Cold Frozen Isle

Dreams

2010-10-19T22:01:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-10-13T21:46:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-26T15:59:00.001-07:00

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.

2010-09-14T23:36:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-09-07T09:01:00.000-07:00

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!!

2010-08-24T21:19:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-08-04T11:22:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-04T09:27:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-14T23:00:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-06-09T14:09:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-05-16T18:16:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-01T20:36:00.000-07:00

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

2010-02-23T19:43:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-01-29T17:27:00.000-08:00

Now.

Organic the Beautiful Purple Ducky-Dinosaur

Martin Luther King Jr.

2010-01-18T20:07:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-10T22:23:00.000-08:00

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.

2010

2009-12-31T17:06:00.000-08:00

Where has 2009 gone?? Oh well, one year closer to that whole 2012 mayan calendar thing. Hope you all enjoy the last fleeting moments of 2009, and a fruitful 2010 to you!

New video and new shoppe with new deals!

2009-12-03T19:57:00.000-08:00

Happy holidays everyone! To help celebrate the impending cold, I have opened a new directly-buy-from-me Frostbite Studios online shoppe! It has Greenwash and Cornbread and some new buttons, and CHECK THIS! When you buy any CD, you'll get a second copy of that album for FREE!! Two for the price of one kinda thing, so you can give em to friends and such. Check it!

CLICK 4 SHOPPE!!

Nick.

New video: The Big Race!

2009-11-21T21:25:00.000-08:00

I have a new video up... its entitled The Big Race!

Nick.

Is it fall or winter?

2009-10-12T22:20:00.000-07:00

Cause today was friggin cold. Anyway, I have two surprising new things for YOU! I made a colouring book as a joke for a friend, so now I'm deciding to upload the scanned images for you guys to download and print and colour on your own :) and I went through my old clothes to find a Frostbite Studios hoodie I had made a couple years ago on CafePress... seeing how its fall now (or apparently winter) I've started to wear it a lot more now and thought itd be cool to offer it to you guys as well! :) (please keep in mind I know cafepress is extremely expensive and I am NOT trying to sell you a product like a mindless TV ad)

Other than that, I've been buckled down lately with a FULL LENGTH movie I'm working on for my film class starring Chris currently called Danny Dreamland as well as a lot of stuff with my real band which is called Hundred Meter Trees. We have a show coming up on the 23rd if you happen to live round the Seattle area. Have a good halloween all of you if I don't get a webcast going or something to celebrate! :)

Nick.

DJ FO SKINTLEY'S NEW ALBUM "CORNBREAD"

2009-08-04T17:22:00.000-07:00

Hello all! I am very excited to announce that DJ Fo Skintley has just released a brand new album entitled Cornbread! The album, said to be a modest blend of alternative hip-hop and electronica, is available for purchase in two forms:
1. Pay-what-you-want download
2. Limited edition bonus CD version
you may have heard the song "Chicken Abortion" off the record in the free downloadable Disciple single. Now you can own the whole album! Both ways of purchasing are available here.
Nick.
PS. Have a look around, I put some clips up of the last webcast.

Greenwash bonus track version

2009-07-26T22:42:00.001-07:00

http://songslide.com/ArtistDetail.aspx?ArtistID=443

KrispyKon's Greenwash is now available from Seattle-based independent digital music distributor SongSlide. The idea behind SongSlide is that you get to choose the price you want to pay for the 100% DRM-free music. Sounds better than iTunes to me.
Nick.
PS. As an extra incentive just to check it out, theres a bonus track that has not yet been released up until now tagged onto the end of the record.

Hundred Meter Trees

2009-07-26T19:48:00.000-07:00

http://myspace.com/nickrobandryansband

Three two great bands

2009-06-06T11:17:00.000-07:00

lol

New free Disciple single!

2009-04-26T20:28:00.001-07:00

Disciple is here

Cornbread is here

Nick.

Here's an Egg remix contest now online!

2009-04-12T18:21:00.000-07:00

This is so great! I can update my website without evening going to Tripod now!

So yeah I've made a remix contest for the "Here's an Egg" song. Download the samples here. The only basic rule is that your remix must include a provided sample from "Here's an Egg." There is no limit to how many remixes you may submit, and you must submit your remix to nickemard@msn.com . There is no set due date but don't let that stop you from being hasty. Prize(s) for best submissions are tbd but will rock. Remixes will be judged on creativity, use of samples, musicality, and originality. Each sample is split from the actual song, so there may be empty spaces where that particular instrument is not playing. Maybe you want to make a sweet four-on-the-floor dance version, or maybe your band wants to create a heavy rock version. Or maybe you just want to use it as an excuse to make fun of me. I really don't care. Just make sure to have fun with it :D
Nick.

Poetry and LEGOS

2009-04-07T21:38:00.000-07:00

Oh, these trees
This ground and these seas
They sing to me a wheezing song
They gasp in fright and confusion
What went wrong?
Was it the herds of people
The clouds of dark and tar
The forests of metals, concretes, landscapes, things
Social sciences
A computer in every pocket
A laser beam in every house
To keep the unwanted out
And because its required by law
We thought we had it made
But our oceans turned red
And our skies black
So what went wrong?

I would be a lovely atom bomb
To desecrate the earth and its terrible orifices
Left pockmarked by piss and rubbish
I would be a lovely atom bomb
To wreck the institutions
And leave their ideals stretched thin across a landfill
I would be a lovely atom bomb
Soap in the eye of society
Bloodshot in the heart
To clean the slate for god to start anew
I would be a lovely atom bomb

Also check this out:

Part 1 is available as well here

Awesome news

2009-04-01T19:14:00.001-07:00

So I finally found a way to embed this blog into my website... if your reading this from the Frostbite Studios site, then awesome! FBS and Cold Frozen Isle have finally become one! It only took me, what, three or four years to find out you could do this? Anyway. I'm back from what I'll pass off as a hiatus, induced by acting in the play... I was Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors. So now its back to work, I want to start doing more film stuff cause the results never cease to be hilarious. I'm also going to hella work with the KrispyKon live band soon (the new one, unfortunately the band I discussed in "2008 in review" fell apart save Henri, AJ, me, and Chris on camera instead of bass.) I've got a bunch of lights and animations assembled for the performances. I'm even thinking of implementing super-old material from KrispyKon's back catalogue for fun... but we'll see. Hopefully. For now, I gotta go find a way to fix the Arctic Thesis video on youtube, I just discovered I uploaded the one with the old version of the song by mistake. cheers
Nick.

2008 in review

2008-12-22T20:27:00.000-08:00

Wow. 2008 is nearly over. Ridiculous. However, I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say that this year has been a huge achievement. I've gone to new heights with both my movies and music, including such new classics as the GreenCo. and Stranded! series. I hope to expand both of them and more in the future. I've got a another band with a bunch of friends that is working hard on producing music so we can take over the dang world. However, lets not leave out the event I hope comes to everybodys mind :) KrispyKon has been taken to new heights this year, starting with officially releasing their breakout album Greenwash and with taking the music to a new level on two (was gonna be three but the weather betrayed us) live webcasts. Trust me when I say we have a lot more tricks planned for the coming year and it is for this reason that I would like to announce the official KrispyKon:Live lineup for 2009:

Nikolas Stethakopolfnavdoavndzbskjdfnogous: Guitar, vocals, effects

Christopher "Orgo" Orgovan: Bass guitar, vocals, effects

Austin Jef Fite: Technicalities and visual manipulation

Henri Noknownlastname: Lights and visual manipulation

Nicholas Christian Emard: Lead vocals and the rest

...and more to come.

To wrap up the crap, thank you all very very much for being a part of Frostbite Studios over the last year, whether it was watching videos, enjoying music or telling me you went to my website in tech class. I hope to bring more of the same and a little extra in '09 and the coming years and I look forward to sharing it all with you :) I'm gonna go have some 'nog.

Nick.

Snow rocks.

2008-12-15T21:39:00.000-08:00

We're webcasting soon btw.

Chicken Abortion. No, really.

2008-10-17T22:54:00.000-07:00

We figured out the rubbish concerning different cords in school today, which is nice. And to think, I came close to not having to make a trip to Guitar Center.

Thank. God.

Also heres an email I got from him at lunch:

I just asked Henri for some equipment>I can do everything but the colored lighting and I still have to look into blacklights...>Multiple camera angles may work... But I am not sure how well, I only have 3 cameras and one has a very short wire so I have to figure that out>They came and removed the broken stereo box from our media room, so I have to see if we can run sound directly to the amplifiers, but they may have a new box by halloween eliminating that problem I am assuming we will be doing the test the week before halloween then the actual webcast on the saturday after halloweenOther than that I seem to have everything figured out over here,
AJ

Cold Frozen Isle...

2008-10-17T22:48:00.000-07:00

Welcome. This is Cold Frozen Isle. Part Frostbite reference, part Stranded! reference, it will (perhaps?) be the new news source for FBS. Or maybe not. Whatever. For now it'll have references to our live KrispyKon webcasts and surrounding news. Please, settle yourself in.