Baby Jesus just spoke his first word

[LHX]

It's sunday 28th Jan 2007.

I've got a headcold. I'm sitting at my pc enjoying waves of hot then shivery, a pallid, sticky sweat has permeated my entire being. I'm reminded of Crowleys description of the holy oil in Book4.

There are 9565 frames in the video of my lips I recorded yesterday. So far I've done 1701 of them. Moving 5-10 frames forward, till the shape of the lips is completely different to the mask then moving the mask, 1 point at a time til it matches up. If I'm lucky, when I move back through the frames I've skipped, the mask will follow the lines of the lips as they move, due to a process called 'tweening'. When the little bastard has got a lot to say this is never the case and you end up having to edit each frame.

I'm watching freezeframes of my own lips, saying things I wrote a week ago, but I just can't get away from seeing the little baby. I'm watching my own mouth and hating the cartoon character that's stolen it. Do I really want to go through with this? Is the shit even funny? Or, as some shitty little insecurity demon, all but beaten to a pulp, in the darkest recesses of my brain, keeps telling me; "Nobody is laughing with you asshole! It's a stupid pathetic, home made animation of the most tedious script ever penned. Those people who keep saying nice things about it are your friends ffs - their job is to encourage you and be extra fkin nice about every stupid piece of shit thing you do."

I give the little bastard another kick in the ribs before shutting off his incessant droning. I try to remember how funny I found the shit a week ago when I was writing it. Back when the words were just popping into my head and I was cackling like a madman, writing them down as I heard them for the first time in the solo dictation thing that is the creative process. Before I'd read it, again and again, making tweaks and shit that had ceased to make any kind of coherent sense to me about wednesday. Once something is done my objectivity flys out the window. The text is just black shapes on my monitor.

The baby Jesus show, when I watch the final cut, will make me laugh about as much as my best friends funeral. I'll have heard every joke a thousand times. I'll hate every line, the way it's delivered, I'll despise every stupid video effect, the lame animations and background effects. To put it bluntly, when I watch this it will suck! It'll probably suck more than anything else I have ever watched. I'll watch the Baby Jesus Show before anyone else in the whole world and I'll know just exatcly how much it is possible to hate it.

When I started this I was doing it for me. I'd bought a camcorder about 6 months ago and it'd hardly been out its bag. I had the idea for masking lips, talking then superimposing them on some dumb baby's head meme I'd come up with. Sometimes I just want to play with this kinda stuff and see what it looks like. When I saw him roar like the MGM lion it was exactly like I had imagined it would be, all wrong and kinda creepy but funny at the same time. I got excited! Note to self: Maybe lithium is the answer after all. Inspiration struck and my train of thought derailed into daydreams about a whole 10 min show with the little bastard I'd created ranting and raving.

Most normal people would prolly have thought "dumb idea. Thats too much work that I don't have a clue how to do." Most normal people woulda understood what a stupid proposition it was for joe fkin bloggs with no experience or training in this kinda stuff to produce something like that. To be fair tho - most normal people wouldn't be watching a 3 second clip of a baby roaring like a lion, pissing themselves laughing, knowing that they did that. Who the fuck am I trying to kid? I left the rank and file of most normal people somewhere between conception and birth, as far as I can tell. I'm not most normal people, I'm super idiot, flying through the web of possibilities that most normal people choose to ignore. I take a bite of any pie I see in any sky and 9 times out of ten it's a nice munch.

So It began with the words "I'm going to do this" and the notion of "I can't" really didn't play much of a part in it. Turns out it's easier than it looks. Funny it usually does. But fuck me is it ever boring. Next time I'm using facepaint to paint a thick green 'al johlson' circle round my lips then using chromakey technology to automatically isolate the mouth.

Yeah, I know, "What the fuck do I know about chromakeying?", right? Well I might know next to fuck all at this point in time but I'll tell you what - I'm gonna do it anyway.

yo man

animation takes crazy amounts of work

im actually learning a lot about it just reading about you documenting the process


respect due

[P3nT4gR4m]

mumble ... mumble ... tail between legs.

I'm going to have to push the release out another week. I was shooting to finish the lip masking by friday/saturday (which is still on target) but that only leaves one day for the animations. Realistically this is not likely to happen or, if it did, the results wouldn't be pretty.

LMNO it means you have mega time to fuck around with the theme tune to your hearts content. That reminds me I'm gonna need to throw some titles together too. K one week on sunday it it is.

[LMNO]

Actually, I'm heading to DC tomorrow for that scientology wedding, and won't have time to touch it until Monday.

Except, Cain's Apocrypha to The Vengevul Testament of Eris is up next on the audio chopping block.  If anything, I'll be able to get to the guitar by Wednesday.

Damn, I gotta remind myself to the intro....  That shouldn't take too long, if I can remember to do it.

[P3nT4gR4m]

If I'd known discordia was gonna result in so much work I'da joined the fkin mormons instead. 

[LMNO]

I challenge you to find anywhere in the Principia that any of this would be easy.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I counter challenge you to find anywhere it says you'll have to graft like a f'kin navvy

[LMNO]

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/book/85.php

If you want to truly live in the heart of Eris, you'll have to graft like a f'kin navvy.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I smell bull shit 

[LMNO]

Whaddaya mean?  :halo:

[P3nT4gR4m]

Well that's it. The lip mask is finished as of half an hour ago and I've animated 30 secs worth of final cut on top of that. For the record - if the chromakeying doesn't work out for me this is going to be the first and final episode. I'm not going through that again. Fkin ever! I mean point a gun at my head, I'll take the fkin bullet before I'll touch another spline control. Srsly.

[Triple Zero]

congratz Silly, you got a drink waiting for ya in the OB!

[Cain]

Silly, I have a suggestion for one of your later animations, should you not want to kill yourself by that point.

Basically, Mental as Anything did a song called Talk to Baby Jesus.  I can send you the mp3 and these are the lyrics below for lip synching

When the bricks are burning and the harbour's on fire
You're sick of pies and drugs and all your friends are liars
You can talk to Baby Jesus down Tokoroa way
He welcomes every stranger with a handshake and a good day

Comparisons are made to Bob Dylans and Hope
He's got more fans than either and he'll never bludge
your smokes
You can talk to Baby Jesus he's the man for you
Got a red silk shirt - very big - muscles too

They call him Baby Jesus 'cause he's bigger than the Pope
He's a devil with the sheilas and a darling with the blokes
He eats like a Cadilac and wrestles like a champ
He's got his own Falcon and he drives it like a tank
You can talk to him any time you like
You can talk to him any time you like

Don't go to Europe for a caravan tour
It won't do much good for you and you
Take the great South Road past old Papakura
And talk to Baby Jesus 'cause he'll tell you what to do

[P3nT4gR4m]

hell yeah - email me the mp3, I'll stick it in my todo folder. Another thing I'd thought about was the intro to the rocky horrors picture show - that's got the lip synch already done  :-D

[Cain]

Done, just sent it now.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Nice one. Dunno about the lip synch - be kinda tricky but the tune is defo getting used. On another note - anyone seen Teh Ballad of Ricky Bobby? Mega BJ Lulz in there!