JOURNAL: Kusoyaro (Hsien Lee)

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  • what a day, what a day, if you can look it in the face and hold your vomit... 2002-03-11 10:41:17 Didn't get as much work done on the Trigun video this weekend as I had hoped. It took me an entire afternoon to do one FRAME of a blue-screen/masking intensive scene, and the entire sequence is up to 2 seconds long. It's also not quite right yet. For this one frame where I have a girl kissing a guy she never shares actual screen-time with, I had to blue-screen her, resize her, change her color levels to match the lighting, redraw part of her face, and construct part of her body from scratch (the actual scene only shows her from the thigh up, I need her from about theh knee up), and move her entire position on the screen. To complicate matters, I am also going to have to put the guy's head in the foreground to give the scene depth, which means I need to blue out part of the girl's head. And then I have to do about 50 more frames worth to animate it all. That part probably won't be *quite* as bad, because I'll probably define macros so that the resizing, re-coloring, repositioning, etc. is all done automatically and with the exact same settings. I'm guessing that when I have it all figured out, it'll be approximately 15 minutes of work per frame.

    It's certainly slow going. I think this might be the most complicated editing/Photoshopping I'll have to do though, because its the most out of context scene. I guess it'll be good to have it out of the way.

    Duke made ACC history against NC State yesterday. Yay.

    Leandra and I agree that Live's "Hero of Love" is a fucking sexy song.



    I don't know why, but I rented The One this weekend. I'm no MCWagner when it comes to evaluating movies, but here are my thoughts on it (with some spoilers):

    - I liked Ebert's reasoning that if the death of one's doppelganger in a parallel universe results in their life energy being divided among all the survivors, that eventually old people in hospitals would start getting super-powerful as their doubles died of old age in other universes. Carrying that logic further, one of those old people would eventually be the last survivor, and then they would be The One! In otherwords...for their to be One, it doesn't require a maniac going around killing all his doubles...all his doubles would eventually die of natural/unnatural causes anyway! And that would be true for EVERY person. But the premise of the movie is based on the fact that there has NEVER been just one, and that the impact of there being a One is completely unknown and potentially catastrophic. Okay, so I guess then you have to make the assumption that if all the dimensions are parallel, then all 124 versions of each person in the multiverse would live parallel lives and die at the same time, thus preventing the existence of a One. But then by THAT assumption, Evil Jet Li's act of going from dimension to dimension, unnaturally killing his other selves, would disrupt the parallelism of the multiverse, thus causing a cosmic imbalance!

    - The "good guys" constantly tell Good Jet Li that once they kill Evil Jet Li, they'll have to kill Good Jet Li too, to prevent there from being One. Buuut...by that time, wouldn't it be too late? The potential catastrophe they fear from there being a One would already have occurred. Their biggest fears (and thus, their most pressing reasons for getting Evil Jet Li) are that if he succeeded in becoming One, then 1. He would become a god, or 2. The universe would be destroyed. Either way they'd be screwed, and thus, their threat to kill Good Jet Li is meaningless.

    - Evil Jet Li breaks into a hospital and attempts to kill Good Jet Li. He fails, but runs amuck in the hospital. So then Good Jet Li goes and unknowingly changes into the EXACT SAME OUTFIT as Evil Jet Li, which results in him being attacked by his police buddies. He continues to wear this outfit for the rest of the movie, which results in constant "Ohhh, which one is the evil one?" conflicts, and it's not like he never gets a chance to change. And there's no evidence that this is tactical on his part, so I assume it's just a plot device.

    - Right before the final showdown, Evil Jet Li conveniently rips off his overshirt so we can tell them apart.

    - Right before the authorities arrive, Good Jet Li's overshirt conveniently catches on fire, which results in him having to rip it off. The authorities then proceed to capture (surprise, surprise!) Good Jet Li by mistake.

    - Final showdown = Fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight--oh, it's finally over---wait, no it's not--fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight.

    - I like Jet Li, but watching him trying to be menacing or bombastic in broken English is painful.

    - The CG sequences of characters travelling through wormholes were extremely unsettling to me for some reason.

    - Have you ever had your mortal enemy on his back, with the tip of your ax right up against his throat? And then, have you ever changed your mind and decided to choke him with the handle of the ax instead? That's probably why all of our mortal enemies are still alive, eh?

    - Seeing pictures of alternate universe versions of Jet Li (in various silly wigs and getups) was a hoot. 
  • smiling with the mouth of the ocean...and i wave to you with the arms of a mountain... 2002-03-08 08:33:22 The Trigun video is going to rule this weekend. Er...the video will rule ME, I mean, the video itself will probably not rule. I'm getting really nervous about the video now...I've had several people tell me that they're looking forward to it. I'm really skeptical about the reception to this video. It'd play poorly in front of an audience, and it's basically dead in the water if the sound is too muddled to hear the words. I'm also worried about how well the story will convey itself to the audience...it's less of an AMV, and more like a (very) short film with sing-song narration. That makes it sound really pretentious, but the video really is low-key and I can't think of any better way to describe it.

    3 more DVDs to go...and I've got nearly all the scenes I need. What I really need now is, of all things, a clean, top-down image of a book. If I can't find one, I'm just going to grab the one from Fushigi Yuugi. I think I'm going to do all the hardest parts first when I edit. I'll start by overlaying scenes that I'm going to be combining...that way, I can see how the characters/objects fit onscreen in relation to each other. Once I get all that down, THEN I'll start all the nasty blue-screening and what-not. Over the next couple of weeks my journal will probably consist primarily of bitching about frame-by-frame editing in Photoshop. I really need to get more efficient, though...based on some frames I played around with just to if what I want can be done, it takes me nearly 5 minutes per frame. 5 minutes X possibly up to 1000 frames or more = too much.

    A lot of the scenes I'm capturing are better than I had imagined, though...a lot of what I want can be achieved through creative editing, so I won't have to create *quite* so many scenes by compiling elements of other scenes. I couldn't believe my luck when Millie actually walked up to Vash and punched him right in the face! I was really worried about how I was going to create that scene...
    And I was just *hoping* for a good, slow scene of Wolfwood walking away from the camera, his cross propped on his shoulder. Even better, I get a shot of him riding away on a motorcycle with a somber look on his face. That's so beautifully perfect that it almost made me forget about the problem of Legato's rather active role in the video; all he ever does in the actual series is stand around and smirk. I don't think I'm up to the task of actually creating animation sequences from scratch.

    I wonder if people have guessed the song yet. I've dropped a lot of hints already, but I would like to keep it secret.

    Sorry about rambling so damn much about this video all the time, but it really is the most ambitious concept I've ever attempted, so just *thinking* about the video makes me all jittery. And my most fruitful bouts of inspiration always come when I'm nowhere near my computer.

    Plan for today: putz through the rest of the workday, head to the gym, get home in time to eat dinner while watching Duke vs. UNC in the ACC tournament, and then work on the Trigun video until my eyes bleed.

    I still can't believe that my kid brother is 20. Once his new band Makeshift scrounges up enough money to buy some studio time, I'll probably have another AMV song on my hands.
     
  • ...so wear the hat and do the dance and let that suit keep wearing you... 2002-03-05 10:44:35 Okay, it looks like I've definitely found my "villain" for the Trigun video...which is good, because now I won't have to import a character from another series. And now I can really start serious work, since I no longer have to spend hours staring at each insignificant little character, hoping they might have the right poses and such to be the villain. I *think* I can pull off a kiss between two characters who never actually meet...I captured some scenes last night that might make it possible with a lot of luck and a lot of Photoshopping.

    Damn, I'm really excited. I've been thinking about this video for so long that it's hard to believe I'm finally doing it. Unlike my other videos, this one isn't an amorphous blob that shapes itself as I edit on the fly...I have a pretty good idea of how each and every scene is going to fall into place. It's just a matter of the legwork enroute. 
  • no more words...just you and i high in the sky... 2002-03-04 11:30:57 Alright, work on my Trigun video has finally begun. About 5 minutes into capturing episode 1, I realized what an incredible BITCH this video is going to be. I've nearly decided on the final "cast" of the video....instead of having to "import" a character from Captain Tylor, I found a random bit character that will work just as well. I'm almost positive that Wolfwood will be the savior instead of the villain, and I'm leaning towards Legato for the villain. For the first time, I'm going to have to plan every scene out meticulously ahead of time. Winging it's not going to work for this video, as it's not a mood video. The song is basically going to narrate a story that I'm assembling within the video.
    Approx 30% of the video will include scenes that don't actually exist in the original anime. I don't have After Effects, so I'm going to have lots of fun editing hundreds of frames individually in Photoshop.

    Examples:
    -Taking a table out of one scene and putting it against another background, removing all the characters sitting around the table, and then adding OTHER characters sitting around the table.
    -Changing the color of a character's drink so that it looks like he's drinking something else.
    -Creating an extended death sequence for a character that doesn't actually die, including a deathbed scene.
    -Two characters that never actually meet or share "screen-time" in the series are going to be paired as lovers.
    -I don't think Wolfwood's character will be an actual character...probably more of an abstract, which means I'm probably going to have him walk around semi-transparent for the entire video...which means either reconstructing the background behind him, or putting him in entirely different backgrounds.
    -Constructing backgrounds from scratch (well, the character's head takes up about 80% of the screen in the scene I'm talking about, so I wouldn't have to do THAT much)

    Goddamn. Now that I read through all that, I'm having serious doubts as to whether or not I can actually pull this off. The trickiest part is that people who watch the video aren't supposed to be able to tell that I did all that. And it still won't be as impressive as Tainted Donuts. 
  • she brought our food out on time...wore a funky barrette in her hair.. 2002-02-27 12:35:08 ::rolls eyes in ecstasy::

    Mmmmmm...Thai drunken chicken noodles........ 
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