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The cure for what ailed me. From Silly N' Serious Productions, an animated kaiju opera in three tiny acts.
In the midst of a severe depressive state, this prescription was fired my way by my good pal Leif via a comment on my Cinema 4: Pylon blog entry of August 27, 2006 :
"...go sit naked in the pool until you stop feeling cold. Then sit on the grass until you feel cold. Rinse with hot water, and repeat until you look like a prune. Then drink some hot Dr. Pepper while eating a food on a stick. Finally, build a fire in a can and burn some marshmallows. Eat only the carbon."
OK, except for drinking the hot Dr. Pepper, which I cooked up on my stove, I didn't follow the doctor's advice. I figured a good deal of this behavior would get me either arrested or ostracized from the neighborhood or both (mainly the naked stuff). But I did find much merit and personal interest in the next part of the prescription. To wit...
"Once you've completed this cleansing ritual, your mission is to write a three-act opera in the key of E-flat minor, with the subject of Man versus Gomera [sic]. You must use the color "pumpkin" in the costume for Man. Gomera cannot speak any recognizable languages. The opera can last no longer than seven minutes, and must be animated in Flash for presentation on the web no later than Nov 9th, 2006."
Surprise! Knowing full well I couldn't pull this off on my own, I ran to my brother Mark, who is a musician and songwriter when he's not fulfilling his professional capacities, and asked him if he wanted a challenge. His buddy Sean is an artist and cartoonist, and he came in to help provide character designs and storyboards. Both of them have been great, especially considering I sprung this on them out of the blue, and the fact that they are both family men with very divided attention at times. But it's done, and that's the main thing.
Yeah, as my brother puts it, E-flat is only used here and there and some minor chords are used sparingly as as well, but there isn't any E-flat minor at work here. We also saved the movie in Quicktime, mainly due to website issues with my hosting service which sucks, so I had to run to the arms of my friendly neighborhood Mattman. (He graciously allowed us to squat in his E-flat for a couple of days, but there were no minors involved.) You can't have everything, but's it done and that's the main thing.
Well, half done. This is not the completed work, but merely the outline for a slightly longer and eventually better animated effort. This is our first cut, a rough sketch, if you will, over which we will lay down our final version. Mark did the music with Melody Assistant and added the voices with Virtual Singer. We were originally going to record live voices, but in the interest of expediency, I suggested that for its initial unveiling we simply use the sketch voices. We actually have a few more minutes of music and lyrics written, but we had to edit savagely to get it down to where we were still happy with the score. Also, this is Mark's novice experience with animation (especially with the program he is using), so once we meet the quoted deadline, we are going to fully flesh out the production to around ten minutes or so. And yes, there is a Third Act, but it is not ready as of right now...
And if you want to understand what is being said via buzzy computer voices, read the post below for the complete Act I and Act II lyrics!
1 comment:
I'm glad that my off-the-cuff idea appealed to you as much as I thought it would.
By the way, I have this idea for a movie about a dog that flies a UFO...
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