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AMV Gods Strike Again/Back
2008-09-20 21:06:43
It's been awhile since since the AMV Gods have held up Their almighty palms and said "No" to me, with that sickening smirk on Their faces. Lest I forget that I possibly have the worst bad luck with AMVs of anyone on the face of this planet, They have graced me with not one but two maddening, "I don't have time for this last minute tomfoolery" problems. They both have to do with AE, too, a program I use haphazardly at best, and of course there's a snowball effect going on, whereby when I start to notice little "Hey, why's that doing that?" issues, I start to notice them all over the place and then begin wondering what else I'm missing.
My attitude has changed towards the Gods, though, or at least, it's become very disdainful at the moment. They give me a problem and my reaction has been "Oh yeah? Well then I'll just do THIS instead." So far it's working out. I'm cheating left and right, but someone would have to be looking really hard to catch me at it. Which brings up the point that I've obsessed to an unhealthy level making my tamperings indistinguishable from the original animation - but who in their right mind is really going to evaluate my AMV frame by frame because they want to find a mistake I made? I'm obsessing about PIXELS for heaven's sake!! Something's one pixel off and nope, I have to do it over again.
Complicating things is AE, which has to be fed footage from Premiere and/or VDM, then told what to do with it, then told to do seven other things, then told to render, then that's put back into Premiere and I found out I screwed up back at step 1. Maybe. I can't figure out where I screwed up, because last time I checked everything was ok!! I don't even think I'm the one screwing up, either, I think it's something software-related. Bleh!! And tomorrow is really the last day I have to work on this before it goes out the door to AAC, so all these last-minute problems are not only quite stressful, but also par for the course. I don't even know yet what's going to happen when I attempt to make an MPEG-2. I've been trying not to think about it, actually, given the disaster that happened last time I was trying to submit an AMV to a con.
And then I get to make my Takeout credit sequence. Right now I'm making it a point to always learn something new not only while making an AMV, but also while making my credits. The two things I've learned with Takeout are time remapping and corner pinning (big deal, but it's something at least). I already know what I'm going to have to learn for the credits, though, and I'm a little scared, but hopefully it will be ok. I don't know if I'll have time, though. My weekends are just about completely shot from now until the end of October and I wanted to release this thing around 10/19. -
Wow
2008-09-18 20:08:56
I was just about to say that it's always fun when you come to this site and the banner that loads is your own, but now I can say that it's even more fun when you go to the next page, and the next banner that loads is also your own. I wonder what the odds of that are happening?
AAC is probably a no-go. I got left holding an $800 car bill this morning I never saw coming, so bye bye not only my spare change, but a big chunk of change I can't spare, too. I'm seriously starting to consider whether my car is worth more in pieces than it is as a whole. It's got new struts, a new EPA canister (whatever the heck that is, it's expensive and made my check engine light come on - that's all I know), two sets of nearly-new tires and lots of other stuff I happen to know is extremely expensive to replace. That would make a fun TV program - someone takes a decent car all apart and sees if they can sell the parts for more than they'd get as a trade-in. -
T-SHIRT TIME
2008-09-16 12:06:15
Now that Takeout is pretty much done – and just in time, too, b/c my schedule is about to preclude lengthy AMV editing stints – I’m turning my attention to that little t-shirt project I’ve been planning for a long, long time. I’m hoping to attend Another Anime Con in N.H. next month and I figure that would be a great place to debut my official AMV.org wardrobe. I really, really, REALLY hope it comes out awesome, because I’d like to be able to wear it all sorts of places.
AMV.org should do a charity drive for itself and give away t-shirts and stuff. Notwithstanding the fact that anyone could download the original artwork and print up whatever they want themselves...I'd bet some people who don't donate would plunk down money for a t-shirt or something.
Spider count: 1 web across my door/in my face again this morning -
Random Drift musings
2008-09-15 21:07:56
Being the independent sort and highly skeptical of the grocery bag-packing skills of the average grocery store cashier, when I get to a supermarket that lets me do that self-checkout thing, I go for it. Except when I'm buying beer or wine, because then the computer starts beeping like crazy and a front end manager has to come over, not check my ID and then clear the sale.
On Sunday I was picking up a few things - honey mustard pretzel pieces, apple cider and marrow bones (for my dog) - and I looked at the self-checkout monitor screen thing that has a 3D animation of someone in my position going through the motions of buying groceries. Now I've looked at it before, but in a "Will this thing get out of my way so I can hurry up and scan my pretzels?" kind of way, but for some reason I suddenly realized something: the animated person was a) a woman and b) could have been a dead ringer for Lara Croft if you just gave her a long braid and some ammo.
Why ... why....WHY is the 3D animated woman on the Shaw's self-checkout screen sporting a D/E bust size?? How did she get that way?? Was there some corporate roundtable discussion about the most appropriate form this "everywoman" should take (she's certainly no everyman - how come it's a woman, anyways???). Was there some 3D model maker somewhere snickering to himself (now I'm being sexist) over the unnaturally large proportions he gave his grocery-buying bimbo??
:| You know what would be funny...if someone somehow replaced that animation with a woman in a bikini or something. I wonder how long it would take before someone noticed and/or complained.
Also, the giant garden spiders have begun invading my apartment again, just like they did last summer. They're a couple months late this time, but right now I'm running into at least two a day. This morning one was lurking in my sink and another was hanging off the screen door. There's another one in the kitchen somewhere, too, because when I walked through the door this evening I got a spiderweb plastered to my face. I HATE that. Maybe they'll get rid of the flies, though. I spent all weekend trying to edit with 3-4 flies dive bombing me the entire time. GRRRR -
ok, now I can stop exiling myself
2008-09-13 20:12:54
So let's see...12 months and three days ago I released my first AMV. Hopefully in a few weeks I will release my fourth. Will there be a fifth before the end of 2008? I have no idea.
Takeout:
Pre-edit: ?
Editing: 80? 90? Way too many hours.
The Good: Closer than ever to being done. While I was entirely capable of having a nervous breakdown when I was at this point with 'Bustin, with Takeout I'm just plowing right ahead for the finish line, completely ignoring all the "But you forgot to.../That still doesn't look right.../This isn't good enough.../" shouting from the sidelines. I guess this is a good thing. It shows I'm making progress, AMV-work-ethic-wise. Or maybe I'm just getting lazy? (Can someone who spends 100 hours or so on an AMV be considered lazy?)
The Bad: I keep making the same stupid mistakes I made with all my tabloid covers, namely forgetting some little tiny detail that screws everything up. I spent five hours or so today masking/messing with *checks* 36 frames and pretty much had to do 35 of them over twice because I screwed up a teensy bit.
The Ugly: The real kicker is that very, very few people are going to be aware of how much I altered this footage. While it's nice to think that my masking is top-notch and undetectable, I'm already anticipating that some folks are going to think less of this AMV because it looks - on the surface - too easy. Ok, it wasn't brain-explodingly hard, but I am spending almost as much time cleaning up/altering my footage as I did putting the darn AMV together in the first place. It is HARD to make an AMV when every other scene (seems like) doesn't work and has to be put over my knee and spanked before it cooperates. Advent Children is terrible in this regard, I scream bloody murder at it all the time, but at least with AC there's usually no gray area. If something is not going to work, you can't just plunk down your own custom animation and watch all your problems disappear. In one way, that takes a lot of work off one's plate.
Speaking of AC, I usually know when I have a good AMV idea because I start laughing hysterically about it. I've been considering trying my hand at some more barn-burning, gate-crashing, "You-Can't-Do-That-To-Advent-Children" endeavors and realized today that the soundtrack to AC includes a song called "Black Water." Given that I was already heading down that road, this is like some kind of SIGN or something. Like when Ghostbusters kept playing on TV while I was making 'Bustin (how weird!). I don't know that I am crazy enough to try it, but the commotion that would cause (if it worked) would be priceless. I think it might make a good MEP/collaborative project too, if only from the standpoint that it's asking a HELL of a lot from one person, but not so much from a bunch. And if it didn't work, at least I'd have given it a shot.
erm, oh yes, Takeout. I am - for the first time in my AMV career - deliberately taking the low road. There were some special effects I anticipated putting into the ending, but now that it's come down to doing it, I realize a) I do not have time and b) the chances of it coming out really bad are way too high. Ok, so maybe I'm not wimping out (what I did instead still involved a lot of work), but it grates a little. On the other hand, I guess this is in keeping with my philosophy that if you stick with only doing what you can do really well in your AMVs, in the long run they'll be a lot better for it. Now that I think about it, this is probably why I'm not thrilled with how Takeout turned out, because I did a number of things that are just kind of "meh."
MEH!!!
Must watch Dennou Coil now 'cause meleechampion said so!
JOURNAL: DriftRoot (Lauren C.)
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