LONDON –
UK based singer songwriter Will Varley has released “Seven Days,” the latest track to emerge ahead of his forth-coming fifth studio album, “Spirit Of Minnie,” to be released February 9, 2018. The track arrives alongside an animated music video created by Varley himself (https://youtu.be/8w0iHAj2TTM).
On the influence of video games on this video and in general, Varley commented:"I’ve been playing games since I was a wee lad, worked out how to load games from DOS on my Dad's Compaq when I was 4
, so I grew up on the likes of
Crazy Cars 3
,
Froggar and so forth.
Quarantine blew my mind, as did the original
GTA. Early DOS pixel art has a particular place in my heart."
"Flashback was a masterpiece for me on SNES, I was also a big fan of the point-and-click stuff like
Monkey Island and
Simon the Sorcerer, and also a little cyberpunk game called
Dreamweb
, which still haunts my dreams to this day. More recently I've enjoyed seeing how games like
Hotline Miami,
Papers Please, and
Finding Paradise have really pushed the boundaries of how narratives can play out and give players a genuinely emotive experience with pixel art."
"All of these were definitely in my mind when I was making this film. I think platforms like Steam have totally democratized game distribution in recent years, allowing the indie developers to shine. I was also a big fan of Prison Architect, and in particular the cut-scenes and storytelling in that game. I used to make games on Klick and Play when I was a kid; the music video for ‘Seven Days’ is made with Clickteam Fusion
, which is Klick and Play’s much younger brother.”
“The video was all hand-drawn, pixel by pixel, in Fusion's native art editor, which is essentially a glorified version of MS paint. It took a long time – about three weeks of solid work, with a monster 23-hour session on the last day. I was sat at the computer from 1:00 in the afternoon until midday the following day... my wife thought I had lost my mind. Maybe I did...."