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It is really rare for me to make two complicated comedy AMVs in one year, but I figured since I took last year off I owed two this year. Some school friends of mine sent me this song and said it was begging for an AMV. It was just up my alley so I took them up on the offer. This is the first Comedy AMV I have ever made with a remotely comedic song, and I really enjoyed working with Not Literally's parody.
After Anime 101 was released I got a lot of really solid feedback about how I could improve my technicals to make things look smoother. The problem with Anime 101 was in order to fix a lot of what I had learned, I would have had to redo large portions of the video, which already having spent a year or so on, I was really sick of. So with this video I had two goals, Be done in time for Otakon and Try to improve on what was lacking in Anime 101.
With Ship Happens I first worked on my joke delivery. With Anime 101 and Moe Moe Rebellion I really suffered from the Lots of text/Not a lot of time to read syndrome. With Ship Happens I tried to make the humor more visual. When I had large text heavy documents I tried to emphasize the text that NEEDED to be read, leaving the rest less noticeable so it could be revisited on a second watch. Pretty basic stuff but it really took me two videos, 3 years, and several lectures from snapxynith to understand that concept.
Secondly, I worked on my color correction on crossover shots. No crossover shot is going to be perfect, especially if you are mixing two different styles of animation from two different years. But I really made my best effort to blend things as seamlessly as I could. I also experimented in repainting shadows (Mostly on Edward Elric in the scenes with Eren) so that they matched the original sources light source. I also painted my mask edges to make them cleaner and more blendy.
I struggled with lip sync, I always do, but I think I did a passable job. Even when I drew my own animations for school I struggled with lip sync so I don't think it will ever be something I can master or grow to enjoy.
Finally I worked a lot more with AE for this project. All the websites seen in this video were made in photoshop and then animated in After Effects. I was really worried at first if I would be able to pull off the motion graphic work I wanted in this AMV, but all my original ideas (having gifs on tumblr, posting things live to twitter and facebook etc) really came through.
Overall I am really proud of this video and I was really happy I got to see it live at Otakon. It definitely received a stellar reaction -- probably one of the best I have ever gotten. Unlike Anime 101 I think this truly is a comedy video (not an upbeat video masquerading in comedy). I hope you enjoy my AMV!
And now if you excuse me I am gonna make a single source drama video. Or romance. Or upbeat. Just no more crossover comedies for a while. Please.
