The Steve’s Quest crew hard at work

We’re now in the home stretch, as far as putting out the first episode of the animated musical soon-to-be smash sensation, Steve’s Quest, is concerned.

I thought I’d share a bit about what we’ve been doing over the last several months to bring Steve and friends to life on the . . . I was going to say the “big screen,” but it’s actually your monitor.  Hey, who knows, you may have one of those huge new Mac monitors, so maybe “big screen” is appropriate.  But I digress.

The Visual Side

Here’s how things have worked when it comes to the visual art aspect of things.

Once I had a satisfactory draft of the script for the first episode, and I’d recorded some rough, “MIDI-licious” demos of the Episode 1 songs, the next step was to put together the concept art — the character and scene drawings our animators will rely on.

I put together a document with my ideas about the look for each character, liberally borrowing photos of celebrities and my friends — although, like they say at the end of movie credits, any resemblance the characters bear to any real person is purely coincidental, a/k/a please don’t sue me — and passed it along to Whitney, the Steve’s Quest art director.

Whitney did drawings of some of the characters and scenes, but it quickly became clear that, given the number of drawings we needed, we would need a bigger concept art team if she was going to keep her day job and/or do anything else with her life.

That was where our artistic dream team, consisting of the undoubtedly lovely (I haven’t met them in person, but I’m sure they are) and talented Connie, Eugene, Kat and Michelle, came in.  If you want to see some of the mind-blowing art our visual team has come up with, there’s a montage in this video, which also features a song from the first episode.

The Audio Side

While the concept art was being crafted, I split my time between Northern California and New York recording the music and dialogue for the first episode.  The mega-multi-talented Tim Edgar played guitar and bass, and did the recording and mixing, and Episode 1’s vocal talent included Broadway actress Gina Breedlove and singer/super-producer Meredith DiMenna.

I then pieced together the songs, dialogue and sound effects, using Audacity, into a ten-minute “guide track” — essentially, all of the audio from the first episode — that Whitney is using to create “animatics,” which are basically animated storyboards with the sound in the background, to guide the animators in developing the finished product.

At this point, virtually the only thing we have left to do is send the concept art and animatics over to the project’s animators.  Once they are finished, Steve & Co. will come to vividly colored life before your very eyes.

Related posts:

1. My Musical, “Steve’s Quest,” Is Coming Soon!
2. New Song From My Musical, “Give Her The Tour”
3. New Song from My Musical: “Maximized”
4. Meet the Steve’s Quest Team, Part 1
5. Yes, This Is Me Singing, Part Two: Electric Boogaloo