Jolly Roger Jingle

This video was a long time in the making over the course of many months. I have learned many things about using Adobe After Effects...mainly what NOT to do. It was all worth it in the end since every project I've done since has gone much smoother and taken a fraction of the time to complete.

The skeletons were animated using the stop-motion, frame-by-frame technique in front of a black background which was later given full transparency. The lightning discs, each of which correspond and react to a different instrument source, have also been heavily modified with various effects to give them a new color and transparency. Those were recorded live for each instrument playing rather than using stop-motion. You will also notice 8 separate waveforms which in effect are tied in with each lightning disc. The constant "zooming-in" effect was the big hurdle to surpass! This was achieved (archaically) by constantly adding in a new copy of the final output on top of the previous all while simply enlarging the video. While all of this is going on pretty much everything is synched to the beat.

The actual song "Arabian Nights" I created years ago using Reason 3.0 before I had a midi keyboard.

So what did I learn in the process?

Don't bite off more than you can chew!