Another Termina

I have enjoyed playing the games Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross a great deal, and in doing so I have become a fan of the video game composer Yasunori Mitsuda. Using my recently acquired Adobe Master Collection, I've been having some fun remixing songs with Adobe Audition. One of those songs being "Another Termina" from Chrono Cross. At the moment I have yet to upload my remixed version of the actual song, but I do have something potentially more interesting for you:

Funny Series

So there's a fun podcast I discovered on iTunes called Yu-gi-oh: The Abridges Series. Frankly I think when people dub anime into English they should do what these guys do and actually edit the lip syncing to go with the words rather than constrain the voice actors in such a way that makes them sound rehearsed. But I digress again...


Funny show. I suggest you try it. This episode in particular made me laugh harder than I've laughed in quite some time:

MP3 Compression

So I was playing with sound, and as an experiment I took a song from my music folder and dissected it. When I was finished playing with my new sound software, I exported the music as an MP3 with a variable bit rate for maximum quality/file size balance.

I then tried something new. I exported three more files as different bit rates so I could hear the difference in sound between all the files of the same song. 236kbps was the max quality bit rate I ended up with for the variable original, then 64kbps, 32, and 16 for the other three. It's weird how 64kbps sounds like it converted the music from stereo to mono. As the bit rate decreases it sounds more and more like it was being performed under water, and when you get to 16kbps it just sounds so "tinny" and terrible it makes me cringe.

If you're interested to hear these files, I uploaded them to minus.com as a .zip file (which I find to be a bit ironic, as .zip files are a form of compression). Here's the download link:
http://i.minus.com/1329186386/JnbnfEt-k6gDfdyWpLaIww/dD1s7T1wIKBrW.zip

Frog Raccoon Strawberry

I would like to share the animatic pilot to a show called called Frog Raccoon Strawberry. It's about a Raccoon girl by the name of Strawberry Fields who dresses up like (and believes that she is) a frog for some reason. I love this kind of humor, but unfortunately the sound quality and voice acting is a bit shoddy in this particular video.

FRS - animatic pilot by ~Jeibi on deviantART

Website Interactivity

Interactivity in website design seems to be growing all the time, but mostly from an animation point of view. We don't see much of raw video itself being manipulated to provide interactivity. I have dabbled in interactive animation myself when I created my portfolio interface in Flash about 4 years ago. There's a certain amount of consideration the designer should bear in mind about usability. It's sometimes rather easy to get carried away with the way you're adding the content; you forget that people are impatient and require easy access to the information for which they are looking.

One example of somebody who went a bit overboard with the interactivity in their website is M. Night Shyamalan. Sure it's creative, it sets the mood well, but there's no alternative navigation to allow the non-gaming community easier access. I could most certainly imagine my mother giving up on figuring out the website within 12 seconds after being given the controls. Maybe after she obtained the information she was looking for in the first place she'd be more inclined to appreciate the websites construction and interactivity.

One fantastic example of animation in web design is Jim Carrey's website. The designer went completely overboard with the crazy interactive madness, but there's still a bar at the bottom for a simpler navigation alternative.

But I digress, all of this is still animation. When I think of an interactive movie on a website, I think of the old movies that would prompt you to make a decision to progress the story, thereby affecting the outcome. Well I just so happened to stumble across exactly that on this website. It's called Survive the Outbreak, and you are prompted throughout the movie to decide which actions to take to survive during a zombie apocalypse.

Still, this interactive video is not being used for the actual website's design. The only example I can think of (that I know of) that uses real video footage in web design no longer exists. Allstategarage.com used to use Flash to combine a number of different videos into one interactive experience, and there would be some guys building a bike in the garage while you navigate. Luckily, after a little digging, I seem to have found some video footage and screenshots on this website that show what the old allstategarage.com used to look like.

I found an interesting example of something I had never thought of before in interactive online video. James Cameron's Avatar Pandorama takes the video footage from your webcam and attempts to key out your background to put you into the world of Pandora. As you move your hand toward the plant life, the plants move as though you're touching them. I've seen this sort of technology with the Xbox Kinect, but I've never seen it online used with a webcam before.

We have definitely made some interesting and revolutionary progress in online interactivity since I first used the internet in the mid 90's.

Adam Phillips and John Berry

As an animation enthusiast, I have played with Flash for many years. In doing so, I have also stumbled upon many others how have also played with Flash for many years. Funny how that works out...


I discovered John Berry and his Evil Josh and Billy series during my time on Deviant Art, and ever since I have stalked him and his animation and comedy goodness. If you haven't yet heard of this man, you should watch every episode of Evil Josh & Billy. John Berry is also working with this other guy on an animated short called Weird Eddy: Luck of the Oafish, which I hope they finish someday and it ends up on Cartoon Network.


Here's the storyboard video for Weird Eddy, and you should also check out John's Demo Reel and DeviantArt page.


On a less comedic and cartoony note, there's Adam Phillips. His animation work is breathtakingly amazing, and if you have never seen the Brackenwood series, then you have no idea what you're missing. I admittedly haven't checked up on Adam's website in some time, but he teaches a BiteyCastle 2D FX Animation course, and he has been working to get a Brackenwood video game in development. His animation and art skills with Flash are stunning, and the creative stories that he writes behind all the animations are equally stunning.


Adam's website/blog is http://biteycastle.com, and a good first episode of the Brackenwood animation for you to see is Littlefoot.

Browsers and Internet Life

Greetings viewers and classmates, both of whom are one and the same.


     To better illustrate my daily interests, it has come to my attention that I should speak of the websites I visit regularly. But before I explain the websites I visit, (because I'm a tech geek) I should probably start with the browser I use to visit said websites, and explain why it is my browser of choice. I used Internet Explorer back in the days of my earlier youth (around 10 or 11 years of age), but I then discovered Mozilla Firefox. I enjoyed the many features and add-ons that Firefox offered, but as of last year I have come to realize that Google Chrome has extensions that act in a similar manner. Firefox has been growing too large and complex, which causes it to bog down and become slow. Google Chrome however remains fast and simplified, and manages to pull off the extensions without the constant need for updates and extra loading times when opening the program. As a result of these realizations, Chrome has become my browser of choice due to its superior speed and similar features to Firefox.


     As much as I would like to say otherwise, Facebook is my top most visited website, partly due to my instinctive reaction to open it as soon as my browser starts. I try not to live in an online world like Facebook  even though our real world seems to be swapping over to the digital age. I use Facebook to check on how my friends are doing, and to update them on my life - I rarely ever use Facebook for anything more. Living in the world of Facebook causes one to become engrossed in the online lives of other people, and promotes self-centeredness, gossip, a false sense of approval from others, and a lacking of self-discovery. Many of the friends people have on their Facebook friends list are never contacted in the real world, nor have they even met in person. Facebook should not be used as a substitute for your social life, it should merely be a tool to improve it.


     Next in line from Facebook is Google+, which I open at the same time as Facebook in hopes that it might take over the social networking world. Facebook has made many blunders in the past that could have easily been avoided had they respected their users, whereas Google has a good track record as far as I'm concerned. I would rather not go into specifics as to what Facebook has done in the past (I'm lazy), but for the sake of irony, you can click this link if you're curious, http://www.google.com. I treat Google+ the same way I treat Facebook, and therefore have the same opinions. My visits to Google+ are more in hopes that people will swap over to it than anything else.


     In third place after Google+ is Yahoo! Mail. I check my email on a daily basis. Not much is really to be said about that to be honest. We all check our email, don't we?


     One website which I haven't been visiting as often as I used to lately (but I think is worth mentioning) is The Daily Show website. Jon Stewart's show may be a satirical comedy, but he does use valid statistics, and actual news footage. I use The Daily Show as a method of keeping up on recent events, as the comedic approach helps to keep things interesting and watchable. Where the regular news networks only report dramatic things that will keep their viewers' attention through embellishment, The Daily Show makes fun of the news for not reporting stories of actual validity, then tells a more broad variety of stories with a relevant interview afterward. I think modern reporting could learn from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, as he does a better job than they do despite his show not actually being an actual news program.


     And now finally we come to Netflix, number 5 of my listing of websites that I visit. Netflix streaming is my method of TV watching, as I do not have satellite service. Using Netflix streaming, I can watch every episode of Star Trek TNG, the first two seasons of Warehouse 13, That '70s Show, Psych, etc. I probably watch around 1 TV show per day from this website. Between Netflix and Hulu+, you probably have all the TV you need right there, which kind of makes paying for satellite service obsolete. Netflix is quite enjoyable - particularly when you're not the one paying for it. ;)