Raggedstar – Journey – Voice of the Journey

…what? July isn’t too late to have your first AMV of the year. Well, technically this is more of a GMV (gaming music video), but no matter. This has got to be the fastest I’ve ever made a video with Vegas 0__0. About 4 days of actual work.

AMV Files Entry

Read the article if you want to know some of the more specific details. I would fill this thing up too fast using the description.

Anyways, this is the story of Journey told from the perspective of the being in white as a call to a journey (the background of that journey…I can’t say since the lore of Journey is kinda hazy). That’s the TLDR version. I’ve noticed Journey is a very tough source to work with because it tells it’s story through gameplay and environments as opposed to cutscenes. The entire playthrough I recorded was less than 90 minutes. I can guarantee you Final Fantasy 13’s cutscenes are more than twice that length. So what I did was instead of recording cutscenes, I recorded EVERYTHING. This allows me to control what I edit with by using different movements, camera angles, etc. It’s something really interesting I don’t see as often (but when done right, oh man I’ve seen a really good SOTC video that did that).

Did I mention you should buy this game?

Song: The Voice
Artist: Celtic Woman
Footage: Journey, Journey trailer
Gameplay by Raggedstar

Raggs Plays Okami [2] [IT’S A HIDEOUS ROUND THING!] [Tsuta Ruins]

Brownie to the one that gets the reference. But yes, if I’m to have any serious gripe, it’s the rolling physics in this game.

Well, I don’t know what, but something happened to my game audio. Tested the source a million times with my microphone in and nothing like this happened. Thankfully, my speakers were pretty loud and the microphone caught a fair amount of sounds. I really didn’t feel like recording for 40 minutes again.

Info: Tsuta Ruins is the home of the first boss, and can be considered as the first real dungeon. It’s short, puzzles are easy and enemies aren’t that hard (though bud ogres can be). You get a brush technique here, though I think you see it in the 3rd part of this area.

Next few videos will still be in the ruins.

Raggs Plays Okami [1] [Return Of My Darn Cat] [Tao Master Waka]

Not a particularly interesting fight (sub-bosses aren’t usually that exciting, especially at this point in the game), but Waka is one interesting character.

Info: He may not look hard with my mammoth health units, but if I was starting a new game, I could’ve been dead in this fight (well, I’m also rather rusty and careless here). Waka doesn’t give you too much slack and he has a wider variety of attacks than any enemy at this point. Flaming swords/arrows (a popular Okami enemy attack. I can name 3 other enemies off the top of my head that use them), slashes, and his sweeping charge can potentially kill newbs (he actually killed my only astral pouch when I played him for the first time) and how he can walk on water isn’t exactly helping.

I don’t want some boss parts to go over 10 minutes, so I trimmed down the cutscene by about a minute. Most of what I cut out was regarding stuff I told in the part before this anyways (rest was basically Waka saying how Ammy is weaker now and how the fight was disappointing. Pfft, well, if I was using the string of beads, I’m sure he’ll disagree).

Sorry about the quality, but Vegas really seems to hate my recorded footage. It either won’t accept it at all, or give me the “red frames of death” on some areas. Had to run it through WMM first. I’m still experimenting.

Next video will be the Tsuta Ruins

Raggs Plays Okami [0.5] [Wow, I Uploaded Something!] [The Story So Far]

Still working on the title for this. “Raggs Plays Okami” seems fitting, but it’s not a full LP. Bah, whatever.

Well, here we are with my first Okami video recorded with Easycap (which has become my new toy lol). I’m still working out some decent settings for recording, since even though the quality is pretty good, Vegas doesn’t seem to like MPG files (and for some reason, WMM does). Did the same for my Sly Cooper ladder video. And for those that didn’t get the memo, this is being recorded directly from my PS2 and not on an emulator like Spyro was.

This isn’t an actual part since there are no bosses or dungeons included (which is the main idea of me playing). With responses from my input video, people showed positive response to showing some cutscenes and summarizing the story. Since there is about 1-2 hours or so of gameplay included at this point with NO BOSSES, I decided to make one video to include it all. There is a huge gap between the beginning and Waka (the first sub-boss), and I promise you that the gaps aren’t THIS big. Waka’s fight isn’t that hard with my health the way it is, but I’ll just include the cutscenes before/after the fight anyways.

Next Video: Waka (Agata Forest)

LiteStudios (cendoo) – Sega Mega Drive 2 368 in 1 review

Finally back with video games, and it feels alright

discuss and comment on this on the forum page here

Raggedstar – [TCT] [POSSK] Chasing Cars

vs TenrouFang and SilverFangNinjaKimba

A bit late (well, 3 minutes), but I blame Vegas for taking it’s sweet-ass time rendering. 45 minutes for 2 minutes of movie? That’s horrible x__x.

Anyways, this was mostly my idea because neither of us had anything that made sense with the footage we had. Had to stick with my backwards random perspective flipping idea lol. The focus here is on the relationships with Kiba and his pack, as well as with Mew (in the brighter clips). Come on, after ep 20, Kiba FINALLY gets his nose out of the flower smell and gives his boys props. Ya, you could say that this video has a little bit of a “bros before hoes” thing going on, especially if said “hoe” is a weird Caracal lady we don’t really learn much about 0-0 (well, I guess it adds to her mystique). Possk did most of the pack clips while I did the garden parts.

I did 30 seconds of AMV in 1 hour *super proud of self*. Also, I was a complete nut with editing the music. There must’ve been 4-5 cuts in the song to get it the way I wanted lol. Also WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME YOU CAN ECHO IN VEGAS?

Texture credit to Salvatore Vuono

Raggedstar – [TCT] [POSSK] Tear Away

Laaaaaaaaaaast again. Well, at least we weren’t uploading at the very last minute. Everything seems to happen each round. Possk was away down south for about a week in round 1, evil homework attacked her in round 2, and I was up north for 5 days this round. Vegas and AIM didn’t really help either. Weak!

Like with last round, this is mainly Possk’s idea. It started out as just Charlie video, but seeing as the movie doesn’t have a lot of scenes that do justice to his initial “out for #1 attitude”, we brought in Carface too. Plus, Carface needs love too *nods*. Even though the song is about a different/better kind of selfishness (it’s not a crime to look out for yourself sometimes), we fudged it to be about Charlie and Carface’s greed and how it affected other characters (Carface basically tried to screw everyone over, but I focused more on Charlie than Itchy, Killer, and Anne Marie). It was the closest thing we had to a focus other than my idea of a lulzy Georgette video lol.

Most clips of Charlie are done by Possk, and Carface was with me. Naturally we switched it up a little bit.

The song is very strange to edit with. I can’t say either of us were fans of it, but we just kept on truckin’. We couldn’t find a nice long string of parts we could do, so I had to do a bit of jumpy editing. 3 cuts, plus it didn’t start from the beginning. I hate editing like that, but meh. What we DO like was the line “God damn I love me”, since it basically summed up everything, so we had to include that. Charlie’s expression says “Fuck yes I’m hot stuff” (…and he is *cough*).

Raggedstar – [TCT] [POSSK] Jacob’s Dream

vs Earliebirdie and HowlSahma vs xXNeonwolfXx and xXShadeoftheNightXx
Theme: Desire

A few minutes late, but I doubt Balco would mind. Of course after all the panic, it seems like Splitty and Fire are getting a few more days and Possk and I were scared for finishing tonight to the point where I did the last second for her lol.

This was mostly Possk’s idea. We focused on the Elric Brothers’ desire to become whole again (and in turn, desire for the Philosopher Stone), mostly with Ed because it was his misjudging that caused them to turn out this way. Human transmutation is what got them there (for those that don’t know, the “recipe” in the beginning is what makes an adult human), and they had to search and study for years for what is missing. That also meant looking for the infamous Philosopher Stone, an object with immense power that they hope to use to replace Al’s body and Ed’s arm and leg. That didn’t make much sense, did it? Bah, just watch the video and you’ll most likely get it. It’s midnight, I’ve been editing for hours, and I’m stuffed with mashed potatoes.

AL, GET OUT OF THE WAY! YOU’RE IN FRONT OF ANOTHER SEX-ED THUMBNAIL!

Song: Jacob’s Dream
Artist: Day Of Fire

Raggedstar – [TCT] [POSSK] Fight Inside

vs TheArsenalRisen and Fluffehpotatoes (TIED)

Well, Possk and I are rather unsure how far we’ll get, but here it is. This is our first (and possibly only) video for BalcoZero’s collab tourney. Just our luck we get paired up with them *still hiding under table with Possk*

This is an ultimate video of AAAAAAAAAANGST! Basically, we took several characters suffering from inner conflicts, like Lucy and her instinct to kill whispering in her ear, Matt being pushed to fight with Tai (note the crest of friendship flickering red), and Greed battling with Ling’s humanity (literally a fight inside lol). Not much to say except Vegas decided to make my fades extremely sharp and my flashes are dimmed. Plus, the fact that (like in I Walk Alone), I had to rely on “instinct” and edit with a preview window that didn’t work most of the time.

Raggedstar – RockDawg::Lycos Fang Preview -V3-

See? I wasn’t just talking big when I said I would finish this. If you want to get most/all of the angles from this video, read on.

This is a revisit to an idea I had waaaaay back when I only edited using 4 sources. It was meant to be a bit of a commercial/trailer/preview to my studio and showing every bit of footage I have. Each footage source had it’s own little section and it became very balanced. I revisted it once in 2008 (just before I merged with RockDawg), but the format was more like a general AMV and not something really special. I was planning to revisit the idea again (using a similar format as before) using Nara, but that just…didn’t happen. This song I could manipulate more anyways.

Oh boy, I’m tempted to make a rambling video to describe every angle and thought I put into this video. Really, so much thought and organization was put into this video, and I’m quite proud how it turned out. I don’t sleep much by the way.

A bulk of this video wouldn’t have been created without reading the song’s creator’s blog (http://blog.christophertin.com/2008/0…). He described the song being broken up into the seasons, and the lyrics and singers reflected the said season. What I did was break up my footage sources into seasons, give each season a colour and a texture. Changes in attitude and pattern indicate a transition between seasons (like yellow and red means summer to fall). I also made my own personal spin and including the gypsy singers, drummers, and dancers to build up from the end of spring to “The Dance Of The Seasons” as well as other things done with my own personal interpretation of this beautiful song. This is the way I organized things.

Spring:
0:00-0:54
Green
Flowers

Summer:
0:54-1:25
Yellow
Dry grass

Fall:
1:25-2:16
Red
Leaves

Dance Of The Seasons:
2:16-2:40
Represents falling of leaves (ie the smaller clips) and last celebrations before the dead of winter.

Winter:
2:40-3:22
Blue
Ice

Conclusion:
3:22-3:54
Showing of every clip. The show movies are piled onto the regular show.

Return To Spring:
3:54-4:24
Green
Using the first footage source from every season and then ending back at spring.

All textures used in this video I created by taking various pictures of nature.

I don’t make sub videos, but thanks for watching, commenting, and just enjoying my videos. I don’t reply to every comment, but I try to read them all and give a silent thanks. You can almost consider this as a typical “Thank you” from the Raggs to you.

I think I need a nap.