Category: Project Update

Fresh from the oven

Since publishing Doozywop’s Wilford Brimley tribute EP in early 2022, Small Glowing Pig has been busy learning new jobs and raising babies. We’ve also moved equipment around, bought new stuff, and gotten ourselves back in the saddle.

On my end, we had our spare room in the basement redone and it’s been coming together over the past few months as a music room. Got a sweet ultrawide monitor, a TV to throw lyrics onto, some sound dampening foam (thanks, Blonski!), and a new Focusrite Scarlet 18i8. Also picked up an Ibanez hollow-body and inherited a banjolin, which I didn’t know was a thing.

Blonski and I are cooking up another album that will possibly be Season 6 of Duck House. As that was coming together, I worked on an EP of high energy rock songs.

Rather than starting with fooling around on guitar or programming synths, I wrote each song by coming up with a melody and lyric idea and then built chord progressions around them. I tried to keep each song short and avoided bridges or solo sections. I also kept the sound consistent between songs, making use of the same instruments, amps, plugins, etc. in each track. Check out the new tunes on Bandcamp or on the discography page!

Fun with Game Maker

While Blonski and I continued to work towards the release of Duck House‘s Season 4, I stumbled upon a Humble Bundle for Game Maker Studio and thought, as I often do with these bundles, “It’s a buck, why not?”

Since then, I’ve been going through some tutorials and Googling things like “== vs = game maker” and “game maker collision detection”.  One particularly neat series involved someone coding a version of the NES’s Legend of Zelda from scratch.

I started by trying to create a Smash Bros. or Samurai Gun – like, since I figured I wouldn’t have to worry about enemy AI or screen scrolling.  As I go, I’ll chronicle my progress here and on our YouTube channel.  Check out the latest playtest below.

-Mike

A new band practices

Panorama

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.

Bill Withers – Use Me

Cymbal in focus

Men at Work – Catch a Star

Blonski watching the show

Steely Dan – Home at Last

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

Writing and recording music inspired by very high places in other countries and the people who live there

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.

Two Hour Challenge - Tibet

Two Hour Challenge – Tibet

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

Hiatus and Scene 1 Editing

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:

CyberNat

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!

King makes you feel bad for him

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

 

SpaceBase: Explosionity!!!

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.

Steve is pretending to be a giant.

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.

Sit, King!

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):

King's locked out.

Finally, a question to ponder… better rap “supergroup”: 213 or Westside Connection?

-Mike

Moon-henge: Future Eye

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!

Mike rips a pipe in two with one of those saws, just like the mouseover says

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:

...what the mouseover says

 

Until next time, when you will see more!

-Steve

We should've taken more notes

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:

  • “This doesn’t make any sense.”
  • “We filmed the dog out of sequence; that threw me off for a little bit.”
  • “Yeah, it’s too… maybe a little further.”
  • “What’s this shot?”
  • “Winona reaction face.  But there’s a lot of talking there!”
  • “I’m assuming that comes after what we just did. [sigh]”
  • “I really don’t know what we did here.  I’m gonna move on.”

Next time things will probably be perfect.  I’m pretty sure.

-Mike