The Cast of Eerie Publications perform the Johnson-Smith Novelty Company "Horror Record"

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Fiends! Boils! Ghouls! So forth! Gather 'round while I spin a tale of... ah hell let me just jump right in -->

So what we've got here is an annual Halloween post that comes wrapped up inside of a link to a project I just finished. How about THAT for a set-up opening sentence! No?

Okay, okay let's get down to the specifics:

This is a short film I made which marries the audio from the probably the WorstBest Halloween record I own (which as you may remember I mail ordered from a comic book ad when I was 8 or so) with the crude and gruesome cover art favored by the company that gave me the most nightmares as a child, Eerie Publications. I know, I know -- "At last!" right?

Some (general) technical info:

It was primarily created in three programs:

Photoshop: This was the most time consuming part. I did lots and lots of visual prep work like eliminating cover text, completing any truncated images (like if there was only half of a vampire or something because it hit the end of the cover page), breaking components out into separate layers and then creating new art that would fill in the holes left by moving those elements around, and so forth.

Motion: This is the program that allowed me to do all of the animation in XYZ (or "3D" you could say) space. Here's the part where I'd move the images around like pieces of paper on popsicle sticks inside of a shoebox stage (well at least that's how it felt to me) and sync them with the audio.

Final Cut Pro: This was what I used to do the final editing together of the various scenes, add the transitions (like the cross fades, etc), and to do the final exporting to video.

All of this took me about 4 weeks from start to finish, which accounts for more than a few false starts and obsessive tweaks. This was actually the first project I had ever attempted to do in Motion and while it turned out to be waaaay more work than I had initially bargained on, I really had a lot of fun.

(Oh, and yeah -- I eventually came to terms with the fact that I was going to have to cut the flogging scene; Eerie Publications just didn't have a single decent whip-heavy cover that I could find. Too tame for their tastes I guess.)

Okay! Hope you folks enjoy the video & my fingers are crossed that I'll see you all again next year!

Boo!