dotsandlines

Squeeeeeee! (vid I wish I'd known about ages ago, missed it on io9 somehow, but it doesn't matter because now I have seen it!)
Squeeeee! (retrofuturistic remake!!)

aaaaaaaaaaadorable.

To be coherent about it, the first is a mixed-mostly-modern-sci-fi live-action(mostly) fanvid to "Starships" by Nicki Minaj; the second is the same, with all B&W footage from before 1969. I was first exposed to this song by Dance Central, but a mental image track very much like this is why I actually like the song.

EDIT: OH WAIT LOOK. Literal video of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" vs. Utena. OMG.

------

Other things that are happening: Still working on personal sewing projects; my space quilt is 8/10 blocks finished. (Remaining: DS9 and Anime Crossover.) Started a pair of Night Vale bears because that's my thing at the moment. Can't sell them - the creators request no sale of fanart - but that means I get to keep them without guilt. :P

Also, researching therapists in the area. Record scratch, yeah, I know. My coping skills have been fine for day to day stresses, but crumple and blow away when I get onto tracks of thought about Big Issues In My Life. So it's time to go back in for some tune-up.

Nobody has done a "Toy Soldiers" Madoka video yet! Aww yeah.

...not saying I'll do it. Just that it would amuse me immensely. I'd just go completely deadpan, like my my Zuko video, and let the viewer decide whether they could take the song seriously or not.

It was the hubs' idea. The song came on the radio on our way back from a local toy fair. Nothing has yet convinced me that it wouldn't work.

EDIT: And the only other idea I've had is "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)" by Florence + the Machine (who is the lamb and who is the knife? brr!), which has already been used for a very good Escaflowne AMV. So that one will stay in my head.

I slept through a round of flu and have worked on a sewing commission, but that's about it since the video was finished. Oh - I did submit the Spice & Wolf video and last year's Princess Jellyfish video to my local con, so that's fun. (One can submit up to three, and since the hubs still wants to try to make a joint project before the deadline, I'm leaving a spot open.)

And in the process of doing so, I realized that I'd encoded the Jellyfish vid as 4:3 when the series is 16:9. D'oh. I swear to the AMV gods (heretic though I am) that I will STOP DOING THAT this year, like, FOREVER. I didn't expect a TV series to be in 16:9 because I mentally live in 2003 when it comes to video specs. Always thought it looked kind of screwy, but I never investigated why. That's why.

The 4:3 version is up on YouTube and the org, and I haven't had the focus to do anything about it yet. I may as well do a sweep and fix all of the ones I've messed up over the years, and by "fix" I just mean "post a new version on YouTube and link it to the old one." Anyway, haven't done that yet.


Story stats next week; that's doing OK. I think my snafu with the Kindle a while back was due to having too many annotations on the same file - the last time I approached 100 notes, it started to load/save verrrrrrry slowly. Noted. ...so to speak.


Still playing the heck out of Dance Central; I have gotten the DC1 and 2 songs imported over and just use the DC3 interface now. I'm looking forward to re-establishing my schedule now that the flu has passed. Still fun. I think I could play some things on Medium rather than Easy, so that's something to try.


And finally, we started re-watching DS9 from the beginning recently, on Netflix. To tell the 150% truth, I did not start paying attention to this series until about season 3. While it hadn't hit its stride yet, I missed some fun things here and there. ...Like Garak's "lay the subtext on with two trowels" acting. There are at least two possibilities as to what's going on in Bashir's head during those scenes ("Squee I'm finally in a spy movie!!" is the less obvious one), and either one is pretty entertaining.

Oh, and actually finally, Red Dwarf is back on Netflix Instant. Just sayin', internet. However, when one of the major cast members departs the show, for the love of all that's good and holy, stop watching. Please.

All over but the screaming. And by screaming I mean lipflap correction, exporting and encoding. It's an apt comparison.

(OK, I actually like lipflap correction... not that I'm terrific at it. But it's satisfying.)

You know, this is fun (usually) if it drags out for months, and it's still fun when it goes quickly. Fast projects are nice for the winter, I think. Instant gratification.


edit: yyyyyep, trying to fix the framerate in post sends everything straight to hell. I'll put it up with the wrong framerate, then. Tch. At least I THINK my resolution is OK this time (d'oh).

I am starting a video. Like, right now. (Just starting preproduction, so estimate two or three days for that phase.) It is going to be appallingly stupid. I loooove appallingly stupid. It's a traditional song covered by a local band, and an anime that REALLY deserves better. XD

I've written 8,000 words in the last 2 days, and my brain hurts. It's high time for appallingly stupid.

----

EDIT: AARRRARARAARGH INTERLACING. ONLY ON MOVING MOUTHS. ARGH

...ugh. See... sometimes you need help, but the only place to get help is a homophobic echo chamber full of judgmental ... ugh, I promised I wouldn't say those things about that place anymore. I'm reeeeeeeally frustrated.

I'm thisclose to saying screw it, I'll go with the script that wipes out the interlacing except for moving mouths and just cover them all in post. Except should I finish this video, and should somebody see it, I'll have to put up with the rounds of "OMG UR SCRIPT IS WRONG DIE F** Y U NOT USE BLURAY". which...is soooo awesome, and exactly what this hobby needs.

Fuck this, I'm moving on. I'll cover them all in post. I hate everyone. Yay!

Apparently there's a project in which a group of AMV fans all watch the same video and write commentary, leave reviews etc. My latest video's number came up, probably because of an Utena fan in the group. There were a couple of comments, some bemused, many helpful/educational... and that was all.

Wow. Faith in the AMV community +5. Good show. I promise to stop slagging them now. It's long past pathetic to do that, anyway.

Also just realized that it was the video equivalent of the Draw This Again meme. Darn, that could have made for a fun ending title or something... doesn't fit the tone of the video, though.

---

Bought The Humble eBook Bundle, because it crossed my radar, because it included a few authors that I'd been meaning to read, and because I'm on track to finish my last ebook tomorrow (the third in two weeks! Although there were Circumstances).

Otherwise, I've recently read:
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Won't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold (her books are collectively #1 on Stuff I Should Have Read Long Ago Because I'd Obviously Like Them)
Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire (I am not much of a fan of faerie stories, never having been one of the Special People, but it's good anyway. Glad I tried it. Probably going back to her InCryptid series after this, though.)

I haven't fully digested Quiet yet, and should probably read parts of it again. I haven't done much reading on the subject, preferring to keep it in the realm of shame and denial, so many of these concepts are new to me. Ex. several other personality traits are thought to be linked to introverted personality traits, like being over-sensitive to noise and easily absorbed by fiction. (If you cry at movies, ever, apparently... you may be an introvert.)

It's interesting. I've never really thought that being methodical and deliberate could be considered GOOD traits by anyone else. A necessary evil, at best. I picked a self-mocking screenname for a reason, after all. But I've never really heard anything like the concept that these traits, which I've been raised to believe make me a broken and worthless human being, can be bent to an advantage. Not just "you should be ashamed, but here's how you hide it," and not all the way over to the other side like "you are the True Heroes of the Universe," because I also hate that zero-sum nonsense - but "Here's how it is for some people, and here's how some of them have compensated when they choose to do so."

Again, I need to ponder all of this. Which, apparently, is typical for an introvert. As is oversharing on the internet.

I was in a mood to buy music at Half Price Books today, during their sale:
Goldfrapp - Black Cherry (fault: DDR; "Strict Machine" is on a later mix) Not done listening to this yet. About what I expected; groovy and kind of dark.

The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing (fault: Pandora; "Shut Up and Let Me Go" has turned up on a couple of my regular stations) Catchier than I expected. Favorite there: "That's Not My Name". Aaaaugh that cheerleading beat thing. It's in my head. Ohhh Mickey you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind, Hey Mickey!

The White Stripes - White Blood Cells (in that "What, I don't already own this?!" category. Also fault: Pandora; "We're Going to Be Friends" is so cute) Favorite: Still WGTBF.

Bowling for Soup - Sorry for Partyin' (have a couple of their other albums, all of which sound the same. This one is pretty meh, but the first track is funny)

Since I've been indulging a whim to buy Really Bad Music on iTunes lately, I feel that my music karma has balanced a bit. I've been treating iTunes in that "whee, I don't have to face a real live clerk" fashion that drives people to buy Fifty Shades of Grey on their Kindles. which I have not done. Not my bag. And most of that is fault: AMVs.

Speaking of which: work continues on the Probably Last Utena AMV, not at full tilt, but slowly and steadily. I don't feel like it's one of my personal best, not yet, but it's solid. Who knows; it could become more than the sum of its parts along the way. I'm planning to send the Princess Jellyfish video to Tekkoshocon anyway, so I'll still have that.

Also writing a lot lately. I'm happy with that. Wrote a pair of scenes involving a minor character (previously only mentioned in passing) who turned out to have a lot of personality, and in the meandering that resulted from that, I may have solved a long-standing plot problem elsewhere in the story. Maybe it's too pat, but right now I don't care. I'd rather see how this works first. Also, it's always fun to uncover entertaining side characters.

( Dangit, Minecraft )

Anyway. After all of my conviction last time, I'm not sure I'm going to do that AMV after all! I might do another one. I guess it's a matter of playing around with each and seeing what works. Hey, something will work out eventually.

I got an iPod Classic for my birthday (due to the space advantage over the Touch), and after loading it up with music, I got a copy of Handbrake and started to convert AMVs and fanvids to load on it.

Final tally: 139 videos, 8 hours. 36 are mine; 26 drama/action; 67 upbeat/comedy; 8 live-action; 2 other (placeholders to remind me to buy real copies of the songs involved).

Picking through my DVD backups wasted almost all of the day, apart from grocery shopping. I can't even bother trying to feel shame, because my brain is loaded up on squee.

This is really, really pointless, and it was a lot of fun. It's one of those.

Title: All My Awkward Homies
Anime: Princess Jellyfish
Song: MC Frontalot - "Wallflowers"
Genre: Fun/Upbeat(ish). Not quite dance, not quite Upbeat As She Is Edited, just... goofiness.

Links: Org / YouTube

No spoilers except the back-of-the-box premise of the show (it's one of those "spoiler at the end of episode 1" series, a la Ouran).

I didn't really set out to make this video - it was a warmup for something more serious - but, uh, it went faster than I expected.

Whee...