JOURNAL: ErMaC

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  • Osoooiiii!!!! 2001-12-29 05:26:14 OK well it's almost been a month without a journal entry so I should probably get off my ass and update now that I have time.

    I'm here at my parents house for a week and a half over Christmas to spend time with family, cuddle with my cat A WHOLE LOT, catch up on RPGs with my sister (finally playing Chrono Cross for the first time, then comes FF9), and generally relaxing. I don't have my computer with me, so I can't edit videos. =( But I guess that's a good thing otherwise that's all I'd be doing. =)

    For the first time in about 3 months I feel good about editing again. I finished a video that I really, truly love in about 3 days of constant work, and I feel great. I still have the "stuff" that an editor needs. For a while after my last video (also not yet released) I was so busy working on other projects that I hadn't sat down at a timeline to edit an AMV in so long that I felt so detached from AMVs... it was really odd. I dropped out of doing my journal, dropped off the message boards... I guess it was a combination of burnout and lack of time (and hard drive space) to give to AMV making.

    Now I'm happy again. Unfortunately my editing equipment's at home!! So I can't edit right now... grumble. Oh well, when I get back it's school, hopefully WORK (I need $$ baaaaaaadly), and AMV making. I've cut back my fansubbing activities (encoding Kokoro Libary, Angel's Tail, X, and Sugar every single week is really time consuming) so next season I should be much better off. I only plan to continue with X (someone else has already taken over Sugar for me) and start up Kanon (which doesn't start until the end of January anyways) so I shouldn't be too swamped with fansubbing stuff. And that also makes me happy.

    Plus now I'm back spending time with my family, which is nice since I basically saw them for less than 36 hours over Thanksgiving and hadn't seen my Mom or my Sister since June (my Dad flew down a couple times on Business and visited, we went to this great place called Curry House in Irvine...mmmm tasty). I really miss just talking with my sister - we always have great conversations, or at least highly entertaining ones. =) She just went to bed after our conversation deviated to arguing about whether Batman was homosexual or not when we decided the subject was sufficiently weird that we should drop it and get some sleep. Too bad I'm not tired. =/

    The other thing we used to do a lot is play RPGs together. Now we're playing thru Chrono Cross for the first time, and I'm here til the 3rd so if we finish CC in another day or so I might be able to do FF9 as well! FF9 I got LAST Christmas but still haven't played!! Ugh.

    Back at my apartment in SoCal my roommate went out and bought a PlayStation 2 JUST so he could play FF 10... I wish I had the $$ to do that right now... course I'd be buying a Hard Drive and some DVDs with it, but still. =)

    Oh yea, here at "home" I'm watching Evangelion again for like the 5th time, but this time along with my Dad and Sister since they've never seen it before. I'm debating whether or not to show Episode 25 and 26 at all or just go straight to the movies... it's a tough choice. My dad likes to ask questions like "Why are the angel's attacking?" and "What's an AT field?" - stuff like that. I guess he's too used to American storytelling where everything is layed out for you at the start. =) My sister answered, "You know exactly what you're supposed to know at this point," and I smiled. =) My dad also enjoys guessing the ends of movies and stuff in the middle. I seriously doubt he'll ever see End of Eva coming. =D hahaha!

    Which reminds me... please don't kill me, but I'm doing another Eva vid.. or two... Well I'm doing at least 2 actually, maybe more. I was planning on waiting for a bit longer, but my transfer to Japan has screwed up my whole timetable and now I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my AMV making time in the next 6 months that I have left. So I decided to move Eva up the schedule a bit. One of the videos will be for the AniPara Project (see the DDR Project homepage - I don't have the URL handy but check the General forums at this site), and the other will be one that I hope to enter at AnimeExpo, but it will be unlike any other Eva video I've done, so you don't need to worry about another Soul of an Angel or Closer To God/The End of Me. I'm done with those styles... at least with Eva. =) The "sequel" to Soul of an Angel is already in the works.

    One of the great things about having my taste in music is that I find all sorts of really great tracks that most people have never, ever heard, nor would ever hear. I bet 95% of the audience at Anime Expo never heard "Shine" by the Space Brothers before, and I think having both a song and a video sort of "premiering" for a person at the same time is a good thing. For instance, no one from AX will now not associate Shine with my video, just like no one will ever associate "Hubba Hubba Zoot Zoot" with something OTHER than Jinnai and the Bugrom Live.

    Having a song which no one else has done an AMV to, or that most people have heard, I think is an edge in competition since it gives a fresh feeling to the whole video.

    As for stuff with the latest video I've completed - I won't release any details, but basically I think it's one of my better Drama videos that I've done. While it does have special effects, they're very "honest" and subtle- just stuff like matting and various lipflap-removing techniques. I spent like 20 minutes removing the lips flapping on this one scene that was only on screen for 3 seconds and 8 frames. Crazy, huh?

    But I really wish I had more HD space. I ripped all the DVDs of the series and removed the audio (all hail SmartRipper!) but it was still almost 26GB to get all the source on my HD, which I just BARELY managed to scrape together... I'd love to just go buy one of those 100GB drives and use it for non-video editing stuff like my fansubbing and video collection, since the RAID0 is really only useful when I'm editing video in RealTime and not when I'm encoding DivX files for some fansubbing group.

    But I just have no money right now. I haven't been trying hard enough to find a new job... I may just break down, drive up the 8 blocks on MacArthur Blvd to the Fry's Electronics there and apply... I'm THAT desperate. But enough bitching from me. This journal entry's long enough.

    Look forward to new releases in April after Fanime, since that's probably where I'll start entering next year's videos to, then probably SakuraCon and AnimeCentral (maybe), and finally AnimeExpo.

    Thanks to everyone who has supported me in Year 1. 
  • Ikimasu!! 2001-12-01 06:49:19 I just found out from the EAP (Education Abroad Program) that me and my friend got the only 2 spots for Tsuru University's language program. This means I'm going to Japan!!! Woohooo!!! And with one of my best friends to boot, so we'll be able to stick together and hit on chicks and such. ;-)

    Seriously, I'll be gone from July 30th-Dec 14th of next year.... wow this is sooooo incredibly cool.

    More details later. 
  • Wow that was a long time w/o a journal entry 2001-11-30 05:22:22 Whoo boy.

    Well Fall Quarter is about to end, I'll let you all know my status when I'm done with all these finals and stuff.

    I've been extremely busy with subtitling projects, parody dubs, school, being an officer in the anime club here at UCI, etc, etc. No time for AMVs. I haven't even touched AMV creation since the end of September. Oi. 
  • Hiatus 2001-10-26 05:15:02 I'm officially on AMV creation-hiatus for a month or so. I've got too many other things going on and I'm currently burnt out from the last con season. I'll be working more probably when XMas vacation hits, or thanksgiving, but we'll see. But you probably won't be hearing from me much, just too busy. =) 
  • Ani-Magic Con Report 2001-10-08 00:50:07 Well Ani-Magic is over - I attended Saturday and Sunday and I had a really fun time. It's a very small con (even smaller than I expected) but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

    I went there with my friend Rob (guy who's doing the Parody Dub with me) and we arrived around 3:00 or so. I got a badge (long story, not worth repeating here, in the end I did get a guest badge as promised, was just a little naming snafu thingy) and went to the dealer room, where I immediately met up with Nic Neidenbach! That's one nice thing about small cons - you have a much better change of actually meeting people. We chatted for some time, I pointed out Read or Die which was playing on one of the dealer's TVs (Raw) and translated for him. Read or Die = ASS KICKING GOODNESS. Go watch it, it rocks.

    Anyways we meandered around the dealer room and then split up for a bit as I did more badge stuff, then I went down to the place where they had a DDR 4th Mix Plus machine. They were having some freestyling tournament (freestyling really isn't my thing) where I met up with Nic again, we chatted some, had an interesting talk about the DDR Project thing, then split up again, while I went to do more badge stuff, finally I got all that squared away and headed for the AMV competition.

    I had 9 videos in the finals. In Action was EuroBebop and Soul of an Angel. In Drama was Lord's Prayer, Hold On, Cowboy Blues, and Life is But a Dream. In Comedy was Dual Opening, Ghostbusters, and The Anime Polka.

    Most of them went over well with the audience except Hold On, which as usual bores people who don't like Marmalade Boy.

    Results came in waaaay after everyone left so they were announced officially the next day at the AMV Panel. I hung out with Anneke (who ran the contest, very well I might add) and then slept. Woke up at 10, got up played a bit of DDR, went to the Panel which was at 12, had a good time, then hung out with Brad (DeMoss), Nic, and Rob for a good few hours. We hit the dealer room and we all bought some CDs which people involved in the DDR project may hear about, who knows. ;-)

    As for results, Nic and I basically swept every award except I tied for best action with someone else. Soul of an Angel tied for Best Action, Nic's new video "Forsaken Angel" won best Drama, The Anime Polka won Best Comedy and Best Overall Video, with Nic's Jinnai and the Bugrom Live coming in 2nd place Overall and Forsaken Angel coming in 3rd place overall (I think, I may have those 2 reversed, but he got 2nd and 3rd place with those two videos). 
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