Video announcements
Anime - Macross: Do You Remember Love
Song - Guilty Gear Isuka Soundtrack - The Cat Attached to the Rust
Completed October 2007
Premiered October 23, 2007
YouTube Link
From a 4-way Iron Chef battle in the #superic channel on IRC, including Ghet, me, Meteor Dragon, and Rave_Epic. I got one of the four votes cast by the judges, so came in tied for second.
Anime - Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS
Song - Coldpay - Don't Panic
Completed October 2007
Premiered October 10, 2007
AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link
My video from the Online Iron Chef Tournament 3.0 Round 1, which lost to Douggie.
Not really a fan of the song, but the video didn't come out too badly.
I gave it a title when it got sent to Youmacon in response to ngsilver's begging for entries. The title means nothing, it's just a pair of words that sound relevant and form the initials "IC."
Convention History:
Youmacon 2007 - Winner, "Most Orignal"
Bakuretsucon 2007 - Finalist
Anime - Lucky Star
Song - Masters of Gregorian Chant - Stairway to Heaven
Completed October 2007
Premiered October 3, 2007
YouTube Link
My first Iron Chef video, done as a practice video against Kitsuner of Corn Dog Vid Vids, in preparation for the Online Iron Chef Tournament 3.0.
By a 3-2 vote, I won this round.
Anime - Idol Defense Force Hummingbird
Song - Hirano Aya, Katou Emiri, Fukuhara Kaori, & Endo Aya - Motteke! Sailor Fuku
Completed September 2007
Premiered September 30, 2007
AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link
When in Rome...
Peer pressure from the Mastermind and his followers made me do it, and I have no pretensions that this is anything other than a slapped-together job to get in on the fun.
And yes, that is the System 7 box, cursor, screen, and sound.
Anime - Kanon (2006)
Song - Trans-Siberian Orchestra - The Lost Christmas Eve
Completed June 2007
Premiered August 17, 2007
AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link
Kanon has been in my mind for this song for several years, and I was planning on making an all-girls video using the 2002 version of the series for quite a while. I was looking for a copy of the DVDs for the series for less money than I was finding when the first episode of the 2006 remake broadcast. My plans for this video were immediately put on the shelf until I could get the new version.
The first step was shortening the song; I've always hated the middle section with the "Christmas..." chant, so I wanted to take that out, along with the final section after the faded chord, since it seemed superfluous to the song. I ended up also cutting the second verse and chorus, since I was having a great deal of difficulty finding scenes that would fit that section of the song once I decided to focus on Ayu rather than have the video skip among the various girls for different parts of the song (Ayu was always intended for the final section before the instrumental finale, though, which I think is the best segment).
The video on the R2 DVDs was insanely high quality; it's no surprise that they retail for 6000 yen each. They were progressive and anamorphic with almost no video issues coming off the disk, so I didn't need to filter a thing, and it allowed me to release an 848x480 distro copy. Whatever KyoAni paid their encoders for these disks, it wasn't enough.
Editing was pretty straightforward, without much in the way of effects other than a few white flashes/fade to white moments. I'm still a KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) editor, and prefer to have the footage tell the story, rather than have the video taken over by effects. Editing this way does make the user have a passing knowledge of the series you use, but it's the way I feel more comfortable.
Convention History:
AnimeEvolution 2007 - Finalist
Anime Weekend Atlanta (Pro Competition) 2007 - Finalist, Best Sentimental
Bakuretsucon 2007 - Finalist
Another Anime Con 2007 - Winner, Best Drama
Anime - Azumanga Daioh
Song - Nakatsukasa Masami - Feeling Heart
Completed April 2007
Premiered May 11, 2007
AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link
YouTube Link (Side-by-Side version)
This video was created especially for Anime Central's 2007 Theme contest, "Faux Anime Opening." I went through almost every DVD, tape, and fansub I own looking at openings for ones that I though I could do on a technical level, and that had at least some scenes that I could think of replicating using another series. Ten openings made the list, including a remake of my first AMV ever, and the one that I could most easily see was Azumanga Daioh replicating To Heart's opening.
I had to wait for several days after deciding before actually being able to edit, as RightStuf's release of the first To Heart DVD wasn't out yet, and I didn't want to work from a very low-quality VHS fansub copy from 2000. I was able to make a list of potential scenes from Azumanga that would match, as well as generate the credit list that would be used in the video (all the credits in the video are accurate for Azumanga, save the opening theme credit, which matches the To Heart opening credit, thanks to ja.wikipedia.org for providing the correct kana/kanji for positions and names).
The final video was made in four parts: the opening, up to the logo, the title logo itself which was made using After Effects on the desktop, the main video, which was duplicated twice for the half-rolled section, each duplicate being sepia-toned, and the ending segment, which was simply a keyframed 4-point matte.
Overall, I'm happy with the way it came out, though I'm disappointed by the edges in the masks at 1:25-1:32, Tomo's and Osaka's in particular stand out. Something to work on in future videos.
Convention History:
Anime Central 2007 - Finalist (Theme Contest)
Anime - Card Captor Sakura
Song - Lazytown Soundtrack - Step By Step
Completed February 2007
Premiered April 20, 2007
AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link
This idea came to me while I was digging through my short songs looking for something that might have fit the "Magical and Musical" magical girl MEP. I ended up not joining the project, but the song paired with CCS stuck in my head.
The overall idea was to showcase Tomoyo's contributions to Sakura's adventures, which mostly consist of costumes and videotape. The main realization I came to while going through the series:
Tomoyo is a really creepy girl at times.
Technical
Ripped/filtered on my Windows desktop, edited in FCP on my Mac laptop.
Digital effects came out in force for this one, especially the opening sequence, which took twelve video layers, and I'm quite proud of how it came out. Each of the "Hollywood Squares"-type also have their own internal linking theme, if you look for it.
Convention History:
Anime Boston 2007 - Finalist
Toracon 2007 - Winner, Sports/Romance/Other
AnimeEvolution 2007 - Finalist
Bakuretsucon 2007 - Finalist
Anime - CLAMP School
Song - Sailor Moon (Sandy Howell) - Oh Starry Night
Completed September 2006
Premiered November 3, 2006
AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link
Created for the Moonlight Melodies project, this debuted separately at my hometown convention, Bakuretsucon.
Convention History:
Bakuretsucon 2006 - Finalist
Anime - Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (Original and A's)
Song - KOTOKO - We Survive (short ver.)
Completed May 2006
Premiered July 7, 2006
AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link
The first time I watched Nanoha, I remember thinking that the action scenes were better than any other magical girl series I'd seen. That impression was confirmed and significantly enhanced during the second season, which had even better battle scenes (with more than twice as many people involved in the combat, things can be much more interesting). So when I decided that I wanted to do a combat-action video, Nanoha was the first thing that jumped into my mind.
The music was much harder. I wanted a fast, driving song, but fairly upbeat, and without long slower sections. I decided that I wanted to use a KOTOKO track after some deliberation, and was having difficulty deciding between "Oblivion" and "Face of Fact," though both had the problem that they petered out pretty badly at their ends. I decided to dig through my collection one more time, and found that I had missed "We Survive," the opening to VG Neo, on the first pass through. The long version, from the GIGA Opening Collection CD, felt like it was too long to carry the action the whole way through, but the short version was still available on the company website, and was perfect for the length and feel that I wanted.
Most of the editing was done without a major plan in mind, just general blocks that I wanted certain characters to dominate. My main goal was to make the action flow, and almost every clip was replaced at least once before finding a good scene for the music.
The text effects of the characters and their devices were fun to do, as finding a font that looked similar to the official Nanoha font took some time. The spellings of Raising Heart, Bardiche, Laevatein, and Graf Eisen are all official, from the device cards in the Nanoha A's DVDs. The spellings of Chrono's and Fate's last names, Signum, and Vita are all from Triad's subs, as I couldn't find an official spelling. I admit that the actual "light" that reveals the text looks kind of lame if you pause the video and look at it, but my skills at generating my own static images are pretty lacking, and they're only on the screen for about a third of a second at a time, so it still looks okay. Something to work on for my next videos, though.
There is one shot at about 0:40 that isn't from Nanoha or Nanoha A's, but from the Triangle Heart ~Sweet Songs Forever~ Soundstage VA, which is a collection of music videos from around the Triangle Heart series, made as a promotion for the then-upcoming OVA series. Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha started out as a sidestory game to the Triangle Heart games, and was apparently vastly different from the series, if the video from TH~SSF~ is any indication, including a distinctly different device, a fairy-form Lindy, and Chrono apparently as the bad guy of the game. Having the DVD available to me, I couldn't resist putting at least one small segment from Nanoha's roots in the video.
Convention History:
Animethon 13 (2006) - Runner-Up, Best Action
Otakon 2006 - Finalist
Anime Evolution 2006 - Finalist
Bakuretsucon 2006 - Finalist
Anime - Various
Song - Various
Completed January-March 2006
Premiered June 8, 2006
AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link
These are the three entries I made for the AMV Hell: Championship Edition competition. Because I either had no ideas for a song (most of the early rounds) or because I was busy with projects for classes (some of the later rounds), I only created videos for rounds 8, 10, and 13. None of them ended up in the final compilation.
Round 8 - The Money Song
This was the first round that I had any idea for the song picked, since I've heard the song more times than I can count. The two lines that jumped out at me were "forty thousand French francs in my fridge," which made me think of the C4 packages in Rally's fridge in Gunsmith Cats, and "my dollar bills could buy the Brooklyn Bridge," where I remembered that US dollars are the currency of choice in Area 88. The hardest part of the video was overlaying all the British Pound notes over the love letters in Shiro's jacket for the opening lines. I eventually took the first and last frames of the original pan, aligned and pasted them together in Photoshop, overlaid the notes, and panned the frame across the large image in Final Cut.
One of the judges sent me a PM after the round saying how much they liked it, but the other judges disagreed and Fall_Child42's (I admit, very funny) entry won.
Round 10 - Wild Card
I'm really not sure where this one sprung from, except that I had just hunted down a copy of the music video of One Billion is Big from the old edutainment PBS show Square One TV, which I watched religiously as a kid. The song by the Fat Boys felt like a perfect AMV Hell song, so I went looking for shows with huge numbers of things. The first thing I thought of was the rats behind Yuki in the first episode of Fruits Basket, which reminded me of the explosion of rats in a first-season episode of Sailor Moon. The rat population of Chibi Goddesses rounded it out.
This was a quick one-gag joke, and I'm not surprised that it lost badly.
Round 13 - I Like to Move It
Blame this one on having watched blaidd's Battle Chess video at Katsucon 8. The first thing I thought of with "moving" was chess, and I hunted down what I had in my collection of people playing chess, which ended up including Miyuki-chan in Wonderland's live chess game as well as a second-season episode of Sailor Moon in addition to the Cowboy Bebop that blaidd used so well.
Not particularly funny, so I'm not surprised that the Azumanga pigtail-moving video entered by AmPsy won.