Chosen by Monk
We had another massive wave of videos come our way this past week – a veritable tsunami of more than 120 of them – all vying for the coveted title and virtual gong of being named our favourite… Believe me, we do watch all of the submissions, and a lot of them are of an extremely high quality, but there can only ever be one winner…
And, to that end, this week’s selection is just the tonic we need for this miserable time of year, the perfect antidote to the Atlantic storms and dark nights… and for the second week in a row our VOTW League Champion comes from Germany, this time in the shape of power metal pioneers Helloween and their animated accompaniment to the latest single to be lifted from the latest, self-titled album of the year. Not only does ‘Out For The Glory’ prove that these Teutonic titans are still masters of the genre, but the accompanying clip once again shows that they know how to use tongue-in-cheeky, cheesy humour in a way many of their contemporaries, and supposed successors, have failed to grasp.
“I had an idea for a video where all band members are depicted as dinky, odd noble courtiers and ministers,” guitarist Michael Weikath told us.
“All of us should be floating in the clouds, [Andi] Deris as a nutty emperor… and after a while more and more details came up and at one point in time we wrote everything down and sent the video concept to the Australian animation team.”
The animation team in question are students from the Bachelor of Design (Animation & Interactive Media) course at RMIT University in Melbourne, who have worked on clips by the likes of Children Of Bodom in the past.
Senior lecturer Aaron McLoughlin told us:
“When I heard that Helloween is interested in a collaboration I was totally gobsmacked. The boys are my absolute heroes since I was a teenager, and I was sure that my students would love to work on a song by this band.”
The resulting video contains more 10,000 individually animated frames, as McLouhglin elaborated:
“Seven and a half minutes might not sound like a lot but in animation terms it is a marathon. We had so much great stuff that the production of ‘Out For The Glory’ was a real challenge. Weiki wanted the video to look as cute as possible and we immediately knew: a legendary band from the other side of the planet wants us to create a medieval epic full of cuteness? You bet!”
There won’t be a VOTW feature for the next fortnight, due to the holiday break, so, until next time, keep ‘er lit, keep ‘er between the hedges and keep on rockin’ and rollin’ with your favourite website \m/
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