writes:Having previously made Dungeon Lost, a music video about a dungeoncrawl, and then Ang Nabigong Pakikipagsapalaran, a Filipino version of the same song, we thought: what about Spanish?
Gemini translated the lyrics as:
Penas de la Mazmorra (Dungeon Blues)
Verso 1
Muros de celda lloran secretos,
la antorcha baila, sombras al acecho.
El agua gotea, un débil gemir,
perdido en el salón, solo he de seguir.Coro
Penas de mazmorra, pesada suerte,
este tonto necio busca no verte.
Mi grupo se ha ido, qué triste plantel,
¿qué hace un héroe si pierde el nivel?Verso 2
El enano borracho, ahora es de piedra,
el bárbaro se fue, su orgullo es su hiedra.
El ladrón se esfumó con todo mi oro,
una historia trágica que aún lloro.Coro
Penas de mazmorra, pesada suerte,
este tonto necio busca no verte.
Mi grupo se ha ido, qué triste plantel,
¿qué hace un héroe si pierde el nivel?Verso 3
Al clérigo traicionó un engendro del mal,
el mago está exhausto, sin fuerza vital.
¿Y aquel Hobbit, pequeño y valiente?
Dudo que logre salir de esta fuente.Final
¡Oh no! ¿Qué es eso? Allí en el suelo…
El cuerpo del Hobbit, menudo consuelo.
Ahora sí que estoy por mi cuenta,
¡maldita mazmorra, fría y violenta!
The translation seems solid, though the line 'what's a poor hero to do?' has become '¿qué hace un héroe si pierde el nivel?' ('What does a hero do if they lose their level?'), which is not quite the same point.
Making the Music
The original song was Celtic in style, which seemed an odd fit for a Spanish song. Gemini suggested three possible styles, and Sonauto came up with a good song based on:
Medieval folk, dark comedy, lute and harpsichord, rhythmic tambourine, storytelling male vocal, theatrical, Renaissance fair style, minor key, quirky and grim, 90 BPM.
Strangely, the only music tag it came up with after all that was '2020s'! (I don't know if the AI produces the song solely based on the tags, or if it considers both the tags and the style/prompt.)
This type of song is difficult for Sonauto, as the lyrics only work for certain types of songs. Some tunes that were wonderful, just didn't work for this story! There were also some 'close calls' where a song was 99% what I was looking for, but with a word or phrase messed up.
Finally, I had a version that worked… but the AI had ignored my instruction for 'storytelling male vocal'. But I realized the song still worked, whether the fighter was male or female…
Making the Video
Since the song was now sung by a 'female' voice, I asked AI to take the original art and make the fighter female. This turned out to be a frustrating process, as with every request, the AI would make some corrections, but usually screw something else up. Where did the torch go? What happened to the lighting? Why is her leg backwards?
I also went back to something I wanted in the original art: the Hobbit's corpse. I found this AI would let me do that, but getting the body right and the fighter right at the same time proved too much of a challenge. So I gave up on the dead Hobbit.
And once again, I had another AI animate the torch flame. Took several tries, as the AI wanted to animate her too much, make her wave or stomp or look completely insane. (A subtle problem with the final animation is that the metal armor seems to stretch with her movements.)
Caption files were made in Spanish, as well as English, French, German and Tagalog.
The final step was to combine the music and the animation with titles, using ClipChamp:
I've posted the video as a reel on the TMP Facebook page. It's had some good reviews, but doesn't seem to have reached much into the Spanish-speaking community. It does appeal to the 35-44 demographic, though, which expands the TMP audience.