On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 6:43 PM, Chuck Burns <[email protected]> wrote: ... > And now a bunch of people in the channel want this spoof to get finished > and become the new theme song for the upcoming 5.6 release.
Heh. I've been heavily involved in the theme and design of the last few releases, so I'll make just a few comments: 1) a theme is more than just a song: what's the art about? Who/what is puffy? Is the theme tying into something specific done in the release or more general? Will there be enough material for the booklet and song? 2) working with the artist and music director take *time*: you send some ideas, they think and send questions back, you ponder lyrics and how to map from the theme to a world with Puffy, you propose more stuff, much of it too abstract or complex to be presented in a DVD-case booklet and/or song, they ignore your insanity, you start to see sketches and character designs, perhaps a demo track. Lather, rinse, repeat. At some point draft layouts are sent back and you get concerned with smaller and finer details. The wording for the back cover is almost the last thing to go into the art. A fully mixed version of the song shows up. You worry about the exact installer text to appear in the booklet. A deadline is reached and it all gets sent off to the factory (and then the next day you find that last glitch in the wording that you read right over before and kick yourself repeatedly). That deadline was *LAST MONTH*. The 5.6 theme came out of a brief conversation while eating during a hackathon in *April*; I described it to the artist with written description of possible images on the 1st of May. 3) no insult, but committers have dibs on theme selection, in part because it's a privilege to exercise your creativity in a different way, but also because it takes both effort and commitment to get it all done both well and on time. The project needs to know that the person(s) working with the artist and music director on the theme is committed to getting it done. Hmm, I should start thinking about what to put on lyrics.html for this release (that's the *final* chunk of work for the theme)... Philip Guenther
