Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Expanding On FaberFabe

So my buddy Nick Faber recently blogged about a song he wrote. For some reason, the sparse Kraftwerkian tones and catchy rhythms resonated with me, and I felt one of those epiphanies that you always read about, where the crazed oil painter has a burning idea in his soul, and the Muses will not be satisfied until he whips his brush across the canvas, emptying his energies in the creation of his masterpiece. So I had this idea for a music video I wanted to make, using antique clip art. Four days later, and here we are. With the permission of Mr. Faber, I present "Clap My Hands": the music video.

This was fun to make. Used my new copy of Photoshop to edit the pix, cutting out backgrounds and separating out parts and whatnot. Used Soundtrack to translate the mp3 into a usable AIFF. Final Cut Pro did most of the video editing, with a few bits (like the writing scene above) animated in Motion. All in all, a fun project which I'm fairly proud of. And all inspired by the fine creativity of one Nick Faber. Thanks, Mr. Fabe!

My New Favourite Wrestler

Professional wrestling has a new superstar, and she's an eight-year-old Japanese girl named President Ramu.

I'm not sure of her whole story, but can tell you that she's with a promotion called 666 out of Japan, a group associated with DDT (Dramatic Dream Team, which is probably the most wackily entertaining wrestling around today.) Ramu, who is cute as the dickens, is also possessed by a demon, which is what gives her her supernatural strength and combat ability. She's pretty much unbeatable as far as I can tell, and is positively adorable. She's the master of the Shining Wizard and the 619, and the Undertaker WISHES he could deliver such a devastating chokeslam.

Check her out here and here, and in this great match. Here's a translated copy of her Japanese Wikipedia entry, and here's her blog, also translated. (Which indicates that her name should probably be "Lamb", although I like the sound of "Ramu" better.)

Oh, and if somebody can get me an Iron Maiden 666 Ramu t-shirt (as pictured above) I will love you forever. Ramu rules!

Monday, February 11, 2008

The CageMatch 50th Show Extravaganza

Well, history has been made. And I'm exhausted.

I don't think I've ever put as much effort into a single project. The day after CageMatch 50, I just collapsed and did jack diddly for the entire day. But on to the report!

On Saturday, February 9th, we had our FIFTIETH CageMatch show. The show started on April 1, 2006 when Scott Jennings invited me to join him as cohost of a show that would pit two comedy teams against each other in a wrestling-themed event. In the early days we (somehow) managed to do a show every week, but that got ramped down to every other week eventually. Now, more than two years later, CageMatch hit the fiftieth episode milestone. Scott's moved on now to huge new projects, but I have to thank him for letting me join his show and eventually produce the program, as well as making it so much fun for me to be a part of. When he created his perverted, disgusting character, he said he needed a perverted name, and asked if he could use "Hobgood". The rest is history.

And speaking of history, you can check out a fun little video I made to open the CageMatch Fiftieth Show Extravaganza right here. It features a look back at the people and events of CageMatch from the early days to the present, and is fun to see all put together like that. The promo video for the show proper is here. On Saturday, I had a huge 24"x36" poster in the lobby to add a bit of special flavour to the event. You can see a thumbnail of it above, or check out the whole thing here. When I arrived at the theater, there was a fabulous huge sign/sculpture/display made from wood and chainlink fencing on an easel on the loading dock. We had quite a time accusing this person and that person of making it--turns out my mom had made it for me and secretly set it up earlier that day! That was a fabulous surprise.

Anyway, the show went great. We had a sellout crowd, and even had to set up extra seating to accommodate folks. Bill Henderson started the show as CageMatch President Jack Tunney, reading a very short proclamation that he still managed to stretch out into a complete drama. After the videos played, I got a very nice reaction when I mounted the stage. Then Remi Treuer as Evil Billionaire Troy Sterling came out to a nice chorus of boos. One of the highlights of the night was the debut of Mrs. Troy Sterling as portrayed by Callie Peck. God, she was fabulous. She really worked hard to put together an amazing costume and makeup, and had the over-mothering henpecky Jewish wife character down pat. She was just fantastic. I'll have to do a supplementary post with pictures of her and Troy.

The show proper was pretty amazing. Panthro brought it as only they can, coming down to the stage with a twenty-person choir to back them up for their opening number. Flavor Shot came right back and put on an amazingly hot professional show of mp3-inspired comedy. At the end of the show I got to break character and thank a lot of people, including Siegel-Prov for being such a fun team to work with (Dan Siegel was in attendance, which was cool), and Ralph "I'm Jon's Father" Karpinos (who was also there) for pushing me to do improv in the first place. Then we traipsed off to Zog's to hang out, which I thought was really cool, as that's the bar we used to hang out in in the old days, and it just has such a nicer atmosphere than Milltown or Speakeasy.

So that was fun...fifty shows. I'm quite proud of the fact that we gave eighty-one different people an opportunity to perform on stage, and hosted forty-three different teams. And that doesn't count the special show we did for DSIF7, or the 3x3 Tournament, or the Dual Duel, or the completely fictional world tour. We'll be back with a show on February 27 after DSIF8, and then I'm going to take a break for a month or so to work on a couple of other projects, like the trailer for Rape Stove, the Lego animation Le Batman, and a music video for Jackson's "Cigarettes On The Ground". Stay tuned for more fun.

Saturday, February 09, 2008

Coming Up In Mere Hours

CageMatch's fiftieth show is tonight. I've been producing this show since April 1, 2006, and have been doing videos for every single show since #3. Hopefully, tonight's show will be a successful extravaganza. I'll certainly have a report up on Sunday, and videos posted and whatnot. Right now it's coming up on 1:00 am Friday night/Saturday morning, I have about 3/4 of one of the two big videos done, and I'm exhausted. I've created a photo pan and smoke trails in Motion, morphed the end of a video into a different picture, and applied tons of holy effects to an imported video clip. Tomorrow, the really painstaking project: condensing fifty shows into one four-to-five minute retrospective video. I have the script written, and I have most of the music picked. Assembling all the footage is the big fight. Oh, and I also have to do a new Hall of Champions and scrolling credits. No problem.

But for now, sleep. If I don't see you at the show tomorrow, cross your fingers for me. I promise not to rip my knee out of its socket this time. Miss ya, Biff.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

I Want To Win

Hey, anybody feel like trying to help me win free software? There's this free Mac email newsletter I've been subscribing to for YEARS, and occasionally they do giveaways. For the first time in a long time, they're actually offering up some software I'd like to have. The cool thing is, if you enter the contest, and YOU win, then I win too! Just use this link to do it.

Don't worry about these folks; they're good people, they don't pass your email addy around, and the newsletter is well worth subscribing to if you're into Apple. (They won't even automatically subscribe you--you have to say "yeah, I wanna do that.") So even if you don't use a Mac, help me win!

Oh yeah, the software is Freeverse's Sound Studio, a nice little audio editing program that would help me with my video work. So help a brutha out.

Friday, February 01, 2008

This Might Make Me Like Politics

I'm not much of a political person; I never really was, and then went to a politically-charged school that really turned me off to the whole process. But this might make me get out there and vote for Obama.

Superheroes, animation, hot girl, catchy theme song, AND it's given me some ideas to use in my own videos. Well done, Barely Political!