Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Exiting the Forest

A whole lot can happen in 4 years.

I can't remember what originally compelled me to make the Rawest Forest music video. It was my final project for my Animation class in Senior year of High School, I had a week to do it, and for some reason I just up and felt like paying tribute to what is probably my favorite game of all time.



Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars has been a gigantic inspiration to me from the time when it was being talked about in gaming mags, to its initial release, to the decade long after it had come out, to even now. Doing the Rawest Forest animation was not simply my transitional piece from High School to College, it was something very personal and meaningful to me. After its takeoff, the fact that it's one of the first things that pops up when you Google-search "Mario RPG" is incredible to me. Everyone who's ever played the game has seen it and holds some level of appreciation for not just the video, but the song that Märta and XBrav had created.



I knew I wanted to do another Mario RPG music video, in the same spirit as I had done Rawest Forest 4 years ago: to mark my transition from College into the rest of my life...unfortunately the time frame for that has long-since passed as of 2 months ago, due to the song itself being finished very late in the mixing process. That aside though, I'm really happy with how it came out and I owe all of that to Psy for scoring the BGM, Shady for his rapping and mixing and even Musical Mike for lending his last-second element of awesomeness that is his opera singing. Special thanks as well to Mike Ruocco for engineering my recording session on the main vocals several months ago. I was considering taking a different pre-existing Mario RPG song and animating to it, but I'm glad the decision came to doing a song built from the ground up, plus people have a real affinity for the Forest Maze. ;]

I know to most people this is just "another video game Flash Movie" and I get that. For me, it was simply a personal venture. Between freelance work and everything else going on in my life, I wanted to make sure it was done quickly, so I set my aim on two weeks at the most. I certainly wouldn't call it a piece of "art", since I absolutely could've spent more time on it from a visuals standpoint. I almost wish I animated the full-length song, if only to throw more geeky references and tributes to the characters and worlds that made that game so special. All that aside, I'm content with it; proud too. Other people who had a real connection to this game like I did have gotten something out of it and that's what matters most to me here. To everyone that's been telling me about how much this video means to them personally, I truly thank you guys for that.

Also, worth addressing: No this is not my "final animation ever". Some people seemed to misinterpret the Author Comments on the video as this being my Newgrounds swan song. It isn't. I'm working on and developing SEVERAL projects right now, all of which are original concepts. Most of it is secretive, but in the near future I'll hopefully have something to show all of you guys. In the meantime though, I hope you all enjoy Waltz of the Forest!