gonktacular's Xanga

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 13:39:39 GMT

Part 2!

I should have part 3 up later today.

Monday, April 02, 2007

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 18:06:06 GMT

Here's the opening of the McM Band video, YouTubed for your viewing pleasure:

This was superfun to do. I patterened this (very loosely) on the opening to the show Cowboy Bebop, which is where the music is from. It's a very retro feeling title sequence that has a few more elements that I wanted to duplicate but this would have ended up a lot more cluttered so I dropped some elements in the planning stages. Most of these shots are screencaps from the footage I shot during marching season (the rest are either pictures given or the footage itself). Photoshop filters are your friend when you're trying to come up with a unique look. The actual footage that's in the opening was color-saturated on the fly in Premiere. The ending shot with the gray profiles is one of my favorites; to give credit where it's due the idea was one of the elements lifted from the inspiration material but it turned out great. Those are actual people (I know the trumpet player is Simon and the trombone is Kenny but I don't remember the other two off the top of my head...I seem to remember the bass drum player is Cheyenne with a hat on) pulled from screencaps and silhouetted in Photoshop.

I'm encoding the other parts of this to post as well, so look for those soon. I'm also working on a compilation DVD to sell (for cheap I promise!), so more news about that will come too.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 14:04:45 GMT

Ahhh image macros. Behold, the Lion Car!

The original and best. From a comic called Toothpaste for Dinner.

Obligatory cat macro.

Secondarily obligatory motivational poster macro.

...culminating with the greatest comic image macro since the Spiderman "how do i shot web?" comic.

Consider yourselves enriched.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 17:56:17 GMT

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:39:38 GMT

Driving cats! Comedy gold.

So, I'm firing up for the McM Band video...it's going to be all kinds of awesome, I promise. I've started work on the opening and it's blowing my mind.

I really should be doing something like this as a job instead of what I do.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 21:00:45 GMT

Friday, February 02, 2007

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 18:07:04 GMT

...

I am shocked - shocked - that some people don't get where the quote is from.

shocked.

edit: ok, ok, here's a hint:

Monday, January 29, 2007

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 19:18:23 GMT

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 01:21:27 GMT

Because I'm a serious country goober and am apparently easily amused in the big city, behold the pictographical record of my trip to Denver:

This is looking north into downtown Denver. The building I worked in is just to the right of the tall building in the back (affectionately known as the "Cash Register Building" because of the top) and the dirty-looking building in front of it.

This was one of the entrances to the building I worked in. Obviously from the size of the cars you can tell that the wreath is ginormous.

Badly stiched panorama of the view from the 29th floor office I was in. This looks from roughly west to north, left to right.

I could see Mile High Stadium from the window. That's where the Broncos play, for the non-NFL-initiated. This is roughly in the middle of the second picture from the left in the panorama above.

Shot of the mountains to the west.

Another shot to the west. It kind of reminded me of the shot in Return of the King where Gandalf and Pippin are standing on the balcony in Minas Tirith, looking across the fields of Pelennor to the Mountains of Shadow and on to Mordor. Yes, I am a nerd.

Looking down on an old hotel called the Brown Palace. Presidents have stayed there; apparently Eisenhower was a big fan. So were the Beatles -- they stayed there in the sixties.

Just to the right of the Brown Palace was the Trinity Methodist Church, which is around 150 years old.

The church at street level, just across from the front door of the building I worked in.

The church from the corner of the Brown Palace.

Various other shots of the Church, including the cornerstone (where they apparently couldn't make up their mind who exactly they were...).

A couple of shots of another church downtown.

This shot is from the corner of the church looking down to the Capitol building.

Down the main street to the Capitol.

The Navarre, across the street from the Brown Palace. It was once a brothel (right across from the church!), and is now a fancy restaurant.

The Navarre from street level.

The Brown Palace at street level.

The cowboy in front of the Brown Palace. At this corner of the Hotel is the Ship Tavern, a little bar where we had lunch one day. Best $13 Reuben sandwich I ever had...

The old sign for the Ship Tavern.

The Brown Palace doorman.

The Brown Palace lobby.

About five floors up was a stained-glass skylight.

Better detail of the skylight.

I obviously spent a lot of this trip gawking and taking pictures. I guess that's what you get when you grow up in a little town. It was pretty fun though, other than that part where I had to work. And the part where I had to drive home on Friday in rush hour traffic. But I made it through.

Monday, September 18, 2006

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 04:05:37 GMT

Thought you McM guys would like to see this -- you might get to see it this week anyway (Leslie has it on DVD):

I cut that together tonight with footage from the parade and Saturday's game. The quality on this one isn't great because of web optimization -- the DVD version is really high quality and it looks like some of the cuts didn't encode right on the web version. But it's a taste, at least. Hope you like it.