! SPOILERS ON THIS PAGE - ONLY READ IF YOU ARE UP TO DATE WITH THE STORY OF STATIC MOSAIC ! This page will have a bunch of super-long lists of things that inspired Static Mosaic, or things that are referenced or heavily implied in its universe. I thought about making another page called "Inspirations", but there was so much overlap between the references and inspirations that I just put them all into one page. This page will be updated a bunch as time goes on, so check back often! (Characters) - Flower's shirt has text on it that says "Welcome To The Next Level". This is a well-known saying used in Sega advertisements in the 90's. - On Star's image on her character profile, the Kanji on her shirt says "star". - On Flower's image on her character profile, the changing background includes artwork from Pop'n Music, and a photo of the back of the CD case for Papaya Paranoia's album "LUNATIC", which shows the names of all of the songs in the album. - All the characters' likes and dislikes are (almost) all the same for me! - Listed under Star's dislikes is "Strong Sunshine". This is a reference to Knuckles' character profile in Sonic Jam, where it said that he disliked strong sunshine as well. - The device on Triangle's ear was inspired by a few (mostly humanoid) robots from various 90's and 2000's anime! Recently, I've also been watching a few low-budget Tokusatsu films, and some of those movies have great robot designs as well :) (Character Images) - The background of Character Image 3 includes artwork by (I think) Elsa Beskow from the book "Thumbelina". - Character Image 3 also includes lyrics in the background from the song "Ukiyo no Koi" by Kidorikko. - Character Image 6 includes a GIF in the background of a segment of the ending cutscene from Sonic CD, specifically the original Sega CD version. - The green "terminal" (not sure what its called lol) background in Character Image 6, which also is seen in Heart's shadow, is a reference to a dungeon in Persona 4 Golden where the characters' shadows had that effect as well. - The facial expression and pose seen being made by Star in Character Image 7 is a reference to an episode of Sonic Mania Adventures, where Knuckles made a similar expression and pose. - The background in Character Image 7 also includes a photo of the 3rd floor of my Sylvanian Families house, and inside are the Marshmallow Mouse family! - So, the monstera leaves in Character Image 8 are made up of pieces of scrapbooking paper that I had lying around. I just took some pictures of them with my phone, with the idea that they would feel more "real". - The style of Diamond's eyes in Character Image 8 were inspired by Iczer One's eyes in Fight! Iczer One. (Which is an OVA that, at the time, I hadn't watched yet. I recently DID watch it, though, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Very good OVA!) I was wanting an "80's anime girl" style, and while the style of Fight! Iczer One isn't the best example, I just thought it looked nice! - Also in Character Image 8, I didn't draw much of Diamond's face, or any of her hair, in an attempt to keep her appearance obscured. This is also the reason why her eyes are the parts of the image that show the background, instead of them being fully drawn. - In the background of Character Image 9, there is a screenshot of a song that I was making with Beepbox... Which also happens to be a cover of "Konokono Koneko" by Kidorikko! - The pink text in the background of Character Image 9 says the names of the 3 songs that Flower sings. - I actually went into Animal Crossing: New Horizons and drew a picture of Heart in a bulletin board post, and just took a screenshot of it to use for Character Image 10! (Soundtrack) - The addition of "...For" and then the name of the level or area is a reference to the soundtracks of Sonic Adventure 1 & 2, where the song titles had that as well. - Multiple songs in Static Mosaic include samples from video games such as Sonic 1 & 3, Earthbound, etc. I won't list all of these samples because there are a LOT. - Any instance of distortion effects on drums in the soundtrack were directly inspired by the music for the hot spring dungeon in Persona 4 Golden, which features disortion effects over drums, too. - "Moon &" was a pretty stupid name for the first song in Static Mosaic. I Just thought, "Oh! Moon & Star!" - "Stuck In The Dining Room Forever" was named after how I was forced to sit at my dining table on my laptop after our Wi-Fi booster broke, not even being allowed to sit in my own bedroom because the Wi-Fi didn't reach that far. (I live in a big house lol) - Triangle's Theme (Her Only Nursery Rhyme) is of note because it was inspired by the music of From Nursery To Misery, right down to the name. I wanted it to have a lot of soft, noise-filled synth. Think of "The Enemy Is Listening" by From Nursery To Misery, I guess. - "Baroque Wallpaper In The Hallways Part III" is a reference to my first music release on the internet, an EP called "The Ocean" (Which is currently taken down, and I will never put it back up again). Part I and II were part of it, and they were just very bad piano solos, so Part III follows in their footsteps; it's just a couple notes on our very out of tune piano, with some slowed-down metal scraping sounds over top. - Said metal scraping sounds are courtesy of Jade Internet (https://jadeinter.net/), who puts together ZIP files of "audio textures". I used a file from "razorheatsink", which is full of recordings of Jade scraping a razorblade accross an old CPU heatsink. - "Get To Know The River" is a reference to a webpage about birds or something that, when translated to English, had the same title. (I found it! It's at "https://coneixelriu.museudelter.cat/ocells.php") - "Procedural Cathedral (Reprise)" is literally the same MP3 as in the album it was from ("Death Tastes Like Sugar"). I thought about adding a reverb effect to it, but that was too difficult... - Yes, the one singing on page 22 (The karaoke one!) was me. I spent quite a while recording myself singing different songs, but I decided to include 3 of my favourite songs by Kidorikko: "Konokono Koneko", "Momoiro Kingyo", and "Ryukou Tsushinbo". Konokono Koneko and Momoiro Kingyo both have instrumental/karaoke versions, but Ryukou Tsushinbo doesn't, so I had to sing over the original, on-vocal version. That's why you can hear the original singer's voice as well! - "Golf Song For You" was originally a placeholder name for the song featured on page 24, because it was originally supposed to be played in the background of my brother's school presentation about golf, and I couldn't really think of a better name for it. I then re-used this song for a science presentation of mine, so this song has really had a life of its own outside of Static Mosaic! - Also, the "Cool Bass" as it's called in Ultrabox, is one of my favourite preset instruments, because it both reminds me of "Toy Dog" by Eyeliner (Though I think they used real bass in that song) as well as a LOT of Kidorikko songs, and I like all of those things, so I use the Cool Bass quite a bit. (Main Game) - Star's bandmates' names, "Sine" and "Saw", are obvious references to different synth waveform shapes, with "Saw" being a shortened version of "Sawtooth". - Every character that shows up in Static Mosaic either does not own a cell phone at all, or has a flip-phone. Reason being: I think they're cool. :D - Not entirely a reference, but Flower shows up to Precious Memories' concert on a scooter, and I tend to give characters in my stories scooters just because they featured prominently in Kamikaze Girls (My favourite movie!). - The name "Precious Memories" was inspired by Precious Moments, a series of cute porcelain figurines that I love. I also saw "Precious Memories" on a memorial thing at my school, and thought it sounded nice. Fun fact: the song "Autumn Birds' Memories" off my album "Afternoon Tea With Teddy Bears" was originally called "Precious Memories" before I changed it. - Star's dancing, singing, and later costumes while performing, were heavily inspired by both Chiyumi Ten (Kidorikko) and Jun Togawa. - The first song that Precious Memories performs, which Diamond (You) comments on, was based on a scrapped song I was writing a while ago called "Woman Of The Cosmos". The words that Diamond can pick out of it were actually from the lyrics of that song, as well. - The reason why Flower says that the idea of making portals came to her in a dream was because the idea for Flower's portal-making ability actually came to ME in a dream! It was well before I'd started working on Static Mosaic, if I'm remembering correctly; it basically started the whole project! - The first movie that Star pulls out of her bag at the sleepover is "Barbie In A Fashion Fairytale" and the second is "Barbie As The Island Princess". I Owned both of these movies on DVD when I was younger, and I tried to describe the covers as acurately as possible. - Star also describes how she bought the movies for $2 to $3 from a second-hand store, and this is because there's a second-hand store near me that sells DVDs for only $3 each! It's great. - Of course, though, the movie that they DO end up watching is "Linda Linda Linda", often just called "Linda". I had watched it a few weeks before writing that part and its strangely quiet atmosphere and very empty locations had really stuck with me, so I wanted to mention it! Check it out if you have an hour or two to spare; it's pretty interesting, has a YMO reference, and is available on YouTube with English subtitles! - Also! The reason why I did not describe the cover of the DVD for Linda Linda Linda was just because I didn't know what it looked like, and I couldn't be bothered to look it up... - Of course, the dragonfly theming is inspired by Jun Togawa's album "Tamahime Sama", and some live performances of the songs in that album. (For those not fans of Jun Togawa, Tamahime Sama is themed around a woman turning into a dragonfly. It's also about the twisted truth of womanhood, with a central "insect" theme all throughout. She often performed live in different dragonfly costumes around this time, too.) - Heart owns a pen with a pom-pom and pink rabbit ears on the end, and this is because I own a similar pen :) - Yeah the PlayStation exists in the Static Mosaic universe, or at least the PlayStation 3. - So does Vib-Ribbon! I love that game, and I tried to describe the level-generation stuff in a way that was easy to understand. I've never actually played it with custom songs, though; I've only ever emulated it on a PC with a non-functioning disk tray. Also, Vib-Ribbon may or may not have been an inspiration for the simple visual style of Static Mosaic... - So, the album that Diamond (You) pulls out of her bag is obviously my album, "Death Tastes Like Sugar". It was mainly because it has a cool illustration that I'm very proud of, and that's pretty easy to describe. I also thought that "Procedural Cathedral", my favourite out of all of the songs in Death Tastes Like Sugar, was pretty fast, with cool instrumentation that I figured might make a pretty difficult level in Vib-Ribbon. (Though I'm not sure, so if you're able to, try it out sometime!) I've actually burned a CD with all of the songs from "Death Tastes Like Sugar" IRL, too. - The inspiration for Star's white heron costume was a running joke in my family. We'd talk about how my school is so unorganised and bad at communicating that if somebody randomly showed up in a full white heron costume, claiming to be the school's new mascot, the teachers probably wouldn't question it. Because I'm bad at drawing, though, Star's costume just has a weird-looking bird hat, which is still pretty funny.