What'd I miss?

January 19, 2021 7:29 PM

Since last summer, Cesar (also known as Guitar_Knight14) has been painstakingly recreating the musical Hamilton inside of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. After six months of work, he completed all of Act 1, which you can view as a YouTube playlist or a single hour-long video.

According to the animator, the elaborate Act 1 finale Non-Stop alone took “1 week and a half of recording (298 clips), 7+ hours of editing, more than 15 different scenarios and many hours without sleep.” After a well-deserved break for the holidays, Cesar has returned to bring us the start of Act 2.

posted by mbrubeck (20 comments total)

Aaaaugh. This is amazing. Truly best of the web. Thanks for sharing!!
posted by rogerroger at 7:43 PM on January 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

Looks like I’ll be keeping that subscription fee, Disney+
posted by Going To Maine at 8:18 PM on January 19, 2021 [5 favorites]

Oh my God. Oh my God!

If you check out the first minute and think, "ha, that's cute, but I've seen enough," NO! Keep going, keep going. It is amazing.
posted by meese at 8:40 PM on January 19, 2021 [9 favorites]

You know, every time I start to lose faith in humanity, something as delightful as this appears.
posted by sevensnowflakes at 8:41 PM on January 19, 2021 [6 favorites]

That 'Satisfied' is truly remarkable, I think it brings out some aspects of the song better than the original filming
posted by yueliang at 9:25 PM on January 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

I was just blown away by how he did the rewind in Satisfied - this is unbelievably good.
posted by Mchelly at 9:27 PM on January 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

I ... probably should NOT wake up the tween and the teen just to show them this. I have self-control, and will show them in the morning, when it will blow their minds.

Yes. That is the way.
posted by feckless at 10:08 PM on January 19, 2021 [6 favorites]

Haha, very appropriate casting for Alexander (single-most-popular-villager Raymond the cat).

I was also impressed at how dynamic it felt even though the actors were almost always standing in one place within each shot.
posted by What is E. T. short for? at 10:34 PM on January 19, 2021

I haven’t played Animal Crossing myself, but I do know it’s not constrained to a one-room black box theater. What’s the reasoning behind the creator not making use of the rest of the island?
posted by lazugod at 10:53 PM on January 19, 2021

@lazugod — The player has a lot more control of what goes on in the photo studio in terms of what villagers wear and what reaction animations they use and so on than they do elsewhere in the game. Most of this has to be shot in the photo studio because most of these figures are unusable as “actors” outside of that “theater”, due to the game AIs.

(Edit: after posting, jinx!)
posted by verbminx at 1:00 AM on January 20, 2021 [3 favorites]

GAH! this is AMAZING! Our kiddo is obsessed with both Hamilton and Animal Crossing, so this is going to be SO much fun to share.
posted by EllaEm at 1:07 AM on January 20, 2021 [5 favorites]

The spittle during "You'll Be Back" is *chef's kiss*. That guy Groffs.
posted by emelenjr at 4:19 AM on January 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

The newest game contains Photopia, aka Harv's Island, which is an area sort of like your house but in which you can arrange props and characters largely how you wish, and orchestrate character actions to a degree. It's largely what makes setting up and syncing animal actions possible.
posted by JHarris at 4:21 AM on January 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'm on "My Shot," and it's already such a joy. Well done.
posted by Gelatin at 6:12 AM on January 20, 2021

I’ve been visiting Metafilter for over 20 years now and it’s stuff like this that keeps me coming back.

Really incredible.
posted by paulcole at 6:17 AM on January 20, 2021 [3 favorites]

This is almost inexplicably compelling. And I say this as someone who prefers listening to Hamilton to watching it.
It hits *all* the right notes. I don't want to overthink it but there's resonance in the "likeability" and uniqueness of the Animal Crossing characters and the characters in Hamilton. I think that's some of the lightning in this bottle.
Anyway. Wonderful and brilliant.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 8:18 AM on January 20, 2021

All the fan animatics on YouTube have long convinced me that animation is a natural medium for Hamilton.
posted by mbrubeck at 9:24 AM on January 20, 2021 [2 favorites]

This is such amazing icing on the cake of a great day today. My 10 year old watched all of Act One with a look of pure joy on his face.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 4:12 PM on January 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

My best friend is a huge Hamilton fan, so I've heard the whole thing all the way through quite a few times, but I'd never really paid attention or really even cared about it (besides thinking those are some darn catchy tunes) until I ended up sitting rapt through this version.
posted by moonmilk at 5:05 PM on January 20, 2021

I didn't think today could get any better. Wow wow wow!
posted by Sweetie Darling at 6:30 PM on January 20, 2021