d

I don't even own a computer anymore.

2011-01-03T09:19:00.000-08:00

Yep, a few weeks ago my computer finally gave out. My motherboard is fried and my CPU fan doesn't work anymore; it only stays on for a few minutes before shutting off on me.

I suppose it doesn't matter too much, I haven't had a WoW account in a long time. Before I stopped playing, Dance (or Toupee at the time I think) was 80 and had a gs of like around 5k. It's too bad I never made any footage, it would have been nice to make at least one video at max level. Buuut who am I kidding, right? :P

Video editing has been a hobby of mine for a long time, and it's something that stays in the back of my mind most usually. I hear a song and my brain puts imaginary footage to it, usually without my consent. It's also something I hope to get back into one day, but I don't know if I'll ever play WoW again.

Making WoW videos was a lot of fun, and there aren't many things that can capture my attention so effectively for so long. I miss it, I suppose. Something I'd like to do one day is to edit someone else's footage, but without a computer those days may be far off.

I've moved around a lot in the past few years, and made a lot of friends doing so. I spent a lot of time partying (like a ridiculous amount, but that's what happens when you have a house), but recently I put myself into a situation which kind of required me to move away from all of that, away from the booze and the friends and the girls. Mostly I just play Black Ops these days.

lol I don't really know where I'm going with this. But I want to take a second to thank all of the people who still come here, who have formed a small community without my input and despite my loooooooooonng absence. Sometimes, I think about disbanding the blog, but you all keep me from it. Other times, I think about coming back, but I'm just not sure what I would do if I did. So here's my middle ground, I guess.

Maybe when I get another computer, you can see a little more of me. In the meanwhile.. Keep on keepin on.

Account compromised and then swiftly uncompromised

2010-05-07T11:13:00.000-07:00

So, sometime last week I got an email from Blizzard informing me my password had been changed. This was weird because I hadn't touched my Blizzard password in a loong time. Anyway, my brother noticed that someone was on my dk and hadn't left Hellfire Ramparts in like three day. Damn you, farmers!

Blizz restored my account today though, so when I get home I'll check out the damage. Hopefully everything was restored, or at least enough to keep chugging along. :)

Is anyone playing the Halo: Reach beta? It's fucking awesome! :D

SC2

2010-04-21T07:24:00.001-07:00

:D Anyone in the StarCraft 2 Beta got a beta key they're sitting on?

Gaaah

2010-04-12T14:54:00.000-07:00

I haven't been playing WoW much (in fact, my little brother is fucking around on my Priest), so I've had almost nothing Warcraft related to talk about. I've been keeping up with the Cataclysm changes, though, especially the Priest preview that came out last week. Shadow Orbs could be pretty badass if implemented right, and I'm pretty pumped about Mind Spike, although honestly I'd be way happier if we could get more than just one new damage spell.

Anyway.

I go to WarcraftMovies every now and again, and every time I do, I see some random Vurtne movie is still winning highest rated, or Total Annihilation is getting top skilled again and another platinum. Which is really cool for Vurtne and Grim, but it kind of kills the whole site for me because it means that the community isn't pumping out these amazing pvp videos anymore, that the best videos we have are like four years old. Warcraft PvP videos stopped progressing at some point, and it's kind of killed my WoW buzz, if you know what I mean. The guys that inspired me.. Beckon, Albis, Pathologist, Vurtne all had something in their videos that is lacking in newer videos.

What's lacking though? Maybe it's just that all the Motion Graphics guys are busy making machinima, but I don't think so. Vurtne had no idea wtf he was doing when he edited his movies, everything Vurtne ever did was in Vegas and could be reproduced after about an hour of fucking around. But somehow, those videos were the fucking shit.

Maybe WotLK PvP just isn't as fun to watch, but I've done a fair amount of it and I can tell you there's definitely potential. I mean, honestly right now is a great time to put out a movie, Northrend provides a ton of awesome environments to film in and classes now have many more interesting abilities than they did when Vurtne was running around BRM.

I think that what is going is that people are not putting any effort into making their pvp movies. I mean, there's plenty of potential but it's a lot easier to just put your arena clips back to back and throw a Linkin Park song on top or something. When I was making Shadow Word: Dance, I did my best to prevent people from finishing the movie feeling like they had just wasted twenty minutes of their life. I'm pretty sure most people don't put that much into it anymore.

I really don't see myself as part of the scene anymore, and this is ultimately responsible for my lack of desire to create anything new.

Anyway, here's some fuckin dubstep:

Hey!

2010-03-23T09:50:00.000-07:00

I haven't had internet since my last post, which is why I haven't been on and I haven't been posting. I haven't forgotten about this place. We're picking up a wireless router Friday so I should be back in business.

As a side note, here's a picture of my dog. :)

Dog Break

2010-02-19T08:57:00.000-08:00

I haven't been logging into WoW much in the last ten days. Recently, on the 8th, I brought home a 4 month old Blue Heeler puppy I've since named Bella. I'll try to post a picture of her, but she's great. She's kept me very busy and even as I type this she's trying to get my attention.

Anyway, I haven't quit WoW or anything like that, I've just been adjusting to life at home with B.

Quick update

2010-02-06T18:20:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to post this for like two days. :/

I transfered to Laughing Skull, finally, but to avoid another 25$ charge I did not reclaim my priest's original name, thus he is currently named Rraar, a name I am rather fond of :D

Anyway, I capped my Engineering skill the other day and I'm working on Herbalism, and also grinding Triumph badges for some PvP gear. My internet might get me killed a lot but I do plan on throwing myself into PvP once again.. whether a video will come out of it or not.. well, don't get your hopes up, but it is something I've been thinking about. I've also been thinking about doing some comedic machinima, but, again, don't get your hopes up. :)

What I've Been Up To

2010-02-01T14:55:00.000-08:00

So, gear-wise I've hit a little bit of an impasse. I've obtained almost all the useful gear from 5man heroics, including the ICC/ToC 5mans. I'm not in a guild, so I haven't been getting into any raids. In the meantime, I've just been farming gold and working on professions.. Engineering is almost at 435, and then I'll work on.. idk, some random gathering profession. I got my epic flyer a week or so ago, which is pretty awesome. You haven't really hit 80 til you have your flyer. :P

edit: Aaand I missed a queue typing that up :(

UI/Keybindings

2010-01-15T15:12:00.001-08:00

I like to keep you guys updated on my keybindings and UI, mostly because you guys seem to like knowing how I have my shit arranged.

Now, I've recently given up completely customizing my own UI and instead started using Caith UI, a pretty badass UI designed with SPriests in mind. Here's a cap of it.

If you like it, the specifics can be found here.

As for my keybindings, they follow the same general concept as they have since before I finished SWD3. I've moved my movement keys to the right from the default WASD to ESDF. The logic here is that it frees up the W and A keys as well as placing my fingers in the center of the 1-6 keys, making the last few number keys easier to reach.

If you don't care much about your keybindings, I don't recommend you do this as it takes some time to get used to. However I can't stress enough how useful keybinding can be, and this is a method I have found which has helped me easily keybind every useful ability I have.

My own keybindings are as follows (note that I haven't keyed every spell I have.. this is typically something I only do when I'm PvPing. In PvE there are just not as many spells I need to cast on the fly.. also note that these are PvE centered keybindings. If I were PvPing, I'd swap a few of these around.):

Buffs:

1 - Inner Focus

2 - Vampiric Embrace

3 - Power Word: Fortitude

4 - Divine Spirit

5 - Shadow Protection

Shift 1 - Prayer of Foritude

Shift 2 - Prayer of Spirit

Shift 3 - Prayer of Shadow Protection

Shift X - Shadowform

Shadow Abilities:

A - Vampiric Touch

R - Shadow Word: Pain

W - Mind Flay

V - Shadow Word: Death

Q - Mind Sear

C - Dispersion

Shift D - Mana Burn

Shift R - Mind Blast

Shift F - Devouring Plague

Shift Q - Psychic Scream

Holy/Disc Abilities:

X - Power Word: Shield

T - Inner Focus

Shift W - Dispel Magic

Shift A - Renew

Shift S - Flash Heal

Alt F - Fade

` (Tilda) - Levitate

Random Shit:

Shift E - +DMG Trinket

Shift V - Ground Mount

Ctrl V - Flying Mount

Ctrl D - Drink

Ctrl B - Bandage

Ctrl G - Cannibalism

Pretty sure that's everything, plus I don't feel like thinking that hard about it. Anyway, as usual, let me know what you guys think.

Also.. what kind of theme would you guys enjoy for the new layout?

And does anyone feel like donating like 3k gold so I can get my epic flyer? Such a bitch to farm for haha.

Some day, I'll know what I'm doing in 3dsmax

2010-01-10T22:09:00.001-08:00

Gear Update

2010-01-10T21:17:00.000-08:00

So after another week of Heroics, I've bumped my gearscore up to 4488, from like the 3200/3400 that it was last blog post. I've got a fine spread of gear from 200 level blues to 219/232 epics and badge gear.

I haven't jumped into a single battleground or arena queue since hitting 80, tho.. as I've said before, my wireless network adapter gives me a few seconds of lag on a regular basis and while it only decreases my DPS in PvE it'll fucking destroy me in PvP. :( Until I find a way to resolve this, I won't be PvPing.

I'm currently on Echo Isles, but here shortly I'll be transferring my Priest back to Laughing Skull, where I'll be giving him back his rightful name.

I'm also having a little trouble finding motivation to download all of the old brush packs and hi-res photos that I used to have for Photoshop and AE. But I'll get there.

Ding.

2010-01-03T17:54:00.000-08:00

Ok, I hit 80 a few days ago, dinging in Halls of Lightning, I think. I haven't gotten to play too much since then, but I've spent all of that time in heroics. I haven't replaced everything with 200 level items, but I'm getting there. It has taken me a lot longer to get groups since hitting 80 because I'm only queuing as DPS now.

Here's a screen of Toupee and my gear.

I've spent what time I have on the computer hitting 80 so I haven't made any progress with the new layout.

79

2009-12-30T11:55:00.001-08:00

Hey, so I've been using the DF pretty much straight since I remembered that it was implemented.. I haven't done a quest in weeks, and I'm pretty solidly geared for 79 with a gear score of almost 3k.

I just dinged last night, so I should be 80 within two or three days.

So, my room is in the basement, and it's been flooding through the cracks in the walls. I've moved all of my things out and my computer is kind of chillin at my girlfriends right now. Pretty lame, but it's whatever. :/

WMV

2009-12-23T22:58:00.001-08:00

I found out wow model viewer has been updated for wotlk, which is pretty awesome. I should be able to throw together a new layout, I just need to go through the task of finding and downloading brush packs and textures and shit. :/

Update

2009-12-23T22:36:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I'm still playing. I haven't quit playing yet, and I've actually played a lot in my spare time lately. I'm like level 75 I think, and I pretty much spend most of my time training dungeons. Dungeon Finder is kind of badass.

I'm having a problem with my wireless usb network dingy and it has kept me from pvping much. Basically it cuts out for a few seconds every so often and t would most definitely kill me in a 1v1, and would make for some terrible footage regardless..

I've spent a lot of time lately healing in discipline.. a departure for sure from what I'm used to, but it provides its own challenges so it doesn't kill the game for me or anything.. The idea is that I'll queue more often and I'll get gear and experience faster. At this point I can get away with needing on dps caster drops, so I've got a lot of gear lined up for me over the next few levels.

And yes, I do plan on going all of the way to 80 without making any pitstops at 77 or something to make a few movies.. I think that I'd get my ass kicked given the current gear gap and honestly I think I'd like to make a video in some decent gear. :)

I never know what these titles should be.

2009-12-16T19:12:00.000-08:00

So, I've been playing Toupee (my priest) on a regular basis for the past few days. It's been nice, it's been a while since I had a chance to sit in front of a computer for a few hours. He's level 72 at the moment and I'm trying to get him to 80 kind of soon. I'm a pretty slow leveler, though, so it may take some time. Unfortunately, he's on a PvE server (something I forgot about until I realized I wasn't seeing any red names), which is probably for the better or I'd get way too distracted from leveling.

You guys aren't going to have to wait for me to get to 80 before I start working on any videos, though. I want to start a creative project without having to spend time leveling and getting him to the point gear wise where he can compete.. so I'm working on a side project I've been thinking about on and off for a few months; making something of a Vurtne tribute video. I'd like to take some of my favorite clips from his work and mesh them into a single video, adding my own style to it without compromising the things about his videos that made them so awesome. I don't know about releasing it on WCM, but I'll update the blog on its progress.

And I'm going to say now that I can't promise that I will ever finish this video.. But I think you guys know me well enough by now that you wouldn't trust me anyway, even if I did promise to finish it. :]

edit: Also, I just remember that they started letting you get experience in battlegrounds.. Is that actually any good? How much slower would I level if I just ran BGs between random dungeons? That could be badass..

Internet up

2009-12-10T10:03:00.000-08:00

I've got internet at home now, and I just started up my WoW subscription again. I'm not sure exactly which character I'll be concentrating on, either my DK on Laughing Skull (Dance), or my priest on Echo Isles.. I think his name is Toupee. lol

Anyway, I'll be on, and hopefully it won't be too long before I have a new layout for the site.

edit: But damn, it's taking a long time to download WoW. :(

Plans for.. whatever. But we all know how well my planning works :]

2009-12-05T17:47:00.001-08:00

So, I'd like to fuck around with Vegas and AE again. It's been a while since I had a creative outlet and I feel like that is something missing from my life. So, here in a few weeks, once I get internet up and running at home, I'll probably update the layout for the blog and, idk, screw around with titles or whatever.

They may not be WoW related at first, or ever, but posting my work on this blog has always helped to motivate me to do better.

Anyway, I'll let you guys know when I get internet and we'll see where we go from there. :P

decent vids

2009-10-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

Can someone point me towards a few of the better pvp videos that have come out in the last few months? Needless to say I'm a little out of the loop. Try and hit me with a few that are edited well, if you can. :D

Well

2009-10-04T18:43:00.000-07:00

Alright.

I'm not going to make any excuses for my absence. Right or wrong, I got away from the blog and from WoW for my own reasons. Yeah, it was pretty stupid to leave you guys hanging like that for so long without an explanation of any sort, but it is what it is.

I had a copy of the movie that was like 70% done, and it was sitting on my computer for a while. My intention was to just release that as it was, fuck the rest, but I accidentally formatted the drive it was stored on, so I no longer have it. :/ I also lost 3 years of music, which also kind of sucks.. but whatever.

I played my DK on Laughing Skull for a few weeks, but stopped reactivating my account. I don't know if I'll start it back up again. Maybe when the new expansion comes out, but we'll see, that's a while from now.

I haven't read more than a handful of the comments you guys left on my last post, I'll try to get around to reading them all at some point. I'm sure a fair number of them will be angry, but that's fine. :P

Seeing as I no longer have a project to work on nor do I play WoW, I don't have any real reason to continue updating the blog, so I probably won't. There wouldn't be much for me to say to you guys, to be honest.

Anyway, let me know what's on your mind :]

so

2009-10-02T10:39:00.001-07:00

Hopefully I'll be able to sit down a little later and type something longer than this out.

Anyway, lol I'm not dead ok?

still around

2009-01-21T13:13:00.000-08:00

I haven't updated in the last week because there hasn't been much to update about. The movie hasn't really progressed anywhere in the last few days because I haven't been able to figure out exactly what I wanted to do for the credits, which is the next section I decided to work on.

But, now I've got an end song and an idea in my head of where I'd like to go with it, so I can start working again. Thankfully. I want to get this shit done. =)

Anyway, I'll post again when I've got another interesting screencap.

w/e

2009-01-14T10:02:00.000-08:00

My paramedic class started up again this week, which doesn't mean a whole lot for you guys as it really doesn't take up that much of my time. I don't think I'll be out at night as much, so this might actually give me more time to work on the video.

Which I would love to finish soon, because I want to play my Death Knight. :P

Anyway, as far as the video goes, I'm getting into the more challenging parts of editing.. It's not always easy to think of a creative way to do an intro or an outro, and having a sort of editor's block doesn't really help. But I'll barrel through it somehow.

1/11/09

2009-01-11T11:54:00.000-08:00

I'm taking the day to work on SWD4, so I'll be editing this post with whatever I happen to get accomplished.

Edit: lol, well after six hours of editing yesterday I decided to hook up with some friends. We wound up having an unexpectedly long night, which is why I never got a chance to update this. But this is what I got done:

I finished the color correction completely, which is good because it usually takes a long time to find a style I'm comfortable with. But it came out nicely.

The majority of transitions are done. I'm a little worried about it being too much of the same thing so I may spend some a little more time in the next few days making a few more interesting ones.

Next up are the intros and outros. :E

where im at

2009-01-09T12:20:00.000-08:00

OK, so lately I've been playing around with some unorthodox forms of color correction, mostly fucking around with a static lens blur that blows out spell effects in 32bpc. I've only rendered out a few tests, but so far it's promising. A few issues I'm having with it is that it also tends to blow out the text in game when I'm /saying whatever stupid shit I always say. It doesn't make the text hard to read, but it does look kind of weird. I can get around it by reducing the lens blur but then there is almost no point in having it because the effect just isn't noticeable.

Here's a screencap of what I'm talking about and a cap of the lens blur effect itself.

Anyway, here's a more comprehensive list of the things I have yet to do in After Effects:

- Finish the color correcting. I might add a tint or grain effect, but I haven't fucked around with it enough to decide.

- I need to finish all of the transitions in the movie, including the black transitions. This tends to take a while, because it's important to me that each transition can be unique while conforming to a particular theme. This is especially important here because the first cut of the movie feels disjointed and I have to bring it all together somehow.

- Intro and Outros need to be done. I'll probably spend the most time in AE working on these two things.

- I want to do a unique WCM promo. I haven't seen too many around and I don't think it would take too long to make something people would be all "That's fucking awesome." about. So, if I finish the movie and feel like I have time to do a promo, I will.

That's pretty much it. I want to give the movie an ETA of a week, but I'm not entirely sure that it's reasonable. I don't want to say that and then get into the intro/outro and realize I need more time. But it won't be months away, the only things I've been doing lately is partying and workin on the movie. A little more of the first than the last, but I'm sure you'll understand. xD

Vegas Done

2009-01-07T10:16:00.000-08:00

It looks like my work in Vegas is done. That is, I've laid down the audio tracks and transitioned them together.. I've also laid down all of the clips I plan on using and done some basic transition work there, or at least laid some space open for what I call black transitions.. or spaces in the raw footage I leave empty so that I can add a transition later in After Effects.

That's all I use Vegas for now, creating the basic skeleton of the movie. This only took two days and tends to be the fastest portion of the movie process because it only involves simple cutting and rearranging.

The next step is to render out uncompressed both the raw footage and the audio file to be imported into AE. At this point, for those of you interested in doing the same thing, it's important that you are aware of what the sample rate is for your uncompressed audio because you're going to have to match that sample rate in After Effects and in your finished movie or else you'll have some syncing issues. A lesson I learned the hard way. :( Also, don't forget to render out your audio in .wav because they're the only audio files AE will import.

After work, I'll be starting on the project in After Effects. There's a large list of things to do there, but I'll probably start on color correction. I'll post a screencap of what the finished coloring looks like

It's not as bad as it sounds.

2009-01-07T08:08:00.000-08:00

Well, the movie is coming along fine. When the after effects file got corrupted, I decided that I would use this chance to change some of the issues I personally had with the movie. The movie never flowed well for me, and I never felt that kind of excitement I did while working on the first three movies. I never really watched what I had and said "Yeah, people are going to like this." So, I've redone almost all of the movie..

I decided to completely redo the music; instead of using four or so songs for the ten minutes, I'm using closer to ten in less time. I've shortened each song considerably and blended them together in a way I've wanted to do for a long time. It jumps from genre to genre; from hip hop to jazz, with all kinds of shit in between.

I'm still not out of Vegas, but I'm hoping I will be today.

Fuck.

2009-01-05T12:23:00.000-08:00

So, my computer shut off while I was saving my AE file. This is the error message I get trying to open up my project now:

This happened not long ago, so it's likely I have yet to fully grasp how fucked I am.. But I have to get back to work if I hope to recover any of what was lost. Which, if the project is completely lost, is everything I did after putting the clips together in Vegas.

Which means I pretty much have to start over with those things I did have done, mainly transitions and color correction. A lot of color correction, and a lot of transitions.

I'll keep you guys updated.

Edit: Yeah, we're fucked. It's not goin anywhere, and I have no idea how to fix it. I've already started reworking the movie, but tonight I'm just going to get super cross faded and forget about it. I mean, I'm going to get really really fucked up.

Tomorrow, it's back to work.

For what it's worth, I told my friends that I won't be playing WoW until the movie is done, and that still stands. So I may have to redo a lot of work, but the movie will still be done soon. There is still hope. :D

Almost done.

2009-01-03T22:14:00.000-08:00

The ETA on the movie is about five days. I've decided to barrel through the last bit of work that needs doing and I've already accomplished a lot today.

Here's a screencap from some of the work I finished.

By the way, I plan on releasing the movie to the blog while waiting for it to be published on WCM, so you guys won't have to wait.

Layout Inc

2008-12-30T13:34:00.001-08:00

New layout is up. As usual, let me know if you have any problems viewing it! Doesn't my deathknight look like a fucking beast? More like a dwarf than a gnome. :D

I'm literally alt-tabbed out of after effects working on the movie, so back to work for me.

Answering comments

2008-12-26T09:49:00.000-08:00

I /am/ going to finish this damn movie. I know it's late, I know it's a 70 movie when everyone and their slutty cousins are 80. But, if only for those of you who have been keeping up with the blog for so long, without any understandable reason for doing so, I am going to finish this movie. Don't worry.

And I don't plan on killing the blog after it's over. I still like having a place to rant, an excuse to keep up with my after effects and photoshop skills, so don't ditch me just yet. :)

By the way, here's a cap of the soon-to-be new layout. I haven't worked out all the kinks yet, like exact dimensions or the header/footer but for the most part this is it.

I haven't added Dance or Wiggles yet, but I plan on having all of my characters dot the layout somehow.

Tis the Season

2008-12-21T12:38:00.000-08:00

OK, so an update for you guys:

Production of SWD4 recently slowed to a crawl due to finals and my attempting to power level Dance the death knight to 80. I dinged 75 about an hour ago, btw. :D So I'm well on my way. I'm still on the fence about whether or not I will be making a level 80 DK pvp video, but if I were going to the series would be entitled Dance and Decay (thank Brad for the name :P).

As I wait for Brad to ding and catch up to me, I'll be working on the layout. Should be done within the next day or so.

Also, here's a photoshop image I'm hoping to base the intro for SWD4 on. Let me know what you think:

xmiss

2008-12-20T10:44:00.000-08:00

New posts, news, and layout inc. hopefully inc today.

Server Transfer

2008-12-08T18:20:00.000-08:00

So, I moved Dance to Echo Isles. Echo Isles is a PvE server.. This /might/ upset you, but its the only server that I have any Horde friends on anymore. It gets really tiring and lonely, playing by yourself. And since I finished getting the footage for SWD4, nor do I plan on making another movie for a while.. This isn't going to be such a big deal.

Anyway, for those interested, Dance's new name on Echo Isles will be Toupee. No, if I decide to make another movie it will probably not be called Shadow Word: Toupee. :)

I'm making an Alliance Death Knight on Laughing Skull, who will be taking over the name Dance.

flash of inspiration

2008-12-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

OK, so I'm going to be straight with you guys because you deserve as much. The movie is pretty much finished, in terms of clip sequence, music, syncing, transitions, color correction, etc.. what's missing is an intro and an outro! How it's been with the last three movies is I would just listen to the intro music.. and suddenly an idea would begin to form in my head of how I would want a given intro or outro to play out, and i would just create it accordingly. But until recently, that hadn't happened. The project has just been sitting here.. motionless and forgotten.. because I couldn't think of any way to start it off!

But, I have an idea now, and so hopefully it'll begin to take its shape. I'll keep you updated.

Internet problemo

2008-12-02T10:11:00.001-08:00

Hey, my internet's been down for like ten days. I wasn't able to fix it because I have no idea how to work a network, but the power outage this morning restarted everything and, for whatever reason, I'm back up and running.

SWD4 is still moving along. :P

Update

2008-11-18T13:03:00.000-08:00

Alright, so here's a to-scale image of my work in After Effects.

Also, I've (hopefully) finished color correction and transitions. I still have quite a bit left to do.. The intro and outro lay ahead of me, as well as any particle work or matchmoving I decide to do..

But, I'm working hard and the movie is definitely shaping up.

SWD4 pics

2008-11-16T15:52:00.000-08:00

WOTLK and shit

2008-11-13T15:44:00.000-08:00

I bought WOTLK last night, and so far I'm pleased with the new areas. All very pretty. Anyway, I've been kind of busy with other non wow related shit, so things have been pretty quiet around here. But I'm still working on SWD4 and am expecting it to be finished soon. :) So hold tight.

Questions

2008-11-09T10:39:00.000-08:00

OK, so I'm going to try to answer a few questions posted in comments lately. Let me know if I forget someone or if you want more info or if you have any other questions. :)

---
Anon asked
"Can you shere some tips or something about encoding on 1680x1050 ? =) I get
really big file size if i want good quality."

You're encoding a movie that large? Well, that's probably your problem. If your output resolution is 1680x1050, your filesize is going to be huge if you want good quality. I suggest you change your output resolution to something smaller with the same aspect ratio. 1680x1050 is an 8:5 aspect ratio. Movies with resolutions that big can't be viewed correctly by everyone, so try a resolution that is less than 1024x768, which is a resolution almost everyone has. Try something like 960x600, which has an 8:5 aspect ratio but shouldn't give you such a big size.

Remember, though, if your recorded footage is 1680x1050 then you might have some quality loss by shrinking it down. Just play around with it and remember to stick to the same aspect ratio.

And I don't have an eta on the video. I don't want to set a deadline. I suck at deadlines.

--

Phael asked: "now ill bet youve answered this question before (but im lazy) but whats your comps specs atm?"

Comp specs are...

Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+, MMX, 3DNow, ~1.8GHz
Memory: 1024MB RAM
Video: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT, 256.0 MB
HDD: 250gb

This comp isn't the best and it is often difficult working with AE on it, but it's good enough to fraps without any issues. I don't know what your computer's problem is but it looks to me like you should be able to do just fine. Do a few forum searches, I guess.

--

Ok, so that's that. Uhm.. Oh, has anyone else had problems using wow model viewer? It isn't working for me anymore, may have had something to do with the new patch.

what ive been doing

2008-11-07T09:32:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I'll give you guys an update. Originally, I was going to use just the clips filmed five or six months ago without getting any new ones, but I got back into the game so I went ahead and spent a few days getting pvp clips at Sunwell when I wasn't raiding with Tefnek, whose guild I joined a few days ago.

The clips added another like two and a half minutes to the movie, which looks like it'll be around 12 minutes long when I'm done with the intro and credits.

I just finished laying the clips out last night, and I rendered out an uncompressed .avi to put my finishing touches on in after effects. At this point, the editing style this time around isn't quite as light as it was in SWD3 and is a lot more chaotic. But that might change.

I guess for those interested in making their own movies I'll go ahead and tell you at which stage of development I'm at.

Usually, the first thing I do when I make a movie is to figure out the songs I want to use and then to cut together a soundtrack. Once that's done, it doesn't usually change unless I feel I need to cut a song down in length or if I need to fade something out or w/e.

After that, I put whatever clips I have at that time into Sony Vegas and kind of just scrub through the first song experimenting with different clip orders. I just screw around with it like that until I decide where I want my clips and how fast I want them to be. I think like.. every clip in this movie was sped up a ton. It can add a lot of action in a short amount of time, so I do it a lot.

Once I finish putting my first clips in the movie, I start pvping and I go through this phase where all that I do in game is run around and kill people with Vegas in the background so I can alt-tab and edit if I get a good kill. I put clips into the movie as soon as the fights finished and in that way my movies build from left to right. So the songs at the end are usually much more recent than the ones at the beginning. And that's also why my movies can be divided into like.. UI segments, where I'll have one UI at the beginning of the movie and another one at the end, because I play through large patches where my addons break and I have to get a new one. :/

Thats no different this time around, because the clips at the beginning are old as hell and the ones at the end are from the last three days.

That's what I was doing until yesterday.

Anyway, I've been watching the movie as it is a lot the last few days and I'm pretty happy with it. The content could be a lot better.. some of the fights straight up dont belong in there, but I can't go back in time and get clips with my old gear and layout and I don't want to fuck with the movies continuity so I can only work with what I have.

But a lot of the fights make me look pretty badass. So that's good. There's a lot of humor in this one, like the others. Hopefully I'll get a few lols

Uhm.. If I get tired of editing this weekend I'll try to make a new layout that looks good at my resolution :)

=)

2008-10-31T09:16:00.001-07:00

not finished, of course, just a screenshot of the work in progress :)

edit: here's a new take on it

SWD4 Progress

2008-10-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

Progress? WHAT? You didn't think I was working on it, did you? Well, here's what is done so far:

Not much information for you there, but at least you know it's getting done.

The last song isn't finished yet, but even with it done this video is going to be a lot shorter than the others. It's harder than ever to get decent clips, so unfortunately this is all we're left with. But there are some pretty badass fights there.

Anyway, back to work.

Dance 3.02

2008-10-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

Someone asked about my UI for 3.02 so I figured I'd just tell you guys how I'm operating now.

I'm specced 5/0/56. It's not necessarily the most effective build but I wanted a chance to check out the new Shadow talents so I specced deep. All in all, I like the Shadow Priest changes. Mind Flay crits every now and then which is pretty cool, and being able to forget having to recast SWP is awesome. Dispersion can be pretty useful though I think it'd be more viable if you were immune to roots and snares. But what do I know about balance? psh

I had to rehotkey everything after 3.02 went live, so I'll give a list of them here in a second. I'm not sure if I mentioned this in any previous post but I've switched over to macroing the majority of my spells to target whoever I mouse over. The macros look like this:

The macros free me from having to target players I only intend on silencing or doting or poultryizing (which dismounts now!)

Anyway, here are my current hotkeys:

Ctrl D - Lifeblood
Ctrl S - Flash Heal
Ctrl C - Hymn of Hope
Ctrl V - Prayer of Mending
Ctrl A - Renew
Ctrl B - Bandage
Shift Z - Wand
Shift A - Will of the Forsaken
Shift D - Mana Burn
Shift G - Poultryizer
Shift V - Mount
Shift E - Insignia
Shift C - Wiggles
Shift 3 - Devouring Plague
Shift S - Fade
Shift W - Mind Flay
Shift Q - Shadowfiend
Shift F - Vampiric Embrace
Alt D - Drink/Eat
1 - Inner Fire
2 - Fear Ward
3 - Shadowform
4 - Shadow Protection
5 - Fortitude
` - Levitate
X - Shield
Q - Dispersion
T - Mind Blast
C - Fear
V - Shadow Word Death
R - Shadow Word Pain
G - Silence
A - Vampiric Touch

My UI looks like it always has:

I'm using ag_Unitframes, Quartz, Cooling, and Bartender. There's not much point to uploading my UI because I'm playing at 1680x1050 so if you're playing at anything else it'll look pretty fucked up.

Despite my absence, I'm still getting creepy whispers. :o

I think that's pretty much it. I took a picture of the new monitor, which is here.

Oh, and Epi: Once I start recording more, I'll just play WoW windowed at whatever resolution I recorded the old footage in. There won't be an issue. :)

othxgod

2008-10-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

Comp is here and working fine. I've been playing Dance all day with my brother. Playing WoW at 1680x1050 is pretty fucking nice. :)

Anyway, expect posts on the progress of SWD4 and much more random shit now that I'm operational again.

I'm still around.

2008-10-12T11:42:00.001-07:00

I got my computer the other day. It wouldn't start though, and it'll be a while before I find out if it's going to start up again. lol Bad luck, I guess. I did get my new monitor though. A 22" flatscreen. Amazing. :D

I'll get to editing as soon as I possibly can. And I'll probably change the layout again. Or at least fix this one. Background isn't even centered. :(

Some Shit

2008-10-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

Couple of things. We got WoW installed on this computer, so I've been playing Dance on and off the last two days.

I'm going to d/l modelviewer here in a second so I can Dance up the layout. Does anyone know how to get all the new models to work in modelviewer? By the way. I have no idea.

Should be getting a new 22" flatscreen by the end of the week.

850 fucking billion

2008-10-03T10:20:00.001-07:00

Fuck the bailout

The tutorial that got me encoding

2008-09-30T12:36:00.001-07:00

When I first started making movies, I had a lot of the same questions you guys do. I was starting from scratch with no background whatsoever and zero concept of how or what I was doing. But, I did stumble upon a few tutorials that got me going in the right direction and this is one of them.

It was written by Thiras specifically for encoding WoW videos into wmv or xvid. His steps are advanced; as they should be.

Strive to create the best looking video that you can for the least amount of space. It isn't much a hassle to change a few quantizers and start rendering out in multipass and the results can be pretty fucking awesome. Anyway, Thiras knows a lot about what he's talking about and made a point of trying to teach the concepts behind the numbers and settings, something most encoding tutorials skip out on.

His tutorial is pretty old so a lot of what you see will be slightly different or not even there at all anymore. But it is still the best xvid encoding tutorial I've been able to come across, so learn as much as you can from it. I'll post a link to this tutorial on the sidebar, for future reference. And I'll try to, one magical day, create a more modern tutorial of equal quality.

Dance might want to raid

2008-09-30T10:45:00.000-07:00

So, I've had an on and off relationship with WoW for a while now. But almost every bit of time spent playing the game has been devoted to PvP. The farthest I ever got into an end-game instance was, uh.. like one boss into Molten Core. It might be nice to find a guild who'll let me tag along on a few raids. Just to see what all that pve jazz is about. :)

What do you guys think? You think I could find a guild willing to let me float around for a bit?

more layout change

2008-09-29T20:05:00.000-07:00

Fixed a few of the issues with the layout and added text to the header and footer. Snice. Anyway, this is about as far as I'm going to be able to get as far as fixing peoples problems. I don't know shit for ass about xml.

me

2008-09-29T11:53:00.000-07:00

here, put a face to the name

classy, amiright?

Layout Change

2008-09-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

Update: New Layout is finished. Well, not completely. I have a few changes I want to make, but this is good enough for now.

As usual, let me know what you think.

Hey, ask me stuff

2008-09-27T13:21:00.001-07:00

Do you guys have any questions for me? I'm here to give advice to you about.. anything, really. Have a specific question about video editing in After Effects or Vegas? Need encoding help? Is your girlfriend pregnant and wants to keep the baby but you're not so sure? I can help with these questions and more, you just have to ask!

Seriously, though. I'm in a very helping mood. Ask away. <3

On a side note, if any of you are of voting age and in the United States and have yet to watch the first Presidential Debate, here is a link. Knowledge is power, right?

AND, I just checked my movie's on warcraftmovies and SWD3 is back up to a 4.90 rating, where it belongs. <3

Dance: WAR

2008-09-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

Couple of things: Friend finally picked up my computer from California. Should be here by the end of the next week. This means a design change for the website and the completion of SWD4.

I picked up WAR on release night. The computer I have it running on right now isn't very good, but I already know that I'm going to enjoy playing this game once I've got a box it'll work well on. For any of you who are also playing WAR, I've got a rank 7 or 8 Shaman on Hochland named Potato. Feel free to say hey if I'm on.

Any of you playing this shit too?

Mother fucker. There was something else I was going to say but I can't remember.
Shit. Uh...

Medic class is going well. If I ever needed to, I could stab a pen in your neck to save your life. Which is pretty sweet.

Got a haircut today. Well, it was more like a grooming. Shaved the beard into something less than rugged. It looks good. Why am I talking about this here?

Quit smoking cigarettes last night.. But now I'm worried that I wasn't addicted enough to quit. If that makes any sense.

Eagle Eye! Shit, yeah. I'm supposed to see that here in a few hours. Michelle Monaghan is awesome. And hot.

This whole stream-of-consciousness thing is a bit much.

Each yard on this street has a single tree. Ours is the only one changing colors. And it'll be the first to die as Winter comes, too. Which is nice, I think. Winter has always been my favorite season and I haven't seen a good one in three years; since I moved to California. Well, now that I'm back I'm hoping I can sacrifice a virgin or some jazz and whip up a nice little snowstorm. Snow would be great.

Winter is always the best season for spooning.

=o

2008-09-09T11:58:00.001-07:00

I wish I had more content for you guys. It's nice being able to communicate with you all on a regular basis. :)

I talked to a friend of mine who /should/ be shipping my computer out today, which is good news for all of us. The computer I'm using now is like a decade old so I can barely run iTunes and Firefox at the same time. Being able to multitask again is going to blow my mind. :D

I got high and stole a traffic cone last night.. lol

Also, a google street view car drove by me twice today. I was outside smoking a cig, so maybe I'll be up on google maps at some point? That's more than a little bit creepy, but what are you gonna do? At least I wasn't naked. Why I would have been outside naked is beyond me, but you never know. :D

Music I've been listening to lately:
Astronautalis
The Bird and the Bee
Brighten
The End
Gentlemen and Scholars
Gym Class Heroes
Jack Conte (amazing)
Kenotia
Minus the Bear
Made out of Babies
One Small Step for Landmines (check these guys out too)
Picture Atlantic
Portugal. The Man
Six Red Carpets
Underoath

Any of those guys are amazing, but be sure to check out Jack Conte and One Small Step for Landmines. Both are really inspiring. :)

Anyway, I'm always up for hearing new things so if any of you guys are listening to any interesting groups let me know! I'm game for all genres. h

Also, I'm going to be redoing the layout AS SOON AS I get my computer back. I like changing things around often and it's been overdue.

WAR Beta Key

2008-09-05T09:19:00.000-07:00

So I'm not sure if you noticed or not, but WarcraftMovies has been handing out WAR open beta keys. The EU WAR open beta starts in two days, on the 7th. Due to my standing as a hall of famer, I have been given a beta key, too. Which is pretty sweet. I don't really have a computer good enough to, like, play it.. yet. But I'm sure I will get my computer back before open beta ends.

I've been excited about giving WAR a try for a while now, since last summer. I guess now I'll get my chance. :)

So I totally owe you guys a new post

2008-08-28T14:25:00.001-07:00

And here it is! I started my Paramedic classes this monday. Also taking some random classes in German and Econ, but they're secondary to the medic stuff. I'm still on schedule to get my computer back soon, which is good because I can actually get some new content to you guys. I don't want you thinking I'm letting the site die, but I'm currently running on this like decade old laptop that can barely run firefox and itunes at the same time. I couldn't open After Effects or Photoshop with this thing if my life for the life of me.

I'm actually pretty excited about getting the comp back. I've had these small urges to pick up WoW again and with all this free time I have it is only a matter of time before I log in again. I'm looking forward to finishing SWD4. It won't be as long as the others, probably a 8 or 9 minute affair if I can stretch it out. That isn't much compared to the amount of time you guys have been waiting for it, but they will at least be pretty entertaining 8 minutes.

Dance: Photoshop lawl

2008-08-11T16:42:00.000-07:00

I've been killin time like a champ! I photoshopped a couple of my friends into various scenes involving Unicorns, and now I shall lay them to rest here, for all to see! :)

Dance: lol woops

2008-07-31T13:18:00.001-07:00

Hey, sorry about the complete absence of activity here lately. I was recently attacked by rabid dogs and have spent the last three weeks in the hospital recovering.

lawl jk

I've been busy finishing up my EMT course. I've go the final on monday and then I take the national registry exam and I'm certified. I've decided to go on with the course and get my Paramedic license, which means I'll be here in Illinois for another 18 months. We'll be shipping my computer back here from California at some point which means I can finish up SWD4 and publish it. I do plan on making more videos, tho not necessarily SWD movies. I'd be more than willing to make movies for other players, so I'll try to set something up with some of the better players I know.

Anyway, I'm not dead. I'll try to post something interesting here soon, but it's hard without photoshop around. :P

I hope your summers are all going well.

And yeah, the Shadow Priest talent changes do intrigue me. I don't know if I'll come back to WoW, but it's a possibility. We'll see once the expansion hits the shelves. See you guys.

<3

Dance: Music

2008-07-01T16:54:00.000-07:00

So, I've been listening to a lot of artists from my favorite record label Ninja Tune lately, as well as some drum and bass artists like Pendulum and High Contrast, and some of it makes me wish I was still in a position to edit video. I left my computer in Cali for the summer and haven't gotten a chance to do a whole lot of editing since I got here.

Editing is one of those things that seeps its way into a lot more aspects of my life than it ought to. Every time I hear a new song, I run it through After Effects in my head, dreaming of the things I can do with it.

:'(

Anyway, some of you have expressed interest in the music I like, so please check out some of the Ninja Tune artists (I especially suggest Loka, Bonobo, Mr. Scruff, and Fink for starters). This is the music I like to fill my days with. :)

Dance: I'd Rather Be Topless

2008-06-26T09:52:00.001-07:00

Ah, I'm like twenty minutes early for class today for some unknown reason. Maybe I was speeding.. Who knows!

Anyway, I'll chill here in the car for a few more minutes and in the meanwhile I'll let you in on an observation of mine; you guys are from fucking everywhere. I never really noticed until you guys commented on the last post, but I'm pretty sure you guys hail from every country in the world. Have we covered every continent yet? Any of you know a friend in Antarctica who'd like to pitch in?

At any rate, I'm glad to hear that you're all doing well. Or at least not bad. I mean, none of you have developed a terminal illness.

And srsly, if you have, wtf are you doing reading this blog? Go climb a mountan or something. Sell your house and buy a prostitute; you know, one of those high-class ones. Eliot Spitzer can hook you up, no doubt.

Shit, none of you are from the US, that joke isn't going to make any sense.

Well, damn.

Dance: The what-month-is-it Update

2008-06-16T16:37:00.001-07:00

It pains me to think that there are still some of you out there checking this blog hoping for yet another exciting morsel of entertainment from yours truly while I whither away in boredom and mild humidity.

Now, I haven't been ignoring you boys and girls completely, nor could I if I wanted to. My phone notifies me automatically of any comments you leave behind. Thus, much like the cries of the Norwegian prostitute I have secreted away in the trunk of my car, your comments are a constant reminder of my neglect for you.

But I like to think that you're okay with that. Perhaps you even enjoy this abusive managé trois of ours; this fiesta of neglect. Still, whatever the case may be, know that I care for you as much as the day we met. Oh, you were timid.. shy.. unsure that you would enjoy my movie. Not quite convinced that the 600 mb download would be worth it... But the moment you gazed upon my soft, delicate features and my little blue hat, you were captivated! Quite willingly you followed me further into my little world where I abused you over and over again in the dark while you called me little girls' names.

Thus is the nature of the relationship that we share, you and I. And, fan! Fan, I say to you.. Thank you. Thank you for sharing this tiny corner of the internet with me.

:)

At any rate, how have you all been? How has life and the summer been treating you? You all still playing WoW? Getting sufficiently drunk? Chat me up and I'll respond in something somewhat similar to a timely fashion. Promiz.

Dance: Random picatures :)

2008-06-03T12:25:00.001-07:00

Hey guys. I got bored and made this little picture in Photoshop. The one beneath it though is a screencap from a project I'm editing for my brother and a friend of his in After Effects. <3

Dance: Yo.

2008-05-24T13:03:00.000-07:00

I made it back to Illinois with little trouble. There was this sort of mad dash out the door though, and I left a few things behind (my wallet), but it's not such a big deal. Anyway, I wasn't able to ship my computer out due to time restraints and my lack of a vehicle. Sorry, guys. I like to think that it's for the better, anyway, as I was starting to feel a little bit guilty for not making the movie and tbh the whole process should just be about killing some time doing something that I love.

Anyway, I'll still be around, so if you guys wanna keep checking the blog, I'll be around. :)

(Tosan): WoW Needs WotLK NOW, Also: Age of Conan, Level 22 "Herald of Xotli" =X

2008-05-22T23:29:00.000-07:00

So here's a rare sight, an actual blog from me........well uh, I decided to pick up Age of Conan the other day, out of the sheer anger of playing World of Warcraft in anything but arenas.

There's just not enough fun left to suck out of this game playing it this long to keep me entertained.......Arena is still really fun actually, but the few pro friends I play with (Namely, Ayume and Scyles), took on a life of homosexual PvE adventuring, thus limiting their arena play time. We've played 70 games in 3 weeks, in total. (This is where I get to brag, Ratio: 65-5, Rating: 2302, classes, Rogue/Rogue/Druid)

It's great fun in the arena with them, but nothing else really is anymore.

They released a new trinket to farm 40k more honor on.....I have like 3k honor on all 3 of my characters right now because honor farming just isn't fun. It just is not......even at 60 when rogues/mages were even more amazing 2-3 shot machines, the fun didn't last past 1 Battleground.....and I'm pretty easily entertained!

Wrath of the Lich King better be amazing........I understand TBC turning out pretty bad, I mean...it's their first MMO Expansion, no previous experience with such things obviously leaves a good chance for failure, no hard feelings Blizz, I still love ya........but I hope they learned enough to make WotLK amazing.

Unfortunately enough, if you enjoy the PvP in this game, you probably hate the Random Number Generator (RNG) system as much as me. Losing a fight because a dude resists 3 out of 3 kidney shots is just not fun when you did everything else right to win y'know. Luck simply shouldn't play that big of a part when there is person against person competition.

I know why Dance can't stand playing, there's no fun chain killing sprees in BG's anymore, even the newbs are caked in atleast 350 resil just for farming BG's 24/7 like they love doing so damn much.....instead, you have to slowly wear down a target even when all your abilities are left on cooldown.

So I'm basically burnt and gonna be taking it easy, I might even get so lazy as to not get gladiator on my mage (which would kinda suck, but Scyles/Ayume pve too much to play more than 1 effing team now......yeesh), it's not hard to do with those 2 on my side..... 80-90 games is all it would take to secure the spot but they don't even want to now......damn fatties!

Also, I'm tired of maintaining 3 classes already, and my Rogue/Mage are obviously the priority takers, so I'm selling my Hunter! Don't think the few people that come here would care to buy an overpriced piece of virtual property but on the off chance someone's interested, just drop me a line on AIM: Renataki Tosan.

ON TO AGE OF CONAN:
I've played the class, Herald of Xotli, to level 22 in a couple days, do you care about my opinion on the game thus far? Probably not, but you're gonna hear it anyway, jerks!

Other than my computer having a heart attack while running it (for no reason, my hardware is more than enough to run it smoothly, something is seriously wrong), it's actually pretty fun.

I guess anything new is fun for a while, but I've played every MMO Since Ultima Online up until now, and WoW was the only game that was fun for me to level up in, and now Age of Conan is providing the same leveling fun I had when I first set e-foot in WoW.

The combat system is fairly involving, not too beyond WoW if you're a caster, the melee system involves you actually pressing button combinations to do "combo abilities" for melee classes (although anyone can melee of course..), and there's no "auto attack" at all, and "normal attacks" are done manually (no, it's not tedious or annoying even if it sounds like it, it's pretty dope, and most things die fast enough with your special abilities and spells anyway).

The Herald of Xotli class is like a cloth wearing fire mage warrior......a bit of a weird combo but it's fun as hell. I wear light armor and such, but most of my fighting (so far, not sure what the future will bring as far as spells go) is done in Melee range with FIERY MELEE COMBO ATTACKS! I can also do a little fire breath attack in front of me, I can turn into a demon every 2 minutes for about 25 seconds which enhances my health, fire, and physical damage, it's pretty neato.

Random and free PvP is pretty fun, sometimes annoying because some high level can choose to come terrorize you while you do quests but, it's nothing too bad so far, hell, some level 30 tried to kill me and I whooped his ass anyway ;P

Another cool thing is you don't even have to target someone for melee combos to hit them, as long as your character is facing them when you swing your weapon you can hit them. I can do some cool, shove-my-sword-in-the-ground, fire pillar attack thingy and other wide-swung 2 hand sword combos and kill groups of 3-5 at a time myself.

Class seems pretty great in the lowbie stages I must say, 2 assassins snuck on me while questing, I root them in place and do a mega fire-sword combo and basically 2 shot both of them at once.....good times.

If you want something new and exciting again, I don't think Age of Conan would be a let down. I'm not trying to drive everyone from WoW, but if you're as bored as I am waiting on WotLK, this is a very fun alternative, so long as you have the time, extra money, and *fairly* up to date computer to run it on, I'd highly suggest it.

AoC gets the Tosan Stamp of Approval (it's not a real thing, I'm not that important...*sigh*)

Dance: Update #a-hojillion

2008-05-22T15:06:00.000-07:00

Hey, so just to clue you guys in on recent developments. I hate WoW, and stopped playing the game after I had enough footage for about 7 minutes including a short intro and outro. Yes, this is shorter than we'd all like, but I just can't play the fucking game anymore.

I started editing a few days ago, and have come up with some fucking cool shit. But I can't finish in time. My flight leaves tomorrow and I have to finish packing and write a 10pgish paper tonight. Also, I'm seeing Indiana Jones. :)

However, the editing process has thus enthralled me and I'm working on getting a ride to Kinkos to ship out my computer. This may or may not happen. If it does happen, you guys will get a movie, albeit a short one. If it doesn't happen, then you're fucked. Sorry. :)

Anyway, I'll try to let you know the outcome before my flight tmw morning.

Dance: UI Upload

2008-05-14T11:02:00.000-07:00

Here's the current UI I've been running.

Anyway, Epi:
It's good that you're worried about quality. It's not uncommon for people to fuck up the quality of their first release (see SWD1), especially if they have no guidance on the topic of rendering or anything at all. It looked good, which is sweet.
In terms of editing.. well it really depends on what you mean. For me, most of the entertainment in watching a SWD movie isn't in the editing but in the actual playing of the game. I do a lot of stupid things in PVP that are really only there for aesthetics. One of the things I do which I feel adds a lot to the entertainment of a clip is to speed it up.
Back in the day it used to be pretty taboo to speed your clips up. People thought it took away from your ability to catch all the action. Either PvP has gotten a lot slower or people have just gotten better at watching PvP videos because that's not the case anymore and as long as it's not excessive you can speed up clips all you want.

Also, I think a good UI adds a lot of flavor to a movie. Plus it's important for those watching the movie to be able to easily identify a certain number of things, mostly you and your opponent's health, cooldowns, buffs and debuffs. The color of your health bars makes it difficult to tell what health your enemies are at.

But yeah, I mean. It does the job, right? It's really hard for me to tell you exactly what to do editing wise because editing a movie is a very personal experience. If your style is minimalistic you might not require a lot of flashy shit yet still might give off the aura of a very good edit. Or you might just wanna go to town on the motion graphics and that's OK too. It all depends on what you want to see in your own video and how much time you're willing to put into it to see that it happens.

Anyway, yeah. I didn't see anything that struck out at me as horrible. So you're going down the right path.

Dance: UI Blogisode

2008-05-11T18:26:00.001-07:00

Hey guys. So, I had a lot of spare time today and could only play WoW seriously for about two hours. So, with some of the rest of my afternoon I went ahead and made a little video for you guys. Contained within is a little showcase of my UI, which is only a slight variation on my UIs in SWD2 and 3. You also get to hear my sexy voice and I threw in a little teaser of SWD4. Anyway, enjoy. :)

Oh, also, because I wanted you guys to be able to clearly see the UI I was showcasing, I amped up the kb/s during rendering. So while the whole thing only clocks in a little over two minutes, it's 150mb. But, yeah, whatever. :P Don't complain.

Edit:
lol. Should have done a song list before I posted. You'd think I would have learned by now.
Alright.

During UI showcase, the song was Last Living Souls by Gorillaz.
During the SWD4 teaser, the song was Start Something by Lostprophets.
The song at the end of the video was '75 Aka Stay With You by Lemon Jelly.

As for uploading my UI. Uhh.. if you tell me how to do it again, I will. I can't ever figure out exactly what needs to go where in the folder. It's all some sort of hoodoo magic to me. Anyway, yeah. I'd be down for doing that.

Dance: Quick, before I forget, binds and shit.

2008-05-10T17:34:00.000-07:00

Epi, I don't usually need to cut my files. I tend to just hit the record key at the start and end of fights without much in the way of uselessness but there are occasions where I'll go through a few bad fights and end with a good one I'd like to keep all in the same clip. In cases like this, I don't usually bother cropping clips. If I were to, though, I'd just use virtualdub, which you can get here. I did this a few times when I was shipping clips back and forth between stfx or Tosan. :)

Anyway, someone asked about my keybindings so uh.. I guess I'll let you know what they are? I mean, there's not much of a use for that kind of information because there's no real method as to what I put where. I usually just throw them wherever. Anyway, here you go.

F5 - Flying Mount
1 - Touch of Weakness
2 - Inner Fire
3 - Fear Ward
4 - Fort
5 - Shadow Prot
G - Silence
V - Shadow Word: Death
R - Shadow Word: Pain
A - Vampiric Touch
T - Mind Blast
X - Shield
W - Dispell
Z - Mass Dispell
C - Fear
Shift F - Vampiric Embrace
Shift Z - Wand
Shift 2 - Devouring Plague
Shift E - Inner Focus
Shift Q - Levitate
Shift 3 - Shadowform
Shift S - Trinket
Shift V - Ground Mount
Shift R - Grenade
Shift B - Bandage
Shift W - Mind Flay
Shift G - Poultryizer
Control Z - Shadowfiend
Control A - Renew
Control V - Prayer of Mending
Control S - Flash Heal
Control B - Cannibalize
Control D - Mage water

Pretty sure that's everything. On second thought, a little bit of a pattern emerged from practicality. All of my heals are on Control since I'm obviously not using them as much. Most of the spells I have to be standing still for (mind flay, mind blast, vt, etc) are on Shifts because I don't need the extra finger to be moving. My instant casts tend to be on regular keys like A, C, V, etc. My buffs are on 1-5.

My flying mount is on F5.
I don't know why.

Now, I have to go to Chipotle and get some food so I'll post again with my new UI and a quick explanation later tonight.

Dance: Update

2008-05-10T17:30:00.001-07:00

I'm leaving for Illinois in 13 days. I won't be bringing my comp with me, I'm getting my EMT cert and hopefully doing some cave/dive search and rescue or volunteer firefighting depending on what I can set up over the next few weeks.

I have two or three songs in SWD4 finished. I'm worried about not having enough time left to get the rest of the clips or put together the intro and outro stuff.

Anyway, that's where things stand. Not particularly optimistic, but whatever. :P We'll figure something out. I'm gonna go play some AB. :P

Dance: Oh Hay. :)

2008-05-01T09:29:00.000-07:00

Heayo. Well, things have been pretty dead around here lately, as I'm sure you've noticed. However! This doesn't mean I haven't been keeping you guys in mind; SWD4 is coming along as quickly as I can hope given the month I have to finish it.

Elle's gone out of the country, which is why she hasn't been around at all, and I imagine Tosan is decompressing from his work on T4. Which leaves, once again, just you and I. :)

There's really not much more than that I can say. I'd rather not give you guys spoilers about the movie, and I woke up like ten minutes ago so my head isn't exactly working at full capacity. I do have a ridiculous amount of free time for the rest of the month, though, so even if I'm not here posting, know that SWD4 is otw

Tosan: Tosan 4 - Trying Too Hard.

2008-04-22T15:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=72333

Thar! Have fun cutie pies!

Dance: WFR week

2008-04-20T22:29:00.001-07:00

Howdy, ladies and gents. I know you've been peaking your heads in without consequence and I apologize. This is WFR week and I've been either busy in class or sleeping. But, for those interested, it's been pretty badass. WFR is a wilderness first responders course my university holds every May Term Break (the week-long break between spring and may term).

The course is pretty intensive; ten hours of lecture, two hours of case studies and one hour of reading a day keep us all pretty busy. And if I'm not in class or sleeping, I'm downing beers by the case load because, well, shit, it's break. :)

We rock some pretty sweet simulations during class. Part of the class acts as the victims while the rest pair up as primary and secondary first responders and have to act accordingly. It's as cheesy as it sounds sometimes, like when I had to pretend to have an asthma attack; though sometimes we do some pretty sweet shit like wrap victims around trees and have to extricate them without causing more damage to the spine than there already is. Rumor has it that they're going to flip a car in the middle of campus for us on Saturday. Woot.

Anyway, I'll be back to playing WoW and recording clips come next week. It's only an eight-day course. I have a break on Wednesday, but I will probably be getting drunk off my ass with the rest of the WFRs, so don't count on getting anything interesting out of me then. :P Maybe I'll just throw you guys a really drunk ramble post. Yeah, I'll try to do that. Anyway, that's what's going on with me. I hope your spring to summer transition is moving as smoothly as mine is. At any rate, keep on trucking. I feel relatively confident that I will, in fact, have a movie for you come end of may.

<3

Dance: A quick blog post, or Why I Reactivated my Account

2008-04-15T12:25:00.000-07:00

You know that feeling you get when you lock eyes with the Filipino hooker down at the corner and you know you shouldn't but just can't help yourself? Yeah, sure, you might catch something, but that singular fear is never enough and you hop onto that thing like she's the Greyhound to Vegas and your wife just left you.

That's exactly how I feel when I reactivate my WoW account. But after rewatching Vurtne's videos over the weekend, I took the plunge and reactivated. Something about his debutantean grace always drives me to play the game again. I won't go into my seriously scary level of respect for the man, just know that it only took like twenty minutes and I was sold on coming back.

Anyway, some of you may have seen me on. Feel free to bug the shit out of me, because I'm probably in AV and am bored as fucking hell. Or friends might be on my account getting me gear.

Also, I've been doing some pretty baller things in AE I wanted to show you guys. I decided not to, though, because I'd rather you see it all next month.

Hey.

2008-04-07T23:23:00.000-07:00

I've been avoiding this post for a few days now.

I haven't been around the week for a pretty personal reason. I won't go into the boring details, but I've been spending a lot of time out of my room, doing my best to keep my mind occupied. I've been getting your comments via my phone, though, so I know you guys keep checking in.

Anyway, I could have posted but I didn't. I didn't because I've also been reconsidering the place that this project has in my heart. I needed a few days to decide whether or not this was something I even wanted to do. I needed to decide if I was still in the game out of a desire to produce a new movie or simply because this strange corner of the internet I have built has asked it of me.

So, here's the deal. I've got finals next week, and a week-long, nine-hour-a-day Wilderness First Responder's course the week after. After this, I have a month left with my computer before I fly off to Illinois to visit my family for the summer.

Somehow, I will scrounge up the money to reactivate my account, and I will do my best to create this movie. Don't worry, I'm not doing this for you; even in the end, I am being a little selfish. WoW represents a part of a my life I feel I must move on from. However, this project continues to have a special place in my mind. I have a lot of things I want to accomplish with it, and I truly believe I am, at this point, capable of making a movie I will be proud of. Before I leave the WoW movie community to my successors, I want to create one more thing. I guess I want to leave one final mark.

So, bottom line is, I haven't given up on you. I haven't decided to abandon the project or this community. I just had to iron out a few personal things. I'm still here. <3

Elle: power up that spaceship ninja d, it's time to boogie!

2008-03-25T21:51:00.000-07:00

Last week I was rendered basically legally blind due to the fact that I fell asleep in bed with my glasses still attached to my head, we'll say; the end result producing predictable complications, such as the frame and lenses being totally bent forward, leaving one arm completely borked and twisted in an opposite direction, while the other was still merry and dandy and taunting me with its normalcy. My brother and I attempted to fix this. Disastrous. The gimp arm snapped off and then I was left with an instrument to pick my nose with, and the other piece could've very well have substituted as a lorgnette. As such, the world lost its fine details and everything became rather blurry, but at least I could pretend to be obnoxiously pretentious and act out my best Victorian snob impression. Fabulous. Things such as, "Slayer sweaters encourage loose morals!"

However, this left me feeling pathetic and sad, like most things do.

A visit to the optometrist's office the next day provided me with a new frame, which I received today, and I look even nerdier than before. Success. This was my intention. Nothing screams fierce like a pair of thick black framed spectacles, and I am just about as fierce as a nerd can get. You know, the lion crying out a ferocious 'meow,' fierce. Bad ass.

Enough about the current state of my eyesight. You know I'm the worst blogger ever when I think that anyone could possibly be interested in something as ridiculous as this, but I'm pretty uninteresting and I leave much to be desired, unlike my predecessor, who with a few strokes of a Sharpie on a napkin commands attention like no other. I HATE YOU, DANCE. Why do you make this so easy!?

Unfortunately, I will not be producing any PvP videos for the faithful Dancecrafting crowd, but I will provide you with useless commentary, hopefully some form of comical relief, however corny it may be - and TLC. Tender, loving callousness. Truth be told, Mr. Wiggles and I share the same outlook on life. I'll leave it to you to figure that one out.

Typing Warcraftmovies in Google's search bar brought up a menu of options to choose from, including 'Woman's opaque tights'. I think that was from a previous search but we'll not go into that.

I was feeling particularly not-so-artistic so I drew a few portraits in Photoshop, taking no longer than needed, of our bloggers here at Dancecraft. Beautifully drawn, breathtaking and inspiring, it is a truly magical visual feast for your eyes.

Me, in my glory, along with my lorgnette:

Dance, with a fantastic mastermind's mustache, and Wiggles:

And.../shudder, Tosan. I have no idea what he looks like but I imagine it to be something like this:

Masterpieces, all. Clearly.

For anyone who has seen There Will Be Blood, I recently came upon this absolutely hilarious recreation of this particularly (spoilerish) famous scene...and if anyone shares my ridiculously bad humor, you might find it equally awesome. That and it has to do with Pokemon. It's a cult favorite. Come on.

I have nothing else to say.

Amount of your time wasted in spectacular fashion? Every bleeding second.

Dance: Oh, by the way

2008-03-25T01:16:00.000-07:00

This might be a little late.. but it's the thought that counts, righto?

Not sure what that square dude is doing there. I got bored. Started to doodle.

Anyway, carry on.

Dance: Site Update

2008-03-22T17:37:00.000-07:00

I got tired of pb&jcraft so I updated the layout. Coincidentally, Mr. Wiggles has found a more artistic way of expressing his hatred for you and everything else.

Dance: UI issues..

2008-03-21T10:05:00.001-07:00

So.. My monitor broke a few weeks back. You know? The big one that let me fraps all that pretty footage at whatever ungodly high resolution I wanted? That one.

I'm using my roommates monitor now. It's this dinky little 1024x768 LCD which is fine for watching Daily Show reruns and porn but fails hard when it comes to WoWing. I had intended on making the new movie at the 16:9 ratio 1088x612. I love playing the game at that ratio and it's more dramatic to watch. But I can't play at this ratio on this monitor.. So I'm at a loss for what to do.

I mean, I could rock the classic 800x600, or maybe a smaller 16:9.. Either way, it isn't how I'd prefer it to be. It's an issue I have yet found a solution for.

Sonovabitch.

Anyway, what do you kids think?

Dance: So.. about this "movie" you all keep talking about

2008-03-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

I haven't played WoW in like four months (thankgod), but I hear that they're releasing a new expansion soon. This puts me in an awkward position, see.. This means I have to get all of my footage before people run off to Northrend and I have to release the movie within a month of the release of the new expansion. This is because, well.. after about a month, people aren't going to want to see 70 pvp movies again.

So, idk. I guess I'll start playing again (shit). Good news for you! Bad news for me.

Tosan: Hello! Had some fun in arena tonight, and I'd like to share.

2008-03-18T00:30:00.000-07:00

http://files.filefront.com/Popsiclesavi/;9840084;/fileinfo.html

It's small so I suggest downloading for good qual. full screen goodness.

Customer teams allow for el oh el moments.

Dance: Happy St. Patts

2008-03-17T23:02:00.001-07:00

I'm having trouble with our schools internet, so tonight I report straight from my cell phone!

I'd like to wish you all a happy St. Patt's! It's a truly wonderous holiday; just be sure to go easy on the Irish car bombs!

With love and some subtle form of affection,

Dance

Tosan: OMG IM USELESS DONT BEAT ME FOR IT!

2008-03-15T21:09:00.001-07:00

Yar yar yar, my blatant inactivity here is still apparent I'm sure, it's not because I don't love any of you.....it's just......I have this bad habbit of taking the little free time I have (when I get it ) and smothering it like a kitten that's worn it's welcome. (just kidding, I wuv kitties!)

How so? OH I'll TELL YOU HOW! I still do a buncha sales teams on my rogue and sure, I could just do that and have time to post, edit my looong stalled video (and the million small ones I still want to make), but instead, I take this little free time I have and do what? Take my brothers 70 hunter (same name on accounts so it's legal and such) and start playing it.

I did this for 2 reasons, and 1 possible reason.

1) Played a friends hunter and got hooked.
2) I wanted a character to use one of my all time favorite names on (Rodango!)

and the possible, psychological fuck-up reason) Maybe, just maybe, I am more satisfied when I don't have any extra time....maybe I like being busy? I dunno, where's Dr.Phil when ya need him.......

In other news: My brothers cat is in heat and won't shut the fuck up, meow meow meow 24 hours a day.

I still plan on rendering and uploading a sample of what I've done recently on Tosan 4, a comical dialogue + part of the 3rd song in the video for your entertainment, and to make myself feel worth something here, I mean hell, Dance put my rugged, manly, lumber-jack rogue on the banner, I should be doing something useful here, RIGHT? (F*** you I don't need your approval, this is for ME!) -- (JK HUGZ N KISSEZ <3)

So ya, hang tight, once I get my huntard all decked out (he's on a 2200'ish team atm so it'll go by pretty fast, all the honor crap is done alreadies!), I'll put my focus in to videos LIKE HARD CORE N STUFF to entertain you.

Maybe more small cheesy vids too....

Dance: Tragedy Strikes!

2008-03-15T02:27:00.001-07:00

So, this afternoon, I returned to my dorm room to find Lemon Jelly floating at the top of the fishbowl. Distraught, I immediately called his owner, begging her to take her other fish back before I destroyed them too. Clearly, I'm a terrible pet owner.

Never again will I trust myself with the life of another. :(

Anyway, sorry things have been so quiet lately. I've been keeping busy; schoolwork and friends have kept me on my toes all week. I finally have a break here on Friday, but I don't intend on being in my room much the rest of the weekend. After all, it is St. Patty's Day weekend.

So, no. I'm not dead. Just busy. I don't feel like I have much to say anyway.

PS. In the spirit of St. Patty's day, knock one back for Lemon Jelly;

Comrade.
Brother.
Fish.

Elle: mad lame intro post.

2008-03-08T19:39:00.000-08:00

Yo!

New blogger here. The name's Elle - I'm fantastically unawesome, I've got no life, I'm just about retarded, and I'm posting from my own personal batcave here in the 'sunny state' of California (I wouldn't really know - I don't venture outside often). I'm a bit of a dork, but not much different from Dance himself. I daresay he and I are a lot alike, in a plethora of ways, and allow me to explain to you how:

We're both amazing at procrastination, so much so that we nearly have it down to an art. He introduced me to you folks over a week ago, and I'm just now getting around to sitting down and typing up a little tidbit of lame that you will probably skip over anyway. That's ok; I don't really like you either. Suffice it to say, I've been shy & lazy, but mostly lazy. As you all know, he's taking his sweet, molasses-like time in producing a certain vidya, in which I think most of you are rather interested in...but I leave it to him to explain that!

Another thing Dance are I share is our love for music, movies, video games, and cute animals. I have yet to be unimpressed with the music he's sent me for his future prospects (in fact, before I'd ever met him, I thought he was super nifty because he'd used a Veils song in Shadow Word Dance: 3). Awesome, I thought, no sign of Rise Against or ...some other screaming-their-head-off-bash-your-face-into-a-mirror-like band. He was using smart music! Fun music - the type which would make you dance in your chair and be the most likely cause for future embarrassment should anyone stumble upon you doing so. I'd have to say, I'm pretty happy he is going with the same route for his latest project. Shhh. Yeah, yeah, ok. I'm making myself sick with this whole compliment string, so I'll just say that he and I definitely have our differences and have been keen to argue them in the past. ;)

I'd say we've both got a good eye for graphic design, he much more than I - I'm more into forum/web design , and he's definitely got me beat in the creative video department - I don't know a damn thing about that, so don't ask! You'll get a: Duh..hurr? /tendrilofdrool answer. He's the expert there, I just tell him whether or not it's pretty.

Mostly, our love for priests is what has tied us together. I watched his PvP videos months before I met him, and it was rather coincidental. One of my best friends, Brad, resides on Laughing Skull playing an undead rogue (poorly).One day, low and behold, while re-watching SWD:3, I noticed in the chatlog that said friend had logged on. Neato! I immediately IMed Bradley on AIM and inquired about this, and he explained that he and Dance were old palz. It didn't come up again for a while, not until I was playing on Laughing Skull myself, under the guise of a tauren druid named Bucket. Dance and I soon became good friends, mostly because he couldn't get over how weird I am, and I because I found him to be super similar. That usually makes a good combo for the best of friends, IMO. He, Brad and I were peas in a pod.

Anyway I emo'd out and quit the game, but have returned once more to play my undergeared (in arena standards) human priest. She's rather a disappointment because she's not on the ever-favored PvP server which I enjoy, but she's my oldest and most favorite of characters, and I'd spent a good bulk of time getting her to where she is at. Lately, it's been dwindling, but such is life when you are a super hero.

So I introduce to you, my priest:

Or, my priest and my snowshoe rabbit, which has been my noble companion since about level 10.

Dance and I share our similarities throughout WoW as well. Despite what he may have told you, I'm just as good as he is, shown here:

We're also both incredibly emo and /cry a lot. See:

I'm running out of things to say (for now) and this is beginning to drag on quite a bit, so for the TL;DR crowd...

My name's Elle, and I'm one of the new bloggers here at Dancecraft. Nice to meet you - feel free to say hi!

P.S. Tosan hates me.

P.P.S. The Arena Tournament realm is my new crack. Hell yeah, premades.

Dance: Rendering

2008-03-07T12:22:00.000-08:00

I get a lot of questions from you guys about rendering. I don't blame you, though. Rendering can be the most daunting part of the whole process. What codec do you use, what settings do you use, etc? It's all too technical and I didn't understand any of it. I mean, SWD1 looks like shit because I had no idea what I was doing. I wish I had somehow kept the footage and the Vegas file, I'd go back and rerender. But alas, I cannot.
Anyway, hopefully you guys wont have to deal with that particular brand of fail.

First and foremost, there is a good tutorial that, while slightly outdated, should be able to get you through the thickest of things. Problem is, though, it's hosted on WCM, which I have no access to. But, just scroll down and on the right you'll see a link to Articles or Guides. One of them will have a guide to rendering with xvid. (Someone get me the link to that, and I'll edit this. )
At any rate, it goes through the method of rendering that I've adopted. He does a better job explaining it than I would be able to, so.. You know. Read it.

There are a few things I suggest, though, simply from my own experience. There are really two types of rendering that you do while creating a movie. You render to preview the work you've done and you render the final product for release. Now, xvid is amazing for the latter case. It provides good quality for above average compression. Plus, with all these people streaming nowadays, you can go crazy and jack up your kb/s as I do.
However, when you render to preview.. say you're just rendering a certain scene to see what it looks like/sounds like in real time and the RAM preview isn't doing it for you. It's best to render this preview in something that isn't xvid. Rendering with xvid, in my experience, takes more time than rendering with, say, the windows media codec or the quicktime codec. I definitely don't suggest rendering two passes in xvid for a preview. It takes too much time and is simply not worth it unless you're planning on releasing it.

Experimenting is the greatest way to become familiar with rendering. It can take a long fucking time to render a small amount of work, depending on how much shit you've got going on. That is, a clip and a song will take less time to render than a composite scene with motion blurs and coloring. Either way, though, it's going to take a while. My suggestion to you is just to take a few seconds of footage and render using a few different codecs at different settings. This is what I did when I started and, even though you'll wind up just using xvid for the big stuff, it's a good way to get comfortable with the rendering process and will help you choose a codec for previewing.

I know you probably all want screencaps of my xvid settings or whatever, but at the end of the day, those settings are going to be partially unique to your project. That is, if I'm releasing a trailer, I'm going to ramp the kb/s way up there, because it's shorter in length and I'm comfortable releasing a 50mb trailer. But when I render something big for release, I'll drop the kb/s down so I don't blow peoples minds with the size of the thing. Like I said, just experiment.

Yeah, I know it takes a lot of time. But it's the weekend, and, let's face it, it's not as if you have anything better to do.

PS. Hey. You. Recently, we've been missing each other on MSN a lot. This is mostly because you can't get around to saying Hi until midnight, when I'm off doing Math or heroine or whatever. Now, there is evidence that you take the time to read this blog before shuffling off to bed and I just wanted to remind you that I will always stop whatever I'm doing, be it simply watching Entourage in the lobby or snorting cocaine off a urinal somewhere, to take a call from you.

My deviated septum and I miss you.

Love,
Me!

Dance: I don't want to write my papers.

2008-03-06T11:01:00.000-08:00

I was writing a reply to some comments in the last blog entry when it started to get a little long, so I'll just expand on what I had intended to say:

Someone questioned my use of Premiere, an Adobe product no longer as popular as its younger, hipper brother After Effects.
I'm using it at the moment because I think it's important to be familiar with a wide range of editing software, especially if you're considering doing this for a living... or if you're looking to compensate for something by becoming e-famous, such that thousands of people can stroke your ever expanding ego while you reign cynicism and tasteless jokes down upon their adoring faces.

Psh, don't give me that look.
I didn't get laid in High School.

Or did I..? I can't remember, it was so long ago..
Maybe.

No wait. Yeah, I did.
Nevermind.

So, sure, Premiere is annoying to use and looks like my asshole, but it's not impossible, so I'll continue to play around with it until I feel comfortable enough to move on.

And yes, it's definitely the lesser of two evils, no matter how easy Vegas makes certain things.

Oh, and I have absolutely no idea how the Top Skilled contest turned out. My WCM is crazy broken, I can't load any of it anymore. But regardless of the outcome, I feel pretty damn good about being in the contest at all. I mean, I was up against some of the players who had inspired me when I was just starting. I have ridiculous amounts of respect for some of these guys.

I mean.. If it hadn't been for Vurtne, Albis, and (especially) Beckon, there wouldn't be Dance videos for you guys to watch. I'd probably have spent my WoW career getting kicked out of PvE guilds because I wanted to Shadow in instances pre-TBC.

Although I did do my fair share of that.. But that's a story for another day, my pretties.

Dance: This is too technical and unclear!

2008-03-02T15:43:00.000-08:00

I want to clear up a few misconceptions I fear I have made with all my talk of After Effects. After Effects is not meant to be used as a replacement for Sony Vegas, or your other video editing software. After Effects is meant to be used for the creation of motion graphics and for heavy compositing.

What you should understand is how specialized professional post-production software is. That is.. Alright, I'll just give an example.

Let's say you're shooting footage for a high-end, big budget film. That footage will eventually make its way through more than a half dozen different software programs before it finds its way to a box office. Programs highly specialized in non-linear editing, color correction, sound design/audio editing, motion graphics and compositing all play major rolls in creating a film of that magnitude. That's not even it, though. At this level of production, single-function programs are built to render or convert film, to create a database of your footage, or just to encode the final product to master DVDs.

That is the realm into which After Effects was born. It isn't built to edit footage, but to create pretty graphics and composite. However, many WoW movie authors consider editing to mean the whole shebang, as opposed to trimming clips or stringing them along in a timeline. So, when someone asks me "What is the difference between After Effects and Vegas for editing?", I'm not really sure how to explain.

For starters, Vegas is relatively low-end. I mean, it's not bottom of the barrel, but its made for people who want slightly more control over their home footage than what Microsoft Movie Maker gives them. Because of this, it's perfect for the WoW movie maker. It's relatively uncomplicated and easy to use and, with a little practice, can be used to make some pretty nifty movies.
However.. say I want to create a scene where I rotate the camera around a sphere, maybe with a logo underneath that I also rotate around. This is a motion graphic, and Vegas can't make them for shit.

Sony Vegas does not support a true three dimensional field to work in. I mean, I can shrink a clip, or blow it up, to make it look like I'm getting closer to it, and I can move it up and down, but never could I rotate it. Never could I create a three dimensional particle field to fly around in. Because that's not what Sony Vegas is built for.

I feel like I'm talking you guys in circles. My point is that Sony Vegas and After Effects are very different beasts indeed. Ideally, I would go into After Effects to create a cool three dimensional title or composite some green screen footage, render that footage uncompressed, take it into Sony Vegas or (preferably) Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro, and incorporate it into the movie.

I would never edit a movie in After Effects. It is not made for that at all. I would, and will, however, use it in tandem with a program which does edit video. So, I don't want you guys thinking I replaced Vegas with After Effects. If anything, I've replaced Vegas with Premiere and Photoshop with After Effects. I've just matured a little, as an editor and compositor.

PS. I think I confused myself while writing that. I'm in a bit of a funky mood. Let me know if I sounded retarded anywhere there. <3

Tosan: Mickey Mouse is a badass!

2008-03-01T19:52:00.001-08:00

So my brother's Girlfriend went somewhere and bought him this Mickey Mouse coffee mug because we drink coffee chronically (not for caffine, we just like the way it tastes, okay?).

What a fucking beast, look at him conjuring demons 'n shit!

She got me a Donald Duck mug, it's not nearly as awesome, it's just Donald in one of his typical fits of rage, shaking his fists at whoever might be consuming liquids from his mug at the time.

Just thought I'd share, I mean....I always thought Mickey was kinda a pussy up until now, I MEAN LOOK AT HIM, HE'LL FUCK YOU UP!

Dance: Testing and Reviewing Vimeo

2008-03-01T13:18:00.000-08:00

So, someone suggested I use Vimeo to upload my future movies for HD streaming. The site's ezmode so I did a little experimentation, uploading the intro I released yesterday as well as the trailer for SWD4. Anyway, judge for yourself. The embedded videos do not support HD, but if you view the video at Vimeo, you can enable HD.

At any rate, a major problem with Vimeo is that it has a maximum upload limit of 500mb per week. Because most of my videos are bigger than 500mb, this makes using Vimeo to stream my larger projects impossible. However, for future blogisodes and pvp shorts, it's pretty much win win. :)

Dance: First new blog author

2008-02-29T19:21:00.001-08:00

So, as I mentioned before, I'm expanding the blog and the first addition to the team is Elle, a close friend of mine and a truly amazing Priest, though I'm sure she'd say something to the contrary. She's quirky, beautiful, and knows her way around an Arena, which is pretty much all that is required to get our attention here at Dancecraft.
Treat her kindly, else she will absolutely destroy you irl. No joke.

Dance: Hay, something pretty

2008-02-29T17:40:00.000-08:00

SO, as I mentioned a few posts ago, I recently did a little work in AE that I had, at the time, intended on using in the new movie. I decided (In a dream sometime last night.. I think.) to go in a different artistic direction with SWD4, which means I'm free to upload this thing for you guys.

This is also an example of how AE can be used to do things that are either extremely difficult to reproduce in Vegas or are altogether impossible.

Oh, and keep in mind that it's only 15 seconds long and starts/stops with no warning. :)
Download at Filefront here.

For those either partially or completely uninterested, here are just some pretty pictures which give the gist of the style I was shooting for.

Anyway, enjoy. :]

Dance: My Apologies

2008-02-28T16:09:00.000-08:00

I've never been one for self control. As undisciplined as any rebellious youth, I've wandered through life with little regard for my own future or well being. Because of this, much of my day is full of fail for no particularly good reason.

Now if we don't count my mother, who sometimes can't sleep for worry that I will go all homeless alcoholic on her, the only person affected by my poor choices is me. This is something I'm content with.

However, sometimes I make stupid decisions involving other people, which is significantly less okay.

Recently, I feel like I've let down Tosan and stfx, both of with whom I've started projects I neglected to finish for various reasons. I like to think that they both understand, but regardless, I owe them both a (public) apology.

Sorry, gentleman. I dropped the ball, but I hope I can right a few wrongs or at the very least finish what I started to whatever degree that I can.

Streaming in a Post-Stage6 World

2008-02-28T13:05:00.000-08:00

As many of you have pointed out, Stage6 is closing its doors as of earlier this week. Plans are for them to close the site today, leaving many WoW movie makers without obvious access to high definition streaming. Or, at least, you know... me.
I've gotten a few suggestions from fans, but I haven't done enough research or experimentation to decide if I will be reuploading my movies outside of FileFront.

Streaming has always been a bit of a pet peeve for me. I spend months at a stretch creating a flick, sometimes editing for as many as five or six hours on a few seconds of footage. The editing process is vastly more important to me than the content of the footage I work with. If the music isn't perfect, if I don't time a jump or a crit or a transition just right, I will without pause take the time to fix it. If you guys haven't ever done video editing of this kind, take my word for it: working on the same forty five frames for six hours is incredibly tedious. But I love it with a secret passion, locked deep within the vault of my mind; a passion I have yet to share with even your mom.

Streaming is an incredibly convenient way of destroying the subtleties of the movie making process. Even with Stage6, nuances were lost which had taken a ridiculous amount of time to produce. And, well.. we don't talk about Google or YouTube. Let's just say that streaming one of my movies on YouTube is tantamount to stabbing me to death, violating my broken corpse while taking high resolution pictures you fully intend on sending to my girlfriend.

So.. at the end of the day, if I can't find a streaming site hosting high definition content of the Stage6 variety, I will be absolutely content to leave my videos on FileFront. Or, even better yet, moving them to a hosting site that does not automatically and without my permission release streaming versions of my movies, all of which send me into a spiraling sickness not unlike the time I acquired the stomach flu and woke up with food flying out of my nostrils.

There was chicken everywhere...

PS. Is anyone else having trouble loading WCM, or am I just retarded?

Today is "Update the Blog Day"!

2008-02-27T13:03:00.000-08:00

So, as a rather genius ploy to convince you that I'm being productive (IM NOT), I'm going to spend a large part of this day updating the blog. That is, new banners, color schemes.. maybe throw on a couple of new thingies over there on the right? I have no idea, I'm making this up as I go.

One thing I would really like to do is to get a few new blog authors. Nothing crazy. I'm not talking GameRiot or anything. Just a few fellow pvpers or movie makers. My reasoning behind this is that I hope to one day be able to, say, not post here for a few days without losing half of my readers. You all know how lazy I am, by this point. This is perfect for me!

Anyway, though WCM is having trouble loading on my computer (Firefox AND IE. It's a true mystery), I can at least get access through my amazing Q. So, I'll do what I can to get you guys a few new interesting blog authors.

Edit: Oh, btw, I have absolutely no idea what color scheme I'm going to use for the blog. So.. Respond to this, pick two colors, and whoever gets here first gets to pick the new color scheme.

How I Have Spent My Time Not Editing

2008-02-26T13:10:00.000-08:00

And today, I present to you a comprehensive list of ways in which I have (today) ignored editing:

Boozing:

This one is pretty self explanatory.

Renaming fish that do not belong to me:

Apparently, it is difficult to fully enjoy yourself when burdened with the guilt of abandoning pets to a slow death by starvation, because Kit and Megan have asked me to take care of their fish while they are off gallivanting across California or Boulder or The Moon or whatever.
This is definitely not unusual. I stay on campus for the majority of my breaks as I am carless, and I have spent many a break taking care of people's fish. I have trouble remembering their names, however, so it has become tradition for me to rename them. This particular batch of little dudes were renamed after DJs or new-agey composers.

PS.
I fear there's something terribly wrong with Mr Scruff. He seems to be fighting the urge to float to the surface. His tail end keeps rising as if to say "hay, follow me TO CERTAIN DOOM".
Because I'm pretty sure that fish only float to the surface when dead, it is clear to me that Mr. Scruff has left the realm of the living, becoming half zombiefish. How a zombietail acquires the brains necessary for its survival is unknown at this time. Probably by means of anal teeth.

Recreating the scene from The Patriot where MG owns bitches in the face with an axe:

Improving upon all of my favorite childhood board games, starting with this rug-sized Candy Land:

Thus far, the only rules I have managed to come up with are as follows:

1. If you land on any of the following colors, King Kandy declares that you must, by candy law, remove your shirt: Red, Purple, Yellow, Blue, Orange, and Green
2. Do not ask Chris why he has a giant Candy Land rug in his dorm room.

In short, know that even though I am trapped alone in this room for the next five days with no one to talk to but fish, I will continue to find inventive ways to not make this movie.
It's almost like an art. It's beautiful, really.
If you think about it.

Time in After Effects

2008-02-25T00:29:00.000-08:00

I'm replying to a question from Epi, but I think it's something that should be easily found. It's a explanation of one way how timing works in after effects. That is, how do you slow down certain pieces of a clip, etc.

Right click the layer in question > Time > Enable Time Remapping

Setting a keyframe attaches that moment in time to that keyframe. For example, if you set two separate keyframes, those keyframes represent those two points in time during the clip. Drag those keyframes apart and the clip, between the two keyframes, slows down. Push the keyframes together and you increase the speed at which the clip between the two keyframes is played.

By moving the relative positions of these keyframes you can fast forward, slow down, and rewind a clip. (To rewind, I believe you simply swap the positions of the keyframes. That is, move keyframes to the other side of each other, or something similar. Maybe that works. :D Experiment.)

<3

A few things before Sleep

2008-02-15T12:38:00.000-08:00

I'ma field a few of your questions. I have no idea if this is going to make any sense. I'm a little sleepy.

As I said before, every author has his or her own style of movie-making. I can tell you the order in which I piece together the parts of my movies, but honestly trying to categorize this process into steps someone else has told you are necessary will really only hinder you.

How you develop your own style is up to you. But one constant is that, if you're making a movie for the first time, you're going to get it wrong. For example, someone asked me the other day if I compressed all of my clips before I edited them. It was a very valid question, but one that can be answered simply by trying to create. This is the best way for you to learn, and the only way I suggest you go about creating movies.

I'm sure that this explanation isn't very satisfying. Just keep your eye on the prize, ladies and gentleman. Personally, there is little order to the way in which I make movies. For example, when producing SWD2, I had all of the clips laid out before I started editing. But in SWD3, the very last thing I did before the final render was to add in a final clip, a clip I had only captured ten minutes prior to finishing the movie. Basically, I do what I want when I want with little form or forethought.

This tends to work for me very well, because the movie is born in real-time. The two comedic segments at the end of SWD2 and in the middle of SWD3 were created on the fly. I honestly had no idea what I was doing as I edited the pieces together until eventually an idea solidified in my mind and I was finished.

But do I see what I mean when I say that following that style of film making simply because it works for me is is only going to hinder you? You each have your own style. Do what comes naturally for you.

Now, some of you had more technical, or at least less philisophical, questions. I get a lot of questions about the pictures I add into the movies (the Silence effects or the borders), and because these are ridiculously easy questions to answer, I'll go ahead and do that before passing out:

The idea of using Photoshop to enhance my movies didn't occur to me until my third flick. In fact, this is how a lot of my filmmaking process has evolved. For example, I pretty much had no idea what I was doing when I made Shadow Word: Dance. The best thing I had going for me was some great music and a little bit of humor inherent in the clips themselves (the fight with the hunter in Terrokar with the twenty billion wolf adds is still my favorite clip in all of the movies I've done). But I wasn't particularly skilled, my opponents weren't much better, my editing was beyond horrible, and, of course, I wasn't even 70.
But one day, a few weeks after the release of the movie, I began to reedit the footage, with a much heavier emphasis on editing. I looked up a few tutorials on RENDERING, discovered how to use brightness and contrast, in moderation, to bring a little life to bland clips (I always use Color Curves to achieve that effect now, but I didn't know wtf that meant back then), but the biggest breakthrough with that project was that I became familiar enough with the program that I could spend more time on the creative process, because I wasn't spending hours trying to figure out how to sync my audio and video.
SWD2 gave me a lot more freedom to create pretty things, but it wasn't until SWD3 that I realized that by using Photoshop, I could really do some unique things. It's actually a really simple process.

Just make the image (whatever it is, text, a border, whatever), in Photoshop and bring the picture into Vegas (or whatever), and throw it in a layer above your clips. I mean, I don't know if that makes sense to you guys or not, but it at least sounds pretty fucking simple, right? Make the visual image in Photoshop and import or drag the picture into Vegas. Then just place it on top of the clip when and where you'd like it. As in the case of the Silenced effects in the last two movies I've done, I just placed the image above the nameplate in every scene where I silenced someone. You can just fade them in by dragging the top corners of the clip in its layer in towards the center of the clip (see the basic Vegas tut I put up a long ass time ago), or you do a combination of effects. I used Blur and Position keyframes, along with opacity, to make the image sort of shake and blur into the page.
I won't ever do anything like that again, because I could make something much much more badass in After Effects, but at the level that I think most of your questions are being fielded at, this should work until as you get your feet wet.

Anyway, I need to get some sleep. My brother was accepted into the Columbia Film School in Chicago, and so I'm going to have a long afternoon and night ahead of me drinking in celebration. :)

Let me know if I didn't answer something important, or got something wrong, or what the fuck ever. <3

And if you go out tonight, or if you just decide to drink alone in your room, have a round for my brother. :]

Things I Have Learned Recently

2008-02-14T20:56:00.000-08:00

Some people play Darts with a geometric increase in skill when shitfaced.

Alice in Wonderland makes no more sense than it did when I was six.

It is considered improper to have more than one Valentine. (or 3)

People will give you cookies in exchange for math tutoring.

There are three major differences between having a head of hair and not:

I can turn my head with significantly less energy than before. Sometimes I forget this and my head just sort of rolls around lopsidedly.
Bald heads get cold much faster.
Without hair, hoods stick to your head awkwardly. Like space monsters. :[

I am not the only person in the world who knows who MuteMath is.

It takes roughly one week for the average person to learn how to use a thumb keyboard without appearing to be retarded.

I don't need to read Maureen Johnson's books to fall miserably in love with her.