Spiffworld | Blog

As if I weren’t going slowly enough on my new video, I recently discovered that the new UK division of Machinima.com is having a machinima contest (details here). The game is to make the best machinima video using one of two semi-obscure (IMO) Jonathan Coulton songs, “Todd the T1000″ or “Bacteria”.

At first, I thought I was out of luck, which wasn’t a bad thing. Only UK residents 18 years or older can enter this contest (I’m from the states), and I’ve never won a machinima contest ever, so having a solid excuse to not enter and lose this one seemed to be a plus. But then I got to thinking… perhaps only the video enterer needs to be a UK resident and perhaps the video maker can be from wherever they want. And it would be nice to win something for once. So, I emailed Machinima.com and got confirmation that as long as the video enterer is from the UK, they couldn’t care less who actually made the video. So, it looks like I can still make a video and then find a buddy in the UK to enter it for me and perhaps have a shot at winning something after all!

Let’s just say out loud that “Todd the T1000″ and “Bacteria” are not particularly inspired choices for a video contest. One is too specific (”Todd” describes the action going on very specifically, which makes it hard to generalize to other machinima settings) and one is too broad (”Bacteria” is about… well, bacteria). Still, a challenge is a challenge, and I’m on it.

So the bad news is that the video I was working on is officially on hold right now (I’ve gotten probably half-way through it). But the good news is that hopefully I’ll have two videos to release some time soon.

Now I just need to find a buddy in the UK who wants to enter this contest for me…

Today I IMed with an Australian bloke who broke the WoW solo leveling record for getting to level 70. He did it in 5 days, 19 hours [ed: should be 5d, 8h] of game play time (not real time — sitting in front of the computer for five days straight wouldn’t be pleasant). That’s absolutely amazing. It seemed to take me years to get my main to 70. I can’t imagine doing it faster, although I’ve got a bunch of alts who I’d love to get out of the minor leagues and up to the majors, if you know what I mean.

This guy’s got a site www.glutonysguide.com with a guide that teaches people how he did it so they can level up faster too. I agreed to put a link to his guide in the YouTube description of all my videos and I’m mentioning it here because if anyone gets the guide due to my referral, I’ll get a part of the proceeds (ironically enough, that’s called a “spiff” in the world of sales). And I’ll be sharing half with Jonathan Coulton, just like I do with the donations I receive from the PayPal link on my site.

It looks like a great guide, and if it can help you level up your characters in even half the normal time it’ll be worth it, much less if you can do it in just days. So I feel very comfortable recommending you go take a look.

I suppose I should probably mention that I’ve started work on a new video. However, it’s not progressing as rapidly as usual. You see, right about the time I started working on the video, we got a Nintendo Wii, and whenever I find I have enough spare time where I could either work on the video or rock out in Guitar Hero III or do some Wii Bowling or play a little Mario Kart, I’m finding that the video is losing out nearly every time. And with the Wii Fit that just came out and Rock Band right around the corner (June 22), it’s not likely to get any better any time soon.

On a more positive note, I do have about a third of the video done so far, so that’s good. Who knows how long it will take me to complete the other two thirds though. I’ll let you know when I figure that out.

I made it to the show, and even peeled off some cousins from the wedding to help fill up the venue. Turns out, they didn’t need my help. I’d checked with the venue earlier in the day, and they told me they were planning on taking out the tables in the (very tiny) concert room which should allow about 120 people in there. They said the doors opened at 9pm, and if I got there by 8:30, I’d be good. They lied. We got there at 8pm and were at least a hundred people back in line. I asked a guy up front what time he’d gotten there, just to gauge how early I’d have had to get there to get front row. He was there at 6pm. Obviously, Lestat’s Coffee House underestimated the power of the Coulton.

So we stood. The room was so small though that that put us maybe 30 ft. from the stage? And lord almighty, was it hot. It was hellishly, goddamfuckinghot, that’s how hot it was. When you walked in the front door, you could feel yourself passing through the wall of heat, and as you were standing around in there, you’d take deep breaths of air that were almost the same temperature as your body and you’d seriously start to wonder if you were going to pass out. Turns out nobody did (although some people left because they thought they might), but it was that hot, and I am not kidding when I say that pumping my shirt like a bellows to keep my head cool(er) was the only thing that let me make it through the evening. I’ll bet being on stage under the lights was murder for those guys.

My nine-year-old daughter wasn’t going to be able to see anything standing in the back but it turns out that she got to go up and sit on the edge of the stage with a couple of other people. So for her very first Coulton concert, she spent the entire thing about four feet from the man. Pretty sweet.

I was honestly expecting Paul & Storm (the opening band) and JoCo to be a little listless for the performance given how unbelievably hot it was in there. But not these guys. P&S were great and JoCo seemed, if anything, energized by the heat, like a lizard on a rock soaking up the sun. Whether because of the acoustics of the room, or the sound guy, or just those guy’s voices that night, they sounded probably the best I’ve ever heard them.

I didn’t bother trying to memorize the set list or anything, but it was a pretty standard line-up. The only thing new, for me anyway, was getting to hear “When You Go”, which was nice. Also, for “Chiron Beta Prime”, they pulled a guy up on stage who, it turns out, was the voice for the robot puppet on Mystery Science Theater 3000. He seemed very nice.

When it came time to play the encore, JC turned to the kids along the stage, bent down and started talking to them. I couldn’t tell what he was saying from the back, but we figured out that he was trying to find their parents to make sure that they were cool with the dirty, dirty song he was just about to sing. He couldn’t match all the kids with parents though and finally Paul pointed out that it was nearly midnight and that if their parents were OK with them staying up that late at a Coulton concert, they’d probably heard “First of May” before, so they let it fly. My daughter had never heard the song before although we’d warned her that it was coming. She was kind of stunned. I don’t think she has any idea what the song’s actually about, but she just couldn’t believe the sheer number of times JoCo said the F-word in that song. We could see a little bit of her childhood innocence flake off during the number, but she’ll be OK.

All in all, I’d say that if you took out the standing for three hours and the riduculous heat, this would have maybe been the best JoCo concert I’d seen. And as I was telling my wife the next day, if I were 25 again, I’ll bet the standing and the heat would have actually made it even cooler. I mean come on, going to a tiny, crammed coffee bar to stand for hours in the blistering heat to listen to an internet rock star blow us all away? Heaven (for a younger man).

I can’t imagine anyone cares, but by a happy and completely unexpected coincidence, I’m going to be in San Diego for a relative’s wedding at the same time Jonathan Coulton is playing a gig in the same town. It’s not a 100% certainty that I’ll be able to make the show since it involves sneaking away from the wedding reception with the wife and kid, but I’d say it’s over 85% at this point. If you’re there too, I’ll be the guy wearing the black “Spiffworld” t-shirt (probably). Be sure to say hi.

Yesterday I poked around on YouTube looking for video tutorials for the programs I use to make my videos. I feel like I’m pretty good at the basics but that there are a lot of cool special effects you can do with After Effects especially that I’ve never explored. I’ve posted links to some of those tutorials on my “How To Make WoW Videos” page, so if you’re interested in learning how to make ripply water or explosive energy blasts, etc., you can check them out.

If any of you know of any particularly good video tutorials you think others should know about, let me know, and I’ll put a link to them on my page.

Blizzard has announced Blizzcon 2008, to take place in Anaheim this October. They say it’ll be a bigger con, taking up three halls instead of just two, and it’ll be two days like last time. If I had to guess, given the timing I’d say that they’ll probably announce ship dates for StarCraft II and Wrath of the Lich King. That’s based on the assumption that they’re in Alpha or earlly Beta with each title right now, and should be able to work through enough of the bugs and whatnot over the summer in order to have a solid(ish) idea of a ship date by October. But who knows?

No word yet on whether or not they’ll be inviting back the machinima artists they invited to Blizzcon ‘07, myself among them. It was a total blast to be invited by Blizzard to attend the con last year and I would totally go if they invited me again. Would I go to the con if I weren’t invited? Probably not, seeing as how the tickets were $100 each last time and all of the info you’d get at the con will be instantly made available to the Interwebs and propagated across the globe for everyone to see. Still, being there live was quite an experience, so who knows…

Whether or not I attend Blizzcon myself, I sent an email to the Blizzard folks suggesting that Jonathan Coulton would make for fabulous entertainment at the convetion. He’s smart, funny, and geeky, he already has a WoW connection through my videos, and he’s even written a song for a video game (”Still Alive” for Portal). It’s a natural fit! Their response to my suggestion was perky and polite (a lot like the Stepford-like responses you get from GMs in-game), and they promised to pass the idea along to their planning committee. If Coulton were to play at Blizzcon, that would certainly raise the chances of me wanting to attend the con even if I had to pay for the tickets. Coulton concerts kick ass.

Before you do anything else, make sure you’ve watched Jonathan Coulton’s original Flickr video. None of this will make any sense until you’ve seen it (and even then, who knows?).

“Flickr” was another one I wasn’t planning on doing. Heck, it’s just a slideshow, not even a real video. And the song’s already got a video done by JoCo himself, so it sure doesn’t need another one from me.

But then I got an email from a fan named Kytyn who really wanted me to do it. I explained all the reasons why I wouldn’t (mainly that I had no idea how I’d get some of the shots, like of Warren Beatty and a balloon man and such). She came back with a list of ideas for shots, and I told her “maybe”…

Then the folks on Coulton’s forums started talking about making their own version of the Flickr video using photos they had all taken themselves. The more they talked about it, the more fun it seemed, so I finally sat down to make my own WoW version.

Let me tell you, these slideshow videos are the way to go! Way easier to make than a normal video. But don’t worry. I won’t be abandoning my normal type of videos any time soon.

For those of you who have no idea what the heck this “Flickr” video is all about, it goes like this — back in 2005, Jonathan Coulton poked around on Flickr.com, found some photos he liked, and made a song and video about them. It’s purposely random. And he could legally do this because the Flickr photos were licenses under Creative Commons just like his music is, so the synergy was undeniable.

Without a doubt, the most difficult shot to get for the video was the balloon man. I mean, what the heck am I supposed to do for a balloon man in WoW? There are no balloon men. There are bubbly slimes, but they’re not men. There’s the goblins who stand next to the zepellins who I suppose are technically some kind of balloon men, but not really. My sister-in-law came up with the best runner-up suggestion of having a guy be surrounded by a bunch of the big spherical eyeball beholder-like monsters from Outlands. But in the end I went with a Draeni surrounded by paper airplane zeppelins, which I didn’t even know was in the game but I swear they are. Apparently you can get a loot card from the collectible card game that lets you get little paper airplanes you can throw to your friends, and there’s a little paper gyrocopter and a little paper zepellin. Hence, the balloon man is having too much fun.

Mr. Fancy Pants is done.  Three things I want to say about the video — one, it’s really, really short, which you’d think would make it easier to turn into a video (less work to do), but which actually made it relatively difficult to tell an interesting story in such a short amount of time.  In fact, this video is probably the one where I add the least amount of value to the story that’s being told in the song itself.  Usually, I’ll add a sort of a second level of story that underlies the story in the song.  But in this case, it was all I could do to tell the song’s story with a couple of added gags but not much more.

Secondly, I wanted to point out a “behind the scenes” thing that isn’t really all that interesting, but I’ll tell you anyway — in the video, there’s an orc wearing a yellow shirt with some plate mail pants. He was originally going to be Mr. Fancy Pants. This was before the Burning Crusade expansion came out (tells you how long I’ve had the idea for this video), and I wanted Mr. Fancy Pants to be a kind of a comically lame figure. But after Burning Crusades came out, the male Blood Elves were far too perfect as Mr. Fancy Pants, and I put the original one on ice. However, I decided to thaw him out and use him as a background extra in a couple of shots. This one’s for you, Original Mr. Fancy Pants.

Lastly, I had stated previously that there were two characters in my “Big Boom” video that were not from my other videos but who would be in upcoming videos. One of them is the Winner (no idea what else to call him) in this video. If you look closely, there’s a guy with a ponytail who runs into the church. He’s the Winner.

That leaves one more character in “Big Boom” for a future video…

I’m about three shots into a new video, so it’s probably time to announce that I’m working on a new video.  My last video came out at the beginning of December, so it’s been about three months since I’ve put one out.  That feels like a long time, and I’m definitely noticing that my video-making skillz are a little rusty; not so much in terms of making the video look like I want it to, but more in terms of the mechanical skills it takes to manipulate the video programs.  I’m forgetting keyboard shortcuts and stuff, but it’s all coming back to me pretty quickly.  Just like riding a bike.

I don’t think this video will take long to finish, but you never know.