So You Wanna Be A Rockstar?

So...I'm hanging out in Minecraft on MinecraftGeek's Sanctuary server in my Ninja Decorators, LLC office, sipping my coffee and struggling with plans to decorate the main living quarters at Haven, when I get a Tweet from a friend. Astragali, the Minecraft Scribe, sends, “Erm...can I ask you for a favor?”. Stalled on my current project, and warily intrigued, I jump onto TheSpawn.net's Mumble to find out what's afoot.

To my surprise, I found myself invited to help create the set for WelshPixie's new music video! I'd seen Astra and Pix Tweeting about their “sekrit project”, and now I got to find out what it was: a parody version of Portal 2's closing song “I Want You Gone”, sung by WelshPixie, lyrics by Astragali. The best part? I get to build a castle that will be blown to smithereens in the video sequence!

I find that the set is to be built on the new Minecraft Workbench Chunk Error Server, so I get the address and 'port in.

The Mission: Build a castle.

Without WorldEdit. Rats.

Without VoxelSniper. Nuts.

With Zombe's Fly Mod and Marglyph's TMI. Sweet. All is well.

I began to clear the castle site and plan it out. While chatting with Astra as he built the “Stop Griefing” sign, I found that he was to play the griefer in the video, and that Pixie will ban him in the end (this was related with a certain amout of evil pleasure on his part). This led to about an hour of his attempting to demontrate said griefer skin, all to no avail. All the loading and reloading of Minecraft on Astra's part drew attention from some other folks on the server, resulting in a slew of requests for his presence and questions about what he was up to-neatly sidestepped to keep the project a secret.

Astra's sign, which he ignores. Griefers can't read?

In a couple hours, I had a cute little castle, pennants flying, that would be open enough to film and nice enough to (slightly) regret blowing up...but this is Minecraft, and I can always make another. I found that Pixie loved the castle, and didn't want any changes, so I headed back to Sanctuary to take another stab at those pesky interiors.

Castle, pre-explosion. *sniffle*

Then I get another Tweet:

“Do you want to be in the video?”

Excuse me, but do bears shit in the woods? Is the Pope Catholic? HELL yes, I want to be in the video! Whoops, girl, your cool just slipped...(nonchalantly) “Sure, I'd love to help out. Just tell me what I need to do.”

A few days pass, and all the while the nerdy girl in my head is dancing on the furniture singing Nickelback's “Rockstar”. I get to Chunk Error on the day of filming to find that Pix wants me to play the lead so she can film, and the nerdy girl in my head goes absolutely ballistic.

Filming was as fun as I thought it would be. WelshPixie is talented, funny and gracious; Jaco was a delight (he was taking care of administrative stuffs, but was in the Skype call as well); Astragali was, well, Astragali/Griefer-stealing my diamonds and blowing up my damned castle. I admittedly had a bit of a pang when it went, but the awesome explosion under my feet made up for it-I've never been TNT'd before!

The aftermath, courtesy of Astra the griefer...please pass the banhammer.

Amazingly, Pixie had the video, titled: “Want You Banned” edited and posted to YouTube within a couple hours-of course, she had already done the amazing vocal track. The end result was fantastic, and if you haven't seen it yet, go. NOW. I'll wait.

Thanks to WelshPixie and Astragali for the opportunity to assist and have a great deal of fun in the process.

Now if you'll excuse me, nerdy girl wants to dance on the furniture. /cue “Rockstar”.