A Cracking the Code behind the scenes feature by Adam Payne, discussing the process of conceptualizing a world and animation style to fit a technical discussion of the difficulties in decoding Yngwie’s complex arpeggio-based solos. A journey through the visual inspiration of a scene, from German expressionism to Holmsian homage. Also includes a technical breakdown of some particular Motion tricks used to make this animation work.

Grab a fistful of quarters as we head to Eddie’s Arcade for a look at a really cool Cracking the Code deleted scene, and an in-depth breakdown of the Code theme song, “Arcade”. This 24-minute feature includes detailed analysis and note-for-note breakdowns of the entire song.

A Cracking the Code behind the scenes feature by Brendan Schlagel, looking at how we recreate the high-energy atmosphere of a crowded rock concert on a low budget using motion graphics animation. Includes explanation of the many aspects of our world-building and scene creation process — from cameras to replicators to lighting — that go into creating emotional resonance and excitement.

Hey, where do you guys get all those pixels and songs and stuff? Good question! Let’s take a look at the production process behind a Cracking the Code scene that updates an arcade classic, Centipede, with three-dimensional mushrooms and a custom soundtrack.

The path of discovery is less a gradual slog than a punctuated equilibrium of sudden insights. A chance meeting of CPU and sound had turned a toy synthesizer into the ultimate musical x-ray. Like a glass-bottom boat, it opened a window on a world that had existed only in imagination.

But as the pile of data grew, so did the frustration. Peeling back the armor of the guitar colossi only revealed even more complex rigging underneath. Rock videos and record collections had failed to provide all the answers. And this felt like a defeat. But that’s only because they had taken us as far as they could go. What we really needed now was a change of scenery.

We sat in the front row. We took good notes. We did the readings. We had good class participation. We even aced the midterm. But none of it would matter: They cancelled the course.

If the ’80s had arrived like a vortex, instantly dispersing the sweaty haze of disco and decadence, their sudden, unheralded departure was all the more striking. The wholesale abandonment of fretboard frippery was so swift, that by the turn of the decade, any recording featuring two-handed tapping may as well have been delivered directly to a sandy sarcophagus. The search for clues to the mystery of guitar mastery could no longer take place on pop radio. But that only made it that much more urgent.

If the secret sauce of a liberal education could be boiled down to one ingredient, it wouldn’t be humanities, and it wouldn’t even be beer. (Though a case could be made for sweatpants.) No, the ultimate enabler of the examined life would have to be none other than the singular catalyst of all great ideas since Pythagoras quit his day job at Dairy Queen: free time.

In the summer of 1991, Professor Malmsteen brought his medieval music appreciation class to VCRs everywhere. While pre-med students were busy pipetting their titrations, language majors, with only verbs to conjugate and almost no papers to write, were glued to their cathode ray tubes in an effort to deduce just what the good professor was trying to say.

Learn about the power of Yngwie’s alternate picking approach, and its key ingredient: downward pickslanting. The first in a two-episode cycle completely outlining the Yngwie picking technique.