Automata (Pages One Through Six)

[nihonnewbie]

Was 3 years behind with reading PA, have been catching up over the past few weeks. Just came across this today and wanted to say thanks for making this. Job well done, indeed.

[hermiteer]

@nihonnewbie Thank you, I appreciate that you took the time to leave a note. Who knows, maybe more in the future? :)

[hiPlasma]

tiiiiiiight mothafucka!!!!

[bigvig209]

Christoph --

Fantastic work. Really loved the music, and the editing is really tight.

[YodelOutLoud]

That was great, but i imagined the story to have almost a more "Grim Fandango"-y feel to it. Compliments on an excellent piece, though.

[Aandor]

That was impressively fantastic. I'm actually in awe. While the original artwork was pretty great by itself, you actually made it better, if by nothing other than through a different delivery method.

Sweet editing skills, for sure.

[dennymeta]

This is really nice - good job.

[ErikVeland]

Fantastic work! Automata really resonated with me and you've captured the noir feel just perfectly with sound and vision. Great job!

I also love the all-important detail work you did with clickwise!

[t2yd2y]

Not to take anything away from the art and writing, but that was incredible, beautiful.

[mm089]

Really, really amazing. Thanks for doing it.

[Abenstern]

Thanks for creating this composition. It was paced nicely and the music/ effects had the right tone for story. The 'clickwise' was a very interesting noise. The blurring, shifing panels, and disappearing word-ballons kept the mood dark and hectic. And the fade-out, pulling back from a lonely man? Classic Noir!

[singingcera]

Absolutely amazing. The story was touching to begin with, but your soundtrack and presentation made it immersive. I've got chills.

[guthmund]

No doubt. That piano bit at the end was especially nice.

[luvhair255]

nice job with coordinating all this beautiful art

[Vultrus]

Perfect. I like what you've got here and I'm looking forward to other projects you may have in store.

[fapmyster]

Nice work, I'm sure the guys over at penny arcade would be very happy with what you have done. Hope they do some more automata again soon

[Axe336]

Reminds me of Broken Saints, good job on that.

By any chance was the Cowboy Bebop opening a measure of inspiration for the fight scene with the band music?

[hermiteer]

Thank you very much. I know Cowboy Bebop, but no, it never crossed my mind when I did it.

[Tedly224]

Superb. The Penny Arcade crew have probably walked away from watching this with their own work being seen and heard through your view, and it'll be a lasting thing. Thank you for slaving over it.

[hermiteer]

Many thank!  They did something that inspired me and I never felt like I was slaving over it, I was just trying to keep up!

[Pungdyr13]

brilliant work!

Can't forget to thank PA too for the comic after all :P, but your editing and music really enhance the mood setting in the comic. Good job.

[hjcoyne]

Super Awesome.

[OppositeOptimist]

That was surprisingly awesome.

[efficientsexy]

BRILLIANT!

[iobjectifytom]

This was totally awesome.

But the jazz should have been in 7/8. A real missed opportunity there.

[atomicazaaron]

Nice, really nice.

[flappedjack]

Sweeeeeet

[pmptendo]

Amazing Job, I think you captured the mood of the story very well.

[ElijasaurusRex]

Great stuff, man! That jazz fight scene was brilliant - hell, the whole damn thing was brilliant. I loved it.

[dracosummoner]

That was absolutely beautiful! Amazing job, and thanks so much!

On another note, congratulations on getting 16,000 views in about twenty-four hours. You've earned each and every one of them. God bless!

[hermiteer]

I have the PA guys to thank for linking to it, otherwise I'm sure it would have just been my 30 friends watching it! Thanks for taking the time to watch and comment.

[christofurb]

Absolutely genius work there, friend. I think the intensity of the jazz/fight scene was well conveyed by the still placement and cuts. Clickwise was perfectly done!

[zuluthrone]

the features i wanted to see in the beginning did show up later on, like some rain falling sounds, footsteps, shuving, doors opening, etc. The robotic agitation around 0:47 as part of the song works really well. I hadn't watched all the way through when i made the text comment, but i think it could use more. The tempo at 3:37 feels off. It's like the scene goes slow whereas the panel transitions want to go fast. It feels like cowboy bepop, you know?

[zuluthrone]

Since it is a slow moment (or i think of it as one), maybe stretch it out more, dissolve from blue eyed into red eyed, and then dissolve in the "help," then black, as it continues.

I think some more erratic, improvised jazz during the fight would fit well, and then go back to the musical style during the outdoors which works very well with the dialog between them, especially up to KUNG when he's hit. I loved that.

[zuluthrone]

I get a great sense of the instruments representing character voices in the exchange at 3:57, that's awesome. The end music is really mellowdramatic, maybe a tad too much. It still works, but maybe the audience can feel more uneased by the replaceable nature of his arm and how he's just immediately gotten over this situation, as a robot would.

[zuluthrone]

Rather than seeing Carl as some sad, defeated creature, you could bring up the idea that you can't really trust your friends anymore, and that sympathetic attitudes towards the robots may leave you dead. Maybe back up the piano with electronic sounds instead of horns and strings and in more of an atonal style. Again, awesome work, I'll keep an eye out for more stuff.

[zuluthrone]

though the more i look at 3:37 the more it works for me. not what i would have used there, but cool none the less.

[hermiteer]

Thanks for taking the time to re-watch and add more comments. I'm glad 3:37 is working for you :)

[zuluthrone]

I think you've done a great job. Are these the panels as they were released on penny arcade or did you get access to some higher resolution ones? Also, I think this could have a greater impact if you fade in the speech elements separately to complement the rhythm you've created with the motion and music. Do you have any dramatic friends who'd want to record over dialog for you? Do you want some?

[hermiteer]

Thanks you very much. These are the same frames as released on the PA website. I would have loved to have the original layered PSDs so I could do more fading of the text in and out. I did it a bit in this video, like when Carl explains the Clickwise conversation, but that required photoshopping in the missing wall and rain. Gabe didn't complain so I must have done an OK job:)

I'll let people invent their own voices for Automata, but not adverse to dialog in new projects. Keep in touch!

[hermiteer]

Thank you everyone! I am still blown away with all the great comments. You are all inspiring me to start looking for my next project immediately...

[archangeloz]

Yeah, this was perfect. Way to go with the soundtrack, it really captured a lot of the feel.

[Flubberwood]

Amazing video! i love the comic, but this really brings emotion and life into it. The cuts and transitions are perfect (although my slow reading capability meant I had to pause it twice!), and the soundtrack was very fitting.

[tytan82]

All I have to say is: WOW!! The first time I read the comic 1-6, I thought it was really good, but what you have done is just amazing, the music really, really works with the strip, very emotional. Makes me feel sorry for Carl at the end, even more so than before, gratz, and great work!

[ThrullSDA]

What made this stand out for me was how I noticed things in each frame that I breezed past previously... I never even read the "No heart/no soul/no service" sign the first time I read the comic. This does the strip's details justice, and its creative interpretations work well, I think.

[Petablast]

Excellent stuff. Though now the fight scene turned into Adam West Batman.

[lilgrillo]

This was a fantastic treatment of the miniseries. Well done.

[spidey0102]

Just brilliant, especially the video's composition - music could have been a bit darker in tone, but otherwise great.

[ramenmou]

This is wonderful. :) Thank you for putting so much creative effort into this.

I think the music was well done, and I, too, enjoy how you portrayed Clickwise.

[cekylir]

just kinda wondering, what's the point of this?

[gollumsalterego]

That's all covered in the description.

[cekylir]

yeah, I know what he was doing, but it seems like a waist of time unless he actually animated it or at least put in voices...

[hermiteer]

I purposefully left voices out because I believe the best person to do a voice is the one who is reading the words.

[cekylir]

well, okay, but my point is that it seems kind of unnecesary to simply make the images move across the screen when you could just read it and still be able to have the right voices

[hermiteer]

I'm sure someone told Ken Burns the same thing :)

I understand what you are saying and if it doesn't work for you, that's cool.

[chaos7789]

Absolutely brilliant job.

[AndiWeiqi]

Brilliant work! The music and images work together seamlessly, and the "Clickwise" language is clever.

[matthewtptaylor]

Simply wonderful - I loved the Automata strips, and this really brings them to life.

[jurian99]

Fantastic video, brilliantly done.

Sure hope we will see more of Automata in the near future.

[sivartis]

Wow, that was a really spectacularly well done interpretation. Good work, my man!

~Trav

[Biyokko]

I really liked the way you represented Clickwise; it translated well both musically and logically. Though the music was surprising, I think it fit very well, especially with the way you managed to match it all up. Very nicely done. Hell, my rat sat up next to me and watched the whole thing, too.

I especially enjoyed reading your concept notes about the whole thing. I really admire all the thought that went into it, and it was fun to examine your ideas and expand my own knowledge about music.

[hermiteer]

Cool, I'm glad you liked my translation! The concept notes (good way to describe them) are really for myself, but I'm glad you got something out of them too.

[Ess2s2]

Superb, you took a piece of work that was brilliant and added your own touch. The resulting product was superlative. Thank you and Penny Arcade for all your hard work.

[project2501b]

The music in this is... it clashes with the style, and feels like it was a bad dubb over. While it was a nice attempt, it doesn't feel right, and jars the nerves.

A more film noir style would have worked better, like the music that Kenji Kawai placed in Innocence. That fit perfectly, this feels just so wrong.

Nice try, though.

[hermiteer]

Fair enough :)

[Zerrin]

The music is absolutely beautiful and just works so well. I liked the comics, but wasn't blown away. The way you put them together and show them off - with music choices that were unexpected but extremely well chosen - really did blow me away. This single-handedly made me fall in love with the concept of Automata, and judging by your skills here I'm sure you can do great things elsewhere, too.

[hermiteer]

I'm glad you liked it! And thank you for the vote of confidence!

[CaptainSpalding1]

Amazing, amazing work, all the way around. I can't wait to see where this goes someday... Interesting, that is could slip right in to the Rain Slick Precipice universe, eh? Am I right, or am I right? /big fucking hint, Gabe & Tycho...

[Valyn]

Absolutely awesome. That's the kind of thing I would pay for, unlike 90% of Hollywood's garbage. I love the 'voice' you gave to the clickwise talk.

[MapNinja99]

Posting beneath an epic vid. Good job sir.

[mistertoasty]

wow! great work!

[ohwaitnvm]

You really captured the path of the eye across the panels well, especially on the first page, keeping me interested the whole time both visually and auditorily.

Very good stuff, I wouldn't hesitate to watch more.

[murrayman49]

Brilliant

[wizardmach3]

Holy fuck. Nicely done sir

[nulloperations]

The music and timing of the images worked out great. Wonderful work. I wish you could do more of the fading in and out text, but otherwise this is just awesome.

[hermiteer]

Me too. When Carl explains the Clickwise conversation, I had to photoshop out the text but spend a bunch of time re-doing the rain streaks and wall. Hopefully in the future I could get the original PSDs that have the text on different layers to make it easier.

[Tassadar1992]

Beautiful just beautiful.

[jwshay]

3:29 - I think Gabe drew a hi-hat instead of a snare drum.

[hermiteer]

Touche :)

[meebit]

AWESOME!

[samtung]

This is wonderful! Great work on pacing the motion comics with the music- wonderful brooding film noir jazz composition.

What did you assemble this in? Flash?

Keep up the good work!

[hermiteer]

Many thanks! I used iMovie '09 to do it.  Some things were super easy, but I had a few fights with the timeline and transitions. I've filed a couple enhancement requests with Apple, maybe they'll fix 'em.

[smknight85]

Very nicely arranged. And I agree with a previous comment: The moment the title flashed was made a moment of excitement by the music.

[karaksindru]

Very well done, sir.  Thank you for creating and sharing this.

[pete275]

you'd think the clickwise would sound a bit more, you know, "clicky"

[pete275]

(your reply didn't show up here aparently)

yeah, or maybe the first version of "inter-robot communication" was clicky (maybe the used some kind of mechanical device to emit it), and later it became better sounding, but the name stuck.

[hermiteer]

Totally possible too. YouTube comments and I aren't getting along at the moment, not sure why my response disappeared.

[mikeash47]

You're my hero. Almost as much as Gabe and Tycho. They should get you to do this for everything they make.

[mcmanusdown]

Get outta our town, metalheads...

[donpetersen]

Wow!  I followed the link out of curiosity, expecting something horrible. But that was great! Very, very nice job.

[garageink74]

very nice work! Automata is my favorite story from PA in years. Hopefully it becomes a semi-regular thing like CTS

[leonardobb]

Amazing work!

[SwordDemon22]

That reinvented the comic for me. Truly amazing.

[SilverSteelWolf]

Excellent work. You had some great musical selections that worked well with the artwork and the moods I felt while reading them. When I saw the first "automata" title I got the excitement chills all over again. Thanks for sharing this.

[Haphazy]

Awesome work! Touching. You captured the essence that I felt reading through it also.

[LoliconKato]

awesome, really captured the feel of the comic. Also, I must say this is the kindest comments section of any video I've ever seen on youtube.

[ZionXero]

Wow. That was amazing. They need to hire you to do this for everything.

The last piano thing was the best.

[stiggy1605]

That was brilliant. Kind of like watching an old silent movie, where they had to portray moods and pace with music. Absolutely stunning.

[vbpetrovic]

Indescribably good. The action scenes and your interpretation of the Claptrap's music is the real showstopper. But I also like the piano motif that looks to be the Automata theme.

[hermiteer]

Thank you everyone for your great feedback! I'm glad the PA guys liked it enough to link so you could all see it. Here's hoping for more in the "futro!"

[Teh1337Fist]

Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

[Spleenz]

The way you handled the car crash was just plain awesome.

[SolitaireG]

Nicely done, honestly. Best part for me was your work with the robot's language - it would be interesting if someone figured out all the permutations of the bars....you've translated it very well into audio, in my opinion :^)

[Lurklen]

That was amazeing, very nice compliment to an already great work. The ending sounded so sad .

[djoeck]

Well done.

[mozleron]

Now THAT is how music should be used to help set a scene. Elfman could learn a thing or two from this. :)

[hermiteer]

Wow... just wow. Thank you!

[infinite1der]

Kudos, sir. You captured the ambience perfectly. I would love to have a high(er)-definition version of this. Awesome, indeed.

[hermiteer]

I'll be posting a link to a 960x540 hi-def version over the weekend on my site. I can't link it here in the comments but you can find the link up top in the "more info" box.

[Generik420]

That was really well done. I think the music caught the mood very well and I really loved the Clickwise speech. Bravo sir!

[NaelokQ]

Extremely good stuff, nicely done sir.

[schnichaels]

Incredible. It seems you managed to evoke every emotion Jerry and Mike were trying to convey. Very moving soundtrack!

[aburnflags]

Great work, I really liked the fight scene the fast paced music really helped set the scene, I hope to see more of this in the future.

[dhw9406]

Pretty great... The only thing I would have done differently would have been, when the panel came up, to focus close in on the "Swangee Man Knows his Place" billboard, and then pull out and pan down. Otherwise, this was just amazing!

[jimk23x]

Amazing.

I keep getting the same feeling from this I got from the scenery and settings and storyline of Bioshock. Not that I could draw any direct parallels, it;s just they both evoke the same sense of sadness, nostalgia for something I never had and excitement about discovering more of the retro/future world. This video only added to that experience. Really well done! I really REALLY hope they do something with Automata in the future and get you to make more of these videos.

[hermiteer]

Awesome, thank you. I'm just starting to play Bioshock (I know, I'm late) but I'm pretty fascinated by that style. Retro + future = futro?

[dennymeta]

In the custom motorbike scene they call that tektro.

[quillian42]

This is absolutely incredible. It really gives a sense of the world, and how rich a longer exploration of it could be. great job.

[Q9R42]

Not too bad (:

I liked it. Made me follow the story a little better.

[sdhedgewizard]

Awesome work - great music! Very creative way to "display" the PA comic!

[MegaYokai]

that is really impressive...nice work!

[hamellr]

Great job! Love the background music, love how you musically represented the conversation.

Things move a bit fast through there in comparison to the first episode.

[LordDaimos]

Great work, loved it!