Updates

New Video: “Let’s Draw! With Tables! The First Video!”

Jake Fox! On Video!

Hello all~ I made a time lapse video of a sketch I did in one of my smaller sketchbooks. Give it a look below and let me know what you think in the comments section!

Creating this was a major learning experience. I hope to release more videos in the future, as I get more familiar with the process of video editing. My end goal is to create art time lapse videos, featuring music playlists with a focus mainly on chiptune and other video game music. A big thank you to the music artists that lent their talents to this video.

Video Playlist

00:00 / FearOfDark – Surfing on a Sine Wave
https://fearofdark.bandcamp.com/track/surfing-on-a-sine-wave

Artwork by Jordan Chewning

FearofDark‘s music is a chiptune fusion style of music that has a nice jazzy, melodic feel to it. It’s the kind of music you’d find in the earlier, more relaxed parts of a video game. Surfing on a Sine Wave is a great upbeat and lighthearted tune that’s perfect for getting you up and moving. Surfing on a Sine Wave is available on FearOfDark’s website under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.

There’s a certain sense of sanguine melancholy in some of FearOfDark’s music that resonates with the rhythm and tempos of my own inner soundtracks. This song in particular happened to be playing in the background as I was editing the video and I thought it was too perfect not to use for it.

04:48 / Disasterpeace – One Hot Genie
https://music.disasterpeace.com/track/one-hot-genie

Artwork by Rich Vreeland and Hiswa (fuj1.deviantart.com)

Disasterpeace is a composer who makes music in several different genres and styles with an overall surreal tone. His chiptunes have a very retro and atmospheric feel to them feel to them. Overall, his music an great range of emotion and tone. He’s composed music for actual games such as Hyperlight Drifter, FEZ, Reigns, and many more; as well as a plethora of albums that sound like they belong in video games.

In all honesty, the slot this song was meant for was going to go to a song by PROTODOME; but I didn’t want to use his music without getting permission first and Disasterpeace happened to have a blanket permission to use his music on his blog page. I think it speaks a great deal to his music’s flexibility that you could just comb through his discography and find the perfect song in a pinch.

06:16 / Visager – Witch’s Hut
https://visager.bandcamp.com/track/witchs-hut

Visager makes music specifically for use in video games. This track in particular is very similar to the Witches’ and Fortune Tellers’ huts in The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past; perfect for the point in this video in which my cat familiar comes to pester me while I toil away.

I happen to come across her work while rummaging through FreeMusicArchives.org for music to use in the video (here’s her FMA page). Her tracks stood out to me for perfectly encapsulating the environments for which her tunes are meant to be featured in. They’d fit right at home in any game emulating an old-school system like the NES, SNES, and Gameboy.

06:55 / Shnabubula – Daring Escape (Super Castlevania IV Instruments)
https://shnabubula.bandcamp.com/track/daring-escape-super-castlevania-iv-instruments

Artwork by Katie Kinkel and Alex Roe

Much of Shnabubula‘s music is largely indistinguishable from the music found in the games they’re based from. He does a great job of capturing the tones of the games they’re based on. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he created these tracks for some secret unreleased SNES sequel you never got to hear about until today.

As someone who grew up on the SNES, I greatly appreciate the care Shnabubula puts into his compositions and how closely he sticks to the styles of music his tracks are based on. I think it takes a lot of love, both of music and video games, to be able to create music those styles.

11:02 / Zackery Wilson – FM2K
https://soundcloud.com/zackerywilson/fm2k
ZW’s Bandcamp: https://zackerywilson.bandcamp.com/

Last, but certainly not least, is Zackery Wilson‘s track FM2K. Zackery Wilson’s compositions are largely a deconstruction of the music they’re based on. He created very modern sounding tunes while strictly adhering to the sound fonts of specific older video game tracks. This is especially prevalent in his SNESQUE album.

This last song on the list is done in an FM Synth style, which was the type of music that was characteristic of music from games on the Sega Genesis. The Genesis’ sounds were unique in that they didn’t sound like any of the chip music of it’s time; music on the Genesis instead had more of a specific synth sound to it. As the only track in this video with this style, it felt like the perfect way to round out this brief VG music playlist.

On to the next video!

I hope to start working on the next video soon. This one took me a little longer than I might’ve liked but I think I’m getting the hang of it. I really enjoy the idea of these let’s draw videos with retro gaming playlists but I also want to explore doing more instructional videos. Until I find a nice niche that fits me, I’ll keep on trying new things.