Space Log

Album Announcement: “Replicator’s Tide”

Thu, 6 Sep 2012 23:55:41 -0700

It’s been awhile since our last update, and that’s because we’ve been working on our second album entitled “Replicator’s Tide”.

Like our first album, this too will be a musical story. We can’t tell you everything about the story just yet, nor when it will be released, but we can tell that every member of Galactaron will be present and that it is about Emily Wong’s first journey to a new planet.

We took Emily to this planet because, as the only ambassador from Earth and the first human to see a new planet, we wanted her to experience something she’d never experience on Earth.

Replicator’s Tide is a planet whose inhabitants, many millennia ago, created a new piece of technology. It is unknown why they created it or what they meant to accomplish through its creation, but we do know that the technology they created grew out of their control and absorbed the entire globe.

What they created were self-replicating nanobots, and this is their planet:

"First Contact" Music Video Released!

Mon, 7 May 2012 19:35:21 -0700

Today is the day! After 6 months of non-stop work we’ve finally released our music video! We want to thank everyone that has supported us this far. We simply can’t thank you enough.

Without further adieu, here is “First Contact”:

"First Contact" Music Video Progress Report

Wed, 1 Feb 2012 09:31:54 -0800

As you may or may not know, we’ve been hard at work on “First Contact.” It’s the music video to go along with our song of the same name. We thought we should update you on the progress and explain a little bit about what goes into a two-dimensional animation.

One of the biggest differences between 2D and 3D animation is the amount of time it takes to make them and where the time goes. In a 3D animation, most of the time is used modeling the characters inside a computer, giving them “bones” to animate, and texturing/lighting them to correctly to make sure they look good. After you get these things down, it doesn’t take nearly as much time to actually animate what you see. You put in a lot of preplanning and it all pays off in the end by making things quicker and easier to animate.

However, in 2D animation, the process is much slower and more linear. Each frame of an animation has to be drawn by hand. One second of animation is usually about 12 drawings.

It’s especially hard when animating humans. Humans are so difficult! If anything looks even a little bit unnatural you find it creepy and you don’t like it! Your brain’s wiring has made this into an especially difficult task.

Here are some step by step examples of what goes into creating just one frame of animation.

First, the character must be sketched out in their pose. This stage of animation is called the “Pencil” stage. It’s usually one of the longest stages in 2D animation. This is the part where you make sure the character moves correctly and flows easily from pose to pose. If it’s not correct in the pencil stage, it’s not going to get much better in the next stage after that. Pencils can be more detailed than this, but often, they’re less detailed:

Galactaron Short Story: "Hēi dòng"

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 07:44:10 -0800

“What is it?” Asked Emily.
“It is hēi dòng,” responded Singer through his neutral mask.
“Hēi dòng? It’s a black hole?”
“Si.”
“It’s beautiful.”

Millions of years worth of vibrantly colored debris and foggy gases were slowly being spun into the void. A harsh, continuous light shone in its center; infinite nuclear reactions, impossible to extinguish. Emily averted her eyes, the brightness slowly burning into a mild pain. Singer’s gaze remained steady, staring into the void.

“We must go slowly when we travel near them. It is… asthira… mm… unstable.”
“Won’t we get pulled in?”
“The ship reforms matter. When we get too close it forms again... mm… away from hēi dòng.”
“So when the ship gets this close to a black hole, it has to constantly rebuild itself a couple inches away so it doesn’t get pulled in? Including us?”
“Yes.”
“We’re being reformed by the ship right now?”
“Yes.”
“That makes me feel kinda sick…”

Sitting behind them, on an overstuffed paisley patterned couch, Bass was playing with his travel-sized pinball toy. It was designed for car trips and boredom on Earth, but it was the pinnacle of happiness for the smiling little lizard.

This seemed like a very surreal moment to Emily. A month ago, she would never have expected to be on a spaceship with five aliens, a concern for how close she can reasonably get to a black hole before it obliterates her existence, and a replica of her father’s worn out sofa. Now here she was, asking questions nonchalantly to a masked being that couldn’t tell the difference between “yes” and “si”.

Singer glided over to the control panel, hovering his fingers just above the various assortments of switches and knobs. His mask changed. It was happy.

Calling All Artists!

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 23:02:21 -0800

Our first Galactaron short story is coming soon and we want to invite you to help us out!

Every now and again we will release a short story to show the continuing adventures of Galactaron and Emily Wong through outer space. We want you to be a part of that adventure!

The steps to get involved are as follows:

1) Send an email to email (at symbol) galactaron (little dot shape) com with the subject “Story Time”.
2) We’ll send you a prompt from somewhere within our story.
3) You create a piece of art depicting that prompt.
4) You send us the artwork before January 16th, 2012.

That’s it! Once we get all the artwork from everyone we’ll post the story on our website, along with your artwork (credited to you of course) as a big comic. You’ll get to see where your piece fits into the larger story and you can show everyone you know this amazing collaborative piece you were involved in. It’ll be very fun.

You can make the artwork in any visual style you choose: drawing, painting, digital, photography, sculpture, video, etc. The choice is yours! As long as an image gets to us by the 16th of January, anything is fair game.

So email us right now and lets do this! The more people email us the better the story will look.