Ever wondered how Ode to Dom was created? Want to make and promote a unique homage to the Chris Moyles show yourself? Interested in hand-crafting a humorous animation with your very own bespoke soundtrack? Well here’s your essential 20 point lifehack that will only take 5 effortless minutes to read (please note that 19 or 21 point lifehacks are completely ineffective, and not all minutes are effortless):

1. First off, learn how to animate (please note, this may take years to effectively master).

2. Study to the point of vague skillfulness the art of writing and producing original music (er, hate to tell you this, but this could also take years to achieve).

3. Learn how to design, develop, optimise, test and effectively market a beautifully presented, standards compliant, accessible, mobile-friendly, secure ecommerce website with integrated blog functionality (that’ll take an age, sheesh).

4. Thoughtfully consider and compose a shed-load of related blog posts that will work effectively in search engines, as well as on the content marketing and social media front (again, this may go on a wee while).

5. Grow, nurture, test and refine an original and bloody good (some would say deranged) sense of humour. This comes naturally to some (the humour, not the derangement). 

Edit sounds using software that looks much sexier than it really is
6. Listen to hours and hours of the Chris Moyles show carefully noting the date and time of each specific humorous phrase. Then download the related episodes from ChrisMoyles.net and meticulously edit (above), export, name and categorise them as high quality wav files (a tad time consuming, but it has to be done). You’ll end up with something like this:
The library of sound clips
7. Consider which of the many songs that you have written is the best to use as the soundtrack to your moving picture. With due awareness, select a song that is both melodic, catchy, available on a newly released album and juxtaposed in style to the very narrative of the animation (sorry, I went a bit Radio 4 there).

8. Sticking closely to your unique and highly creative idea, and whilst also avoiding the impulse to keep drawing upon your ever-growing sound effects library of bizarre phrases, add your current collection of crazy Chris Moyles Radio X Show samples to the song that you wrote and carefully remix, edit and produce a new “comedy” version. Please note, this may make you laugh a lot. Please also note, that this may utterly ruin the original song for you.

Producing a masterpiece

9. Having finished the song (above), come up with a totally unique, novel and penetrative idea for the animation, based on the bizarre rantings of comedy “news reader” Dominic Byrne. Penetrative ideas work best as they get lodged in heads of the casual observer, much like stray darts thrown by the village idiot.

10. Tirelessly (and I must stress tirelessly) search the interweb for photos of Dannii from Babestation. Repeat as necessary. This may take several attempts. If you want a photo without her boobs out this can prove very difficult/enjoyable (delete as appropriate).

10. Realise that after spending  hours, days, weeks, months trying to find the “perfect” photo of Dannii from Babestation (without her boobs out) that using a photo of a “professional actress” without her permission could possibly infringe on her image rights and maybe, just maybe,  could be a bad call.

11. Come up with an amazing new idea to feature someone called “Danny” from another station. Petrol? Train? Police !? Or some other pun-based alternative (be careful, you have to devise a pun).

12. Research, locate and Photoshop all related stock photography, imagery, props, signage (great word) and graphics so that you inadvertently end up with Windows Explorer looking as utterly bizarre as this (please note, no cat legs were severed from actual cats):

An unusual scene in Windows Explorer
13. Edit all photos of the main characters so that they look like brain-dead zombies that can be animated in such a way that their eyes and jaws move in what is both a highly effective, yet very lazy, animation technique.

15. Load the song that you made earlier and the weird mix of imagery (above) into Flash (other animation software is also available) and begin to animate. Season to taste and allow to simmer for several days.

Keep those timelines clean kids
16. Work tirelessly to animate and tweak your characters movements in such a way that their vocalisations and movements are really bad.  It is well known that badly animated videos are very funny. At this stage caution is necessary, only spend the appropriate amount of time tweaking Pippa. Excessive tweaking can cause breakages.

17. Consider the fact that if played on the Chris Moyles Radio X Show some people will see and hear the video on “Facetube”, but others will only hear the video. Mull over the consequences and ensure that your video sounds and looks funny (i.e. include visuals of Dom wearing women’s clothing whilst saying he likes mellons).

18. Add value (farts) to ensure that listeners and viewers get as much enriched enjoyment as possible. Please note, “enriched uranium” is no substitute for enriched enjoyment.

19. Test to the point of stiff boredom every single related element, including, but not limited to, your vigilantly hand-crafted website, the independent home-grown music, the securely hosted download store and painstakingly devised marketing strategy.

20. Write to Dominic Byrne on the Chris Moyles Radio X Show and hope to (in alphabetical order) Allah, Buda, Ganesha, God, Karttikeya, Shiva and Vishnu  that all this work weren’t for nowt!

The final scene is set
Still reading? Why? Watch the damn animation!
Composer & Producer at Scambler Music
Scambler is an independent composer and producer with eight multi-genre chart albums and music credits in film, TV and video. Tracks from Scambler's extensive back catalogue are available to instantly license and download from www.scamblermusic.com.
Scambler