[Video] Sword of Sorrow Series and other stuff I do

[Castle Pokemetroid]

You think that's busy? I have a scene where I have the trouble of trying to find a free program with 15 - 20 sound layers for all the crap that goes on in it.

There's also a scene were a big part of the entire cast shows up at once.

Strange thing about that window. It was intended to be colorful, but isn't.

I wonder, how can you tell what the dragon is doing/will be doing by just a screen shot?

[WhiteFox]

Oh... Oops. I meant visually busy. The dragon and the window have a lot of detail. There are so many lines over them that the outline of the dragon gets lost in the mass, and it all turns into a jumbled mosaic. His silhouette isn't distinct

The stained glass is predominantly brown and yellow, which matches the bronze and it's highlights. there's a bit of red, blue, and green in there, but only a few patches. The red doesn't help anyway, since it mixes into the brown. It's mostly warm earth tones, so that might be why it doesn't seem colourful.

By comparison, the wall to either side is much less busy. It's lines are all straight and even, and they're less bold than his. It's also dark, blue, and grayer. The difference in shade, colour, and saturation makes the dragon and the windows stand out against it. Warm vs. cool colours.

I can make out his shape in a still image, but I have to actually stop and look at him. I probably won't time to do that if he's animated, which would make it difficult to follow what he's doing.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

Still, your guess was pretty damn close to what it really does. You made me stop and think if I gave away more than I did.

Also, the dragon is in constant motion when it's idle. I doubt very many people will even see the detail in the stain glass window, since the motion draws the eye away from anything else. The scene is also quite short.

That's the problem with some of these scenes, I spend so much time in editing a background, but it's there for only a minute or two. Nothing I can do about it. Keeps it from getting too stale, at least.

I can understand why web comic artists complain about background so much. It's not something you usually stop and look at, especially in something animated.

Hey, guess what? I took that image and put it into a scholarship contest thing.

If I get lucky, this image can win me a thousand dollars.

Wish me luck. I'll tell you guys if I win something or not.

I really need the scholarship, since my family has -10,000 in savings. That's a negative figure, if you can't tell.

[WhiteFox]

Also, the dragon is in constant motion when it's idle.

Well, if I can't easily make out the dragons silhouette, all I'm see is a bunch of movement.

That's the problem with some of these scenes, I spend so much time in editing a background, but it's there for only a minute or two. Nothing I can do about it. Keeps it from getting too stale, at least.

Go with something simpler. Prioritize, and put your time into the stuff that matters.

I can understand why web comic artists complain about background so much. It's not something you usually stop and look at, especially in something animated.

I never complain about backgrounds... I love doing them. 'Course, I only put a lot of effort into establishing shots, and places where the BG contributes to the moment. It's like spice.

Good luck on the scholarship, it sounds like you need it.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

Go with something simpler. Prioritize, and put your time into the stuff that matters.

Eh, I'm handy with photoshop. I can edit an entire background in ten minutes or less. It would only take an afternoon to edit every background I need.

However, I don't have photoshop, so I need to either spend school time, or use paint.net, which takes much longer, and I spend more time than I need to. School time is quite limited, so it maybe rushed.

It's true that paint.net can do everything photoshop can, but however, it'll take much more time.

Sprites are simple. They don't need editing, but they do need cutting and rotation centering, both of which can take a bit of time. Rotation centering is finding the center of movement for a sprite. Very important, since the program scripts run off this.

But my time should indeed be managed better, like I shouldn't type posts as long as this one, for example.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

I have bad news.

The board of the senior project feels that my project doesn't meet all of the requirements. Appearently, it doesn't "contribute to the community" enough. Because my research report was about how I will make my animation, I need something that relates to that AND contributes to the community. I try to add a life lesson to the story, but even after I rewrote it three times, it's not enough. 400+ hours, and it's not enough?

Well, on top of struggling to finish this beast off by the end of third quarter, I have to make a "behind the scenes" video AS WELL, and not only that, I have other classes with other projects to deal with. I don't understand. One guy is running around the island, and it's completely fine. HOW DOES THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE COMMUNITY? At least my project creates a form of entertainment and teaches a lesson that apparently isn't obvious. I have to admit that much, though. The lesson in the plot isn't obvious.

But really? I can't believe this . . .

I have to now research to find out how I'm going to make a behind the scenes video, and waste precious hours when I could be catching up in my failing AP classes. And here I thought I was almost done . . .

I've gotten this far, so I can't just back off now. I gotta do that extra thing now . . .

[Inumo]

If you have a camera, tape your workstation(s) and explain the components and how they work, and if you have Fraps, you could also capture a tour of your video program of choice and how the program works.

[WhiteFox]

Be cool, man. Be cool. This is a lot of stress when you need it the least, but panicking will waste a lot of energy when you can't afford to.

Appearently, it doesn't "contribute to the community" enough.

I imagine they want it to have something to do with your local area, either inspired by it, or directed at it. Hard to say.

I don't understand. One guy is running around the island, and it's completely fine. HOW DOES THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE COMMUNITY?

Because it's local. Effectively, his project pulls double duty as advertising for the area.

I have to now research to find out how I'm going to make a behind the scenes video, and waste precious hours when I could be catching up in my failing AP classes.

Take screenshots, use them as a series of still frames, and add a running commentary. One part "how it's made," one part project journal. Add some photos for good measure: your work area, the building it's in, your highly essential coffee maker, all that jazz.

When I went to college, they did't just want to see your end product. They wanted to see a development process, and that you didn't just go with the first thing that popped into your head. How things evolved and/or were refined as the project progressed.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

Well, I have a camera and a way to record what I'm doing on the computer.

But I'm so far into the project. I've even reedited the script so that I'm 10/11 through now.

I'll have to go back and remake key parts of scenes from scratch. Literally from the program, and from scratch, as in from the bare minimum.

I think I'll need to post several test videos to see if I'm going in the right direction with this.

It can be done, I know camera angles, depth of field, tripod usage, ect. I can wield a video camera just as effectively as I can wield photoshop or my scratch program.

The only problem I have is that it'll eat time. It's also damn well impossible to set up the camera and record while at home, since my sister and dad tend to constantly question to what the heck I'm doing if I'm not at the computer. That reminds me of a something. It's winter you know, and it gets cold, right? So I put on my jacket, and my dad asks where I'm going. It's ten at night, and I don't have anywhere to go. I rarely go outside on a good day. Not only that, he had just put a jacket on just a few minutes ago, and when I do the same, he wonders if I'm going to go outside? Strange. If I put my shoes on in the house and get ready to leave, he wonders if I'm going to stay inside all day.

I feel that it's better to respond with nothing sometimes, but then my dad thinks that I don't care and that I'm rebellious, even though I have two AP classes. My sister, on the other hand, has been arrested twice and has all "normal" level classes. She's three years younger than I and constantly gets into fights with my parents, but it seems that they let anything she does slide after a few days. She does what ever the hell she wants, and I basically do nothing at all, since my dad doesn't believe in the usefulness of computers. They're soul sucking demons to him, or something to that nature. They're man made creatures that steal your time and life. Since I do so much nothing but sit on a chair all day, he tends to try and find house work for me to do.

There's also my mom, who will think I'm weird for self interviewing myself, or doing a commentary like thing. I should record my lines at school. In one of my classes, we're expected to do such a thing, so my fellow classmates won't be judging me as much, since they don't want to be judged themselves. That, or, I can just go out back behind the house, set up a chair, position the camera, and just jabber on about my project, and add pictures and videos of my work station and videos of the work itself, and such.

Well, anyways, that was just a long rant to explain that I'll have to record, cut out the audio, then record what I'm going to say after, separately, which can make it take even longer, since there's more editing, ect involved.

My sister tends to have nothing to do on most weekends, so when ever I try to record anything, she tends to get in my way or make noises just to intentionally piss me off. Even if she doesn't, I have roosters here, and they crow all day, which is a pain.

That transformers video I made a while ago was quite a pain to pull off. It took a day. Like 9 AM to 11 PM, or something like that, for a, what, ten minute or less video? I only got to use about half of what I managed to record. I don't think I'll be doing any stop motion in the near future. It's too tiresome on the body.

I feel better now. More calm. I don't feel as stressed out as I was before, now that I have some ideas going. I do admit that I can't remember any of what I just ranted on, but I think I really let off some steam. There should be SOME ideas somewhere there. It's too late right now for me to go over and review what I just typed, so it should be riddled with grammer, or something like that. It's getting hard to tink right now. Something like 3 or 4 in the morning? I tend to type alot of unnessesary things and ramble on when I normally think things over on what I'm going to type normally. Script writing is a lot easier when I'm tired, since ideas just flow.

Monday is no school, so I think I can get something recorded then.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

Yeah. Sort of a school assignment, or I wouldn't of wasted my precious time making this.

I still have a behind the scenes video to worry about. Not sure how I'll pull it off before the end of the quarter.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

This is not only a post to keep my topic from locking itself, but one to say that I've asked both the teacher in charge of overseeing the senior project and my video teacher and they have both agreed to allow me to change my behind the scenes video into a commentary.

It'll just be me bitching about what gave me problems while watching the video. It's great. Solved the major problem I had, and also garentees that I'll be able to finish the project in time. I was almost thinking about dropping out like 65% of students who took senior project in one form or another (there's three classes relating to it) but I've decided not to.

My stress has been relieved and my deadlines are possible. I feel great now.

The commentary will be done before the actual project, since the commentary will have no sound other than my voice.

The sound editing will come after.

I also managed to sell my super nintendo and my excess children's trading cards. Sure won't need them, now that I'm going to college in a matter of months. I still failed to gain acceptance to any colleges or win any scholarships.

I had signed up to eight or nine scholarships, and lost six of them. Haven't heard from the others.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

All eleven scenes are now completed. Now comes next of the tedious task of adding all the sounds.

For my senior project, I had to make a project log. I wonder if I should share it here or not. It's basically a diary style of what I've done for the entire project.

[WhiteFox]

If you want to discuss it, post it. If not, don't. If you don't have anything to post, there's not really a whole lot to discuss.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

I've decided that it's not worth the effort.

I would of been posting it already if I cared.

But anyways, I've decided to search for voice actors.

http://voiceacting.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=20385&page=1

Here's a topic on another board with all the details. It's a freaken long post, so I don't want to copy/paste it here.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

I made this.

Yeah, not much else to say.

My Sprite Based Animation thing is pretty damn well near close to being done.

Uploading a one and a half hour video to youtube is going to take like two entire days of uploading, won't it?

[Castle Pokemetroid]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oJjefFUgoA

Go watch and stuff. The comment that I would normally make here is in the video description.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtqwlMQFmhA

I got bored and made this.

I have no idea what project I should do next. I got permission to animate someone's fanfic, so I might eventually do that, once I get the fanfic. It's hard to use a script you don't have.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

It's been a month, so I'm gonna bump this topic now.

I am currently working on that fanfic project thing. The writer of the fanfic has clearly never heard of grammar before. That, or, english just isn't his first language.

Apparently, it went from me wondering what to do for another project, and asking some guy about his fanfic, to the guy just flat out begging me to turn his "hardly made and good loving" written project into an animated form, as he said himself. He couldn't send the script through a youtube private message quick enough.

At least I know that I'll have at least one viewer for this project I'm working on. As long as I have at least a single blindly loyal viewer, I'm content.

I'm getting rather tired of Rosenkreuzstillette by now, so I'll do something radically different for my project after this one.

Well, at least, I'll try to, anyways.

[WhiteFox]

At least I know that I'll have at least one viewer for this project I'm working on

Just so you know, I did watch Rosen. It took me three sittings to get through it, and at the end, I honestly didn't know where to start. I spend a while debating what to say, and I guess it just slipped my mind after a week or two.

The animation is very flat. There's no sense of bounce, momentum or acceleration, and everything usually slides around at a lethargic, monotonous pace. This isn't really a problem if the characters are talking, but the fight sequences plodded along mechanically, and there's a lot of time spent on characters just walking across the screen.

Most of the characters have little depth, and quite a few of them (Navi, Squid hat girl) were annoying. Maybe they were supposed to be quirky in a lighthearted way, but it's hard to say. It took a deliberate effort for me to pick up on the personalities, and the characters do have have a measure of personality, but I had to look pretty hard to get a feel for them.

The story was hard to follow. I had a good idea of the overall story, but not the particulars (Okay, they're off to save some girl from some dragon that came out of nowhere. Where are they right this moment, and what are they doing? Who the heck is this girl now?).  There's more backstory and exposition than "live" story. Everything is told, rather than shown.

The characters didn't seem to have many frames other than "walk" and "shoot," which limits their acting considerably. There are relatively few frames, which makes the animation loops look jerky when they're slowed down (particularly when walking). Nice selection of background art, though.

The plot and characters have all the elements of a good story, but the delivery and execution didn't get them across well. The pieces are there, but they don't come across. There's a lot of excess material that weighs the story down rather than moves it along. I imagine it was a lot of work, but it feels like there was more effort put into getting it done, rather than doing it well.

Good luck on the next project.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

To be honest, it felt like I simply wanted to get it over with because that was exactly the case. At the time, the school year was almost up, and I either had to rush through the rest of the project or not finish at all. I rewrote the script several times just to find a way to end the damn thing already.

Despite me cutting key points out of the story, the entire animation itself still was an hour and a half, which is ridiculous. I still can't comprehend how it became that long. The original script was meant to be a 40 minute mini film.

In the end, the plot and story of my RKS animation got stuck between a limbo of parody or satire. As you can tell from my normal episodes in my SoS series, they normally compose of broken logic and incomprehensible jokes being thrown left and right. My RKS animation ended up being just flat up contradictory at the very end. A good example of this is Lilli's (the fairy) lines. She says nothing, but yet something at the same time.

Another problem is that I probably chose the wrong video game series to parody/satire. The characters in Rosenkreuzstillette just don't have very many frames at all, really. Leibea for example, has only two, yes, two frames. Standing, and being hurt. No walking, no jumping, no nothing. You might notice that when she glides across the screen.

I'm not a spriter, so I can't exact edit sprites to suit my needs. I need to work around the restrictions the characters give me to make something work.

In this new project I'm doing for that one guy, there seems to be very little battle scenes. I think there might not be any. The scenes also go by very quickly. Just a few lines, then they're off to the next scene. It's a "blink and you'll miss it" sort of a thing. Just like my first animation. (It's labeled "Swords of Sorrow Movie" in my sig)

It's really quite a change of pace. It feels like I'm going back to my roots, or something. But that's not possible, since the script is something I'd never write myself. Not sure how to explain it.

[WhiteFox]

Took me a little while to decide how to respond to this.

To be honest, it felt like I simply wanted to get it over with because that was exactly the case. At the time, the school year was almost up, and I either had to rush through the rest of the project or not finish at all. I rewrote the script several times just to find a way to end the damn thing already.

Enjoy the process. Not the product. Rushing through production creates in a rushed product, and it shows. It really shows. If you don't care about the work, neither will the audience. Put some love into it.

One of the more effective ways to avoid burning out is to find satisfaction in the act of creation itself, rather than looking forward to the end product. That way, there's a payoff throughout the entire process, instead of the promise of one at the end.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

I made a new version of my logo thing.

Here's the original one that I made back in 2006:



These are the newer versions:

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l229/C-P_06/logo1.png

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l229/C-P_06/logo2.png

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l229/C-P_06/logo3.png

It's something I made myself, rather than something crafted from video game sprites.

I like the third one the best.

I'll probably use it in my next video.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nrjf5snx8FE

I spent too much time screwing around, so it took like two or three months longer to finish than it should of.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGKRZAHd9MI

I made an animation using walfas.

http://www.walfas.org/

[Castle Pokemetroid]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYwGYjQb3bk

I'm into Touhou now, apparently. This marks my first flash animation, and also my first HD video I uploaded to youtube.

Also, I finished that fanfic animation.

You don't have to view the fan fic animation. I most did it because I was asked to. Not going to do that again, I can tell you this much. I got bored of the fan fic a sixth of the way in, and dragged my feet for half a year until it was finally finished.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

Changed the title to a generic one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzcGnBKXp-A

It also seems like my Sword of Sorrow series just doesn't interest me, and I want to make things like this instead.

Is that a bad thing, even though I never finished SoS?

Maybe I should go back and sum up the whole thing and end it in a few episodes, just for old time's sake.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e-2o9FHIBI

I really love this song. I used it to make my final project for my After Effects animation class.

I also haven't posted in this topic for a while. Seems nice to put something in here.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

I made my first interactive youtube video thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y-KoEJRN6s

Basically, you'll have a choice to choose one of the five characters and you'll go down their paths till you get an ending. There's 26 videos in total, collect them all.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7gnlP4NEzE

Oh man, I made a Raocow animation. It's pretty great.