Post by Carli Jaff Everyone has their own taste in music, from Mos Def and Kanye to Led Zeppelin and ACDC all the way to Bon Iver and Of Monsters and Men. But, what if there was someone who was trying to rid your world of the music you loved and replace it with their favorite music? I dont know about you, but that is one of the scarier scenarios Ive heard in a while. Well, lucky for me and you, thats not going to happen. However, in the Super Remix Hero studio, that nightmare is becoming a reality- virtually. For the past week, nine enthusiastic students have been working hard on creating a storyline for their very own interactive video titled Super Remix Heroes. With the help of two highly accomplished coaches, Josh Randall (electronic dance musician, video artist, video game developer, and Creative Director at Harmonix) and Kerry Roan (Lead on the Camera & Lighting Editing team at Harmonix) the students have learned how to successfully use both Photoshop and After Effects! By the end of next week, these nine students will have created an extremely impressive and detailed interactive video!



Day 1 On day one, Josh and Kerry introduced themselves to the students and showed them some of their greatest accomplishments. These include Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and The Beatles: Rock Band. In addition, Josh and Kerry showed pictures and videos from the Florida studio in order to give the students an example of what their final project could be. In the afternoon, Josh and Kerry told each student to animate a scene by hand (without computers!!!) by using a flip book in order to gain appreciation for the computer as well as the hard work that animators put into every little image. Creating a flip book is harder than it looks, Klara Ingersoll said as she continued to erase, re-draw, and erase again. After many iterations, eraser shavings, and ripped pages, the students ended up with some great starts to their animation careers! At the very end of the day, I took pictures of each student, printed them out, and handed them out. Josh and Kerry told the students to cut themselves out of the picture and cut themselves apart at the joints (in the picture, of course!). After this, the students used sticky tack to animate themselves manually. By 3 oclock, the nine hardworking students had begun to turn themselves into animators!



Day 2 Students arrived bright-eyed and ready to work, learn, and animate at 9 AM on Tuesday morning. Josh and Kerry started off the game by showing the students an example of an interactive game that they created themselves! They hooked up MIDI Trigger Finger (a drum pad) to the audio-visual performance software Resolume Avenue. The game is basically a music-performance game with visuals tied in; it is similar to playing the drums, but now there is imagery tied to each different sound. After the students understood Josh and Kerrys game and how it worked, everyone watched animated videos for inspiration, such as Captain EO, DJ Qbert, and Space Channel 5. For the rest of the day, the students used Photoshop and After Effects to animate the pictures of themselves that I took yesterday. Josh and Kerry taught the students how to animate their bodies on After Effects by using the Puppet Pin Tool, a tool that will allow one to bend the image any way that they like. Another great thing about After Effects is its ability to play an animation on a loop. Because of this, students were to create five different one-second animations that would play on a loop. Once finished, everyone submitted their favorite animation to Josh and Kerry, who then put each animation in Resolume and made another interactive game. At the end of day two, we all knew that the students were getting antsy to start brainstorming for their final project...