JOURNAL: Kusoyaro (Hsien Lee)

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  • 2002-08-23 11:17:38 Nightowl kicks ass... 
  • come on baby let's go... 2002-08-22 11:54:36 EK: Thanks, I might take you up on that :) There's one tiny little thing I need to do that is theoretically very simple -- it just doesn't help that I'm an idiot. I guarantee it won't take you more than 15 minutes ^^; I'll probably get it to you on Monday.


    Anyway, before firing up Warcraft last night I decided to take the plunge and replace all the MJPEG files in my timeline with the original AVS scripts. Much to my surprise, nothing catastrophic happened! So I went ahead and rendered the Huffyuv file -- godDAMN, it was gorgeous (the video picture quality, not the video itself -_-). I had gotten so used to previewing with the crappy-looking MJPEGs that I had forgotten how crisp the DVD footage was. For some reason though, during about half the crossfades the picture gets really fuzzy, like MPEG-1 quality...guess I'll ask around about that.

    I woke up this morning and the first thing I did was watch the video again -- I always do so the morning after I finish a video, just to kind of take an out-of-the-blue look at it. I didn't get as much of a "what the HELL was I thinking?" feeling this time, but I did notice a stray fucking frame! Now Akimbo can make fun of me. Rrrrrrr...very simple to fix, but I'm not particularly looking forward to messing with a 5:42 timeline filled with raw MPEG-2 video streams.

    In other news, my brother Jay's band is getting ready to record their next song some time in October. I don't know how the hell I'm going to make a video to it though -- it's about middle class oppression or some mumbo-jumbo like that.

    Jay's always been the most honest and brutal critic of my AMVs (Dreams of Earth: "You edit WAY too fast." With Every Light: "I don't really see the point."), so I sent him a beta of Self-Titled. His comment was, "Your videos are getting more and more basic." I don't know what that means. He really loved the opening that I busted my ass on, but said it was a real let-down that the video didn't continue in that vein.

    Here's a priceless snippet from our conversation last night:
    Me: watch video
    Jay (who was burning a CD at the moment): wait until my thing stops burning
    Me: what, you have a rash or something?
    Jay: moron

    :D

    I actually feel well-rested today. That's probably because I pretty much laughed at my alarm clock when it went off this morning and came into work 2 hours late. Ah well. The Expo deadline is actually a week later than I thought it was, which means I can relax tonight and fire up Warcraft without worrying about finishing up my other video (yet).

    Zabet of MTT showed me her new video last night...apparently it's called "yermombiatch." Good stuff. 
  • 2002-08-21 11:10:04 Hahahahaha!

    My number of journal hits is 13337. 
  • she could steal...but she could not rob... 2002-08-21 11:09:05 Whoops. Forgot to post this journal entry yesterday:

    So. Last night, I realized that I finally had to get my ass in gear and do the frame-by-frame Photoshop editing that I needed for my opening clip. This is a scene that I had envisioned nearly a year ago and been doing lots of asking-around and research about how to do it. There are now 6 people in the "Special Thanks" section at the end of my video, and about half the time they spent helping me was for this one little, insignificant scene. Less than 2 seconds long. Well, after finally trying to implement this scene last night, with the help of MTT's Kwasek, I realized that it was NOT GOING TO WORK. The perspectives in the two scenes didn't match up right, and the camera angle on the character was awkward. It was also impossible to animate the character properly because I wanted her to move in a straight line, but she sways to the right in the actual clip -- I tried removing her lateral motion by keeping her centered, but that turned into a dismal failure. All that planning for nothing.

    But then, out of the blue, I stumbled upon THE PERFECT CLIP for the scene! So I spent the next 3 hours editing frames in Photoshop, and at the end of the night I had about half a second done, and it looked passable. Gonna finish it up tonight, but I think I need to clean up the edges of the cut-out image, and I probably need to muck around with the color balance a little. I really suck at Photoshopping. 10 frames took me 3 hours. It's a really easy clip, too...I bet a proficient Photoshopper could do a frame in less than 5 minutes. If things get boring at work today, I suppose I could try messing around with Corel Draw -- my FTP is set up so that I can download stuff from my home computers here at work.

    Also, Kwasek decided to completely destroy my soul. The original clip I wanted to use took up a big chunk in the middle of the screen, but now the new one only takes up a wee bit of the top. So Kwasek suggested I stick in *another* character in the now-vacant bottom half. To quote Akimbo:

    ::falls out of chair::
    ow.

    Sad thing is, Kwasek has a good point, and I'm probably going to end up doing it because I like pain.

    I watched the entirety of Self-Titled (minus 1 second of the opening scene) and determined that once I finish this Photoshop crap, the sumbitch is done. I've been going with this "fuck it, it's done!" mentality from my very first video all the way up to My Iron Lung, so I trust it.

    That gives me about just under two weeks to finish Sappy Self-Indulgence if I want to get it into the Expo.

    I did manage to avoid playing any Warcraft whatsoever yesterday!

    Tarantino movies out on DVD today! Wooha!


    Today's journal entry:

    Anyway, I finally did finish up that pesky opening clip, and I was amazed that it actually looked somewhat decent...but I still wonder if it'll hold up on a big screen. And I'm probably just so sick of staring at it that I couldn't tell even if it were completely screwed up. I added a shadow, but it's just a blurry circular blob that moves along with the character.

    Since I'm a procrastinating bastard, I waited until yesterday to reserve the hotel room for AWA. Luckily, the overflow wasn't full yet. Oh well, Paizuri and Jescaflowne can breathe sighs of relief now.

    Heh. I just logged onto my own FTP server on my home computer and downloaded Self-Titled so I could watch it here at work and see how I liked it when I *wasn't* burned out from working on it for hours. Eh. I wish I could make a better shadow for the opening.

    Going to a Japanese/Korean restaurant to get sushi and bulgoki for lunch.

    Maybe it's a good thing that I completely suck at Warcraft, because I'm starting to get tired of it as a result. Oh well, I'll still probably end up playing tonight :P That, and I need to finish up Sappy Self-Indulgence in the next week or so. If I have time after that, I'll add another character to the intro of Self-Titled... 
  • nightdriving without headlights...wearing sunglasses too... 2002-08-19 12:26:24 It was a good weekend. Did a lot of sleeping, editing, and Warcraft 3 playing. I slept until 2 PM on Saturday...first I've done that in a looong time since college.

    I got down and dirty with Self-Titled, and for the most part, I actually enjoyed myself and *almost* achieved my goal of having it finished by last night.

    This is what stupid and annoying looks like:
    http://www.kusoyaro.com/yermom/ARGH.JPG

    As you can see, I edited the entire section, then decided I didn't like it and REDID the entire thing on the video tracks above -- keeping the original hidden underneath insteading of deleting it just in case the redone version was even worse. I decided around 10 PM last night that I didn't like EITHER version...so I redid it yet AGAIN. So yeah, in my timeline right now there are actually 6 layers of those annoying, annoying clips. My PC is going to kill me when I finally try to render -- each one of those clips is speed-adjusted and has a filter on it. And it still kinda looks off, but I don't know else what to do with it.

    Heh. If you look at the edits, you could probably figger out what the song is...but don't blurt it out :P

    But in general, the video is just about done. The only thing left is a 1-second clip that requires frame-by-frame Photoshop editing. I've been putting it off til the end, and now that it's time, I'm thinking that it might not work. I could certainly get away with not doing it, but I really really want to ;_; I'll play with it for a couple more hours tonight and then decide...but aside from that, the video is maybe an hour worth of tiny tweaks away from being fully complete. I'm actually extremely excited, as it's my first "real" video completed in over a year (I don't count Ballad of Yui Hongo because I had already made that entire video in my head over the course of two years by the time I actually sat down to lay the footage down). Some friends said some good things about an early beta of it, which was very encouraging. It's not my greatest work, but after this past weekend I've developed somewhat of an affection for it.

    Aside from the possible Photoshopping involved in the opening clip, the only big thing left now is to replace all my low-quality MJPEG files with the original AVS scripts and render straight from the VOBs. I tested it a few weeks ago right as I was starting the editing to make sure it would work, but that was just with one tiny clip, not with 5:30 worth of intricately edited clips. My PC hardware is about as robust as they come nowadays, but still...I am afraid. I am veddy, veddy afraid. I never imagined I'd have so much technical trouble over so simple a video. There are 5 people listed in the "Special Thanks" bumper at the end of the video.


    I still suck at Warcraft, and am showing no signs of ever getting better.

    I actually got some decent sleep last night. I don't feel like crap today! Might this be the beginning of a good week?
     
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