Thanks to the Barbarian Group for the multimedia production on our new CD. The Barbarians are an Internet company located in Boston, MA. Many friends of Freezepop work at the Barbarian Group, including Rick Webb (Archenemy partner, former Freezepop roomie and sometime Freezepop photographer), Ben Palmer, (Freezepop remixer), Aubrey Anderson (Freezepop roomie), and Alex Chen (programmer of the lovely
multimedia content you see on the CD). The Barbarians do lots of Internet and video work for entertainment clients such as Marilyn Manson, the Future Bible Heroes and Tecmo (makers of Ninja Gaiden and Fatal Frame). They also do work for big corporations who like their stuff to look good, like Volkswagen, Nike, Saturn and the like. You can find out more about them at www.barbariangroup.com or email them
at info@barbariangroup.com.

visualizers:

optical popsicles
programming, design: Russell "Logical Hippo" McClellan
portraits: Kate "Tasogare" Lindsay
"Design-wise, I was trying to keep the general feel of previous freezepop flash videos. I intentionally used a pretty small pallette of colors to make everything fit into freezepop's existing aesthetic. The "plastic stars" visualization was based on a nightmare I had after listening to the song of the same name on repeat for WAY too long. The qy70 feature is something I think every album should have, because the best way to enjoy music is to be a part of it. I had never done any real programming in flash before, so this project was very much a learning experience. The most technically challenging visualization was probably "Fading Hearts". Kate's artwork tried to depict the essence of freezepop in an anime style.They were hand drawn, scanned, then colored in flash."

plasticstars.res
by Roger B.
"After all the visuals I had planned out were pretty much done, I found myself basically adding one thing after another that made me crack up. Like, "what if the band were up there playing in the front?!" "what if they were obsessed with watching some spaz dance in the audience?!" "holy hell, what if they could tear off their clothes and change costumes!" "oh, the audience HAS to throw roses after the song's over..." One stupid idea led to another, and I felt myself strangely compelled to bring every trifling detail to fruition, whether i was supposed to be sleeping or working at the time. So I guess that's where I had the most fun with this contest, in the little details. It was also kind of like playing dolls, dressing up these little 10 pixel freezepops. In a totally disturbing way."

storm
by noah pedrini
"General: This piece attempts to take the visualization engine one step further by creating a sense of narrative.
What the hell?: The base "scene" of the engine is an interactive scrolling landscape comprised of sine and square-like forms reminescent of mountain and building. With two rows for each form, each reacts to Left and Right amplitude data, and the transparency of all four react in tandem to reverse vertical mouse position. Framing the scene is the sky and sporadically-occurring bursts of lightning. Split down the middle, the transparency of either side of the sky reacts to Left and Right amplitude information, while its width is reversely proportional to horizontal mouse position. Occuring at random intervals and also tied to song position, the lightning's horizontal location is loosely tied to horizontal mouse position as well. All of these aspects of the base scene use Flash MX's drawing API and are entirely programmatic.
In addition to this backdrop is a set of randomly plotted non-interactive graphical elements that are introduced and de-introduced based on current song position. With a designated 'hot-spot' in the song for each, the intended result is a recognizable, but subtle, sense of visual thematics as the song progresses and the prominence of these graphics rise and fall at differnt times and rates. The effects include: randomly plotted QY70 buttons, with _xscale and _yscale based on current mean amplitude data; randomly plotted rainbow/floppy disk, with _xscale and _yscale based on current mean amplitude data; "clone" effect, quickly laying out then removing overlayed grid of sheep/frog/dove with one orange 'clone'; randomly plotted barcodes; and randomly plotted lo-fi images of Freezepop members (2 pics for each)."