Ulduar

Wow, I knew we'd turned out something good with this video, but I still wasn't prepared for how popular this thing would be.

Cranius posted a version of "how this came to be" post on his blog several days ago, so I thought I'd give my side of things. Cranius and I got introduced in a roundabout manner by a mutual fan. I confess, at first I was a little concerned when Ajulex came to the Mad Cow forums all excited that he'd gotten Cranius to agree to work with me and Nyhm when neither of us had expressed any interest in collaborating. I tracked down the Big Blue Dress creator, apologized for any confusion, and ended up chatting with him about machinima, our musical backgrounds, vocal recording and World of Warcraft until the wee hours of the morning when the servers shut down for Tuesday maintenance.

Fast forward two months. Nyhm had talked often about doing a spoof to "The Way I Are" with Timbaland and Keri Hilson, but had never found the right subject matter on which to write. My guild had made a halfhearted attempt to try out the new Ulduar bosses on the test realm, and there was much anticipation of the upcoming patch as the current raid instances were getting old fast. Well, Nyhm was on indefinite hiatus from movie making, and Cranius had expressed an interest in collaborating on something, so I found myself writing a semiautobiographical spoof about the anticipation for Ulduar. The characters are based on myself and Cranius, obviously, but the relationship is entirely fictional. (And for the record, I'm not married to Nyhm, nor am I dating him.) Summer's gear in the video is my actual gear in game.

I liken the resulting whirlwind to the feeling of casting a fishing line, hoping for an Enormous Barbed Gill Trout, and finding myself faced with The Lurker Below. Cranius bit, and he ran with it. A few days later, I received his processed vocals, and I was just tickled pink at how much he'd done with them. Then he asked if it was okay to recruit some help for the video so we could get it out before the patch. "Sure," I say. "Who did you sucker into it," I think to myself. Then he introduced me to Legs' work. My jaw dropped as I watched video after video of hers and marveled at the skill and artistry. I couldn't believe I'd never heard of her before, and I was very honored she was up for working on this project, particularly since my one attempt at doing video, Heartbroken, well, let's just say it left a lot to be desired in terms of technical sophistication. *cough*

Fast forward another 10 days. Nyhm liked the song I'd sent him so much, he offered to advertise on his channel for me. And as of this writing, we're closing in on 100,000 views on YouTube, as well as having received a glowing review from Myndflame and a WoWInsider Moviewatch feature.

That was a lot more than I intended to write about the back story... Finally, some notes about the video itself:
The line "Hop on my mechano-hog and we'll never log" was not my original lyric. Cranius, in true punk PVPer fashion, wanted to change it from "don't got no mechano-hog" to reflect the fact that he does actually own a motorcycle, both in game and out, and in fact most PVPers do have bikes. This introduced inconsistencies since the mechano-hog is in fact an epic mount, and you get an achievement for obtaining one, but it fit with the rest of the spoken-word verse and the relationship aspect. Chalk it up to artistic license, folks. ;)

I highly recommend watching this in HD to appreciate all of the amazing detail.



The MP3 of Ulduar is also now available for download.

First!

Everyone else seems to have a blog these days, and with the growing success of Ulduar, now seems as good a time as any to start one myself.

By way of introduction, my name is Summergale, and I play a Tauren shaman on the World of Warcraft US server Nesingwary. My stage persona, though, is that of a pink haired troll shaman (still named Summergale). My reputation in the Warcraft machinima scene was made through a series of Weird Al-esque hip hop spoofs produced by Nyhm, and at my request he portrayed my character as a troll because let's face it, cows look goofy singing hip hop. His videos have been wildly successful, netting views in the millions and countless fans. Alas, the time came when he decided to take an indefinite break from making movies, so I decided to try my hand at doing my own projects.

This blog will follow my new projects as well as give some background on previous ones.

So, welcome and thanks for tuning in!