Ice Cream!

Another misc project I did for one of my college classes:

Bonus Stage

Bonus Stage is the only Flash series I know of (and like) that has over 80 episodes, and some episodes that are actually ~15 minute specials. From what I've seen, usually Flash webtoons are short, and their creators tend to either get bored with the series or busy with life before they get anywhere near 80 episodes. I believe Bonus Stage started on keentoons.com, though I could be mistaken.

It is a strange series with little details here and there that make it interesting. I'll see what I can do to summarize it. Bonus Stage is based on a world created by a brilliant inventor, whose goal was to create the greatest webtoon of all time by using three of his friends as guinea pigs in a virtual simulation of the entire planet. 

-Joel (on the left) is supposedly the genius who created the world. Though hyper-intelligent with technology, he is actually an insane numb-nuts who makes little sense. But his comical hijinks and sheer stupidity make him work wonders for the show's plot device.

-Phil (the middle one) is one of Joel's friends. He's an ex-superhero who, unfortunately, is stuck in Bonus Stage. He's a generally rational person, and he provides many of our comic reactions from Joel's insanity. Phil's super-powers and generally not shown, despite the repeated states of peril the group tend to end up in.

-Elly (on the right) is the girl. Phil has a crush on her, she has a crush on Joel, and apparently Joel has a girlfriend (though she's rarely shown). Love triangles aside, Elly also plays the part of Evil, one of the show's antagonists. Who would've known, huh? Cute little Elly, a maniacal chaos-thriving madwoman...

There are plenty of other characters, but at this point I think the best way to get a feel for this show is to see an episode. I recommend this one in particular - Episode 84. It was the first episode I ever watched, and it had me in stitches. Note however that since the above picture, Elly has been redrawn to have a more publically appealing chest.

More episodes can be found either on youtube or here.

John Berry's Demo Reel

Just in case you guys haven't already, you should see John Berry's animation demo reel. I want to see more of his work, so someone should hire him.

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