Experimental storyboard video, local+direct

[Kai Stromler]

-- (rubicons)
anime: Munto
music: In Flames, "Touch of Red" outro
format: Xvid (mostly)
filesize: 7.65 MB local, 21 MB direct
runtime: 1:16

This video is an experiment in several ways, not the least of which is exactly how far pretentiousness can be pushed in video titling. However, that's not the interesting part.

The generally interesting part is that the animation painting has been removed from this video as an experiment in minimalism. Credit for this should go to Lags, who wrote the filter that allowed me to do this without really thinking. If, though, you think I've horribly abused his gift, it's my fault entirely, not his.

The other part of the experiment, and the reason for the local version, is that people occasionally get after me for diminished audio quality. Since the video portion here compresses so well, I've got the luxury of offering a version with PCM audio on direct; the local version is compressed with mp3 to SH standard. If there's no appreciable difference, or greater difficulty with the hi-fi version, well, I didn't waste too much time encoding an experiment this short.

Reactions to the experiment are as always appreciated, here or in op form; flames will be false-colored and archived for use in antisocial protest works.

--K

[Bakadeshi [AuN Studios]]

interesting concept.... it could work if you told a story in a somewhat abstract way I think.

Only problem with the filter I think, is that in some of the scenes, because you are converting full 32/16 bit color to lineart, it doesn't handle some of the shadows correctly, so it looks weird. Only rememdy to this i can see would be to hand edit the resulting frames to remove the lines you don't want. tedious.

[Kai Stromler]

Tedious is quite correct, though "skullcrushing drudgery" might be even better. If it was a 10-20 second sequence over, say, an open solo, in a video mostly using full coloration, it might be worth the effort, but in this case there were about 2100-2200 affected frames in the video (obviously, not counting the whitescreens), and for a total work of 76 seconds, the effort wasn't really justified. Lags has so far used it in one cut in this video, to much better effect, and with deliberate attention to picking something that the shading lines won't distract too much from.

Also, as you pointed out, it sorta works in a heavily abstracted context like this, and the shading lines provide an extra element of distancing from any initial perspectives anyone's taking in. It's certainly a better solution for this sort of minimalism than thresholding is.

--K