Funky Cold Medina: Tone Loc Vs Star Trek on GoAnimate

I think the fact that Captain Kirk had a bit of a reputation of being successful with the ladies was what prompted me to use the Star Trek theme on this animated music video for Tone Loc's song, Funky Cold Medina.

Although I'm a huge fan of the song when it was released back in 1989 I uploaded it to GoAnimate intending to use it as a backing song to my GoAnimate Complaints Department Plus animation. However it just didn't seem to fit.

In December of 2010 I decided it would be a great song to help feature Some of GoAnimate's new Musical Action packs including 'Lead Singer', 'Black Guitar' and 'Drummer' as well as the not so musical action pack, 'Romantic Male'.

Those of you with a musical ear should listen out for all the different samples Tone used to create this awesome track. Funky Cold Medina was made at a time when mix artists were ripping samples from all kinds of songs without a care in the world for copying rights. One of the fact sheets I read on the song, notes that you just couldn't make a song like this today without going through a legal minefield of attribution and royalties.

GoAnimate.com: Funky Cold Medina - Tone Loc VS Star Trek by etourist

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

This was a difficult music video to make because I tried really hard to synchronize the action with the music and lyrics of the song. The difficulty was compounded by the GoAnimate studio suffering performance issues on longer animations that used Lil' Peepz characters.

Thankfully, despite listening to the song more than 100 times during the making of the video, I never got tired of hearing it - and still don't even when I listen to it now. It's just that good a song.

Some things to note about the making of this video...

I really did my best to make the Tone Loc Lil' Peepz character look like Tone Loc as much as I could.

The I.T. Guy features on guitar... now you know what he does when he's not fixing copy machines.

The whole idea of the eyeball being related to the evils of Funky Cold Medina evolved as I made the video. You first see it on the Enterprise's view screen where I placed it because I thought it would look cool to have an eyeball planet.

As the clip progresses you see the enterprise trying to avoid the danger of the eyeball planet but then you see crowds cheering it and then finally people who've drunk medina have their heads turn into a giant eyeball. I don't know what that means... maybe it has something to do with being singularly focused on one thing?

Notice that Tone's Tribble has two of the crazy eyeballs used through out the clip.

The live action video section is cut directly from the official video of the song. I decided to use it because; it was an easy way to fill a lengthy instrumental break; it's the only section of the official clip that contains cartoon speech balloons that fit nicely with GoAnimate's cartoon concept and; you don't see too many hand held, guitar like DJ turntables these days so I thought it would be cool to show that instrument from the video.

Despite all the problems I had with the studio's performance I was really happy with how this music video finished up. The Lil' Peepz mixed well with the Star Trek Quogs, I got in a few visually interesting ideas and it's fun and funny too.

I was surprised when I published this at the number of people who hadn't heard of the song but I was glad I could introduce people to it twenty years later.

Oh... and in case you were wondering... at the time the song was released there was no such drink as 'Funky Cold Medina' however, after the songs release, several drinks were given this name taking their inspiration from the song.

Comments

Inochi2D - Free Open Source 2D VTuber Avatar Rigging and Puppeteering Software (Part 1)

Inochi2D Creator - Free Open Source VTuber Software. If you've been looking for a way to live perform as a 2D cartoon avatar on camera, whether it be for a live stream or for pre-recorded content like educational videos, then VTuber software is a low cost (or even no cost) option worth looking into. In my previous post, How to Become a VTuber - 2D and 3D Software for Creating and Controlling Your Avatar , I took a brief look at the relatively new but completely free and open source Inochi2D which I thought showed great potential for my own needs of creating a live performance character rig for my own TET Avatar that I use for all my promotional materials. While it is possible to live perform my character using Cartoon Animator itself, Reallusion's MotionLive2D capture system isn't great - with lip sync in particular. More importantly though, I can't exactly teach people how to use Cartoon Animator if I'm using Cartoon Animator to control my Avatar. What is Inochi2D

Learn Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 Fast by Creating Fun, 2D, Animated Christmas Holiday Messages - Free Course by The Lazy Animator

H ave you ever wanted to send your friends and family fun, 2D animated, holiday messages, or just create 2D animated characters that you can make move and talk without learning difficult to master animation skills or spending hours drawing frame by frame? Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 is a professional quality, 2D animation studio software that is also very easy to produce impressive results with, even if you've never animated before, or can't draw. Don't Have Cartoon Animator 5 Download a free, 30 day trial . Easy Beginner Course I've created a completely free beginners course that teaches you my fast, easy way to rig and animate your first 2D custom character in Cartoon Animator 5 without complicated templates or any drawing skills at all. My online video course includes everything you need, including eight AI generated character sprite graphics, and four AI generated Human voice samples, so you can start learning right away. Eight AI generated character image

Glif (Alpha) - Make Your Own Tiny AI Powered Niche Image Generator Apps

I first heard about Glif through a YouTube video that mentioned you could get access to Flux Pro (the latest 'game changer AI' generative image model) through the site for free. While I had a vague notion from the video of what Glif was, I wasn't expecting it to be so easy to get started with, and so good with my very first results. Glif is an easy to use, low-code platform for creating tiny AI-powered generators called Glifs. While that may not sound inspiring, what Glifs allow you to do is create a tiny app that niches down to a specific type of AI generation that the user modifies with their own inputs. The best way to really understand is with an example. My First Glif I've recently been using VivaGo's AI platform (free and unlimited at the time of writing) to consistently generate full body characters in a front facing T-Pose that I can rig as front facing characters in Cartoon Animator. Unfortunately it can be a bit hit or miss maintaining the T-Pose part

The Ultimate Independent Animator's App and Resource List - Animation and Video Life

Image created with Cartoon Animator 4. Being an independent animator is not like a studio animation job. There's so much more to do that is indirectly related to the actual task of animating. Over the years I've sought out many apps, tools, and services that can help me achieve that one single task, expressing myself through animation. Below is my Ultimate Independent Animator's Resource List for 2024 (last updated Oct 2024). It started out as a list of free or low cost apps that could help you in every stage of producing either 2D or 3D animation, and then just kind of grew from there. You may not have been looking for a Time Management App as much as you needed something to get you started in 3D animation but when those commissioned projects start coming in you'll have a head start on maximizing your time. All the apps and services on this list had to meet two main criteria: They had to be useful and relevant to an Indy Animator/artist. The base app/se

Krita AI Diffusion - Generative Image AI For Krita is Seriously Useful, Powerful and Free (If You Can Install it Locally)

Generative AI sequence of a woman in a business suit. From sketch to refined image using Krita AI Diffusion - by TET G enerative image AI, where you describe an image with a text prompt to an Artificial Intelligence model and it produces a new image based on your prompt, is gaining a strong hold as a tool for many artists. Krita AI Diffusion brings generative AI image tools right into your favourite free and opensource, graphics editor, Krita. Not only that, if you have a computer with decent specs (and at least 10GB of hard drive space), Krita AI Diffusion is completely free. What If I Don't Have a Powerful Computer? If you're in my situation, with a computer that was around before anyone in the mainstream had even heard of generative AI, you can still access Krita AI Diffusion for free, using a cloud based AI server, Interstice and 300 tokens, to get you started. Once your initial tokens run out, purchase 5000 more for 10€ (approx US$11.00). Tokens never expire. I would

Wonder Unit Storyboarder - Free Storyboarding Software for People Who Can (or Can't) Draw

Wonder Unit Storyboarder. As an independent and solo animator I'm always tempted to try and skip storyboarding my animated shorts because they're usually only single scene sketch comedy type jokes. As a result I have many unfinished projects that kind of petered out due to having no clear finishing line. Storyboarding your productions, no matter how small, gives you a step by step guide of every shot that needs to be completed (no planning shots as you animate). It also allows you to create an animatic that gives you a rough preview of the finished production. In short, you shouldn't skip storyboards as they, generally, increase the chance of the project being completed. Disclaimer - I'm Not a Fan of Storyboarder Upfront, Wonder Unit's Storyboarder is not my preferred storyboarding software. However it's completely free, has a number of very compelling featu

Using Avatar Maker with Cartoon Animator - Free Vector Cartoon Avatar Creator with Four Art Styles

I'm always on the lookout for cartoon avatar makers of any kind, whether it be ones that 'cartoonify' your photo, or ones that let you build a cartoon likeness from a library of individual features. Free Avatar Maker falls into the latter category and can be used for making head and shoulder cartoon avatars. While it doesn't have an extensive library of character features (you may struggle to get a good likeness), uniquely it will make your avatar in four different art styles concurrently, allowing you to save the one you like most, or even all four. I wasn't overly impressed how my TET avatar looked in the first two styles, but style three is quite possibly the coolest looking version of my avatar I've ever seen in a third party avatar creator. It's a very contemporary style. Style four, line art, is also not too bad. Avatar Maker's User Interface. Switch between the four different art styles shown across the top at any time. I particularly like the

Animation and Video Life

Search This Blog