This is my first newsy kind of post - and unfortunately, it's not a positive one - though it could be worse.
I had a problem with my server over the holiday weekend - the server that hosts most of the images for this blog. Unfortunately (man, I hate that word) most of the old files were deleted from the server.
However, it's not a huge deal - the main images on each post are embedded in Blogger - but if you go to play a song, watch a Flash movie, or view a larger version of an image, that probably won't work.
Don't fret - I have the files stored locally - it's just a matter of restoring them to their proper online locations, one by one, and testing - which I'm doing now, starting at the most recent posts.
So if you see anything weird, my apologies - it's only temporary.
In the meantime, you can check out this music video - that's me on drums. Long story, but I recently reconnected (via Facebook) with a guy named Al, who was the owner of the record label, Dromedary Records, a small label that put out music by my band cuppa joe in the early 90's. It was his 40th birthday this week, and so Doug (that's him with the guitar there) wrote this song about the number Forty, in honor of Al. The video was a surprise for him at the party. Enjoy - and please don't mind the inside jokes.
Slippage
When I started writing Attract Mode, I'd planned to keep that screenplay short - maybe 12 to 15 pages, with only 3 or 4 locations, lots of dialogue, and a few props, so I could shoot it myself. Ha! It grew to over 30 pages, and at some point I let the reins loose and wrote a couple sequences in a large arcade game repair/sales/rental/party venue - based on a real place somewhat near me. I thought I could approach them about shooting on their premises, maybe bartering in some free commercial work for them.
All that was pretty ambitious - really, too ambitious, since I haven't nearly done the quantity of shooting and editing that would give me the confidence to round up a full cast and even a small crew, and secure location shooting. I needed to go way, way smaller - and shorter. Some people say for your first "real" short film, anything longer than three minutes is too long. That sounded ridiculous to me, until I shot Robot Roundup, devoting about 30 hours to the project - and it featured a baby (my son) who doesn't have any lines, an overdubbed horse and robot - all fairly controllable elements.
And yet, though I was mostly happy with the final outcome from a technical point of view, there were compromises galore along the way. I definitely needed something much more modest, that I could conceivably shoot in one or two locations in my own house, with minimal characters and camera angles. Something that warm me up from a technical point of view, forcing me to work with a people who were performing, existing settings and getting the sound, lighting, and camera work right.
So, I wrote Slippage. I had just watched Primer (see the trailer below) for a second time, so time travel was on my mind. I kept the story very dialogue-heavy, inserting lots of science-specific terminology - some readers said too much, but I wanted an authentic feel, like Primer has. And there's a little twist at the end, or really a payoff - probably expected, or the story would be a little too dry.
Interestingly enough, I saw a documentary on the Higgs Boson - the MacGuffin of the story (if a five-page screenplay can have a MacGuffin), only after finishing the screenplay. It was really interesting and filled in a ton of information I didn't know about that subject, but I didn't change the script to reflect that newfound knowledge. I thought it was tech-heavy enough, and I didn't want to overload it with even more jargon.
And I still haven't shot it, sadly - having a baby does not add to one's available free time (not that anyone ever said it would). Hopefully that'll happen this fall, before it gets too cold - that's important, since almost all of the story would take place in my back yard.
Slippage
Bond Opening Parody
Oh yeah - this project. Another one that I forgot about, for the most part, until I found it in my hard drive.
This animation was created for a large corporate client who does a lot of fun internal projects like this. I don't think I ever got the full story, but they had an executive who they wanted to mock (always a good thing) and there was some connection between "Agent 007" and "Agent 88.00" (some kind of nickname for the guy), so they wanted to James Bond-ize him, and asked me to help.
It wasn't a complex project, which was good because the turnaround time was either two or three days from when they called me - the animation was to be shown at a large departmental meeting. The client sent me a photo of the executive, and I was happy to see that his expression was nice and grim - it really fit the Bond mood, especially when I stuck his head on a tuxedoed body holding a gun in Photoshop.
I studied a few openings from different Bond films on YouTube. They were all similar, with some minor variations between them. I boiled it down to the basic elements, created them in Freehand, and animated them in Flash - adding a classic version of the song. I think the only change the client requested upon seeing the first version was that I add an actual bullet flying at the viewer. I don't know how well that registers, but it's in there for a few frames.
I finished just in time for the deadline, and the client was happy. I'm not sure how the executive who was the subject of this lampooning took it, but hopefully he had a good sense of humor about it. It's not like we made him into Austin Powers or anything. James Bond is always cool.
Click the "Play Movie" button above to view the animation.
Watch the first 30 seconds of the clip above for a comparison.
Balloon Buster
Balloon Buster game. Click to play in a new window.
I decided to create this game purely as a self-promotional piece. I was getting more Flash game work around 2005, and I wanted to have an example of a simple online game that I created to show potential or existing clients, as a way to demonstrate my abilities. I decided to leverage an existing animated version of myself that I'd already been using on my www.stevespatucci.com website, so as to give myself a little head start on the game.
This pea-soupy green is my favorite color, and as it was already the color of my animated self's shirt, I decided to stick with it and let it dictate the color scheme of the game. That may sound lazy, but with an open-ended project like this, every limitation helps move things along.
I worked out the concept - a retro-style shooting game where you throw water balloons at me, Steve, disguised (in some cases, poorly) as different characters - real people, archetypes and fictional characters - in the windows of a building. You have to hit the Steves while the windows are open. And, you get a bonus if you hit the floating slice of key lime pie (a prize also determined by the color scheme).
I made up a couple more rules: I couldn't alter the cartoon of me lying underneath the disguises - I could only elements on top of it. And, I would only work in the existing color palette. I just started brainstorming, and worked out way more characters than I expected - I actually had to add more levels to the building to accommodate them. Since there are four characters on each level of the building, sometimes I'd think I was done... then I'd realize there was one more character I just had to include, and I'd add that character in... then I'd have to add three more to fill out the level. It should go without saying that the game took longer to complete than I anticipated because of this pattern - maybe a month total.
Here are all the characters, from top left to bottom right:
• magician
• party guest
• spaceman
• beatnik
• clown
• Indiana Jones
• Peter Criss (from Kiss)
• generic superhero
• Roman gladiator
• redneck trucker
• 1920's accountant
• soldier
• Robin Hood
• Fidel Castro
• Frankenstein's Monster
• pirate
• old-timey aviator
• devil
• Hannibal Lecter (from The Silence of the Lambs)
• Tin Man (from The Wizard of Oz)
• Rebel fighter pilot (from Star Wars)
• Kermit the Frog
• Amish guy
• The Pope
• chef
• Jason Voorhees (from Friday the 13th)
• Mickey Mouse
• Austin Powers
• Albert Einstein
• pilgrim
• Storm Shadow (from G.I. Joe)
• The Statue of Liberty
• Salvador Dali
• Batman (Christian Bale movie version)
• Chinese man
• The Cat in the Hat
• nun
• viking
• Napoleon Bonaparte
• Alex (from A Clockwork Orange)
• Sherlock Holmes
• George Washington
• old timey bowler-wearing guy
• late 60's John Lennon
• 50's greaser
• Marvin Martian
• Rorschach (from Watchmen)
• Andy Warhol
• Harry Potter
• Rastafarian
• court jester
• Willie Nelson
Closeup of the game. That's me as Indiana Jones, Peter Criss
from Kiss, a redneck trucker and a 1920's accountant.
I developed the basic game engine in Flash fairly quickly. At first the fact that the balloon you're throwing covers up the screen briefly (as it's a first-person view) felt wrong or confusing, but after a little test-playing I liked it - it only blocks your view for a brief moment, and it adds to the challenge - if you just keep shooting, you won't see where the characters are on the board.
Someone who played it asked me once where "you" (the player") are - it's not shown (since you're in "your" head) but in the instructions, it says you're in a hot air balloon. I guess I was really into balloons when I developed the game.
I created three levels - the harder the level, the quicker the descent, and the more the building moves side-to-side. The theme song, created in GarageBand, is meant to emulate early 80's game songs - simple, repetitive, and low-fidelity.
Oh, and there's a little bonus - if you hit every character you get a little surprise at the end of the game. I'm not telling what it is - you'll have to complete it (at any level) to see it.
After developing Flying Spaghetti Monster - The Game, I knew that if I posted the game file to one of the online gaming sites (that all "share" the game file generously), it would be all over the Internet in days. And it was - which is what I wanted (all part of my master plan). When I track hits to my websites, I get a few hundred a week from Balloon Buster - and mostly from all the other sites that host it (and not my own). Granted, I believe they're mostly from people looking for more free games, but occasionally someone does inquire about my game design services. There's no such thing as a bad link, I always say (not really, though I do believe it).
As with all of these games, some people said it was fun, some said it was boring, and some people cursed me out and called for my death... anonymously, of course. Ho-hum. If I created a game featuring 25 levels with different gameplay on each level, and hundreds of characters, weapons, backgrounds - people would say it's too complex to play online. I may sound jaded, but feedback for online games is some of the most pointless feedback you'll ever read. Here are some of the highlights from one of the many online sites that host the game:
"wow, that game was good.............NOT!!"
#3 anonymous (8 months ago)
"ur a f*kin pleb"
#2 anonymous (2 years ago)
"this the the gayest sh*t i have ever seen"
I just wish the #2 anonymous person would have been more clear - am I the pleb, or one of the other comment-givers? It really bothers me.............NOT!!
And a few positive pieces of feedback, not surprisingly from NewGrounds, probably the best (and maybe the oldest) online gaming portal, where people usually try to be constructive in their feedback:
"Nice job on the art, your use of green is really nice. The controls were great too, which made the game more addicting than it really is. Music went nice with the theme. You definitely have talent. Keep up the great work =]"
"it was a neat little game. a bit easy and repetitive, but it was fun to play and it had a good concept to it and your efforts in this one were good too."
I know. It's more fun to read the negative stuff. I agree.
After all that fantastic feedback, click here to play Balloon Buster.
GarageBand Two-Track Recording Setup Diagram
My old, pre-Logic, two-track mixer/GarageBand recording setup. Click for larger view.
This is more of an example of an informational graphic than an explanation of my audio recording setup (I've since upgraded), but it really works as both.
I started recording with GarageBand around 2005, when version 2.0 came out. At first I used a crappy USB mic, just plugged directly in the the computer, but the results there weren't really worthy of using a professional multi-track recording program, so I bought a small, cheap two-track mixer and worked out a simple set up.
GarageBand can record up to eight simultaneous tracks - but to do that, you need a real mixer with a Firewire interface - if you're only going into the 1/8" audio jack, as I was with this setup, you can only get two separate tracks into the computer at once (using kind of a trick that I'll explain below) - and as I started to ask questions on audio recording forums, I got a lot of non-helpful answers (and that's being kind) - because anyone with an 8- or more channel mixing board is not using GarageBand - they're using Logic, Reason, ProTools or other more high-end multi-track recorders at that level, so they couldn't really help me out with my setup.
What I eventually learned was that, using a two-channel mixer like I had, you could pan one track to the extreme left, the other to the extreme right, and they would then come into GarageBand as two separate tracks, recorded at the same time, that I could then mix as I pleased. So I could record a simple drum/cymbal setup with brushes using two mics in different positions, or two guitars, or bass and guitar, or vocals and guitar - all using two tracks. That's all I wanted, and it worked well.
The image above is actually the second version of my setup - eventually I figured out a bit more in terms of monitoring the recording (either with headphones or a small amp - or both) and how I could could control the output, and add in MIDI instruments. It got pretty elaborate, though I hope it's easy enough to follow - especially for anyone looking to emulate it. I used FreeHand for all the elements and layout, keeping it simple with only black and white outlines - very "technical drawing"-style.
I posted the link on a few audio forums, where some people found it helpful, and others were surprised at the level of detail I went into - but I wanted it to be totally clear, especially when dealing with audio, where the lack of a single adapter can throw everything off and cause confusion, a trip to a store, and delays. I did receive a couple "thank you"'s from people just getting into recording, who wanted to create a similar setup who couldn't find much help elsewhere. That made me happy.
When my wife and I bought a house in 2006, the basement became mine, and I started setting up a recording studio, which is far from complete - I'll have to detail that in a future post. When I started in on the basement studio, I wanted to be able to record a few instruments and my full drum set at once, so I got lots of mics mics and cables, an 8-channel Mackie mixing board, MOTU Firewire interfaces, and I started using Logic, Apple's high-end multi-track recording software.
It's a much more elaborate setup, and the software had a huge learning curve (I'm definitely still learning, even after reading three books on the subject) but it paid off nicely - I can do much more than I could with the original GarageBand setup. But that original arrangement still comes in handy - I have a very similar setup in my office now, which I use for more limited voiceover or simple recording situations. It's nice to have the flexibility to whichever setup is appropriate - though my neighbors are definitely partial to the smaller one.
Control room setup - small 8-channel control surface at left, MIDI
keyboard, MIDI drum surface, two 20" Apple Cinema Displays, small
mixer and mic for playback (control room talking into external
headphones while recording is in progress), reference monitors and
my old Mac G5 holding it all together below.
Main instrument recording area. Eight cables lead from the channels
in the mixing board into the Firewire interface, which goes into the
control room via a single Firewire cable.
Drum recording setup - there are seven mics total - one for snare and
hihat, one for the kick drum, three for the toms (one between each set
of two), and two overhead condensers.
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