Animating "Mental Music Video"

[GenericUsername]

OK, so the last time I brought this up I apparently gravely underestimated the cost of commissioning an animation of this length. Realizing what it costs, I originally dropped the idea. However, I really can't let it go, it's been nagging me for weeks now. I mean COME ON! The "script" is really awesome, and it would look so cool! And I'm sure Kkat would be really happy if we actually got it done. So now the question is, would people be willing to contribute, and if so, with how much? I don't know how many registered users the site has, but the facebook group had 1500 members. Now, I know everyone doesn't have access to credit cards, and not everyone who does would be willing or has the means to contribute, but maybe we could start a poll or something to see if we could raise enough money to commission someone?

Also, if we now would get enough for a commission, who should do it? The two most solid animators I can think of in the fandom are Jananimations and Black Gryph0n, but I have no idea if either of them take commissions. So, what do you guys think?

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about-->viewtopic.php?f=7&t=23

[Pugs]

I would be willing to chip in for this. Brony Dance Party is another option for animating it I think. I'd say he's pretty experienced in making PMV's.
The thing is though, go back and listen to the song while reading down the list of scenes, and picturing them in your head.
To keep up with the lyrics, the scenes all remain very short, some would only be 2 seconds long.
As much as they are all great, moving scenes, they'd need more air time to have the proper effect in visual form.
So that could mean culling the list somewhat, which would be a heartbreaking thing to do.

The other thing is, this would have a considerable amount more work than the average pmv, because it needs A LOT of backgrounds, and characters.
Something like that could make it expensive.
But to that I say, shuttup and take my money!

So yeah, it wouldn't be without its hurdles, but it's not impossible.

[Pugs]

I just played the song in VLC with it playing at 0.78x speed. It adds roughly another 55 seconds to the song. Perhaps slowing down the song would be considered? It can be done without changing the pitch of the sound.

[Arcane_Scroll]

I would be willing to chip in for this. Brony Dance Party is another option for animating it I think. I'd say he's pretty experienced in making PMV's.

I'm really not a fan of his "animation". It's too much of the static-picture-with-wiggling-limbs variety using basic flash controls. I would rather see the guy behind the ATC to work on it, then we would get show quality.

[ThePuzzldPirate]

I would be willing to chip in for this. Brony Dance Party is another option for animating it I think. I'd say he's pretty experienced in making PMV's.

I'm really not a fan of his "animation". It's too much of the static-picture-with-wiggling-limbs variety using basic flash controls. I would rather see the guy behind the ATC to work on it, then we would get show quality.

I agree though it would probably be some time before he could do it if he would. He already has two animation projects going (Pony Rock PMV,Tumbler Animation) so he probably wouldn't be able to look at it far into next year. We could always ask but I don't even know if he is a FOE fan or not.

[Arcane_Scroll]

His rates are rather high, and worth every penny. The last time I looked, was looking to be at least $1000.

[GenericUsername]

$1000? That's way less than I expected. That's more along the lines of my original estimates. Considering we have ~1500 members, rasing a couple thousand dollars shouldn't be too hard, right?

[GenericUsername]

This is what Alex told me when I pitched the idea to him, and the reason why I now thought we were looking at way more than $1000:
As freakin awesome as that would be, I don't think you have a good sense of scale for how much that would actually cost. I've talked to askthecrusaders before about doing animations and anything beyond a 10-20 second clip starts to push in 500-1000 range for cost. That music video he did took him three months of almost nonstop work and I would be willing to bet that nothing short of several grand would convince him to do this for us. I don't mean to shoot your idea down but having this commissioned is not likely going to happen. What I can say is, I myself have most of it actually planned out because when I first joined the group back in it's third day of existence my plan was originally to try to animate it myself. I managed to finish the first intro scene with the fence but I had been using a piece of crap freeware tool that honestly didn't work. If I were to try it again I would go back to flash and commission someone to do background paintings for me. This would have to be more of an internal project than a commission and while I would love to do it I have school and these books to occupy most of my time. I will boot up flash and see if I can't put together something in a reasonable amount of time. If it works then I will consider pursuing it. Long story short, the group itself wouldn't be able to afford the time or resources to getting it commissioned and unless you can track down a graphic artist and animator in the group. Sorry but it would be a cool idea.

[AffeTrollkarl]

Does it necessarily have to be animated, really?

Like Pugs pointed out, the imagined scenes are really quite short. Wouldn't it even be better to have a slideshow or something of the like with the scenes masterfully painted by different talented artists?

[Neztep]

@AffeTrollkarl, I agree, a slideshow would probably be just as effective and way less of a hassle. You could even do layered pictures and during that few seconds the camera could do a slight shift and it would give the appearance of motion and 3-dimensionalism (don't think that's an actual word).