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One more step takes you down the rabbit hole.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
TGWTG Year Three Tribute Video & My Hotel Room Is Haunted By The Ghost Of Disco
There is a Facebook group dedicated to the promotion of the TGWTG 3rd year anniversary movie, whose subject is still a mystery, when it is released. While we all wait for the release of a trailer or a hint or anything we can get Tweeting about, an idea was devised to organize a side project -- a compilation of videos made by fans to express what their connection with the site has meant to them and thank the producers or whatever they wanted to say to them.
I knew from the moment that plan was proposed that I wanted to be part of it. But before I could even begin formulating even a vague concept of what I wanted to do or say for my contribution, a friend of mine brought it up and told me that although she wanted to contribute, the things she wanted to say were not things she was comfortable saying on camera to a potentially very large audience of mostly strangers. I told her that if she wrote down what she wanted to say, I would happily be her on-screen "voice" and record it for her. And that is exactly what I did.
So here is my contribution to the Year 3 fan video. The first part (a little more than half) is me speaking for my friend. The second part is my personal contribution.
Now, while I was trying to find a place to set up my camera and do this so the background wasn't COMPLETELY obviously just a hotel room somewhere, I noticed very quickly that my camera was behaving.... very, very oddly. The result was a lot of outtakes and tests which I have compiled into a second video.
Until further notice, the only explanation I have for what happened here is that my hotel room is haunted by the ghost of disco.
I knew from the moment that plan was proposed that I wanted to be part of it. But before I could even begin formulating even a vague concept of what I wanted to do or say for my contribution, a friend of mine brought it up and told me that although she wanted to contribute, the things she wanted to say were not things she was comfortable saying on camera to a potentially very large audience of mostly strangers. I told her that if she wrote down what she wanted to say, I would happily be her on-screen "voice" and record it for her. And that is exactly what I did.
So here is my contribution to the Year 3 fan video. The first part (a little more than half) is me speaking for my friend. The second part is my personal contribution.
Now, while I was trying to find a place to set up my camera and do this so the background wasn't COMPLETELY obviously just a hotel room somewhere, I noticed very quickly that my camera was behaving.... very, very oddly. The result was a lot of outtakes and tests which I have compiled into a second video.
Until further notice, the only explanation I have for what happened here is that my hotel room is haunted by the ghost of disco.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Skelter demonstrates why it's a bad idea to talk to the animals...
I've learned to yoink clips off the internet!
It only took me... what... 6 months? :P
I use RealPlayer Converter, incidentally.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Lady Gaga Comics
This is a video response to two reviews of a Lady Gaga comic.
Linkara's review can be seen here:
http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/linkara/at4w/30553-lady-gaga-1
Iron Liz's response can be seen here:
http://blip.tv/file/5006686
You'll want to watch the first two, or this will make very little sense.
And as for the art at the end: as low as my production value on this video is, I'm going for the "dress for the job you want, not the job you have" approach and had a drawing of my primary character commissioned from an artist whose work I really love. I'm using it as an avatar now pretty much everywhere and plan to try to inforporate it in all my videos from now on that are of me as this persona.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Videos, Art, PROGRESS!
This "approximately two months between posts" thing is almost a pattern now, isn't it?
That sucks and is made of fail. I hate that I've let myself do that and I have every intention of making every effort to make sure it doesn't continue.
Anyway. On to actual news.
Item One:
I've got a regular gig now with a fellow called Tony. On his dime, I'm a title card artist for 3 Fat Guys and a podcaster with the Random Odds Oddcast. I've also been receiving and filling art commissions like a mad thing. Details on how to commission some art from me can be found here on my DeviantArt page, along with my most recent commissions in my gallery there.
And now, to the videos!
Item Two:
A brief April Fools joke!
When these four jokers posted a thread to the forums on thatguywiththeglasses.com about taking control of the site and making demands for certain props and characters related to various producers' shows, I though it would be a hilariously good opportunity to do a bit of casual screwing around with these folks. My video reply is the second entry on page 2 of the thread, or you can just click here. I do recommend teaching the whole thread, though, and watching the videos made by the first four guys. They're all very funny.
Item Three:
Where Is Doctor Steel??
I have been a memeber of Doctor Steel's army of Toy Soldiers since 2007. For those who are not familiar with this person -- he's a guy who plays a steampunk mad scientist character and makes hilarious videos and really fantastic music, all in character. Rather delightfully, in my opinion, nobody knows who this guy is outside of his Doctor Steel persona.
Part of his schtick is that he wants to take over the world, and his fans are organized into an "army" to help him do it. The Toy Soldiers actually do organize regular "invasions," mostly of conventions and occasionally of theme parks, where large numbers of them show up in costume and distribute "propaganda" related to Doctor Steel's vision of spreading creativity and building a utopian playland.
It's all quite silly, but at the same time, it's also quite inspiring. The thing is... while the good Doctor used to post regular videos to his YouTube account and update the forums and such, he's been AWOL for something between 9-11 months now, from anywhere he has ever officially posted material. He's just... gone.
Toy Soldier Ven is concerned about this. Yes, deeply concerned.
The character in that video is actually a character, and not me/"Ven." I have unofficially named that character Detective Jude Grimlin. I had originally intended to play the Somaturge for this video, but after twisting my hair up under my hat so only my red bangs were visible, I decided that was a really good look and played with it.
On a related note, my satisfaction with the look of the character happened to coincide with my discovery that an artist whose style I especially like on DeviantArt was open to doing commissions for a rate even lower than mine -- and her art is at least thrice the quality. So on a whim, I commissioned a picture of this character from her. This is the collection of screenshots I gave her as a reference. Some four or six hours later, she E-mailed me this:
Impressed. I am it. I mean... other people have drawn me. Other people have drawn me magnificently well and I'll probably do an entry on their stuff here eventually. But none of them have been quite on THIS level of astoundingly professional, clean quality.... not to mention having something this good done in SIX HOURS or so. Jeezus!!
THE TECHNICAL SHIT:
I'm still having issues with video quality, which annoys me. A lot. I'm pretty sure now that my camcorder doesn't actually take HD video... but I DO have it set to the highest quality it's capable of and MY WEBCAM STILL TAKES BETTER VIDEO. This is pissing me off. I'm probably going to sell this piece of shit and try to save up for a proper HD camera. I believe my still-camera is able to take HD video, but I don't think I have enough ,emory on that thing to record for very long, plus there's no way for me to see myself if I stick it on a tripod and try to film myself. I blew 2 hours on testing distances from that thing to see if I could record with it before I decided it just was not worth the effort. I don't have that kind of time to spend testing the angle and distance I have to be from the camera every time I film myself on it. Frustrating.
But aside from video quality issues, at least my AUDIO is fine. Mostly. I'm aware that it might be a bit loud on the Doctor Steel video. The thing is, that audio wasn't recorded in one take. That's at least six different audio files, attached to dozens of video clips, transitions, effects, text, and background audio. I just couldn't quite figure out a good way to get all of it balanced at a lower volume, so I figured... you morons have volume controls on your computers, use them. :P
The podcast for Random Odds is the major audio thing I'm doing right now. It took us three attempts to record our first podcast due to none of us knowing how to use the recording software and messing it up twice beyond any ability to fix. HOWEVER, our first interview with Linkara from Atop the 4th Wall apparently went well and will be posted soon.... Tony, sadly, was stricken by food poisoning which prevented us from getting anything done this week. We also have another interview with Doug and Rob walker, two founders of thatguywiththeglasses.com, scheduled for late May or early June, which is exciting as hell. And by then at least we'll know how to make sure we're recording. XD
That sucks and is made of fail. I hate that I've let myself do that and I have every intention of making every effort to make sure it doesn't continue.
Anyway. On to actual news.
Item One:
I've got a regular gig now with a fellow called Tony. On his dime, I'm a title card artist for 3 Fat Guys and a podcaster with the Random Odds Oddcast. I've also been receiving and filling art commissions like a mad thing. Details on how to commission some art from me can be found here on my DeviantArt page, along with my most recent commissions in my gallery there.
And now, to the videos!
Item Two:
A brief April Fools joke!
When these four jokers posted a thread to the forums on thatguywiththeglasses.com about taking control of the site and making demands for certain props and characters related to various producers' shows, I though it would be a hilariously good opportunity to do a bit of casual screwing around with these folks. My video reply is the second entry on page 2 of the thread, or you can just click here. I do recommend teaching the whole thread, though, and watching the videos made by the first four guys. They're all very funny.
Item Three:
Where Is Doctor Steel??
I have been a memeber of Doctor Steel's army of Toy Soldiers since 2007. For those who are not familiar with this person -- he's a guy who plays a steampunk mad scientist character and makes hilarious videos and really fantastic music, all in character. Rather delightfully, in my opinion, nobody knows who this guy is outside of his Doctor Steel persona.
Part of his schtick is that he wants to take over the world, and his fans are organized into an "army" to help him do it. The Toy Soldiers actually do organize regular "invasions," mostly of conventions and occasionally of theme parks, where large numbers of them show up in costume and distribute "propaganda" related to Doctor Steel's vision of spreading creativity and building a utopian playland.
It's all quite silly, but at the same time, it's also quite inspiring. The thing is... while the good Doctor used to post regular videos to his YouTube account and update the forums and such, he's been AWOL for something between 9-11 months now, from anywhere he has ever officially posted material. He's just... gone.
Toy Soldier Ven is concerned about this. Yes, deeply concerned.
The character in that video is actually a character, and not me/"Ven." I have unofficially named that character Detective Jude Grimlin. I had originally intended to play the Somaturge for this video, but after twisting my hair up under my hat so only my red bangs were visible, I decided that was a really good look and played with it.
On a related note, my satisfaction with the look of the character happened to coincide with my discovery that an artist whose style I especially like on DeviantArt was open to doing commissions for a rate even lower than mine -- and her art is at least thrice the quality. So on a whim, I commissioned a picture of this character from her. This is the collection of screenshots I gave her as a reference. Some four or six hours later, she E-mailed me this:
Impressed. I am it. I mean... other people have drawn me. Other people have drawn me magnificently well and I'll probably do an entry on their stuff here eventually. But none of them have been quite on THIS level of astoundingly professional, clean quality.... not to mention having something this good done in SIX HOURS or so. Jeezus!!
THE TECHNICAL SHIT:
I'm still having issues with video quality, which annoys me. A lot. I'm pretty sure now that my camcorder doesn't actually take HD video... but I DO have it set to the highest quality it's capable of and MY WEBCAM STILL TAKES BETTER VIDEO. This is pissing me off. I'm probably going to sell this piece of shit and try to save up for a proper HD camera. I believe my still-camera is able to take HD video, but I don't think I have enough ,emory on that thing to record for very long, plus there's no way for me to see myself if I stick it on a tripod and try to film myself. I blew 2 hours on testing distances from that thing to see if I could record with it before I decided it just was not worth the effort. I don't have that kind of time to spend testing the angle and distance I have to be from the camera every time I film myself on it. Frustrating.
But aside from video quality issues, at least my AUDIO is fine. Mostly. I'm aware that it might be a bit loud on the Doctor Steel video. The thing is, that audio wasn't recorded in one take. That's at least six different audio files, attached to dozens of video clips, transitions, effects, text, and background audio. I just couldn't quite figure out a good way to get all of it balanced at a lower volume, so I figured... you morons have volume controls on your computers, use them. :P
The podcast for Random Odds is the major audio thing I'm doing right now. It took us three attempts to record our first podcast due to none of us knowing how to use the recording software and messing it up twice beyond any ability to fix. HOWEVER, our first interview with Linkara from Atop the 4th Wall apparently went well and will be posted soon.... Tony, sadly, was stricken by food poisoning which prevented us from getting anything done this week. We also have another interview with Doug and Rob walker, two founders of thatguywiththeglasses.com, scheduled for late May or early June, which is exciting as hell. And by then at least we'll know how to make sure we're recording. XD
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Talk about going a while between posts...
It's been about 2 months exactly, hasn't it?
Well, I have excuses!
Since December, I have forayed into the bizarre depths of nerddom and attended my first con! And in doing so, I have acquired EMPLOYMENT! YES! I am now a title card artist for these fine fellows: 3 Fat Guys
I've been slowly catching up on old title cards, doing new title cards, and am now working on their DVD art. That'd be why my video production has gone down somewhat remarkably. But I come to you tonight with something new anyway!
This is, of course, me singing both parts.
It annoys me how messily the vocal tracks are matched up. You see, I AM actually a passably capable audio editor, when I have ample time and equipment. For this video, I quite obviously did not. Due to reasons I would rather not get into, the harmony vocals had to be recorded in the creepy basement bathroom, which meant I had a lot of reasons to do it in as few takes as possible, and none of those takes were done listening to my own melody vocals, but rather both tracks were done singing along to a teaching vocal track on the karaoke version of the song. While theoretically this should have worked pretty well, I apparently devited from the teaching vocals enough in my first recording that my harmony doesn't match up perfectly all the time. Also, I sort of failed to figure out how to chop up the vocal track and scootch it half a second forwards of backwards in iMovie. Blah.
So... not so great quality, but then, I did do this ENTIRELY for myself, so to speak. You see... I have no idea whether this video has any potential audience at all. I recorded the song because of a childhood superstition revolving around it, and I matched it to photos of deer and snow and deer in the snow because I love winter. That's all. I just... love winter. And deer are a powerful symbol to me, both in general and symbols of winter.
Basically, it's a video I made to show what I think is most beautiful about my favourite season, the time when I truly feel ALIVE. I know a lot of my friends and family are summer people, but this is my time of year, and so I made this to show why I love it. That's all.
Well, I have excuses!
Since December, I have forayed into the bizarre depths of nerddom and attended my first con! And in doing so, I have acquired EMPLOYMENT! YES! I am now a title card artist for these fine fellows: 3 Fat Guys
I've been slowly catching up on old title cards, doing new title cards, and am now working on their DVD art. That'd be why my video production has gone down somewhat remarkably. But I come to you tonight with something new anyway!
This is, of course, me singing both parts.
It annoys me how messily the vocal tracks are matched up. You see, I AM actually a passably capable audio editor, when I have ample time and equipment. For this video, I quite obviously did not. Due to reasons I would rather not get into, the harmony vocals had to be recorded in the creepy basement bathroom, which meant I had a lot of reasons to do it in as few takes as possible, and none of those takes were done listening to my own melody vocals, but rather both tracks were done singing along to a teaching vocal track on the karaoke version of the song. While theoretically this should have worked pretty well, I apparently devited from the teaching vocals enough in my first recording that my harmony doesn't match up perfectly all the time. Also, I sort of failed to figure out how to chop up the vocal track and scootch it half a second forwards of backwards in iMovie. Blah.
So... not so great quality, but then, I did do this ENTIRELY for myself, so to speak. You see... I have no idea whether this video has any potential audience at all. I recorded the song because of a childhood superstition revolving around it, and I matched it to photos of deer and snow and deer in the snow because I love winter. That's all. I just... love winter. And deer are a powerful symbol to me, both in general and symbols of winter.
Basically, it's a video I made to show what I think is most beautiful about my favourite season, the time when I truly feel ALIVE. I know a lot of my friends and family are summer people, but this is my time of year, and so I made this to show why I love it. That's all.
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