Getting back in the groove with this Neuromancer revis thing, re-green-lighting it. (Re-green-screening several bits as well.) I decided we're doing an "All Tomorrow's Neuromancers - starring the WGB" video, or frying a dual-core processor trying. I'm thinking that the reduced "80's" color palette and animating the static character images in After Effects will give the whole thing a cool anime-esque feel, like something churned out by a tweaked AI instantiation of Shirow Masamune and Mamoru Oshii.

All Tomorrow's Neuromancers (Intro Sequence)



Starring Meru, Bravus, Green Robot, and Twilite Minotaur

A higher res downloadable version will be available here in a moment

Not sure yet how jacked in and involved I'm going to get into this, but I'm liking what I'm vizzing. My Twilight Maze webseries thing I have pretty much left sealed away in its own convoluted timestream to collect entropy for the past seven months, and I may just start this ATN thing into its own series, with it's own set of episodes, depending on how many people cast their retinas upon it. Also, the amount of time, talent with After Effects, Photoshop, writing, actors, and other help I can pull out of somewheres. But either way, I like to keep as many sides of God's quantum computing dice available, as many alternate futures open, as possible.


Here's some reference on the Neuromancer Revis I posted a while back

"Calling all neuromancers, cyber-iKids, myspace idorus, razormoms, mirrorshaded tech support wizzes, interzonal neverwintermutes, guitar anti-heroes, starving locative Youtube artists, and professional Azeroth expatriots.

Photo-actors for spooky Chatsubo reconstruction wanted!

The next episode(s) of the Twilight Maze web series will be centered (territorially and thematically) in a sort of... "collective hallucination" of the Chatsubo; the bar that Case shoulders his way into beneath the dead-channel sky at the beginning of Gibson's Neuromancer. The core idea is: Imagine all the characters that inhabited the "cyberpunk" (in it's loosest possible semantic) worlds in all the books, movies, anime, and minds of the 80's and early 90's tore away into a closed "Dark Net" of sorts. Then imagine that all of these characters were jacked into reality circa 2005 and had to deal with the "alternate future" shock up to present day (2008). How would they adapt? Would Tally Isham start a Youtube cam? Would all those chromed-out hipster cyberpunks pick up iPhones and get strung out on WoW? Would all those AIs be running WoW farming / international WoW cyber-crime operations? Would all those cybernetic limbs be converted into super-enhanced Guitar Hero and Rock Band playing devices?

Keep in mind all of this is metaphorical and the tone of the series is highly surreal, so we don't need a literal, completely realistic scenario. Creativity highly encouraged."

Another way to think of it is as an APPF - Alternate Present of a Previous Future*. That is, an alternate reality of the collectively imagined cyberpunk future of the 80's. A 21st century that is neither and both our 21st century and the 21st century of vintage cyberpunk. The present (and near-future to an extent) as seen from the vantage point of the ghosts of an elder, imagined cyberspace. Hopefully resulting in much comedy, illuminations of the present, edification, pleasure, and other such good things.

(*Because no self-respecting part-time futurist can get through a Gibson Board or blog post without punting at least one two-second flash-wizz neologism!)

(From the blog post)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: TwiliteMinotaur,

Downloading.

Dude, that was sweet, srsly. Very nice.

Brilliant!

I'll get to watch it with the sound on once I'm back home.

quote:

Originally posted by ArkanGL:
Brilliant!

I'll get to watch it with the sound on once I'm back home.

me too! looking great so far!

Ha! That was brilliant!

I feel I've been occularly assaulted by a Video Toaster!

Thanks Arkan, Jbx, GR, Shake. Let me know if you guys have any ideas or anything!

Ideas?

I want to be in there! ^^

Hm, maybe we can get some chanbara in there somewhere...

Very cool, of course: you == star

Well, I'm kinda cheating cause I'm all in video and stuff...

quote:

Originally posted by TwiliteMinotaur:
Well, I'm kinda cheating cause I'm all in video and stuff...

You're a PoMo, retro-flashback, Video Toaster, Cam Whore Godzilla for the post-ironic cyberpunk fetishist set.

And you have a black coat.

quote:

And you have a black coat.

Well, you know, it's Spook Country.

It's funny, like that.


(*But from the spectres' perspective of the looking glass.)

I feel that the guy is really attentive to what Gibson writes. he almost never kills of his "prots."

Sounds like some sort of literary Double Speal and not so double-plus good at all.

'Suntory Time'... ha!
Interesting, TM. I don't know if you've used any book-based tutorials, but if you can, invest in at least one of this series. Specially if you're serious about tutoring.

Thanks!

I took an AE class a while back and we did actually use tutorials from that book.

I'll try and suss out a cheap copy of the latest edition on Amazon.

Oh, while Fuldog sensei is around: have you ever done character animation in AE? I'm trying to use object parenting and such but sometimes it takes a while. I suppose I could do the animation in Flash but I was trying to keep everything in AE if possible. Also Is there a way to save or loop a repeating animation so you don't have to copy-paste it multiple times?

I have done cutout-style, limited animation of characters. In one example, personages where divided into head, eyes, mouth, legs & arms, all those elements being independent photoshop layers, then parented to the torso. Yes it's cumbersome specially if you have sub-parts (hands, feet, ankles...) but that's what precomps are for.

For those motions that need to loop, I usually render out one cycle as a .mov and then use that clip in the main comp, set it to loop as many times as needed. Yes, easier than pasting dozens of keyframes but of course if you need to change something you have to re-render the element.

Ah, I shall give that a try. Cut down on the processor load as well! Fanks!

Oh, Meru, if you're around, you got those songs?

Also, Hurtz, give me a ring.