Yes, someone actually did convert the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer into a Legos version. Enjoy!
And with good reason; I just discovered Weird Al’s contribution to Epic Rap Battles of History, and now his new album is rolling out this week, one song per day. So far Word Crimes and Foil are my favorites, but there are more to come. I can’t wait to learn what new twisted goodies he has in store for us!
Another variation of Nerdcore has crossed my attention horizon, so I have to mention Epic Rap Battles of History, a very amusing project. I selected a few of my favorites to give you the idea, including Sir Isaac Newton vs Bill Nye and Nikola Tesla vs Thomas Edison, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. Visit their web site to check them all out and vote, and be sure to check out Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates on their YouTube page.
The first track is called Robot Roh Night by the band Shinsei Kamattechan, who seem to like graphics a lot and are using a Hatsune Miku kind of singer/ vocal processing, as near as I can tell. The second song is Front Memory, and also spends as much time putting together the graphics as creating the music. Nothing deeply intellectual here, just some good upbeat silly fun; until you translate the lyrics, at which point all bets are off. The band formed in 2007 and gained a following through streaming music videos, in part because of their tendency to stream live songs and mini-concerts using unusual and eccentric processes with no advanced warning. A lot like what Jack White does online with his music, come to think of it. They were indie for years, but signed up with Warner Music Japan once they got big. The final track is Whistling Flower Child, or at least I think that is what whistling yellow flower-chan means.
Here is an interesting Battle of the Robot Bands video put together by the Cyborg News Channel on You Tube. The bands they chose for the report were Germany’s Compressorhead, mentioned earlier on this blog, and Japan’s Z Machine, a University of Tokyo project sponsored by Zima.
This is a silly app, spun off from a silly program that I like a lot. The Crazy Talk App allows you to take an Actor, record some dialog, and slave them together for lip syncing. Yes, I know, lots of apps do that. But this is the only one I know that gives you some slider bars that allow you to create and edit animated facial expressions for the resulting video. They have 2 App versions, one free and the other 99 cents. It does have a bit of a learning curve, and to take advantage of everything you will need to get the actual Crazy Talk Program, so you can do stuff like create your own Actors.