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i am on the clouds now http://soundcloud.com/darkesword/

Really dreamy. Short but sweet. Not too interpretive but enough personalization to keep it fresh. Middle section is pretty. Nice performance too. YES

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Cleaned up this thread a bit, removing most of the rude stuff. The first post clearly states that this is a song is for non-profit, non-commercial use. Negotiation over rates is obviously part of any work-for-hire arrangement as well, so there's no reason to come down hard on someone making an offer to pay for a request. People don't complain about fulfilling requests for free in the requests forum. If you're interested in helping Rico out and making some spending money, shoot him an email or express your interest here. If you're going to rant about the nature of for hire work, there are blogging sites for that kind of thing.

This is clearly a job listing, and if someone is hired to work "under the guidance of [the] music composer, Jake Kaufman," then communication in the context of two professionals working on a game is not an issue. Those are the parameters set by the employer, and your personal experiences are not relevant. The listing clearly states that the sounds should fall under the artificial limitations of a 16 or 32 bit game, so SNES/PSX. The developer is not looking for existing sounds, and has clearly allocated money for a sound effects artist to create original sounds consistent with the sound design of the rest of the game (hence working under the guidance of the music composer). That's not for you to determine.

Don't post pictures that stretch the page.

TOOOOOOO short. A nice take on the source but like Vig said, it sounds like an intro. You've gotta develop more. NO

Not really hearing any egregious muddiness. Lofi sound is cool, a little iffy on the kicks. Nice arrangement. Really groovy. Interesting soundscape. YES

Point of order: whenever mentioning OCR, use the following: OC ReMix OverClocked ReMix OCR ocremix Not: Overclocked Remix Ocremix OCRemix OCReMix OC ReMiX

Already funded, but here's a Kickstarter for AW YEAH COMICS!, a really cool kid-friendly/all-ages comic book from the writer and artist of Tiny Titans. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1197720703/aw-yeah-comics

Yeah the difference with steam is that it doesn't actually make you jump through hoops. Steam makes things very easy. I can't see that kind of level of execution happening on a console.

Hardcore dungeon crawling RPG with cartography elements. Quite difficult, but also quite good.

Not a big fan of either Ennis or Moore, tbh. To each his own I suppose.

It was really really good.

Comixology had an Artifacts sale last summer; it was a Top Cow book that unified all the different Top Cow properties like Witchblade, The Darkness, Lady Magdelena, etc. Give it a shot, it's pretty good. Speaking of Top Cow, check out Madame Mirage, by Paul Dini and Kenneth Rocafort. Awesome book.

"Where to start" is a bit like asking "what sort of music should I listen to?" What do you like? Under appreaciated but worth your time? American Vampire should, in my opinion, be much more popular than it already is. Actually let me just quote something I wrote for thewingless on Facebook; he recently asked about comic book recommendations as well. Please keep in mind that I am primarily a DC superheroes guy. If you ask me for Marvel recommendations I can only really tell you about the Ultimate Universe, not 616 (i.e. the main Marvel universe).

I see it like this: anything that isn't 12-bar blues in this piece is essentially just original writing. Rough estimate puts this mix at ~135 seconds of actual 12-bar blues material. The thing about a 12-bar blues jam is that it's characteristic of that kind of music to just play the "head" (the basic melody) once or twice and then launch into an extended solo section that could take up much more than simply playing the head once or twice at the start and once more at the end. If you and I got together and played C Jam Blues we could riff for like 8 minutes just going back and forth with solos, but that song that we're playing is still technically C Jam Blues if we play the head a couple of times at the start and the end. Brandon's woven the head of the piece throughout this song, carefully reminding us, despite all the soloing and riffing material, that this is a remix of Brothers Bear. There's enough material here that sticks to the original chord progression to keep the piece on target, and the main melody does show up a lot throughout the piece. It's a good point to consider, but I don't think the ubiquity of the chord progression is grounds for rejection. Soloing and riffing is a staple of the genre. I think it's alright here. All that said, I think it's a solid track. Good playing, good balance between elements. No complaints here. YES

Comixology, as Larry stated earlier, is essentially the Steam of comic books. Nearly every single publisher, with the notable exception of Dark Horse comics, makes their titles available on Comixology. When you buy a comic book on that site, it's tied to your account and viewable on any device, be it browser or iOS/Android app. Dark Horse comics runs their own digital distro service that works similarly. Practically every publisher also synchronizes their digital release with print releases, so there is no waiting for digital books to come out. Speaking of comics, we have a comic book chatroom on espernet: #comicshop. Come and join us. Also I don't mind if this turns into a "Ask Darke about comics" thread.

Should we be judging this version?

It's well produced enough, but I think there are still some problems. Your snare sound get really exposed when the main melody comes back in around 1:56-ish; all of the other elements are being filtered and faded away but the snare sound is still cutting through everything. The softer flute section is nice but soon the march percussion comes in very loudly and out of balance with everything else. I feel like the construction of this piece isn't so great either; the builds and drops are very fast and very sudden many times. Starting around 3:22, you build up and drop to piano and immediately return to high energy and then drop back to piano again and build back up quickly to high energy synths, all within the span of a minute. It's weird to say, but that's actually a bit too much variation for a trance piece. Even though you have all these quick changes going on, the piece still feels repetitive. It might be because the source itself doesn't have a lot of material to work with, but there's still the whole beginning part of the source tune before the piano melody that you haven't used. Sound design is also fairly basic; you might want to think about spicing things up with some more interesting synths and work on a more evolving texture of sound, rather than relying on quick and dirty building and releasing. Still needs work. NO, resub

The koto playing Splash Woman is the best part of this, but the rest of the piece sound really clunky and plodding. I feel like a lot of the samples (strings, winds) were really exposed here, and the balance between all the elements were really off, especially during the Wave Man sections. The sustained chords sort of just droned. I can't remember if I voted this one high during the competition but I'm not really feeling it here at all. NO

This is doin' it for me. Love all the pizzicato strings everywhere. Blend of orch and rock really works. Like other joojes have said, I love how you're building tension throughout the piece. Ending could've been better, but thems the breaks. I like it! YES

Should be DP. Great vocals and really good lyrics, something that vocal mixes don't always have. Acoustic + Chips = Love. ~YES~

I'm on board with OA in that the production is really good. Really tight sound. I'm going to disagree with the other judges and just say that, going by the source breakdown, this is an incredibly ambitious arrangement and I think it's really paid off very well. It really does push the limits on what we consider arrangement, but at the same time, after checking out the source breakdown, I really get what you're doing here. The original track has a very distinct harmonic sound to it and I think that that's also captured here, even when your melodic ideas get really out there. I'm going to go ahead and YES this. I think it's fascinating to see someone really digging deep into the guts of a source tune and putting something like this out.