As to how long the widescreen intro would take, I have to have the hand-drawn animation part (the hard part) done by next Saturday in order to turn it in on time for class, so I think it's safe to say that it wouldn't make the project take any longer to complete than it would take to complete it without the widescreen intro.
I spent a large portion of yesterday playing gaffer at a lighting and staging test for an independent film my Cinemetographer roommate is going to be shooting this December, so I'm not done with the intro yet - but I can safely say that I'm completely done with collecting and processing the images going into it (actually, I'm going to have some left over, as it turns out), and that I'm a little over halfway done with the video compositing. I've actually produced a video that spans the length of the entire intro song (at least the ~1:30 I'm using as the intro, before the song starts repeating itself), I just need a little more time to clean up the timing (I can get everything timed down to the frame using the PNG images as source, I just need to carefully scrub through the timeline making sure everything matches up with the waveforms) and to mess with the parameters I've been using to move around the overlays to make those all fit together nicely. I've found that the difference between a video segment hovering aroung the general level of "sucks" and the general level of "rules" is often in the care given to the multitude of little details involved. So I'll fix those little details, and will (sometime mid-week) post the Intro segment (minus all the issues I've found in it at its current state) for review. I will then keep all of the source images and project files around so I can apply any changes you all think are appropriate next weekend before compositing the whole film together.
I really would like to have both sections of the film done by the end of the next weekend, the end of next week at latest. I have a lot of very demanding projects and assignments coming into my schedule at this point in the quarter, and this is really my last chance to finish the film before I have vacation in another four weeks. To pull this off, however, I really do need to get:
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AznRaver's picture and screencaps (i'll do my best to find similar images from Edward Scizzorhands and your video, if you no longer have the images you originally sent me)
Ooshna's picture and screencaps
Songbird's narratives and picture (I found your screencaps in my e-mail. yea!)
Bakadeshi's picture and screencaps
My screencaps (yes, I even managed to delete my own screencaps), also my narratives (soon to be completed), my intermission drawing (done, but not yet scanned and composited onto its background), and the end credits (have to have all of the involved images before I can do that one).
Pen-Pen's video, picture, and screencaps
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If I have all of the major missing components (both sets of narriatives, the intro segments, and Pen-Pen's video) by the end of the upcoming weekend, but am missing anything else (that I don't see a post about saying something like "seriously, I'll be able to upload those tomorrow"), every missing video picture will be filled in with one of my creation (I will do my best to make them look cool and representitive of the video they are supposed to represent, but I want to give you all a chance to make your own), and every missing person will become either "missing-face Spike" or "missing-face Osaka".
If I have everything in
before next Sunday, I should be able to produce a finished compilation for the upcoming Monday - and wouldn't that be sweet.
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My 3D-Animation major roommate happens to have a pair of very nice mics on him at the moment, that he's using to voice one of his own animations, and I can borrow them for the evening - so I should have most, if not all, of the widescreen narratives done by tomorrow.
I've also retrieved all of my command logs from the test run of the re-encoding and compilation process, and written out the process I've used to do all of that, so I will be ready to start rendering as soon as all of this project's pieces are in my posession.
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I will now send PMs and e-mails to everyone missing something (even if you have been on the forum lately - this way I can avoid any complex decision process over who's likely to see this post), saying what it is and when I want it by. I should have done so earlier (and was originally going to), but other stuff came up, and this is when I'm getting to it. Hopefully this won't cause any big problems - I'm just trying to tie everything up so we can celebrate the completion of the film and show it off to all of our non-participant friends.
I still haven't fully figured out the whole hosting bit, so that might take another week before I either can manage to configure my computer to work as a bittorrent tracker, get the project up for Local download, or get it up on another bittorrent tracker.
Edit: I modded myself - thinking that, in hindsight, actually naming the site in question and then explaining that it's full of licenced anime and icky hentai might not be such a good idea. Congratulate yourself if you don't know what site I'm talking about.
Anyone know of a bittorent tracker that's a bit more reliable and legitimate than -----------, and would be willing to list this sort of thing? I think I could get this up on -----------, but I doubt that sending everyone there to get it would be looked on as a good thing according to the .org <a href="http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=289">Forum Rules</a>, and something about the thought of posting it on a tracker site that actually has an entire catagory devoted to hentai seems a bit unbecoming.
BTW: For the time between the completion of the film and my discovery of a practical hosting method to deliver it to the masses, I'll put up a new private FTP account and send the username and password to all of you by PM. I can upload ten copies, I just can't upload a few hundred - much less serve that many people simultaniously. I'll also be saying goodbye to the existing Instrumentality account at that point - as my FTP system seems to have some security issues (and should probably be replaced with something more simple and secure, of my own authoring, in the long run) and I want to, as a temporary measure, limit the set of people logging on to it to myself, my roommates, and you folks - people I trust to not screw up my computer or abuse my bandwidth resources. Just thought I'd mention it now, so you'll know what's going on when the account changover happens.
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Oooh, cool - the Forum Rules seem to be very aware of their identity, as of late. Or maybe it's just the .org <a href="http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=289">Forum Rules</a>. It seems this smart-linking stuff sometime does work exactly the way it's supposed to.
