8bit Music Video Experiment

[Mikdog]

Hi. Last year I started (and never finished) a music video for one of my brother's songs. Was a bit of an experiment to see what super-low-res 8bit may look like.

Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bou5aTR9ww

Or here:


I stopped mid-way as I wasn't quite sure whether this approach was working and I had another project coming up. In retrospect I quite like it. Used Photoshop and ASP.

EDIT 2 (from later in thread): I actually animated another 40 seconds or so for the spaceship one but recently cleaned up my computer and though I may have it on backup, didn't look for it. The idea was that the astronauts land on the Moon and find this amazing dancing man (my brother's dancing rotoscoped in pixels) in an underground Moon bunker. They excitedly bring him back to Earth and he dances like a legend to the amazement of the people there, and then his dancing gets out of hand and he starts zapping people and other stuff and generally causing chaos.

A buddy of ours ended up doing the music video for it, which I think is pretty awesome
http://youtu.be/EjjHF3alQmk

Peace out,

Mike

EDIT: Also, a finished music video from last year in an Atari style using Photoshop and Anime Studio (it's had the #1 spot on the dance charts on our MTV South Africa channel for what that's worth):

http://youtu.be/HHMwwuC224U


Also a song of my brother's and a buddy of his' collaboration.

[willf]

Not bad!

All that's missing are the tanks and biplanes.

[Mikdog]

Heh heh. I think I played that on a borrowed Atari back in the day.

[Danimal]

Loved the car bouncing as it drove down the road. This really looks fantastic!

[Mikdog]

Hey, thanks Danimal.

[heyvern]

This is so interesting to me.

For a looooooong time all that was available for computer animation was 8 and 16 bit (my first computer animations were black and white 8bit), yet you would never see it used like this. I remember when I went to art school the "computer graphics" department was a tiny room with about 4 "computers". Nothing more than stills with the graphics capability displayed in the videos in this topic. The only way to get images off those computers was to print them out on a dot matrix printer, or hook up a 35mm camera to the front of the screen and shooting slide film.

I was just talking about this with my brother. We were trying to figure out when does something become "old enough" to be "retro"? He was describing a record store he found on a trip that was packed with people. Very popular, very busy. This store specialized in used CDs. People came in with boxes of used CDs and traded them in for credit to get more CDs. Apparently trading in and collecting "physical" music is starting to become "retro popular" to the youth market.

There is also a return of vinyl albums again and not many places capable of producing them. Most of the factory equipment used to produce vinyl albums were melted down or scrapped when CD production put them out of business.

My brother was telling me about a friend of his who started selling old turntables on a whim in his thrift shop. Eventually his "retro" music section took over the entire store and that's all he sells, but he has a really hard time finding enough old classic high quality turntables to keep in stock. He constantly scrambles to keep his stock up, but sells them so fast he can't get enough of them to satisfy demand.

What is old is new again. Kind of cool... but... it does make me feel ancient.

[Little Yamori]

Your spaceship one had me grinning ear to ear. So very very cool (felt like I was 10 years old again)

[Mikdog]

HeyVery. I mean, Hey Vern. I mean, Hey Heyvern.

Man. My dad had a stack-load of vinyls that I think he gave away because he had trouble selling them. I still have a stack-load of CDs but generally buy my music now on iTines or similar. My favourite CDs either get lost / borrowed / damaged from overplay. I do find I get fatigued after listening to low-quality MP3's for a while though. I understand vinyls contained a much larger / truer range of the audio spectrum which I imagine is why some DJs still use them at clubs, get that really fat bass. CDs cut out some low and high frequencies, and MP3s even more to compress the size. Not surprising that my ear'd take a hit by getting repeatedly exposed to a narrow band of frequency.

I wonder when yo-yos and hula-hoops are coming around again.

The Atari look have pixels that are longer than they are higher it seems, like horizontal rectangles or two pixels next to each other make up one 'pixel'.

Little Yamori - hey, thanks I used some 'pixel' particles for the trail when the spaceship flies all wonky.

I actually animated another 40 seconds or so for the spaceship one but recently cleaned up my computer and though I may have it on backup, didn't look for it. The idea was that the astronauts land on the Moon and find this amazing dancing man (my brother's dancing rotoscoped in pixels) in an underground Moon bunker. They excitedly bring him back to Earth and he dances like a legend to the amazement of the people there, and then his dancing gets out of hand and he starts zapping people and other stuff and generally causing chaos.

[Maestral]

Mike, many thanks for these boosters! I woke up a bit late and worn out - but then - \o/
Excellent addition to the playlist, after Goldfish.

Of course, same goes for the inspiring practisioners of the rhytm and magic ,))

p.s.
Well, now since I started...
While ago, I`ve seen a short "documentary" about the audince feedback on Goldfish (on some festival, but can`t find the link) and was so pleasantly surprised to see their live performance. Compliments! Followed by the sincere respect. Full sails!

[Little Yamori]

Mike,

If you ever get around to finding the rest of it, for what it's worth, I'd love to see it. Sounds like it's really fun. By the way, I only started using this software (and animation in general) a little over a year ago, but I must have watched your goldfish video 20 times over before I dove in to AS, just marveling at the possibilities ahead of me if I got started. So, the goldfish was super key to me getting into this (as well as a really great animation and song) so thanks for putting that out there. I'm sure I'm hardly alone in this respect.

LY

[Distinct Sun]

I am right there with Danimal. The car bouncing up the road is awesome. I also love the rocket busting through the atmospheric levels.
I've done a bunch of icons over the years and pixel art although simple looking is no easy feat. nice work as usual.

[Mikdog]

Hi LY > Thanks. Heh, pleased to hear many reports of Goldfish videos leading people on to try Anime Studio.

DS > Thanks

[slowtiger]

I'm teaching animation since January, and one of my students asked me if I knew these funny music videos by a guy from South Africa ... go figure, you're that famous already.