Flying Colours

How do we put the experience of watching MiningGodBruce's latest Minecraft music video into words? They're swirling, surreal, physics-defying feasts for the eyes. They're like if Dr Strange started a dance party in his Minecraft Realm. They're like rushing through Minecraft's skies with a couple of kaleidoscopes stuck to your eyes. They're like... oh come on. Just press play on the video above, already. You won't regret it.

The song accompanying those heady visuals is Subtelty by Topaz - following the form of one of MiningGodBruce's previous videos, Acid Interstate V3, which you can see below. That too contorts a Minecraft landscape to jiggle with the rhythms of a Topaz track, Singa, and it quickly became a hit when it was released last year. It's not hard to see why. “Acid Interstate V3 got about four hundred thousand views in the first week it was on YouTube,” explains MiningGodBruce to us. “All thanks to the video going viral on Reddit and then spreading to a bunch of other outlets. I think it was enhanced by the novelty of the whole thing 'Man spends thirteen months creating Minecraft music video with fifty engine hacks nobody would never have thought of'”.

Hang on, thirteen months?! “It normally takes about three weeks of consistent work,” says MiningGodBruce, of his more recent videos. “Acid Interstate V3 was an exception, due to the insane amount of technical development, it took me over thirteen months.”

This technical development stage involves creating 'synch elements' – imagery and transition effects that synchronize with the changes in Topaz's songs. “The sync elements I use can be broken up into categories,” MiningGodBruce explains. “The Map-based beats: Torch outposts and 'terrain section transitions', these are syncing elements that are actually in the Minecraft map.” Like the torch outposts in Acid Interstate V3 that appear in time with specific beats, and the way the maps change to new environments with key transitions in the song.

The more complex tricks require extensive knowledge of how to get the best from video editing software. “The "dancing terrain" from Acid Interstate V3, these are controlled entirely by the GLSL Shader program that I wrote for the video,” explains BruceKnowsHow. “Editing-based beats, [like] most of the beats in the Subtlety music video, these are done entirely in After Effects, and include things like rotating and cutting footage.”