(the garoffice during SPP4 mixing. I’m finishing the mix on the machine I started it on, my laptop. To facilitate multi-tasking, and avoid moving my crappy speakers from machine to machine, the laptop is setup in front of the desktop. I right hand mouse the desktop and left hand mouse the laptop. I keep notes on the desktop, as well. It’s kind of ludicrous. For my upcoming mixes on other records [oRSo9 and orso9rmx, MSP, MD8ME, SleepWalks, Kenton Camerata, Brother X, My Special Porpoise, ect] I am sticking with the desktop. To that end I just re-installed Live on it. I am abandoning ProTools for mixing. I can’t see launching it unless I need Pitch n Time, at this point. Mixing with Ableton is faboo.)

I’m pleased to say that we’re closing in on the final mixes of the fourth Stowe-Pembleton Project record. A few more good days, like I’ve had this past week, will get it in the can. And then it’s off to Soul Note. We’re pretty confident they’ll pick it up for release as our third release on their label.
But the third SPP record, embarrassingly, is still not mixed. D’oh! Heaven only knows if the label it was originally recorded for will still be interested. Rest assured getting SPP3 mixed is high on my spreadsheet of things to do. Well, item 13 of ~59, anyway. But since some activities exist in overlapping states, it’s higher than 13 might seem to suggest.

Research for Vile Dead continues. Which is to say I’m watching zombie related tv and film, as well as horror and supernatural flicks. I’ve been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes. This weekend I watched The Hunger (the first 2/3 is awesome. Then it’s downhill into complete, “quick, wrap it up, we’ve used our allotted 70 minutes! Screw linearity, comprehensibility, plot, characters and everything that’s happened in the film thus far, we need a quick ending. Oh hey, could you throw in a twist! Don’t worry about it making sense, this a vampire movie with David Bowie and lesbians, we can’t lose!”) and Hellboy II (Lots of fun to watch with absolutely no promise or pretension to being anything else.) I must admit, I always love the research phase of projects, but VD is particularly enjoyable.

Yesterday 23E Studios hosted a little tea party in the front courtyard of the garoffice. Our overlords, the Nightmare City City Council, were in town and wanted to check up on us. I think we passed the spot inspection. They declared the garoffice very nice, and expressed a strong faith in our ability to be productive in the 23E complex. While here they picked up their tribute for the year, the Nightmare City arcade from the Disembody installation/set. And their outfits from that film for use in future NC ventures.

(This is the courtyard. In the pic it is setup for mixing SPP4. It looked much nicer for the NC3: no computer paraphernalia, just my blue teapot and white cups and saucers.)

You’ll note from this post that the rebuilt desktop is performing fine thus far. I yanked out two internal drives, and hope to replace them soon with much larger drives for the logging and editing of Disembody. That’s one of the first things that came up in my logging strategy session with my father. The other big thing at this stage is establishing the best possible naming system for the clips. And defining parameters based on future uses of the footage. To that end I’ve begun a catalogue and timeline for the footage.

In other Disembody news, the NC3 think they spotted the dumpster from Disembody still residing in an alley in Chinatown where we filled it. The dumpster company has still not carried it away. Why not?
In sad Disembody news, 20th Century Props, where 23E rented theater seats for the Morgellon, is selling off its props and closing its doors. Oh, if only we could buy those seats for future projects! They’re being auctioned off, but A) I’ll be on tour and B) I have no money. So…

Above is some of the messy Copy Lake/My Daddy Ate My Eyes setup for our coming shows (and hopefully tour) in July. I’m mixing a MD8ME demo today. And rehearsing for the shows every day for the next many weeks. Also working on new material for Forever What?. We hope to rehearse in August in preparation for shows in Fall. With luck we’ll start gigging out semi-reguarly here in LA starting in September.

Yup,

our master builder, Jonny Grindstaff, today delivered the new Nightmare City arcade game.

It is amazing. Both Skye and I have been trying to play it, to no avail.
Actually, with a little practice, I got up to level three before a guest arrived for the 7pm showing.
But take my word, this game is stunning, a feast for the senses.

So far everyone who has come in has oohed and aahed over it.

See for yourself

In the meantime, here’s my favorite part of the arcade:

Oh, and for those who don’t read the business page, Nightmare City is the organization that won control of 23E Studios and The Museum of Viral Memory in a hostile take over about six months ago.

now I’m going to go back through the tapes and get the ones with glitches. Maybe it’s my camera. But as Carson pointed about his tools they may be malfunctioning be cause they are so new… LOL

Looks like I want to spend all my time on JBinNC. I think I may have something like 300 tiles left to manufacture. They are all little 32×32 pixel squares. For the most part all the animations are done. I still need to work on the little version of the protagonist. Which is to say the little character before it gets any power ups. I used the fetus as a bad guy already… After the smalll sized protagonist and the zillions of tiles are done I’d like to re-visit the backgrounds and throw in some high res versions of the baddies and maybe a few shand. After that the last step will be to make sure each board has the right music and backgrounds.

then I’ll be done! … I think

I have 3 bad guys left to animate. two are straight forward-ish. the third will take some imagination. Speaking of thirds, i think i have about a third of the protagonist animations done. it might take about 8 more frames.

All the bonuses are done…blah blah

the music is basically done

the sounds are done

the backgrounds could be considered done

the animations are as stated above

the foreground textures are in infancy, but I think I have enough raw materials for those