If you know me, you know that my favorite band is Starset. If I’m not listening to ambient music with frequencies to realign my chakras, I’m listening to Starset. A few years back, they did a contest where fans could create artwork or graphics for a lyric video for one of their songs called Starlight. The text for the lyric to the song had to be in the artwork and they were going to create a video where the chosen artwork would be displayed as the song played. I pretty much made the entire song with photos and graphics and entered them all into the contest. None of my artwork was chosen for this video.
During quarantine, they did this contest again where fans could submit artwork for their newest single called Trials. They just released a new album called Divisions last year and Trials was one of the songs on it. (Side note, they toured North America right after the release of Divisions and luckily, we saw them 2 days after the album was released. That was the second to last concert we saw prior to this damn virus.) Trials is a very relevant song to what’s going on in world and it was perfect timing to release this as a single and create a video for it. It gave the fans, or Messengers as they call us, something to do during quarantine. To submit, you had to post your artwork on Instagram and add the hashtag SSTrials to the caption. Everyone who submitted artwork could see everyone else’s artwork if they looked up the hashtag SSTrials. It was a tighter time frame to enter, only 2 weeks to get your artwork submitted. Theoretically, no problem there except that I was still working overtime at my real job and making masks after work.
I found the time to create 4 different graphics for 4 different lyrics. This was still at the height of people needing masks, so I would blast the song in my car going to and from
the post office to mail masks to get inspired to create the graphics. This helped, a lot. I came up with this cool idea for the lyric “and turn our hearts to the stars” and worked on it for hours and submitted it. This lyric is repeated throughout the song, and a lot of people were creating artwork for it. I decided to pick a couple of the harder lyrics like “Forged in regret, I’m the silversmith” and “the stones break bones, but we’re venomous” because not a lot of people were creating graphics for those. I submitted those as well. At the very end of the song, there’s a computer or AI robot voice giving commands to someone. I wasn’t sure if they were going to include this into the video or not since it was at the end of the song and they don’t sing. No one had made a graphic for this part of the song yet, so I thought, I have a 50/50 chance here, they’re either going to put this part in the video or not. If no one is creating anything for it, I have a better chance of getting my artwork in if it’s the only one for that part of the song. I put a lot hours into the graphic. It’s actually one of the graphics that I’m super proud of. It was inspired by Starset’s website and an MNQN video. (Side note, MNQN is the singer from Starset’s independent music
project) I submitted the graphic on the last day they were taking submissions. I thought if I left it for last and on the very last day, other people wouldn’t have a chance to make something like it if they saw it. I really wanted to get my artwork in this video and though hard about how to do so.
The deadline came and went and about 2 weeks later, I found out that the video was going to air on a 3-hour long YouTube concert. The link was posted in the Starset Messengers Facebook group, which I am a part of. One of the Messengers commented the time in the whole video where it was airing. I saw this on a Sunday morning, and I was up early for my long run. I quickly clicked on the link, slid the bar to the time where the video started, and watched patiently. 19 seconds into the video, I SAW MY GRAPHIC!!! Oh my goodness I was so excited! I was jumping around my kitchen, all by myself. I finished watching the video and immediately shared it on Facebook. It was the best feeling! Check out the video and look for my graphic in the bottom left hand corner. Listen and watch the entire thing, it really is a good song for the times. Also know that this song got me through mask making. These trials really did make me who I am throughout this pandemic.
Ignorance:Slavery::Knowledge:Freedom
Thanks for reading this segment of my “This Damn Virus” story. Catch up on past segments here and come back next Wednesday for the next one!
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