Phew! One of the best ways to end the year!
I got to be incredibly productive this month, in part due to this project which was always on my mind, and seeing others get so invested in it made me so so happy. Especially Hibya! Hibya was so fired up when we were talking about making a video for the project, and he started instantly making a bunch of backgrounds and coloring Aude-Javel's character sketches! Just, forget that Mim said "let's do something that doesn't take a bunch of time" (we were kinda ALL overflowing with projects; I had a ton of homework to do as well but i didn't care!!! PASSION comes first!!!!) and um. it became, what it is!
To get a bit into how it all happened, we were first thinking about joining it back in... July, I believe. months passed and we knew we'd be singing Poka Poka Planet, so I started training my voice ever since! Everyone started by singing the same 4 lines of the song, so Mim could tune everyone's voices to know what it'd kinda sound like in the final version. Then, we tried to check which duets sounded the best, in order to give everyone a sort of equal amount of lines. The result is SOMEWHAT correct, except Spose and I end up having more due to our solo part after the first chorus.
don't take this image as 100% correct because I believe we changed a BUNCH of things from the actual script in the final mix and didn't stick to this 999%, but yeah. good luck making color coded vocals during the choruses! Gyromancy has way less lines because she's doing a BUNCH of harms, particularly the high ones as her voice is IMPRESSIVE HOLY WOWZERS...
I had a hard time with recording because it's quite a high song, so I recorded high and low versions of the song. As the first person to record, I decided to do the entire song just in case we'd need extra lines, if someone was unable to record, something like that. It made me realize the power of vocal correction because hearing my voice in the final mix made me realize that people need to be a bit kinder with themselves! We constantly put pressure on ourselves to always sing good and perfectly, but remind yourself that a bunch of what you hear is heavily edited (and/or, has had 204390 takes before the correct one, just like I had to do for the choruses.) ! A great way to gauge whether you should be jealous of one's vocal performance is through live performances. And use that jealousy to motivate yourself to become better, not as an excuse to be like "I'll never be as good as them."!!
(jingles keys around) WIP VIDEOS HERE LOOK LOOOK HERE
Anyway, let's get back to the actual project!
We started working on the video on December 7. Hibya started making a few backgrounds, we had a few character ideas and once i had all the character sketches and a few backgrounds I got to work on ACTUALLY making the video and laying out the ideas. Started out with an EXTREMELY basic storyboard which had just a few ideas for camera shots, but nothing else. When it comes to these projects where the deadline is super close and I have a bunch of work, I tend to improvise and just use everything I've learned at first, and then if I have the time, add things I'm unsure will work; and experiment a bit. If I'm unhappy with a shot then, then i'll just, remove it as long as it doesn't cause other team members to change assets! When I'm working with a team, I tend to think more about "Will this annoy them?" more than "Will this be annoying for me?" because I love working on projects like these so... it's never annoying, thankfully!!
Here's the first WIP I've shared with the team, which had the first shot, the intro, first lines and early chorus.
(WIP from December 16)As you can see, most of the early things have not changed at all, except for the chorus. I didn't have many ideas for the chorus, but seeing as we had arranged for each lines to be duets, the idea of having two characters face-to-face quickly came to mind...probably after playing Infinity Nikki for a bit, and then coming back to the project.
(WIP from December 16, but 5 hours later.) This WIP has the first draft of the chorus along with other parts, major difference (aside from a bunch of obvious things) is that Gyromancy is BEHIND the streetlight, also that Aude-Javel and Eolienne are missing. For Gyromancy it was that I was like "She's literally CONSTANTLY doing the harms during the chorus so, might as well have her in the background constantly atleast!" and Hibya told me to move her infront which is way better he's right WWWWWWWWWWWW
For Aude-Javel and Eolienne, my original plan was putting them in the credits section (in this WIP it's not there yet, but it's the part where it moves to the sky after the first chorus and there's NOTHING during 20 seconds.), but after thinking about it with the team, they said it'd be cool if they were in the choruses with everyone as well. And poof! there they are now!
(WIP from December 21) OK not to make this about myself (on a website called yumarowen) but i confessed to my crush and got rejected literally 20 hours before and i'm super glad this project was here to change my mind LMAO. but anyway!! the WIP contains the final chorus only because I was SUPER proud of it. Hibya asked if I needed more backgrounds and sent me a pic of that one from the original MV and I was like "wait, for the final chorus it could be good..." and yeah, well! It is! I'm so happy because I truly feel like it gives the project an even bigger oompf!
After this, I went and did "consistency checks", aka, if every scene had the correct snowball effects, if the added lights were infact working... and if you look at a comparison from WIP1 to Final, you can see how things evolved! (though lighting wise this is not the best shot considering it's all in the ambient lights and there's not a bunch of lighting tricks)
We then all checked if we liked the final mix, changed things here and there with Kaiji and BOOM! you get a wholesome cute video straight out of the oven! (Read "oven" as my computer being super hot due to After Effects)
Thank you for reading, and happy new year!
if youre still wondering about my crush. its because he's straight
