Jan. 16th, 2022

lizardjay: Sakura Haruno looking skeptical (Default)
I find the Snowflake Challenge to be slightly intimidating BUT the latest one is basically something i wanted to do anyway, so...

In your own space, celebrate a personal win from the past year: it can be a list of fanworks you're especially proud of, a gift of your time to the community, a quality or skill you cultivated in yourself, something you generally feel went well. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

2021 was a great year for me, AMV-wise! I mean in a sense it's my first full year, since I started in spring 2020, and honestly the stress and isolation of the pandemic (along with my job) is probably the main reason why I've spent so much time on all this. We'll have to see what consistent output level I'll have once life is a little better.

But! I made 10 AMVs in 2021. This is a slowing of pace from 2020 (how did I make 10 AMVs from May to December 2020???) but still very respectable. My goal is to make 24 in 24 months (so, by May 2022) and I think that's doable. Overall I think this year really cemented for me that this is something I like and that I'm good at. It's really strange; I've never been so automatically confident in something I've made before. I can see the flaws in every video I make, of course, but I also genuinely believe they're really good.

This year I tried a lot of new things. I made an entire split-screen AMV where each half focused on a different character. I edited in show dialogue over music, to the beat. I made child-Obito into a ghost and inserted him into other scenes. I experimented with a lot of effects and most of them worked out (Chroma Keyer, my friend and nemesis...).

My favorite of them all is always biased to whichever one I just finished, so lately it's Honey. I spent so much time on this (╥_╥) ... I hand traced dozens (...hundreds?) of individual frames. I think it turned out great! Not just for the ghost effects, although those are good, but also I think my timing on fight scenes just keeps getting better.