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It's like LOLcats are handling my Amazon order.
2008-07-14 20:01:00
"Hello, a day after your mail, i has resend it to the new adress. best regards"
The fact that I could blame never making XII on never receiving my trans-world music shipment has occurred to me, but I'm not that pathetic. If I bail on an AMV, I'm going to just say "I wimped out" and leave it at that. -
An exercise in analogy
2008-07-14 12:28:06
Takeout = Scrabble board
*grabs Scrabble board and dumps it upside down*
Oooh...look, all the little pieces went everywhere, and some of them sort of spell words.
*cat plays with Scrabble piece*
How cute. D'oh!! Not the "T"!! -
Progress!!!
2008-07-13 21:25:23
Takeout:
Pre-edit: 12
Edit: 34
The Good: I got a LOT done today. This might amount to a whopping 10 seconds of footage, however it was 10 seconds in nasty, dark little holes that I couldn't see to the bottom of before. It's always FANTASTIC when you discover you can get away with "creating" part of an AMV with almost no effort. I ran into this today and, while it wasn't quite on the scale of the fortuitous accident that is the ending of Sephiration Anxiety, it still was a good turn of events.
The Bad: It's so good, in fact, that now I'm sweating other stuff I DID put a lot of effort into that just doesn't measure up. There's one sequence that doesn't even LOOK like the kind of thing I'd put together, it's so...um...not me. Beat synch does not the AMV make! How I created that without realizing how sharply I WAS synching is beyond me. @_@ Too bad, though, it's got to go.
The Ugly: I fear one of the biggest criticisms I'll get with this AMV is that it's erratic and uneven. To that I will say the following: a) the music is erratic and uneven, b) beat synch does not the AMV make and c) I never claimed to be a slick editor and while I do believe this AMV is better editing-wise than my others, it's not fantabulous.
My other fear is that boredome will ensue. If that happens, then I'll feel really, really bad because I would have managed to take one of the most unboring pieces of orchestral music ever made and thoroughly ruin it. Some might say that's an accomplishment in and of itself, but since I'm not TRYING to wreck it...heh, iI'm sort of hoping people will watch/like Takeout for the music alone. I know I would/do. :)
p.s. I would like to know how I can stop people from rating an AMV with better-than-the-original video quality and a perfect aspect ratio LOWER on the video quality scale than one which has DivX artifacting and a bad AR. Seriously. And the solution is not to rank the latter at the bottom of the barrel so the other one is higher by default. -
DO it, Drift, DO IT!!!
2008-07-12 20:24:37
I am so glad I'm not into pouring special effects on my videos. I am so, so very glad. It just alleviates an enormous amount of work, not to mention stress. I am just so...very glad. I never want to even have to THINK about that stuff.
This from the person who spend 20+ hours on a 1 second track matte. Ba-dum-bum-CHING.
Can we just get a magic wand in here to wave over my computer so that I don't have to start wondering whether the first gray hairs I get are AMV-induced? Really. I have very little doubt that this wretched hobby is causing me to age ungracefully. Wand? Wand? Anyone got a wand? It's got to be a magic-type wand. You know, star-shaped? Sparklies?
Meh...I HATE it when I create "filler" in an AMV and hastily move on. Oh, yep, that scene? *waves hand* I got it COVERED. No PROBLEM. Yep.
GAHHH!!! WHY must making AMVs take me sooo long??
On the other hand, what the heck was I doing wrong all those years, that I "get" it now? It literally was like someone flipped a switch and suddenly I could make AMVs. @_@
I totally didn't do it. *sigh* I start out with the best of intentions...make a one-line journal entry...but then...*sigh*...someday...
I seriously need to remove my dog from my profile. I kind of wish I cosplayed (meaning, wish I'd finished my costume) because that would look good there. What else am I supposed to put? Me sitting at my computer? I have one photo from a con, and unfortunately it's me with an annoyed look on my face because I was coerced into it. I'm the one who TAKES the pictures, not the one IN the pictures...not that I care one way or another. I've never understood why most women get all bent out of shape about having their picture taken. Seriously. If you're that mortified, how can you stand to go out in public where everyone can see you all which ways? I don't even KNOW if I have a "good" side, that's how much I care. :| This is why I need a t-shirt with AMV.org on it. I would love to be photographed wearing it and put THAT in my profile. I can't put "Anime Boston or Bust" on it anymore, because I already did that. No pun intended, although that did work out nicely.
I've noticed I post in my journal when I'm avoiding working on an AMV. As my grandmother would have said (in a French-Canadian accent), "Dere's someting dere!" -
Maybe not.
2008-07-12 13:47:35
As it turns out, AC is far, far worse than I'd remembered, which is kind of hilarious given how many hundreds of hours I've spent looking at it. VFM can mask it, but the catch is that if there's nothing there TO be masked...it ain't gonna happen. Oh, the program can mask it, it's just going to look bad because what's underneath looks bad. It works very well on scenes that are perfection in and of themselves, but those are few and far between.
Drat those Square-Enix animators!! Don't they know we need clean, crisp footage to make AMVs with??
On the other hand, VFM proved quite efficient at quickly masking any type of straight straight anime I threw at it, even Gankutsuou with all its texture maps. Being someone who has zero fear and loathing of the pen tool, nevermind is able to worth with it very rapidly, I probably wouldn't bother with VFM for serious masking work, though. It's not slick enough - it's on the lookout for minute details, not the plain lines found in most anime.
Vertus Fluid Mask IS, however, something that might interest people who a) want to just play around with masking, b) want to experiment with masked scenes without bothering to rotoscope them all by hand in AE or whatever and/or c) want to experience that sinking feeling that comes with realizing that yes, they need to use the pen tool if they want nice masks. *grin* I think I'm going to use it when I need to experiment. By combining it with Photoshop's action scripts, I can create a fully masked frame in under 15 seconds, start to finish, that's perfectly servicable for rough drafts.
It always amazes me how many people want to know how to make "those cutouts you see in AMVs." I suspect that, in the back of their minds, they know darn well how it's done, but it's almost like they either can't believe that's all there is to it or they don't want want to accept how labor-intensive it is. I think if anyone had found a way to cheat the system, it would have been "out" by now. Oh, wait...ha!! I DID find a way to cheat and I DID discuss. :) Phew...ok, I did my part, I guess.
JOURNAL: DriftRoot (Lauren C.)
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