It seems that Small Glowing Pig has been relegated to only producing music that is part of a failed writing challenge. Cause for celebration, for sure! What better way to celebrate, than with a tribute to cheap two-octave Yamaha keyboards and Dio. 
(Fun is) What We’re Made of
The new rock and roll band remains nameless, but not showless. We’ll be playing a Jack and Jill for a buddy of ours in a few weeks. The plan is to tape it.
-Mike
As mentioned in the previous update, there’s a new band afoot! After a couple of practices, several sandwiches, and a few extraneous bagels, we’ve got some fly-on-the-wall recordings of a few covers. No band name yet, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be Grill Brush.
As always, our real thanks goes out to those forced to listen to us work out harmonies and Purdie shuffles. Thanks, Julie!
More to come…
-Mike
Despite prolonged blog silence, things are happening in the world of Small Glowing Pig! First, a new challenge is completed. I played the ukulele and programmed drums, while Steve played the acoustic guitar and programmed the bass. Be both “sang.” Was it written and recorded strictly in two hours? You be the judge! Also, no, it wasn’t. Also, read this for information on the inspiration.
Next, a new band has been formed and has begun working towards a live performance or two by the end of the summer. No name yet, but we’re looking to cover a pretty eclectic mix that so far includes Stevie Wonder, Beck, Steely Dan, Cake, and Men at Work.
Hopefully we’ll have some practice recordings in the next few weeks and a name to go with them. Until then, enjoy the challenge rok!
-Mike
A few weeks ago I took a look at the small glowing pig discography page and was immediately saddened. As of even this morning, the only release this year was an album written and recorded over two years ago that finally saw overdubs, mixing, and mastering in May of this year. Had we really not completed anything new? Was this really the most musically devoid year for small glowing pig since 2006? How did this happen?
Before building a resolve to right what was wrong, I reflected upon the causes. Surely much of the blame can be laid upon the doorstep of SpaceBase’s continued expansion into it’s third production year. Having a one and a half year old with a 7:30 bedtime also didn’t encourage late night rock and rolling. For most of the year, Steve was also busy playing in approximately three dozen bands ranging from renaissance and Celtic to blues rock. Jefim had moved to Boston and Devin and Angello continued to be busy working a ridiculous schedule and shredding the Les Paul in a new band, respectively. So, considering all this, what was to be done?
How about release that six month old two hour challenge and then do another one last minute when Jefim comes to town? Yeah, that sounds alright.
First, take a listen to “Parcel Octopus” by Parcel Octopus off of their album Parcel Octopus. We random band name generatored the name and then surmised that they were a punk band that had expanded into psychedelia and left behind their days of protest on route to their eponymous album and song. Nailed it.
Two Hour Challenge – Parcel Octopus
Next, it’s about time we released a song that Jim Hernovic and I put together about six months ago. We started by feeding the lyrics of the then-current top 10 pop songs (“Get Lucky,” “Radioactive,” etc.) into a word cloud generator.
Two Hour Challenge – Bones are Radioactive
So what’s next for us? Maybe some The Name. Maybe a new Vacation record. Maybe we’ll even get around to the Small Glowing Pig 10th Anniversary Album (13th anniversary?), who knows. I’m pretty sure that we’ll hear from Predicament again soon, and that Blonski and I will bang out at least a few more frames of SpaceBase before having a catastrophic hard drive failure that drives us to the brink of suicide. Whatever it is, hopefully it’s more than a two year old album and two challenge songs.
Well, until next time. See you next year. Ha!
-Mike
How long has it been?
Must have been ages since our last post… seeing as how Nat has gone full sci-fi Lawnmower Man on us:
He’s actually pretty pumped about it; all those splines and lines means he’s articulate! As in he’s got a big mouf:
OK, its not that big, but maybe a little too big for his head. Fortunately adjusting the size should be no problem! And after spending a day learning motion tracking software, The overlaying process of the mouf on the face ain’t so bad. Animating moufs still is… anyone know how to automate animated mouf generation based on audio input? Cause that would be pretty cool, allowing me to play more Awesomenauts with Mike and lament on the sad selection of other great online co-op games.
The outdoor King scene has been on pause since we last got together, but we should be finished in another day of filming. The venue is likely changing for it, as I’ll be packing all of the equipment up and moving it from Vienna House to Mikey’s, which really needs a cool studio name. Like “Maggie’s Magorium”, or perhaps something even cooler!
Until then, I’ll be churning out the splines and keyframes!
-Steve
ps- moufs!
One might say that the aim of any artistic work is to provoke emotion. What better to provoke someone to feel a way about something than to make a dog sad? We have made the dog sad. Behold!
Eventually, this scene will be stitched together with an interior shot, a static image of stars, and a meteor shower through the witchcraft that is modern home video editing. Please reference the post below for a mockup of the shot.
Until next time,
-Mike
Was this the horrible, unspeakable accident that sparked the genesis of the Melty Man? Does it fully explain the back story of how Mr. Man attained his moniker? Might it create a wealth of story-lines ripe for exploration throughout the first season of SpaceBase: Infinity?
Either those things, or we dropped the adjustable arm lamp entirely too deep into the set and blew out the image. Great opportunity for ridiculous text effects, though.
Today, we fully assembled the next set, experimented with lighting (including some nice LEDs leaking through the window), and made King’s new sitting position.
In addition, we realized that if we leave clay out, the clay gets dry. Hmm… that sounds familiar for some reason. Looks like we’ll be remaking the character’s bodies again. Hooray!
When everything is composited, the shot should look something like this (only, a little better):
Finally, a question to ponder… better rap “supergroup”: 213 or Westside Connection?
-Mike
After a long hiatus, the SpaceBase:Infinity crew is back and hard at work… finally. The jerks.
And next on the list for scenes is one of the more unique sets we will be working with on this project. After much deliberation, we decided to go with a cross section of the SpaceBase interior, with the exterior showing at the same time (you can see a little of the base’s inner workings at the top of the above image). While a little technical and tricky, this should prove to be an interesting shot, which will make up for our lack of exposition and dialogue in the scene!
After crafting the majority of the Base’s set for this scene, we took a break to make some musics, and it was good. The crew of SB:I toiled away as we played our hearts out. Then we took another picture:
Until next time, when you will see more!
-Steve
We can now move Reserved from a category that contains this to one with this and this. Our thanks go out to Carmen for her artwork, Pete for his spectacular mastering job, and to anyone who still has a t-shirt or sticker. Enjoy.
-Mike
Let us begin this blog post with a block quote of an earlier blog post. Imagine a world where it is early March, the weather is still threatening snow, and Steve and I are tirelessly clicking the enter button on his wireless number pad. A bold decision is made:
“We’re also planning to do some creative reusing of a few of the angles we’ve shot so far. In a few weeks, we should know whether or not we have ingeniously saved hours of work or confused the shot sequence so severely that only hours of additional work can sort out the wreckage. Exciting!”
-Mike
Fast forward to present day. We made a mess for ourselves.
What have we learned? Make notes. If you plan on reusing footage, make it apparent where the cuts should be. Write down frame numbers, descriptions, draw a picture. Do something to remind yourself later instead of, you know, not doing anything and assuming it’ll all work out fine.
Here are some things I’m hearing Steve say as he edits the scene and I write this post:
Next time things will probably be perfect. I’m pretty sure.
-Mike
