IC Source tiering?

[gotegenks]

I've been ICing quite a bit lately and used a few sources, but i've noticed something. Some sources were just MADE for raw editing. Sources that come to mind are Samurai Champloo, .Hack, and (to a slightly lesser extent) FF7ACC. And of course when you're ICing, the smart thing to do is to forget about adding a lot of FX or pan/crop and just focus on pacing and clip choice.

What i'm getting at is that some sources have CRAZY animation and are much easier to edit because of it. .Hack//gu feels like it was made by editors. The beautiful cell-shading and Camera movements a low for really dynamic editing without even touching the FX or pan buttons. You have that and then you have a source like Elfen Lied, with below average animation. If they were both used in an ic with a song that fit them equally well then the person using .hack would have to majorly suck balls and the guy using Elfen Lied would have to know what he was doing to have a chance at winning.

I'm never too competitive with ICs and i'm not a "no fair" bawwer or anything, but i had this little idea and i thought it might be kinda cool, add a small new dimension to ICing.

Oh, the idea. Well, we could have like Source tiers. God tier, high tier, mid tier, low tier, and shit tier.
I don't watch or edit a lot of anime but it'd go something like this

GOD Tier - .hack//gu, Samurai Champloo, Karas, FF7, NGE Rebuild, etc
High Tier - NGE End of Eva, Gurren Lagann, Cowboy Bebop Movie, Soul Eater
Mid Tier - FLCL, Death Note, Bleach
Low Tier - YuYu Hakusho
Shit Tier - Gravitation (lol), Elfen Lied

Those wouldn't be exact rulings or anything, so don't comment like "FLCL anim. PWNS EOE, WTF" But like, Just have some kinda casual listing for tournaments, or srs business ICs between people, or idk.

The way it would work would be like with Competitive Pokemon. Choose a tier you wanna play on and anything above the selected tier is banned. Exceptions can be made if the song choice potentially hinders the source (eg - Britney Spears and .hack)
The exceptions would be played out by the two editors icing
"Wanna IC? Mid tier?"
"Ehh, sure, what song?"
"Oops i did it again - Britney Spears?"
"egh...fine... OH, can i use .hack?"
"Srsly? With Britney?"
"FK YEA MAN!"
"i Suppose, i'd like to see you make that crap pairing work."

I don't know exactly how we'd classify each anime, but i imagine some kinda sticky where editors just discuss tiering and the moderator or w/e observes and changes tiering as he so judges.

Probably a bit complicated for simple ICs but i thought it was a neat idea so here it is. What do you guys think?

[Nya-chan Production]

God tier++ - Shinkai

/thread

[ExSphere]

Sources with fluid animation make for an easier source to edit with. But as long as your judges can look through that and see who used there source to the best of it's potential, then there should be no issue.

[gotegenks]

Sources with fluid animation make for an easier source to edit with. But as long as your judges can look through that and see who used there source to the best of it's potential, then there should be no issue.

okay, but if we attach numerical values to different levels of skill and to the quality of clip choice relative to what's available with the source, then a 6 with something like Karas is bound to be way more entertaining than a 6 with gravitation. The only way that a judge would consider it a tie is if he sat down and examined the ics thoroughly and knew both of the animes well enough to know that they're equal. But with your average judge they'll watch both ics a couple times and most likely conclude the karas part the winner. Even with a 4 in the karas part and a 6 with gravitation the karas part is most likely going to win because of sheer entertainment value.

Even without such a drastic difference in animation quality, the judge would've had to seen and probably edited a little bit with both sources to come close to knowing if the editors "used there source to the best of it's potential"

[Ileia]

If you're going to have judges who value videos based solely on source, you could forgo the whole editing part and just show them which DVDs you own.

[JaddziaDax]

I find that the more familiar I am with a source the better I can edit with it... that said, I'm more familiar with Gravitation, so I'd probably do better with it than Samurai Champloo...

You also gotta take into consideration that the style of a Samurai Champloo video is going to be way different than Gravitation because Champloo is an action/drama series while Gravitation is a comedy/romance series, so of course the videos will turn out differently... but just because Gravitation doesn't have a lot of action in it that doesn't make it a worse source to edit with, that just means you are less likely to make an action video with it.

oh and what Ileia said O.o

[Vivaldi]

It seems to me the editor should take that into consideration when choosing his sources. I mean sure, the song selection will have a profound impact on how well the source can be used, but it's just common sense to use a source that doesn't need a very specific set of circumstances to work.

[Nya-chan Production]

If you're going to have judges who value videos based solely on source, you could forgo the whole editing part and just show them which DVDs you own.

Sadly that's the way many judges work |:

It seems to me the editor should take that into consideration when choosing his sources. I mean sure, the song selection will have a profound impact on how well the source can be used, but it's just common sense to use a source that doesn't need a very specific set of circumstances to work.

Too bad nowadays it's usually "pick source (or few sources) first, then you get the audio!"

[gotegenks]

You also gotta take into consideration that the style of a Samurai Champloo video is going to be way different than Gravitation because Champloo is an action/drama series while Gravitation is a comedy/romance series, so of course the videos will turn out differently... but just because Gravitation doesn't have a lot of action in it that doesn't make it a worse source to edit with, that just means you are less likely to make an action video with it.

True, but what about Rurouni Kenshin and Samurai Champloo. Both action animes with very similar styles of art and yet one of them has considerably worse animation.

It seems to me the editor should take that into consideration when choosing his sources. I mean sure, the song selection will have a profound impact on how well the source can be used, but it's just common sense to use a source that doesn't need a very specific set of circumstances to work.

I'm not saying that without this, ICs aren't fair. I'm just saying that maybe with a system like this, you'd see more of the older animes in ICs. That's the main purpose of tiering (at least from the pokemon community). People play some of the lower tiers (because underused ftw right?) and use their favorite animes and at the same time can play fairly against animes on their own level.
Yes, usually the editor would take the animation quality into consideration, and if he wants to win he SHOULD take it into consideration...leading to everyone using these awesome animes. So it's still fair as it is, people just use High tier and God tier animes, problem solved, i just thought maybe this would be a neat idea, add something to icing.

[JaddziaDax]

One has older animation one has newer animation. I guess I don't tier them in that way because I take the context of when they were made as well.

Not to mention my statement about familiarity still stands. I'm sure that someone more familiar with Kenshin will do better with it if they are not very familiar with Champloo.

Most ICs that I've seen the editor is just thrown a song and told to edit to it. Some I've seen they randomize both video and audio sources - this is a better idea in my opinion.