Category: AMV

Anime - Heidi, Girl of the Alps
Song - Edison Lighthouse - Love Grows
Completed September 2011
Premiered October 14, 2011
Animemusicvideos.org Link
YouTube Link

This video was specifically made for the Theme category of Another Anime Con 2011, which was "70's Soul Train."

Finding a source from the 1970's on DVD was difficult, since so few of them have enough nostalgia strength to get rereleased, and I was considering tracking down the Original Gundam DVDs before stumbling across Heidi.

The song was a lot simpler, as I had a collection of 70's hits on CD from a previous project that didn't see completion, but several of the songs had potential.

When I actually started planning it, I only scanned through the first two DVDs before deciding to make a romance video between Heidi and Peter. Not having read the book, I was completely unaware of Klara's later appearance or how large her role would become, so editing around her became more difficult as the video went along.

Overall, this was a silly little romance video that came off decently, and ended up winning the category.

Anime - Various
Song - Kurt Schneider & Sam Tsui - Summer Pop Medley
Completed July 2011
Premiered July 14, 2011
Animemusicvideos.org Link
YouTube Link

This was a collaboration between me and Replay Studios for the fourth round of Project OrgEditor.

After deciding that we wanted to use a mashup song, Replay found the one we eventually decided on, and we came up with the overarching theme of "Summer" for the whole video, using a different anime for each segment. Replay edited the odd segments, and I edited the evens.

This video finished fourth in the round and saw both of us eliminated.

Anime - Various
Song - Parry Gripp - Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom
Completed June 2011
Premiered June 26, 2011
Animemusicvideos.org Link
YouTube Link

This was my video for the third round of the 2011 edition of Project OrgEditor.

The round's theme was "7-7-7" and we had to illustrate one of the Seven Deadly Sins or Seven Heavenly Virtues.

The sins are a lot more fun and a lot more concrete than the virtues, so I decided to go with Gluttony. I remember hearing Parry Gripp's Nom song in one of the AMV Hells, and thought it'd be an easy, silly, fun video. I ended up raiding my entire collection of disks for potential clips, and even hitting up several friends for other shots.

Overall, this was a lot of fun to make, and came in third in a round of 13 videos.

Anime - Various
Song - Various
Completed June 2011
Premiered June 16, 2011
Animemusicvideos.org Link
YouTube Link

This was my video for the second round of Project OrgEditor's 2011 edition.

The theme for the round was "After Story" and we were to show a conclusion, and then a continuation of a story.

I decided to make something like the opening of a sequel to a game, which led to the game's "title" of "Operation Revolver: The Second Chamber."

I completely ignored the storylines from the original series, and assigned each of the characters new roles for their earlier exploits, ten years ago in-story, and then moving on in a "Where Are They Now" type of montage. With the two younger girls, not having any scenes of them looking older, I decided to ramp up the "drama" factor by killing them off, one gloriously in battle, one after a depressive spiral.

In retrospect, it was a bad decision to rely so much on text to tell the story, but by the time I realized that, it was too late to change the concept before the deadline.

It ended up finishing 11th out of 15 videos, though one judge knocked it heavily because they hadn't seen the original series and thought understanding the original plots was necessary for understanding the video.

Anime - Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha the Movie 1st
Song - Richard Cheese - Fell In Love With a Girl
Completed May 2011
Premiered May 14, 2011
Animemusicvideos.org Link
YouTube Link

This was my video for the second round of Brad's Online Iron Chef Tournament 4, from my match against Ileia.

This was a very different song from what I expected, but I think I managed a decent silly romance video out of it, focusing on the only male character in the movie with significant screen time.

I unfortunately lost this match to Ileia's spectacular video.

Anime - Gundam Wing
Audio - Tangled "Grounded For Life" Web Promo
Completed March 2011
Premiered April 22, 2011
Animemusicvideos.org Link
YouTube Link

This was made specifically to troll a prescreener at the Anime Boston contest, who loves Gundam but hates Gundam Wing with a passion, and has been known to rant on the subject at length. I made my regular two submissions, and the coordinator allowed me to submit this as a third under a fake name to hide my participation.

Finding the audio was a little bit difficult, but once I saw Tangled in the theater and then checked out some of the web advertisements for the movie, this one jumped out at me as something that could be quite funny.

When I was planning it out, I'd have sworn there was at least one shot of Relena actually brushing her hair that I wanted to use for the repeating line, but my memory was apparently faulty, so I had to use the very silly hair toss shot, just multi-flipped in a minor homage to dwchang's I Just Can't Wait To Be King.

It got the desired rant, and enough of a laugh that it got included in the contest showing as a non-competing video.

Anime - Ghost in the Shell
Song - macchinainterna - X-Files Theme
Completed November 2010
Premiered April 10, 2011
Animemusicvideos.org link

This was the segment I edited for the fourth edition of Iron Chef Idol.

Thankfully, the song I got given by FC was both very editable and immediately suggested a video concept: parodying the original video.

In accordance with the ICI rules, this was edited in two hours, and still works pretty nicely as a video.

Anime - Project A-Ko
Song - The Postmarks - No One Said This Would Be Easy
Completed April 2011
Premiered April 9, 2011
Animemusicvideos.org Link
YouTube Link

This was my video for the first round of Brad's Online Iron Chef tournament in the match against jade_eyed_angel.

Brad handed us an interesting song that I know I'd never heard before, but immediately made me think of an adventure story, which managed to work pretty nicely with the source that came up in the roll, Project A-Ko.

I won this match by a narrow 3-2 margin.

Anime - You're Under Arrest
Song - Tracey Ullman - They Don't Know
Completed March 2011
Premiered April 3, 2011
Animemusicvideos.org Link
YouTube Link

This was a fun little experiment with bringing a show's subtext into full text, in this case, taking the friendship between Natsuki and Miyuki into a full lesbian relationship.

I've wanted to use the song for a while, ever since I heard it on the radio several years ago, but always pictured it as a "girl loves bad boy" song, like the original music video showed. When I went looking for a song to do the video to, it suddenly struck me that the gender of the singer's significant other is never specified, so it could also be interpreted as a girl taking pride in a lesbian partnership over other people's objections.

I'd also been looking for an excuse to make myself sit down and watch YUA for a while, since I owned all four box sets of season 1, but had only watched the first one before getting distracted with some other show. Now I need to watch the other two seasons (which I also own), which I didn't include here because of the major art shift.

This video was entered at Tekkoshocon IX and Anime Boston 2011, but didn't make the finals at either.

Anime - Magic Knight Rayearth
Song - Tokuyama Hidenori - FOR REAL
Completed March 2011
Premiered March 8, 2011
Animemusicvideos.org Link
YouTube Link
YouTube Link (Side-by-Side Version)

Ten years ago, I started making AMVs. At the time, I figured I'd make one just to try it out, and that'd be it. Imagine my surprise that I'm still here, more than 50 videos later.

I've been meaning to remake my first video, a parody opening, for a while now, and doing it for my 10-year anniversary seemed appropriate.

And, as an additional personal bonus, I used this project to learn something new: some of the more in-depth features of After Effects. I've used some of the basic motion functions in the past, but this is the first time I've used any of the tracking, masking, or animation features.

Ten years have gone by in a blur; here's to another ten!