Here’s a neat little animated video for my latest Song Fu entry.

So, I bet you’re wondering to yourself just how I managed to write & produce a song and an animation all within a week, aren’t you? Well, the answer is pretty simple: I reached out to my social network and found help there.

Although I’ve been very busy lately, I’ve spend what little spare time I have reading The Indie Band Survival Guide by Randy Chertkow & Jason Feehan from the Chicago-area band Beatnik Turtle. What I did was literally take a page from their book (page 20, to be precise, which deals with the “arm’s length” networking principle) and put out the word via Twitter & Facebook:

 
I’m looking for an animator who can do a 1-minute video for a new song. Needs to be ready for next Tuesday pro bono. Offers? Suggestions?
 

Well, as luck would have it, I heard back from a friend, Stuart (Stu) Duncan, who I haven’t seen in years. It turns out he’s living in the Maritimes now and runs his own company, Bight Games, that specialize in making iPhone games. He was more than willing to help if I could repay the favour some day.

Within the day we passed a few emails back & forth before settling on a concept for the video (”Let’s have a guy named Dick bouncing on a pogo stick,” I suggested unimaginatively staring at the lyric sheet) and the terms of our agreement (see page 24 of the Indie Guide, “Cross-Promotion”).

In a deal that would have made Don Corleone proud, I got a cute little video for my cute little song in exchange for providing royalty-free music for an as-yet-to-be-determined Bight Games release. It’s a win-win, especially now that I’ve made Stu promise I will never wake to find a severed horse’s head in my bed.

Also, just in case you haven’t had a chance to vote yet:
VOTING CLOSES AT 11:59pm EST on SUNDAY, JUNE 28th.

Thank you.