wtorek, 31 sierpnia 2010

tek9 movie contest upload period is over..

..and I didn't submit anything. After changing plans few times, in the end I didn't have much time left. I think they should change their stupid release rules next time, I'll make a forum post at tek9 later.

Looking at their ftp server I see at least 3 quake movies coming up:
- O.M.G._2_by_DisSidenT.rar
- The_Gate_Keepers_by_zeroql.rar
- Rebirth_by_grzesiek.rar (not 100% sure about this one)

Looking forward to these, especially zeroql's one. According to the contest schedule the video release period starts on September the 3rd and ends on the 17th.

afterspray - summary

Five days after releasing the movie, now that things calmed down, I'd like to sum everything up.

As I previously posted, the release exceeded my expectations by far. Which was a nice surprise =) Also, the majority of the comments were positive. At ESR the rating reached 8.3 with 175 votes (you can rate it from 0 to 10). On youtube it received 126 'likes' and only 3 'dislikes', also it was favourited 89 times. With all this said, I think it's safe to say that the video was received rather well.

Time for some stats, at the moment the video has 1034 downloads, over 10.000 views on YouTube and over 4.000 views on own3d.tv. 14.000 views is really a lot in such a short period of time and it's not all because I'm not counting views from different streams uploaded by other people.

It wouldn't get so much attention if it wouldn't be spread by people all over the world. It was posted on a lot of sites, initially I wanted to post links to all of them here but I realized it would take a lot of work :)

A nice thing is that my movie got to the featured movie page on own3d.tv (notice the most common typo that ppl do in my nickname)
Really nice to see something like that, although I'm not sure if it really increases the number of views significantly.


My movie also got some honours on YouTube, they're constantly changing and I'll probably make a post later when they'll improve (if they will :) ) Apart from that my profile got an award too "#85 - Most Viewed (This Week) - Poland". It will surely also change. We'll if it can get any higher. Also, if my memory works fine, a few days ago the profile award said something like #17 -most viewed (Today) - Poland, pretty cool. :)

I hope my future project will match the success of afterspray. We'll see about that. :)

piątek, 27 sierpnia 2010

Few words for clarification

Hah, I couldn't imagine a better release of afterspray, not even in my wildest dreams. It's a huge success and it only motivates me to work on further projects. I won't be going into details just yet, gonna release some numbers and charts tomorrow.

What I wanted to write in this post is a response to a couple of comments.

First of all, the title. I had a hard time with finding a good name for the movie. Some of you might heard the ESR's "I'm spraying cum everywhere!" (when for example a tourney is announced, or is drawing near). Later on Carmac, a well known ESL employee, used a modified version of the sentance in his ESR columns, for example "IEM European Championship - sprayworthy?" or "IEM World Championship - let's (s)pray". I thought it would be nice to name the movie in a similar fashion.

Next, fox name tag. Everyone thinks it's a dinosaur skeleton, when in fact it is supposed to be a upright fox skeleton. I found the original image with google, I was looking for a fox skeleton / skull. I really like the image and as I mentioned in the previous post - this name tag is my favourite.


Calipt, heh. That's a funny story as I already explained at ESR I didn't have an idea what to use as calipt's name tag, so I had a little chat with him on irc. He said that he likes wearing caps so a cap would be nice. So I googled it and a bunch of different caps showed up, I found this outstanding image and showed it to him as I found it funny, but I didn't thought about actually using it. He said he loves it and asked if I could photoshop his face into it and use it. And so I did ;)

środa, 25 sierpnia 2010

The Afterspray - my newest quakelive movie


Finally, over almost 6 months of work it's finished. Making this movie took A LOT of my free time, but it was fun, and it was worth it. I hope you'll enjoy it.

For now just a direct download link, I will update this post with streams and mirrors.

maverickservers.com
YouTube

As for additional content, I will upload all the demos from both events, downloading them from ESL site was really a pain and took a couple of hours to click every demo one by one.

Here's a slideshow of the screenshots of the editor shot, I think it looks quite interesting.

Here we have some rejected name tags, most of them look pretty hilarious.

Here's a preview of my favourite name tag I made, which belongs to fox.

More stuff to come later.

wtorek, 24 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #23 - last update :)

The movie is done, as I'm typing this I'm rendering the whole thing. It will be released tomorrow in the afternoon. You might ask yourself, "why not now? Isn't it done yet?!". Well, yeah it's done, but first it has to render which takes about 1,5 of an hour, then I have to compress it, which takes 2 and a half of an hour. Afterwards I have to upload it, which takes quite a while, considering my upload rate is at pathetic 30 kbps. Also, I want to upload it to a couple of places before I release it. Also, I'm pretty sure that after rendering/compressing I'll find some detail that should be fixed. It might be something really, really small, but I'll still fix and re-render the whole thing. I can't wait to have this released. :)

edit, oh yeah, I almost forgot. Here's the final editor shot, and a second one where I made the tracks flat so you can see everything, :)

poniedziałek, 23 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #22

Ugh, movie isn't ready yet. Working on these name tags can be frustrating. First I work on an animation for an hour or so and then after rendering it I'm not happy about it at all.

That's why the movie isn't done yet. I could make half-assed name tags in a few minutes and release the movie even today, but I would feel very bad about it.

I hope I'll finalize everything tomorrow. Just a few name tags left after all. We'll see. Here's the current editor shot in the meanwhile.

Today the uploading period for the tek9 movie contest began. So there's almost a week to end the side project. And I'm not sure what to do as well. I'd have quite a lot of work to do if I want to pull the side project together on time. But then again, the iem4 movie isn't done yet. I wouldn't want to withdraw from the contest.. entering with the iem4 movie is also a possibility but I don't know if that's a good idea, especially because their weird release rules that I've mentioned about before. Also, my dad needs my helping hand everyday so free time slips away easily. All this makes me feel really uneasy. In the end I'll probably leave the contest and release the iem4 normally, as planned. 

On a side note, apparently Han-Sai's ZeroQL, a really good movie maker, famous for his QL movie 'Unagi' and a couple of q3 titles has entered the contest. I can't wait to see his contest entry, also I wish him best of luck.

Daily update #21

Today, sadly enough I wasn't able to do much, due to a thunderstorm that passed by (god these freakin' thunderstorms) there were some power outages. Later I found some difficulties, I'll get back to work tomorrow morning.

niedziela, 22 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #20

Due to an unexpected power outage last night I was unable to make a blog update.

 Right now I'm designing / editing / adding names tags. It's a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to see comments about them. 

When I rendered the movie last time I noticed a slow moment that interrupts the flow of the movie. It might be hard to fix it, but I'll try to figure something out. Apart from that, apparently I overlooked (overheard? :)) one audio file that still needs fixing. Adjusting it won't be troublesome tho.

Here's yesterday's editor shot. As you can notice, some new stuff appeared above the video clips, those are the mentioned name tags, when finished, they'll be all over the place ;)

Anyway, things are looking good and I expect to release the movie either this night or tomorrow. I'm going to post it simultaneously at the main Quakelive site, ESR and maybe some other community pages. I will upload it to youtube, own3d and a server for direct download of course. Also there will be some additional content posted here. So stay tuned! ;)

sobota, 21 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #19

Again, a lot of work done. Tomorrow I'll add the name tags. I'm going to leave the laptop running and render the whole movie. If everything is alright I'll release the movie soon.

Here's today's editor shot. As you can see the movie is 5 minutes and 36 seconds long. Someone could say it's short, but I think it's fine, quality > quantity after all. :)

piątek, 20 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #18

Jeez, another day of solid hard work. I'm silly tired again.

The frag part is pretty much put together. Still, some audio to fix, tweak this, change that. Gonna look for weaker parts of the vid for possible replacements.

When all frags will be in place, I'll start to add name tags, that will probably take a couple of hours, considering rendering previews and stuff like that.

Today I also started work on my side project for the tek9 contest. I gathered tons of resources, also started capturing some footage, I have a lot of neat ideas in my head, but I'm not sure how will I put everything together.. probably gonna think about it tomorrow. I also can't wait to get my hands on the quakecon demos. I hope they'll upload them soon, considering that the contest upload period starts in 3 days and lasts for a week .)

I want to finally finish all this stuff and take a break from movie making for a while. Sure, I have a new project in my head, and I'm already accepting demos for it, but I won't work on it right away. I'll probably start things a while after the end of holidays, when I'll be settled in the dorm again. And I'll probably finish around christmas, or so .) But yea, those are just speculations. We'll see how things go.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, here's the editor shot. There are some audio clips missing at the end. I'll fix that tomorrow.

czwartek, 19 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #17

I've done really a lot today, the editor shot doesn't reflect it at all .D

Didn't start working on the side project yet. Mhm, I hope I'll still make it in time. If not, oh well.

I'm so dead tired I don't know what else to write.

So instead, here's today's editor shot.

środa, 18 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #16

Today, I didn't manage to do a lot. Re-recorded the clip that needed it, editted some ingame audio file so it fit the movie nicely. Right now, I'm rendering everything I did so far, to see if there's anything wrong.

A friend showed me his youtube channel with a custom background, that motivated me to make my own, right now it's just a temporary one, couldn't get myself to make something more fancy.

Also, I was goofying around with photoshop and made some funny stuff. Posted it on ESR. Plus magnet .)

No editor shot today, but tomorrow I'll do my best to make some progress in the frag part. Also, I'll probably finally start the side project for the tek9 contests.

wtorek, 17 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #14 and #15

Yesterday, I wasn't able to make a post because of the massive thunderstorm that was coming and going during the evening which eventually leaded to power outage in the night. 

Because of the wheather I wasn't able to do a thing. The only notable thing I've made was measuring the time my sony vegas turns on. It takes almost 30 minutes, lol. Hardcore.

Today, the power went out a few times as well, they were probably fixing some power lines. But this time I made some significant progress, sorted out all the audio issues encountered so far. Also, I spent around 2 hours on fine polishing the intro, and it's done. It's nice and short. :)

I've also messed around with some frags, but didn't make a lot of progress there. 

Time is slipping away and the tek9 contest deadline draws near. I have a lot of ideas in my head for the side project thingy and I'll do my best to make it in time, dunno if I'll make it tho. I'll probably use latest qcon demos as well so stay tuned. :)

Oh, yeah. Here's today's editor shot. Things are starting to look busy. At the same time, it's pretty clean, I really like this shot. :)

sobota, 14 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #13

Today I took a day off :)

Daily update #12

Today, I've made just a little progress. Recorded a clip for the intro transition again, hopefully it will do. Put a few frags together.

I was busy with other stuff today, like quakecon stream :> Also, finally my external HDD arrived so I was transfering some stuff on it - like 130GB, lol. Took like 4 hours or so. :D But yeah, space problems on my laptop solved. :)

piątek, 13 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #11

Today I solved a performance issue which was slowing me down a lot. Because of that I was able to put a lot of stuff together! :)

So yeah, here's today's editor shot. A lot of new things, the 2nd half of the frag part is kind of messy, right now. I've put some long frags there that fit, later I'll work around them.

It appears that I'll have to re-record some in-game sounds, because their volume is too low. 

Now that I have sorted out the performance issue, and if I'll maintain this tempo, I might be able to have the frag part done by Sunday. We'll see how things go. :)

czwartek, 12 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #10

Today, I have rendered previews of all remaining frags, then I rated them, and sorted out.

I've added a couple of frags to the movie, forgot to take the editor shot tho.

I also started to gather material for the tek9 contest entry, I'll start work on it soon.

środa, 11 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #9

Things are going slowly, I've rendered some previews of my footage to remind myself how the frags look like. (it's hard to playback 200fps .avi's)

Vegas is getting on my nerves. When I was working on some of my previous projects, I thought that it would be nice to work on high fps clips, so I could slow them down easily using vegas. But now when I've done it, it appears that it's eating up most of my pc resources. Vegas opens the project file for about 15 minutes, and the more clips I add to the project, the longer it takes.

No editor shot today, just added one frag, nothing special changed.

Tomorrow, I'll render more previews and probably gonna continue putting the frags together.

wtorek, 10 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #8

Sadly enough yesterday I didn't manage to make any progress at all. During the day I had to help my dad with something. In the evening there were some short power outages after the thunderstorm that coming and going for the whole day yesterday. In the night I was helping a few new players, teaching them the basics.

Yesterday, tek9 released the global intro for their latest "Sapphire movie contest". That means I'll soon start working on the side project that I will enter the contest with.

Anyway, apparently I'll have quite a bit of free time today, so I'll do my best to make up for the yesterday's lost time. :)

poniedziałek, 9 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #7!

I've made quite a lot today.

Besides adding several frags, I've finally connected the intro with the frag part. In order to do it, I've recorded a short clip with a little help from 2 friends.

Also, to avoid confusion and errors while puttings the frags together, I've made an overview of my footage and I've used that to see the order of the clips I've already used. It's the first time I'm doing something like this in photoshop. (In my previous projects I'd usually print a screenshot of my footage folder and write down numbers with a pen) I really like the colours for each player. (the numbers at the bottom don't mean anything, I use them to mark the order on the frags)

At the end of the day I've rendered everything that I've made so far, I'm quite happy about the results, but there's still a couple of moments I'm going to improve.

Here's today's editor shot, quite a bit different than the recent ones.

http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/4278/day7.png


Tomorrow, I'll continue to put the frags together, I might fix some stuff too, we'll see :)

niedziela, 8 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #6

Again, today I wasn't able to do much. Quakelive is unstable, kept on crashing. That's why I was able to only fix one out of two flawed clips. Besides that, I've added a mare single frag. 

Here's today's editor shot, almost identical with the yesterday's one.

Tomorrow, I'll do my best to speed things up!

sobota, 7 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #5

Not much to say today, pretty much nothing changed since yesterday, added a couple of frags. QL still isn't up, not going to wait for it. I'm going to bed. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be finally able to rerecord the flawed clips and make that 'intro-frag part transition'.

Of course here's today's editor shot.

Cya tomorrow

piątek, 6 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #4

Once again, I didn't have time at all during the day and ended up working on the movie during the night. Also, because of QuakeLive downtime I was unable to make the 'intro-frag part transition'. I'll hopefully do that tomorrow, if the update won't mess up things, I'm a bit worried about demo playback on some maps..

Anyway, yeah - big news, big update. QL won't be beta anymore, they're introducing premium and pro accounts that aren't free of charge anymore. We'll see how things will work out. 

Here's today's editor shot. As you can see at one point I've put a marker to remember that I have to rerecord that clip. Handy thing.

Cya tomorrow!

czwartek, 5 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #3 :)

Unfortunately, today, due to lack of time, I wasn't able to do much. I started messing around with the video in the late evening and damn, I forgot that putting frags together was so much fun :) 

I only managed to lay down just a few frags but I really like what I've done so far.

Here's a new editor shot, you can see the 3 frags I've put together, the in-game sounds below the song, and the name tags above the frags :)

Tomorrow I'll continue on puttings frags together, also if I'll have enough time I'll make a transition between the intro bit and the frag part.

środa, 4 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #2!

I've done quite a bit today, pretty much got the intro ready, I've also rendered a short gameplay clip to check if everything is alright. I've sent it to a few trusted players to check if they can playback it properly. 

After asking ESR members for their opinion, I've decided not to submit this movie for the tek9 contest, instead my entry will be a funny mix, I'm sure people will like it. :)

Here's today's editor shot.

Tomorrow, I'll most probably start putting frags together. :)


wtorek, 3 sierpnia 2010

Daily update #1


As promised here's the first daily update! Today, I've setup a good .veg (sony vegas file) for the video. Had to enter the right frame rate, resolution and stuff like that, pretty boring but it didn't take more than 10 minutes because I basically based it on the trailer one :)

Most of the work today I've spent on making a nice ESL logo animation for the intro bit. Luckily I found a high res version of the logo. I've put it into photoshop and seperated stuff into different layers, upper stripe, lower stripe, background and so on :) The outcome looks pretty decent, I'll probably fine polish it later on. 

Here's an editor ss, almost nothing to see yet :)

I also worked a bit on some name tags again, still a couple of players left.

Tomorrow, I'll probably make a "Hell5pawn videos" intro, with the usual no-life "room" :D Gotta think what to put on the monitor :) Cya tomorrow!

poniedziałek, 2 sierpnia 2010

Next stage!

I'm done with demos. Today, I finally finished rendering lossless quality footage. My footage folder now contains 79 .avi files and uses 140 GB of my HDD. That's quite a lot, I'm not sure if I had this much for my previous projects. I won't use everything though, I think about 1/4 of those avi's won't make it to the final movie.

Few days ago I started working with photoshop, making name tags to be exact. It's a lot of fun :) I hope people will like them, there's a lot of variety, I don't want to follow one pattern.

A while ago I was thinking whether I'll use this movie for the current Tek9 contest or my next project. Now when there's about a month till the end of the contest, the question changes: Should I enter the contest with the IEM4 movie or should I withdraw. The worst thing about entering the tek9 contest would be the release, according to the rules I won't be able to upload the movie anywhere else before the voting/judging period is over.. which really sucks, because to download the movie, people would have to register at tek9 site. From experience (Zero) I know that people don't want to register at sites to vote/download.. I'll probably make a post at ESR and ask people if they would support me. 

Oh, btw I'm planning to post daily updates of my work on the vid. Stay tuned! :)