JOURNAL: Ashyukun (Robert Babcock)

previous page next page
  • Man its so crowded in here.... 2003-04-07 08:18:25 Well, this was an amusing weekend, or at least parts of it. Friday night was the They Might Be Giants concert that my wife had gotten tickets to as one of my birthday presents. It was a lot of fun, but not without its problems. First off, there were like 150 more people in the place than I think should have been. The concert was in a moderately sized club, and there really were more people in there than was comfortable. Second, the opening act had my wife, her friend (our boarder, Heather), and I wishing that the place sold rotten fruit. They would have made a killing Friday night. What I can't really figure out is that apparently this woman tours with TMBG... about the best thing I can think of to say was that she made them sound -reaaaaaaly- good in comparison. Of course, the last time I saw them (back in like 1995 or so) they had an equally off guy for one of their openers (Matthew Sweet was the other for that concert, and him the crowd enjoyed) and someone actually threw a shoe at the guy. To his credit, he caught it and told the crowd he'd have it for sale at his table after the show. One THBG actually started playing, things were fine. I was quite happy, they played pretty much all the songs I liked off "Mink Car" (thankfully, IMO, they didn't play the title track). I really liked the concert version of "Time" and "Man It's So Loud in Here".

    Unfortunately, due to the concert not getting out until 1 and us going out for dinner afterwards and then still having a 45 minute drive home, half of Saturday was spend sleeping (well, OK, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing- sleep is good, and I rarely get enough of it during the week...). Most of the weekend was spend cleaning up the apartment, since Heather's parents were coming up to drop off one of their cars for her. My wife is elated, since this means she'll no longer br driving her Camaro around all the time.

    I did manage to get some more of the work done for the ACen vid (For the time being, I'll call it WLTFO). The first of the main effects scenes is done, as is (for the most part) the 'title' screen. I'm making good progress on the 2nd 'effects scene', and am increasingly confident I'll have the video done with time to spare. Which is good because I really should be working on the Otakon vid and not this... :/

    I can't believe it, but we're supposed to get like a foot of snow this afternoon. It's April, for crying out loud! I should be riding a bike around, not coming into work bundled up for a blizzard! About the only good thing I foresee with this is I might get out of work early if there's a danger of the public transit being interrupted. 
  • I feel left out :p 2003-04-03 07:52:54 Wow. I don't think I've ever seen a video generate so much discussion, at least in the journals. I can't be left out! I must join in! MWAAAHAAHAA!!

    *ahem*

    Sorry, it's been a long few days dragging Ryu-oh back into being a functioning computer and getting the software necessary to edit reinstalled. And it's somewhat depressing that I'll have to do it all over in a week or so when the new motherboard and case get in. But, it's now back up and running, so tonight I should be able to start digging more seriously into my ACen project.

    Anyways, to the apparentl topic of the week- Euphoria. It is quite impressive, and it further reinforces my belief in Koop's skills. But, at the same time, watching through it I can see what appear to be a few glitches, and mostly figure out how to do most of the effects in the video (the only one that has me stumped as to how to do it easily is the hex-cell thing, though AE's particle playground might be capable of doing it easily, I haven't used it enough to really know). What impressed me more, all told, is the creative ability to come up with all the things that he did. -That- is what I consider talent.

    Could I have come up with that video? No- just the same as I couldn't have come up with Arima Shinji-kun, Transcending Love, Cowboy Bebop 007, etc. When I first saw Arima Shinji-kun, I sat in front of my computer in awe for a a few minutes letting it sink in. The first thing I thought was "Holy &$%*, this is the kind of talent I have to compete with?!?" Then I thought about it some more, and decided that in the end, it really didn't matter. I think if I were on an island in the middle of the ocean with no possible way of showing anyone else (except my wife, who I would hope would also be on the island... with nothing but skimpy bikinis to wear... um, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah...) anything I made, I would still be making AMVs (ignore the little details of how I'd get new DVDs and CDs... :p ). I have lots of fun making AMVs, and I love the sense of accomplishment when I watch the finished works. That other people seem to generally enjoy my videos is purely extra icing on the cake (Mmmmm... cake....).

    I would hope that nobody would quit because of one video- but if they do, I would tend to agree that they probably shouldn't be here anyways. But then, I'd imagine most of the people who would be scared off won't be reading my journal anyways. :P

    Anyways... since I suck at saying anything really profound, I'll stop now. :P

    My Tekkoshocon video- "Powerpuff Girls : Reloaded" is now up on the Carrot for who can download from it. Since I didn't get lynched for it at Tekkoshocon (and apparently came quite close to actually winning with it), I'm hoping nobody here decides to lynch me for it. :) 
  • I still hait waiting. 2003-04-01 08:00:45 Well, we got back from Pitt late last night (thanks to my mother-in-law's paranoia about driving in snow, no matter how little of it or how much it was -not- sticking and so we could be around to help my grand-mother-in-law out with and after her doctor's appointment- she'll probably be getting a knee replacement soon. Not fun), and no drive from WD. Apparently, it didn't ship out until like late Saturday or Sunday. Suckage. So, I'm stuck with just Lagendra (I try and keep some semblance of continuity in computer names- my desktop is currently named Ryu-oh, which shouldn't need any explaining, and my laptop Lagendra- Apollo and Lateru's ship from Tekki wa Kaizouku!) for a few more days. I need to dig out the spare mouse and hook it up to Lagendra when I'm editing on it at home- touchpads are just -not- designed for fine bezier-curve manipulation. However, it's not impossible- I got most of the Chobits footage rotoscoped that I wanted to over the weekend.

    It was quite amusing to see how much of an interest people took in watching me rotoscoping masks on the laptop at Tekkoshocon. I pretty much took any chance when I'd be waiting around for 10 minutes or so and could be sitting to pull out the laptop and get some work done. Almost invariably I'd end up with several people watching over my shoulders and asking questions about what I was doing. As Ben (my college friend who went to the con as well) said, "I never knew rotoscoping could be a spectator sport."

    I'm really glad I went down to the con. I don't think I've ever gone to a convention and regretted it (ironically, the one convention I wanted the most to get out of going to - not and anime convention, a band frat/sorority convention- ended up changing my life more than almost any single event, as I met the woman who would later become my wife there), and Tekkoshocon was no exception. I'm really looking forward to AB, ACen, and Otakon even more than I was before.

    Sarah- I'm sorry you guys didn't come up and say 'hi'. I always like getting to chat with other editors and other people in general. And as for not standing out, all told, Ben and I wouldn't have been very noticeable were it not for the Otosan Boshi, most likely (well, the Boshi and the fact that you could likely have summed the ages of and two of the people in line in front of us and they would have added up to within a year or so of either Ben or my age). That and the poofball that is my hair when pulled back. I have yet to find anything decent to do with it. Oh well. Maybe we'll run into each other at another con sometime. Next year's Tekkoshocon (there will be one, according to the con chair) should be even better. And next year, I'll win the contest :P

    On a closing note, Klinky's journal is really starting to scare me... 
  • And the winner is... 2003-03-30 16:46:53 No me. ;p

    There are times when I hate my intuition. As I somewhat anticipated, I didn't end up winning anything in the Tekkoshocon AMV contest. From talking with the guy who ran the AMV contest (who also had an entry that ended up winning an award as well- yes, this is a bit odd, but the voting was entirely audience ballot based), my PPG:R was in about a dead heat with Tom The Fish's "The Messenger" trailer, but about 10 votes behind the winner - "The Maid You Want" in the comedy/trailer category. Which, all told, if everyone that was there voted, was a very small margin to lose by.

    But, "The Maid You Want" had one thing that my video was very notably lacking in : Fanservice. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think (arrogantly, possibly, but I don't think so... um, wait... :p ) that in many ways, PPG:R was a better video than The Maid You Want. However, as my friend Ben pointed out and is true in almost all situations: Sex Sells. And lots of panty and cleavage shots stick in people's memory better than a lot of things. Which was unfortunately probably a decent factor, as the ballots were not given out until the end of the contest- which might had influenced the results somewhat (i.e., people might have voted differently immediately after the category was done than after watching an hour and a half more videos). But, I unfortunately think the results would be the same: cool effects work and lip syncing have a hard time competing with panties and cleavage timed will to the beat, especially to a Devo song.

    Note: I did quite enjoy The Maid You Want. It was a very well done video, and I'm not ashamed to have lost to it. I wouldn't really have been ashamed to lose to any of the videos in the Comedy/Parody category, all told- all four other entries were quite good. Personally, I think the category I was in was the toughest competition. It would have been even tougher had a couple of the videos that ended up in Action been put where they better fit, in Comedy (Tom the Fish's Liverpool, for one, and Wuwu's "The One" trailer). All told, in the other categories- I just wasn't that impressed by most of the videos. There were very few stand-out ones that I thought "Whoa, I need to get a copy of that." There were some. Mindwarp's "Alternate Reality", for one. It, deservingly, swept the three non-category awards: Best in Show, Best Editing, and Best Original Concept (as I think I understood it, PPG:R was actually a decent contender behind it, though I'm sure by a much larger margin than I lost the Category award...).

    But, all in all, I had a good time at the con. I ended up with somewhere on the order of $60 worth of free anime DVDs (courtesy of the Fanboy Fued gameshow... I can't wait for the "Press your Luck" gameshow at ACen...) and had a really good time. Not all went the greatest- I obviously would have liked to have won something at the contest, and I didn't end up being able to meet SarahTheBoring. But, overall it was a lot of fun. I'll try and do a full write-up on the con later on the forum (assuming anyone cares :p). For a first-year con, I think it went -exceedingly- well.

    Now, I get to hope my replacement drive comes in tomorrow from WD and will be waiting for me to install in my computer when I get home tomorrow so I can get back to work on my ACen entries. All told, I don't expect to win there. The video I'm making isn't really of the nature that it's likely to win. But, it should be a lot of fun, get quite a good reaction from my friends, and expose a lot of people to something they probably didn't even know existed. :) 
  • Gomen! 2003-03-29 23:28:02 OK- for some reason, on my friend's computer that I am currently using, I cannot get the PPG:R file I have to playback. Despite it being an MPEG1, it claims it cannot find the decoder for it. Until I can figure out -why-, I'm not going to upload the video- I don't want to put up a file that people stand a chance of not being able to watch. Thats the whole reason I like using MPEG1, everything should be able to play it. My apologies to anyone who was hoping to be able to download it soon. Hopefully I'll be able to figure it out when I get home and put the file up once I've confirmed it will work properly. 
previous page next page
Current server time: Oct 28, 2025 10:46:24