halfcactus

*shoves failed Rubik's cube illustration to a corner* Affinity practice—Designer for the vector shapes and Photo for everything else, though technically I think I could have done everything on Photo:

Based on the following journal doodles:

I guess I'm warming up a little to Affinity... Photo feels closer to AI and ID than PS, which means it does have a lot of features if you adjust your expectations of its controls, but also that it's not exactly a PS substitute. I'm really struggling with placing images/objects (typically I only use Place when I'm using InDesign; most of the time I drag objects around from canvas to canvas because that's how my brain works) + gradients... I kind of get it conceptually, but for some reason I get a prompt asking for screenrecording permissions which I deny on instinct lol.

Paintbrush works pretty smoothly if you set the hardness to 99% (instead of 100%)~ There's a built-in line stabilizer that you can toggle on and off.

Type tools work well. Same shortcuts as PS + has opentype features, but doesn't take into account other languages yet, I think? No vertical text orientation button that I can see.

In this latest episode of "tools I can't figure out", I don't know yet if Affinity has a blend tool or more customizable stroke brushes, which is what I'd want to try for the fishbones? (They'd still be tricky to control, but at least I don't have to manually align anything haha.)

Inexplicably, Affinity also has a cat tool:


Which can only generate one kind of cat shape:


All of this may be an exercise in futility considering the Canva acquisition, but idk, I presume we'll be able to keep the non-subscription version... So far Photo is less laggy than my half-broken Photoshop ahaha.

Can't believe I've churned out enough ZXC things that my Dreamwidth can't keep up, but it looks like I never posted my 曾經我也想過一了百了 (Who's the Murderer 7 concert version) subs/translation here?! It's my first and best attempt at translating a full song, and it's been killing me that Youtube keeps blocking my video for copyright. Turns out it was blocking the video, not the audio, and the solution was simply to... make a lyric video... SO!!!!!!! Here are the original softsubbed video I did for Vimeo, the ~English lyrics video~ I did for Youtube, and yjthecat/fwoopersongs's translation for reference and comparison.

曾經我也想過一了百了 (Who's the Murderer 7 concert performance)

Back in February I made a ~Zhang Xincheng performance cut~ from the Who's the Murderer 7 Spring Festival 2022 concert. Official subs have since come out, but I have very strong feelings about the song.

曾經我也想過一了百了 (Who's the Murderer 7 concert) [LYRIC VIDEO]

Here's the lyric video I created today by importing the subtitle file and freezing the frames from the original video. And then adding, because I could, ~*extra effects*~ including some tacky falling petals, to give the stills a sense of motion. I also applied a gradient layer so the video is darker at the bottom and the subs (in plain white text) are actually readable.

Extra footage and effects are from Videezy (free, with attribution) and Pixabay (free, no attribution required). Some GIFs because unnecessary labor begets more unnecessary promotional labor, you have to milk these things:



I also typed up my translation here on Tumblr so it's all in text form.

Other Notes:

I initially mistranslated 荧幕 (TV screen) as "computer screen" (the original JP the word was パソコン, which does mean computer, and I assumed the Chinese would be the same); I have corrected this with the help of fwoopersongs's translation and detailed translation notes of the same song—you can read it all here on Tumblr, or watch their subbed video here (which also has the Chinese lyrics and pinyin):

Watch on YouTube

泪光中微笑的你: fwoopersongs and I have very different readings of this line haha. I’m not sure if it’s grammatically sensible to read the tears as belonging to the narrator, but this is an assumption I made from context: 1) the last 3 lines felt like they were all pertaining to an outsider reaching in, 2) I thought it was a callback to the first chorus, where the narrator was talking about unstoppable tears.

I translated it as It was your smile that I could see through my tears while YJ/fwoopersongs translated it as You, in that vast sea of people, you smile through your tears, which also makes sense emotionally, especially for Zhang Xincheng’s character in that Who’s the Murderer case, so I’m leaving both options here. (I trust YJ way more than I trust me though, haha)

Found out while doing the thumbnail for the lyric video that I lost most of my fonts during my 6+ months of computer issues (which are still ongoing, but I've rolled back and bandaided my problem). Now I'm sad. :((((((((((

I feel like I should have stopped after the first chorus and maybe not animated the lyrics too much but I really want to play with Da Vinci Resolve's type tools? I haven't figured out how to merge text layers or how fusion compositions work. ;___; I also set an imaginary deadline of having to finish before the weekend because I got too caught up working on this that I couldn't get myself to do anything else at night or listen to my friend's new album.


Notes:

Started Wednesday, finished Sunday. My nights have been free since I quit my part-time job, so I didn't have to lose sleep over this. XD

I'm mildly annoyed because this wasn't the thing I wanted to work on, but the song came out of shuffle and I had a flashback to the gifset I made based on it in 2018.

1 fanvid ago I couldn't even figure out how to get the dropshadow to appear. Now I have mastered it. XD

Just as I started this, my brain was like "but WHAT IF FFXV VERSION". I did end up mentally outlining what an FFXV version would look like before I realized that doing a vid to the same song I've had on repeat would drive me crazy actually!

I have discovered!!! The coloring panel!!! I'm not much of a coloring person but it's useful to be able to brighten up dark scenes.

I feel like I discovered a lot of other things but I'm presently too sick of thinking about this hahaha.

For nirvanainfirefest Challenge #3: DVD Commentary, I'm gonna try to walk through the process of creating the multimedia NiF x Persona 5 fusion that I created for swanfrost for NiF Exchange 2018 [best viewed on carrd]. I've always wanted to document it because it went through so many phases, I just never knew how to begin.

For the prompt: ensemble cast | persona 5 au, feel free to follow the plot of p5 or to use the setting/lore as inspiration! notes: bonus points for character study-esque writing and using the mcs/linshu naming conventions cleverly; happy ending please

At the time I was creating it, I was also doing a lot of tedious work at night, and I was working on NiF Exchange in bits and pieces to give myself a break. I mostly remember the backaches and basically had to avoid being on the computer on my downtime for like 2 years. :)) I have an office chair now, though, and life has been better (and more productive) because of it. Can't believe I waited til 2021 to get one. /o\

tl;dr - summary of the process:

Coming up with the concept (in which I decided I wanted to do a fanvid/lyric vid)

Outlining what I wanted to include in the vid

Initial studies and visual development

Learning to vid and do basic motion effects on AE ajs;afjda;fja;

Tracing selected characters into lines and vector shapes on AI (I just needed 5, enough for the Phantom Thieves deck)

Designing the cards on PS (again, I only needed 5 of each design)

Putting the illustrated and animated elements in the vid

Realizing I could do the rest of the tarot deck, actually???

Presentation: gifs, carrd

WARNING: Mega-long and image-heavy post ahead!
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Also on AO3

Second attempt at vidding--the first one was in 2018, and it took me an entire month to put out something that was barely over a minute long. I used a trial version of Adobe Aftereffects last time, learning as I went, but I can uhhh no longer get AE to work for me? So I downloaded Davinci Resolve 15 (free) and I like it! I don't vid so I don't really have any basis of comparison, but for simple vidding with typesetting (like in the video) I found it pretty intuitive to use. I guess it helps that I've used AfterEffects that one time so I have a rough idea of keyframing basics so I can get the type to behave how I want it to.

I'm not very sure what other features it has. I still don't know how color grading works (took me forever to desaturate the Dear Missy clips--if I had to replicate a type of coloring, I wouldn't be able to do it), and if I can do any kind of masking in it. There's a fancier paid version that has more bells and whistles and motion graphics functionality, but I probably don't need those?

Anyway I'm trying to be better at documenting my process, so:

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