PencilHead by Qwaqa

[Animated]

Damn, i'm stuck in the riddle!

[[madaraxD]]

This is a masterpiece. Nothing more.

[rapoverrockamvs]

nice drawings...

[Laerium]

Holy s-
o_____o

[Stratos-RvS]

OOOOOO good,owesome,amazing.......but what is it

[machina21]

Wait a sec, I watch AMVs so I don't have to use my brain and now I actually have to think just to access one? This is madness...

Sarcastic rant aside,


DAT VID.

[-angelface-]

Goodbye VCA2011

[Kyssifur]

ok... what's the word for full video.... maybe it is too late for this...

[Fey_Sin]

actually if you want to ruin fun, there is version on youtube. =) try Pencilhead in search

[Brad]

Yeah, I cheated (looked it up on YouTube). And I have a lot to say. I apologize if you find what I have to say pretentious or overanalytical, but it's how I feel. I'm putting it in a spoiler tag just in case people would rather wait to hear opinions on it until the legit release.

Spoiler :

First off, holy fuckin shit. This video is amazing. I mean, it really accomplishes something that I very rarely never see in an AMV. And that is, it doesn't matter what the anime is. The video uses anime purely as art to accomplish an over-arching goal, which is to create an expansive composition of motion.

Now, I'm left feeling afraid that people are going to look for things to gripe about, which to me are non-issues, and I'm aware that I could be being totally presumptuous here

1) The sketch effect
It's fairly obvious to me that a significant portion of the anime scenes showcased in the video that are intended to look hand drawn with pencil, are in fact being processed with a sketch filter (albeit very well executed). I have a feeling that people will try to say that this was somehow "cheating." To me, the sketch effect was executed well enough that it really doesn't make much difference to me what was hand-drawn and what wasn't. They all flow cohesively together. Hell, the entire video could've just used the footage as it was originally and I probably would've been just as impressed. I think the main thing I'm afraid of is people seeing it and just completely writing off everything else. Like "pssh.. whatev's.. just a bunch of scenes with a sketch filter on it" when it's far more than that (IMO). It's the same thing that happened with Spoil several years back when people were complaining that they used presets/resources from Riot Gear. Now I should say, I didn't really care for Spoil that much as a video, but I certainly would say that making an argument that ended up sounding like "ALL they did was throw some Death Note scenes into Riot Gear presets and hit render" (no, I'm not saying that that's what people LITERALLY said, but the way they posed their argument sure as hell made it sound that way) is just petty and disrespectful. So I'm reeeaaallly hoping that people don't go there with this video when it comes to the whole sketch effect thing.

2) The "randomness"
The video doesn't seem to tell any kind of real STORY, but does it really need to? For me, this worked along the same lines as a straight-up motion graphics piece intended to evoke a mood or atmosphere rather than tell some kind of story. Now, this is obviously a personal preference and to other people, they'd be perfectly within their rights to feel that it needed that because that's their tastes. So the fact that the various scenes didn't really match up in some kind of sequential story-driven way didn't bother me in the slightest. Nevertheless, I would not call the scenes chosen, nor the order they were presented as random. Obviously I can't speak directly for Qwaqa, but I got the feeling that he was extremely careful and meticulous in which shots he chose and where the placed them. Plus, the fact that for a large majority of it, I couldn't tell what was from anime and what wasn't really upholds the strength of this video.

3) The "pretentious factor"
Now, this primarily has to do with the web site associated with the video, and the puzzle aspect of it. It could easily be construed as him trying to hype up the video into being something exceptionally artistic and profound (or however you may see it). Or it could just be seen as artsy fartsy bullshit. This is the one argument that I can't argue against TOO much, other than to say that it just doesn't really bother me. I'm impressed by the dedication he's showing. He's going far above and beyond what almost anybody else has ever done. He's treating it more like a social art project than simply a video release, which personally I respect. I may not really "get into" that side of the project, but I think it's cool that he's thinking about and trying things that haven't really been done in this community.

So, all together, I think the video is just plain awesome. The amount of technical ability, creativity, execution and dedication just make it stand out far more than almost any other video I've seen in quite a long time. Whether or not the style of the video on it's own is going to be other people's cup of tea is completely subjective and I certainly don't expect everybody to feel the same way I do about it. Nevertheless, I just wanted to put my thoughts out there. Bravo sir!