Jason Cruz  is one of my favorite artists workin’ today, and back when I had the opportunity to  interview him for the site, the Choptoon I created for it was somethin’ that turned out pretty cool. Since then, I’d teamed up with Motornation.tv to bring you the Doom Cycle channel, but I couldn’t bring Jason’s video along because we used a Led Zeppelin track for the music. “Hey Page, can I use ‘Good Times Bad Times’ for this animated chopper ‘toon I’m workin’ on?” Haha, yea, like that’s gonna happen.

So to get this thing aired, the music had to go, and for awhile I was really stuck trying to find a replacement. How the fuck do you follow up one of Zeppelin’s signature tracks, right? But then I was talkin’ to Daniel over at Riding Easy Records, and he said ya gotta check out Slow Season, one of the bands on the label. Sure ’nuff, first track I heard, “Sixty-Eight”, blew me away. It was fuckin’ perfect! Hard, mid-tempo, bluesy, and with that authentic boogie I hoped Jason would love. If ya haven’t grabbed their album “Mountains” yet, Riding Easy Records just released a second edition in an assortment of flavors. Grab it!

With the perfect track in hand, it was time to trim it up, drop it in, tweak some stuff to line it all up, and… wait a sec. I could do that scene better now. This bit should be longer. That’s not smooth enough. What if I animated more stuff, like forks compressing, knees waggin’, and pot leafs swingin’? Maybe I should include more artwork, and animate stuff that didn’t move last time? Hell yea! Gonna start this baby from scratch.

So here it is. Free to enjoy as often as you’d like over the next 24 hours before it heads over to the Doom Cycle channel on Motornation.tv. Hope ya dig it as much as I had puttin’ it all together.

Man, I should revisit some of the other videos too.

Music by Slow Season – “Sixty-Eight”. They appear courtesy of Riding Easy Records. Grab the vinyl from Riding Easy Records or get it digitally on iTunes.