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.