the music it will increase the base level of the

glow intensity we now have a nice effect on a badass artwork so that's it i've shown you how i visualize my song and come up with keywords to search and find fitting artworks

i explained how i approach the artists and how i add some motion and effects to the artworks using this method i think my newer videos are a clear improvement to what i did 10 years ago if this video was helpful please

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