How important are amvs to you now compared to back then?

[ngsilver]

AMVs are just as important to me now as they were 16 years ago when I first discovered them and became a fan of AMVs. I started off as a fan and to this day I still am a fan. I'm more a fan of AMVs then really anime in general. I still watch anime, but I'm more inclined to enjoy an AMV for a series rather then the series itself. The editor part is secondary and I've only been doing that for 10 years.

As far as the videos I watch, I find I watch more then I ever had before. In the early days I'd watch what I could find hosted on sites or via kazaa, morpheius, ect. AMVs were somewhat hard to find and there wasn't a central repository (at least that I could find) for them. Thanks to the org I now have a steady stream of videos to download and enjoy. Youtube helps somewhat, but I usually use youtube for finding PMVs and LAMVs since they're not hosted/cataloged here.

As far as editing goes, I've always been a mood editor. As with all my creative endeavors I need to be in the mood in order to do anything. Some years I get into more moods then others and thus I output more then before. As far as AMVs goes, I suppose recent years I've wained on my output but that is more to the fact that I have started branching out to using other source material in my videos, such as live action and MLP. I still make videos just about as frequently as I always have, just it is often for ideas that don't require anime to do.

I do still find it important to produce something for AWA at least. It is really the only convention I make sure I have something new for. It's good to have that deadline over my head to better motivate me and put me in the mood to edit. I've still got plenty of ideas so I'm not planning on stopping anytime soon.

Now if only next month I can have my weekends back (had to work weekends this month to make up for my vacation at the beginning of the month) so I can start the weekly AMV stream back up (and VCA centric to boot!) I still love watching amvs, and sharing that joy with others is still even more fun. Watching and chatting about what's on screen with others is tons of fun

[JaddziaDax]

I don't think age is much of a factor, but more so what phase of life you are in. If IRL gets in the way then it does. Heck, I know some people who are parents and still find time to make videos.

[Otohiko]

AMVs have never been my biggest hobby, and in fact they've been at best distant thirds when it comes to spending my free time. But I've always really liked the community, and since about 2005 it was friends rather than AMVs in themselves that have kept me here and involved in some way. Since about 2008, my free time and energy tanked so my actual productivity in AMVs has been low. That is not changing anytime soon.

However I can also safely say that over the past few years my best friends are all AMVers from this community, so my involvement with the social side couldn't be greater. If I were to disappear from the AMV scene now, I'd lose touch with a group of people I would never want to lose touch with. I've also got more involved with certain things since becoming a mod, and over the last couple of years have participated in various community events as a judge, commentator, or something of that sort (JCAs, Project Editor), as a result of which I've watched a LOT of AMVs. Starting this year, I'm also beginning what will hopefully be another long-term phase in my AMV career - I'll be AMV room staff at Anime North, learning the trade from Vlad. I'd love to be involved with more AMV events in the future, even if I have little time to actually edit right now.

[lloyd9988]

You remind me of my younger days...

I AM your younger days

My less fat days.

Sh*t, now I feel bad

[Diegao]

Well, I found out about AMVs in 2006, but only later in March of 2008 I started to make something of mine. At first, AMVs were just an entertaining hobby, and when I found a song, I started and finished a video in the same day. In this way I kept until the early 2009, when meeting various AMV communities I started to edit a bit more seriously, and AMVs became my greatest passion ever. I used to spend a considerable part of my every day's free time by editing, and I had costantly in the mind thoughts about AMVs. Towards the end of 2010, AMVs have started slowly to become less and less important; they were always my favourite hobby, but I didn't care about them like the past times. Lately, AMVs are back to being like the first times, even if I'm not making a lot of them. So, I can easly consider them important like when I started to make them, perhaps even more.

About the age question, I think that is relevant just because of the jobs and responsabilities we have in different ages. When I started I was 13, now I'm 17 and I've already a lot of more things which keep me far from AMVs. I hope that when I'll have a job, I'll be able to make AMVs anyway, just with less time, but with the same passion.

[Voidses_]

Had a crush on a few AMVs back in 2007-2008. Now I just like to edit them from time to time. So I guess they have become a integrated part of my life by now. Will probably still be making them from time to time 10years from now.

[Rendakor]

I've watched AMVs casually for at least 10 years; however it's only recently that I'm starting to get really into them. Most of the ones I had seen before were the "linkinball z" types: almost all shonen shows with poor video quality set to the same songs over and over. However when I started going to cons in 2009, I saw the AMV contest at one and was really impressed. Seeing the quality of videos at cons, I looked some of the editors up on youtube and caught some more good ones. I only ended up finding the Org a few weeks ago when I decided I wanted to make my own; I was googling AMV tutorials and caught a link to the guides section here. So I guess you could say my interest is greater than it was before, because now I'm actually trying to learn how to make videos, studying other videos instead of just watching and going "Oh cool".

[pacotacoshell]

The "need to win" doesn't enter into it, that isn't what makes the hobby worthwhile, it's not how I gauge how "important" AMVs are to me. Contests are second place when it comes to my participation in this hobby.

^ This. I may not be a long time editor or anything, but I still have to agree with this. To me, amv editing is damn fun. Whether or not I get an award for doing what I love doesn't matter at all. People become too superficial with wanting to become the best. As long as I think my amvs are awesome and I loved the process of doing it, then that's all that matters to me.

[Infinity Squared]

Hobby or not, I'm always a big believer in having goals and one of those had been to win a major award in every convention in Australia. I achieved that last year (only took me 7 years). Somehow or other I guess the momentum of my involvement in the hobby was tied to that.

When it was down to just one last convention in the country and how it seemed to elude me, my motivation waned quite a bit. A big part of that is that in my mind, I had to top my efforts like I've never done before in order to win and as you'd appreciate, having bigger ideas mean more time required and sometimes just thinking about them makes my head spin already

So now that that's over and done with, I have yet to make another AMV (that was back in May last year). Maybe it's because I've done what I set out to do, but it's probably mainly that I've moved to other hobbies/businesses (photography) that right now I don't have any concrete AMV projects that I want to work on. It's probably a combination of life moving on.

Damn, this hobby used to be everything to me.