Dreams

I love dreams. Almost in the same way that a druggy loves imagining themselves in a variety of situations while high, I love imagining myself in various states of dreaming. I love how sometimes what I dream and what I actually experience while awake become blurred, as they often do when I'm constantly busy and tired (especially around times where I'm doing a lot of creative work.) I also love how dreams can affect the creative process. Last night, I experienced the most genuine, lovely example of this.

I've been mulling over a lot of ideas recently for The Icily Polite videos. Of course, with college apps and homework and the like I really have no time to animate, but I can't help that I never stop thinking of creative endeavours. See, the problem I'm having is that all the ideas I've been having so far are either really cool and interesting but also small and near-inexpandable (they would be good for about a minute or two, not for a four minute song) or I simply don't have the tools necessary at my disposal to properly create them. Hand me a shiny Macbook, some Adobe software and about a week's worth of free time and now we're talking. But because of these two limitations I've felt stumped!

Now. For some reason lately, I've been having some really nice, bizarre, particularly clear dreams. Which is unusual, but awesome. Anyway, the idea came to me last night right before my head hit the pillow that I should just derive an animation from whatever I dreampt. I've done it before and it turned out great, so why not?

I had the best dream ever. The earth was desolate, and there was this huge space station. My room was part of the space station, as well as the immediate extremities of my room (i.e. the parts of my hosue that I can see from outside of my doorframe, such as my mom's boyfriends office.) I noticed that the window, which I could see through and out into SPACE, had a small part of the glass-screen had peeled back and I could feel the air being sucked out. Looking back it was weird, it was like the screen had peeled back a bit but it could hold the pressurized void of space back normally. Anyway, I tried to fix it with duct tape, but my mom's boyfriend told me he'd fix it. Then I woke up. The last part wasn't so epic, but you get the picture. What a delightful gift from the 90% of the human brain that scientists still have yet to understand fully. Expect a space video when I get the chance.

Nick.

New music video out and wouldja look what Adam made!

Hey. Sup. So there's a new music video out for The Icily Polite's song "Suburban Pledge" over at their constantly-changing website, as well as an amped-up preview of it that's been thrown onto YouTube. You should totes give those a look, specifically the first one cause from what I understand you can now download the first seven tracks of Earthen Sighs on that same page for FREE. Now isn't that nifty? Of course, don't let that divert your attention from the awesome full-fledged Expanded Edition of Earthen Sighs, with its luscious four exclusive bonus tracks, full-colour lyrics, artwork and liner notes and exclusive upcoming digital benefits.

/endsoundinglikeatotaltool

In other news, Adam's new movie "The Time... Guys" is out now! I did the theme song for it (you can find the free download link either in the blog post below or in the "downloads" section of the site) and I was utterly offended at what Adam did with it in the final cut. Just kidding, it was awesome. You can watch part 1 of "The Time... Guys" here and part 2 here.

Enjoy, my comrades.

Nick.

"Time... Guys" theme song

So my friend and collaborator Adam is making a new short film/series called "The Time... Guys" which he was gracious enough to ask me to make the music for! I did one track so far, the theme song, which I am incredibly proud of and you can download for your own squabbly pleasure right here.

Click here for a little preview Adam made of "The Time... Guys" and keep a look out for the upcoming series!

Nick.

Steppin' it up.

I did it. I made the executive decision to start a Promoted Video campaign with Google and YouTube. In short terms, I'm paying them money for them to display the "Paper Song" video in ads and such. Which is apparently how a lot of youtube-based internet celebrities got their start (at least according to their nifty little success stories bit.) Which I guess is nice, because that means I could possibly be the next Fred. Urgh. We'll see how this plays out.

Is this a good time to mention I need funding?

In other news, today was my eighteenth birthday! I celebrated with breakfast in the school parking lot with my buds before classes, which resulted in some nifty little covers of a band called The Lonely Forest. Other day-of-legality activities included pho eating, Lovers entering and seventeen purple balloons (there were eighteen but one popped) tied to the top of my car courtesy of my mom. To everybody who made my birthday fun, thank you! :) This will be the first of many days of, uh... I'm going to bed, it's almost midnight.

Nick.

I'm on Google more and more...

So I was googling for pictures of Lego bases, right? Cause I'm on the school computer and my goal by the end of the year is to have a solid terabite of pictures of Lego bases saved to my account. Y'know, just to be a pain to the system. Last year I tried the same thing with pictures of doctors. So anyway, I'm googling, and look what comes up.

That youtube video. Right there. That's mine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg8VjhgDQWg now isn't that just special? Anyway, the moral here is that methamphetamine is one hell of a drug. Don't get into that shit. Don't you dare get into that shit.
Nick.

The Icily Polite: New music video AND album out NOW!!

And click here for information on the album.

Sorry for how long this all took, but at least it's all finally out :) give it a shot. I start school tomorrow, not looking forward to it...

Nick.

Just a small update...

The Icily Polite have been working hard on a new record for the last two months, and as of yesterday the word is that all recording is finished! Now all we have to wait for is artwork and distribution to be taken care of. The record will be entitled "Earthen Sighs," and you can hear one song from it in the previous post. You can also see the track listing right over at Chris Chrippled's blog.

In other news, I went to the Dominican Republic for two weeks on a mission trip, which was really truly humbling. I stayed with a host family, built hosuses, all that... I also filmed the whole thing with a Flip video camcorder (finally got one, huzzah!) Unfortunately, the software I'm using can't properly edit the video files that the Flip takes, so I'm trying to scrounge up money for a new, better program. Because, y'know, film of a third world country wouldn't be interesting on Youtube or anything. New laptop, the new FL Studio, Flash, new video editing program... good thing my birthday's coming up.

As far as this website goes, I cleaned it up a bit. There is no more "old news" page. I updated the links and the FAQ and the contact page and all that. Also, today we have seen the decline of a Frostbite Studios veteran: the Advice from a Guy in Tights page has officially been brought down. We would like to thank Mr. A Guy in Tights for his long four years of servitude to the visitors of this site, and may he continue to wear tights and give his famous advice in his retirement.

For now, pickles.

Nick.

New The Icily Polite single + album

The Icily Polite will be releasing a new record in approximately 3 to 4 weeks. It will be entitled "Earthen Sighs". Here is the first single from the record, it is entitled "Fireworks (Stars in Blue)". You can listen to it here:

And download it for free here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?wwn4vwyzgwm

We are having a contest for the record. Email your first and last name and address to earthensighs@hotmail.com to be entered in a drawing to win a free copy of the album, a physical copy of the Lily Demo and some other goodies. The Icily Polite will not share this information with anyone outside of the contest.

Please send this song to anyone and everyone you think may enjoy it. Happy 4th of July!

Nick.

PS. I'm leaving tonight for the Dominican Republic for two weeks, so uh, yeah. I'll be gone.

SUMMER WOO

Now that summers rolled around, I've had SO MUCH TIME TO DO EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD EVER. First off, Danny Dreamland, my first long-ish film (45 minutes) is finally on YouTube! After two long days of ripping a DVD of it and then fiddling around with various publishing formats in Pinnacle Studio 11 (don't ever get that software), it's finally online! In six parts! IN HIGH DEF! Here's proof:

ALSO, I started a new myspace. Yes, I know. Myspace. Sigh. Well, believe it or not, some people still use the 'space (musicians and scene kids, mainly) and it's a pretty good resource for stuff like music and... being... scene. Yeah, I started a new myspace for my own solo acoustic on my own demo whatever shitty recordings for fun when I'm bored music. I also recorded three songs for it. You can check it out by clicking this sentence.
And there ya go, good start to the summer. That and working a lot, which sucks but'll hopefully garner enough cash to buy me a Flip video camcorder. Cheap home movies, here I come!
Nick.

Woah. Hold the phone.

A video for Song of the Century recently got, uh, made. Along with a Vimeo account for Frostbite Studios. Which is pretty cool I guess, Vimeo has a very clean and artist-oriented layout, so it's nice. I also put Dad's Experiments up there, just fyi. As always, if you'd like to download "Song of the Century" as an mp3 for free, go check out The Icily Polite's website.

On a different note, summer's coming up! I'll be working on more video projects and stuff, I simply cannot wait... I already have an idea for a video that I shall call I Am A Bear. The title was suggested to me by my grubbly friend Mike a little while ago, I figure it might be worth a shot.

In the meantime, check this out. It's me playing a song I wrote for a Chemistry project. All about Chemistry. Cause I'm cool. Special thanks to Harrison for shooting this!


Nick.

Updates? naaahhh.

Hey! I haven't posted since Easter so I figured I might as well go ahead and do so. Uh, I'm really busy with school and work and blah blah blah, which probably isn't that bad of a thing considering nobody really cares that much. Whatever, if you're bored please check out my videos Dad's Experiments or this song I wrote called Song for MLK or this series of interactive KrispyKon videos. I promise you'll like them :) you can also find all my music to listen here and to buy here.

Man, I need to find a way to get more viewers and listeners to what I create... I KINDA wanna keep making videos and music for the rest of my life and it'd be preeeeeetty sweet to be able to do so without a day job getting in the way. It's weird, with the way viral works so well with the internet today, the idea of becoming internet-famous sounds so easy to do. But I've been trying to do so for five years now. FIVE YEARS. I just can't wait for summer to finally roll around, so I can get back to work on short films and movies and such. I still haven't gotten this 45-minute-long live action film I did called Danny Dreamland up yet 'cause Macs are just so finicky... ALSO, my band Hundred Meter Trees is gonna record an EP of new stuff real soon, which should be really awesome.

Avast, gotta go pillage some villages. See ya somewhere in the Pacific.

Nick.

PS. If you read this and have any thoughts for me, feel free to drop me a line at nickemard@msn.com. It's frrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Egg Time

Oh shoot, Easters coming up... and you know what that means.

I hope everybody has a great, egg-filled self-discovering non-family-issue-enticing Easter. If you find yourself at the KrispyKon website anytime soon, they made a new page to let you stream their entire catalog right off the site... check that ish out.
Nick.

Lily Demo

KrispyKon has a new demo out, entitled the Lily Demo. It is a collection of five new songs they have been working on for an upcoming album, and is meant to generate support in both listeners and possibly attract the interest of a record label. Click the image below to download it for free:

Enjoy.
Nick.

Watch this.

Now.



Organic the Beautiful Purple Ducky-Dinosaur

Martin Luther King Jr.

Happy belated Martin Luther King Jr. day; a day to honor a man so proud and so fiercely devoted that he gave his life for what he knew was right. Amen.

Danny Dreamland is going quite well, we have one more filming day and then were DONE FOREVER. It might get its debut at the Old Redmond Firehosue. It might not, but it also might, which would be cool. I made a trailer but it was terrible so I scrapped it. Yeah.

Nick.

Dreamland

So I'm working on a movie called Danny Dreamland with Chris and a bunch of other buds for film class. Its gonna be a half hour long and we're almost done filming it. Editing has been superb, its so much fun too! It follows the story of a dude named Danny whose toolish uncle Toby moves in with him after his hosue is forclosed. Danny doesn't like this one bit, no he doesn't, so he decides to throw a concert in his garage in order to raise money to buy back his uncles hosue. Along the way he is guided by inner versions of famous Seattle-ites in crazy dreams more often than not involving graphfruit and ninja zombies (no joke, I did write this after all.) Anyway, it should be done in about two or three weeks, at which point I will release it online for your viewing pleasure. SO! Thats whats be taking up my time! In the meantime, I recommend you kick back, drink some iced tea and listen to the soothing nylon sounds of Michael Gotz, who has lovingly agreed to license his music for the film. Chao!

Nick.