I’ve pretty much finished up the intro to the “Combat” music video. I am only missing two elements:
The Bomb
The Bomb Bay Doors
I have a good solution for the doors, but the bomb still eludes me. The only thing I have come across is a water rocket at Fred Meyer. I’d have to paint it black and even then it would still look like a water rocket from Fred Meyer. I guess they just don’t make toy bombs anymore. What a shame.
I’ll try and finish the doors tonight.
I spent quite a bit of time working out the title word “Combat” in the intro. It’s kind of funny but I like it.
I also tuned the sound of a B-29 (I couldn’t find a good B-24 drone) to the key of the song … so the video will start with the ominous sound of an aerial bomber that fades into the song … and hits the root note.
I’m alternating between finishing the “Combat” music video and starting up the next one for the song “No Escape!”.
Combat:
I’ve settled on using the HV-20 footage I shot a few days back for the intro bomber sequence of the video. I have to try and find the right stretch of 5 seconds to fill the scene, and then animate a mask to remove my hand from the shot. I’m lucky that the plane has nice lines to cut along and I shot it against a fairly even blue screen.
I’m also getting some nice cloud results in After Effects CS3 by using the fractal noise generator and layering multiple cloud layers all moving at different speeds. Fun!
No Escape!:
I built up three more sets today; which brings my grand total to about 25 seconds of animation. Completed animation. It’s cruisin’ along at a fast pace due to the sheer simplicity of the style (20×20 pixel graphics with 256 colors).
I need to get into more character design. I have rough sketches for the two leads, and some discarded ideas I can use as background characters … but there is still much to be done. I have to slip into that part of my brain that remembers all the cryptic and ambiguous shapes from old school video games. (what is that brown square with two red dots on its side????)
I’ve also decided to run the music video at 30 fps to better simulate the look of the classic consoles.
I created two more sets today and decided on a method for doing close up shots in the “No Escape!” video. If my close up shots are integer multiples of the original comp, I shoud have a proper re-scaling of my 20×20 pixel size.
This means I can resize a wide shot composition 100%, 200% and so on and retain the same grid size. I can then “zoom in” and an in some detail, and retain the artificial resolution limit I set for myself.
Liz is helping me do some drawing of the sets and creatures, so it should turn out to be pretty fun.
I started working on the video for the song “No Escape!” from my forthcoming record “Bits”. It is an animated video set in the world of the Atari 2600 and other early video games. Hmmm … really it’s more of a King’s Quest … Sierra … type adventure game. I loved those games and always wanted the worlds to go on and on.
You could walk around in those games and interact with objects and environments by typing in commands. I think that is how I learned to type … (It certainly wasn’t from Mr. Gregory in 6th grade typing class).
… anyway … I decided on some the Atari dogma that I will use (and avoid) for the picture.
1) All comps will by 1920 X 1080 square pixels (this is not Atari)
2) I will use a 256 color pallet (this is not Atari - it had 128 colors, but it is easy to set up 256 color space in Photoshop)
3) Atari “Pixels” will equal 20 x 20 square pixels
Going with the widescreen format will help delineate the Atari world in the video from the standard 4:3 world of the classic video game.
I’m having fun and I already have two sets designed!
Posted on July 20, 2008 by arman. Categories: music.
Today I broke out the soldering iron and fixed (for the fourth time) my favorite pair of headphones - The Optimus Nova 71. Yes, these are Radioshack headphones. I am not insane. I have had many pairs of headphones in my life and I have always ranked these up towards the top. They don’t sound 100% awesome. They are more like 82% awesome. But I enjoy listening to them. They are fun.
I worked selling high end hi-fi for a while (see this post) and had a chance to listen to the high end Sennheiser and Beyer phones. I own a big honkin pair of Sennheiser HD 280 Pros (the 64 ohm model). The 280s are good and pretty clean. They cup your ear so that you are isolated fairly well (good for vocal takes).
The Nova 71’s deliver (at least for the price). When I was working at Radioshack (see this post), they were discontinued and I bought three pair for $6.95 each. One pair went to my buddy Dave. They broke and he threw them away (&*%#@)! I’ve gone through five or six pair and I am down to my last two. Liz uses one pair every day and my pair conked out on me a few weeks ago. Tonight I replaced the cable and it’s good to go.
So if you ever see a lonely pair of Nova 71’s just hanging out somewhere … let me know.
Posted on July 19, 2008 by arman. Categories: movies.
Today, Liz and I went to Long Beach, WA and went horseback riding. We rode around for about an hour and both got a little saddle sore.
We also went to Marsh’s Free Museum, the home of Jake the Alligator Man. Jake wasn’t looking so good.
One of the strangest things we encountered was this row of little viewing booths that cost five cents. I thought they were going to be little black and white movies from 1910 or something. They had names like “Things a Woman Should Never Avoid” and “Nudist Colony”.
The first one I peeped into was called “The Sultan’s Harem”. I plopped in my nickel and this is what I saw. I was speechless.
Double click the image below to play:
I’m not sure it looked that way. Maybe things decayed and fell off. The video doesn’t do it justice. I think David Lynch made that thing.
I’m going to have to roto-scope my hand out of every frame of the bomber sequence in the beginning of the “Combat” video. Liz helped me shoot it tonight and I ended up taping the plane to a mic stand with my clip mount for my Tranzport. I had to steady it with my hand as Liz blasted the props with two hairdryers.
One of the hairdryers didn’t have a “cool” setting so my hand got convection cooked. Oh well. I’m importing the shots as I write this and I’m hoping they turn out ok. The HV-20 tends to underexpose things if you use the LCD as any sort of reference.
