Cartoon Heroes (Speedy Mix) - StepManiaX video

I had been thinking about what I would do for a video if we ever got Cartoon Heroes for StepManiaX, and the main core concept that always came up was the idea of including everything we had done so far. This idea always stuck with me, because as a kid I always thought the crossover episodes of any show were the best episodes, and I wanted to make my own!
Then Cartoon Heroes actually showed up in the list of songs we were releasing, and then I had to actually make it.
Now I had to face the fact that we don't actually have $100,000 to hire out hand drawn animation, nor would we have the time. Still, I wanted this to be the video of my dreams, so how do you do it?
Ultimately, I knew I'd have to stick to 3D for a lot of stuff, just because the models were already there and I could use them. However, just having the models doesn't make a video; I needed to do something interesting with them.
The first few days of the month were focused around making the jacket, since that would more or less dictate how the entire video looked and felt. This took a bit, because we couldn't figure out a coherent way to get every character to fit together. Ultimately, this approach didn't look great, but it did end up sticking around to make the final shots.
Eventually, we realized that while every character couldn't look good together, there were some natural pairings in terms of style, and these pairings could be used to make interesting vignettes where different characters had a reason to interact. Finally, we had some progress, a finished jacket, and fun ideas for how to make interesting new situations for characters.
From that point onwards, I mostly thought of who I thought could do things together, and just made short 3 and 2 panel jokes that I thought could work without words. I'm not sure what ended up in the video necessarily counts as "jokes" half of the time, but we're at least doing better than Family Circus in terms of humor so I'll consider that a win.
Ultimately, this became a project with a lot of blind leaps of faith that I could eventually be as good as I needed to be to finish some shots. I bought a tablet for the first time, hoping that whatever I could draw would eventually communicate the idea of hand-drawn animation. Most of this was made up along the way as I came up with good ideas; the "storyboard", if you can call it that, was a bunch of bullet points that weren't timed to the music or really anything that guaranteed there would be a shot for each part of the music. By the end, there was a lot of brainstorming between me, Jason, and Jordan to figure out exactly what the "toon-town party" would be, and we eventually came up with some very Samba De Amigo inspired ideas.
At the end of it all, I'm very happy with how this all turned out. It has the exact feeling that I wanted, which is that it was a celebration of everything the StepManiaX team has done so far, with an eye towards the future of bringing what everyone wants in a dance game. Even getting Cartoon Heroes was not looking to be possible for a very long time, but I'm very grateful that Kyle kept at it for so long and eventually got it. I don't think anyone seriously thought it could come back anywhere, let alone on StepManiaX, but if there's anything that has been consistent with this team...
"What we do is what you wish to do"

[@MrPlab1780]

god DAMMIT I'M IN LOVE WITH THE CHARACTERS
All of these designs are so unique and interesting that it makes me sad that this is a one-off. :(

[@clindberg1]

this is amazing, thank you for uploading it! Every time i play this song I'm so concentrated on the arrows I never have a chance to enjoy the background video lol

[@ZephyrGlaze]

I really didn't appreciate how good this is until I'd played all the songs with the constituent backgrounds.

[@inglomi]

Thank you! I love this so so much!!

[@TacoCatCube]

holy crap, that is so good.

[@Gotmilk0112]

Do you have the original images for the two Pink Fuzzy Bunnies characters? I've been trying to find those images in a decent resolution with no luck.

[@normallife4433]

Those are actual original commissions for StepManiaX. I believe Kami Cheetah was the original artist.

[@vincently1995]

Music game debut: DDR Extreme

[@JoNB3x]

This is better