The Round Stable

(?) · by **Momar** (?) » Thu Mar 01, 2012 5:48 am

So did Strive ever make it to EqD?

(?) · by **Rainbow Crash** (?) » Thu Mar 01, 2012 5:58 am

Yes, it did. It was actually how I first saw it because I wasn't keeping up with this thread :modesty:

(?) · by **blasmeister** (?) » Thu Mar 01, 2012 6:17 am

Oh hey looks like I forgot to post here about how awesome Strive was (also the verb I was hoping you'd go for, especially over 'buck')!

Hey Isaak, Strive was awesome! :allears:

(?) · by **numsOic** (?) » Thu Mar 01, 2012 7:43 pm

Tell us how you made that sequence in Blow!

(?) · by **Aramek** (?) » Fri Mar 02, 2012 5:08 am

Finally just watched Strive, and, easily my favourite one. :twasnothin:

I love Spaghetti Westerns, Applejack, and you. :allears:

(?) · by **Isaak** (?) » Fri Mar 02, 2012 2:01 pm

numsOic wrote:Tell us how you made that sequence in Blow!

I just might... :gotcha:

Aramek wrote:Finally just watched Strive, and, easily my favourite one. I love Spaghetti Westerns, Applejack, and you.

Thanks! Just finished that cigar you gave me, much more subtle than the One, I liked it.

(?) · by **macchinainterna** (?) » Fri Mar 02, 2012 4:07 pm

Isaak wrote:I just might...

I smell an inevitable livestream coming up :smirk:

Also, whoever uploaded the Smirkie Belle emoticon, you're my new best friend :awesomedash:

(?) · by **Isaak** (?) » Sat Mar 03, 2012 9:46 pm

Updated the OP, will announce my new project... tomorrow probably.

Also:

OP wrote:This thread isn’t exclusive to the Mane Cast series though as I’ll use it to post updates on videos in the far away and mysterious future!

The future is now! :yay:

(?) · by **Rainbow Crash** (?) » Sat Mar 03, 2012 11:22 pm

I'm excited to be living in the future and also for the next video.

(?) · by **Davyinatoga** (?) » Sun Mar 04, 2012 1:40 am

Isaak wrote:The future is now!

Looking forward to seeing what's next up your sleeve before you move to Vancouver.
[link related]

(?) · by **Mordja** (?) » Sun Mar 04, 2012 7:07 pm

Oh man, I really regret putting off watching all of your PMVs for so long.
They're all great man, but Strive was just above and beyond! :awesomedash:

(?) · by **Isaak** (?) » Sun Mar 04, 2012 10:08 pm

Announcement:

Flight
(Working Title)

Basic Concept
Flight is a 2 minute animation inspired by and a homage to Michel Gondry, in particular his music video for the Chemical Brothers' Star Guitar.
Though instead of Star Guitar I'll be using a shortened version of Rain Dog's Beyond Their Years as the music track.

Flight is a direct continuation of the Mane Cast Trailer series which featured a strong rise in the use of custom content ending with full on custom background animations in Strive. Strive's Tree Run (0:20-0:30) actually served as a test bed for this animation. Flight's going to take it one step further and will feature nothing but custom content.
But it's also a departure as it's going to be much different in tone and feel. Where the Mane Cast Trailer series were big, complex and spectacular this is going to be simple, meditative and thoughtful.

The animation will essentially be one long take of Rainbow Dash flying over Equestria. As the animation progresses the time of day changes, going from midday to nighttime. The scenery changes along with it and we'll be seeing Canterlot, Cloudsdale and other locations.
In essence it's a flight cycle with fore and background elements scrolling by, timed to the music. So it's a fairly simple concept. Which is good.

This is the Big Pony Related Project that I'll be working on during my stay in Vancouver. I chose this from the list as I'll be working on a laptop which is kind of not really all that when compared to my main editing PC.
The basic concept is pretty much finished and provides a strong foundation from which I can branch Things that Need to be Done.

Visual Style
I won't be recreating the show visually for this animation project, instead I'm going for a "moving painting" look to match the feel of the music. This will involve a lot of experimentation and spamming the How to Draw Ponies Thread with bad but later good art :sheepish:

.
The overall visual identity is still in the very early stages of development though I'm leaning towards an Impressionism vibe with a stronger contrast between dark and light tones.

Things I need to Figure Out

The flight cycle in particular will be the meat of this project, the most important part. This is the one thing you'll be seeing for the entire duration of the video and it needs to feel right.
It's going to be a visual indication of the song's BPM, with RD's wings flapping up and down to the beat, up when the snare hits, down on the other beat. It's not going to be the show's usual 8 frames but will be a custom one tailored to the music. It needs to flow, a wave moving through the sky, organic.
The devil truly is in the details.
Now I've said this would be a relatively simple project, but experience tells me that these things always turn out to be way more complex. Though fortunately through the years I've learned the perfect way of dealing with this: don't think about it too much :v:

Projected Release Date
... June? :pinkieshrug:

--

Mordja wrote:Oh man, I really regret putting off watching all of your PMVs for so long.
They're all great man, but Strive was just above and beyond!

Thanks! I think it's my best as well.

Davyinatoga wrote:Looking forward to seeing what's next up your sleeve before you move to Vancouver.

Yeah... this won't be happening before Vancouver hah! I'll be documenting its development regardless.

(?) · by **numsOic** (?) » Sun Mar 04, 2012 10:12 pm

Oh yeah you did talk about this one at some point. Lookin' forward to it.

(?) · by **Artificer** (?) » Sun Mar 04, 2012 10:15 pm

DASH LIKE RAINBOW DASH. :v:

OR Fly, yeah.

But your choice works too.

(?) · by **Rainbow Crash** (?) » Mon Mar 05, 2012 1:08 am

The stampede scene in Strive was my favorite part of the video, so more scrolling to the beat is a-ok to me.

(?) · by **Headless Horse** (?) » Mon Mar 05, 2012 2:31 am

This sounds fantastic, and if it's anything conceptually like The Way Through the World of Discord, I'm gonna love the shit out of it.

Well, I bet I will regardless. :yay:

(?) · by **fenster** (?) » Mon Mar 05, 2012 4:13 pm

Headless Horse wrote:This sounds fantastic, and if it's anything conceptually like The Way Through the World of Discord, I'm gonna love the shit out of it.

Well, I bet I will regardless.

Its really facinating that both this video and the sound of Isaak's project are both from the same vein of "A journey where the background elements serve to visualize specific beats/parts of the music", but the choices of the music and of the actual destinations/backgrounds can give off completely different vibes. The Discord world video is slow and haunting, with each element adding another scary layer to the visuals and music, literally turning it into a beautiful fusion where the visuals and music seem to make their own crazy diverse world which has this almost organic chaotic feel like venturing through a rainforest or coral reef where you can feel the diversity of life mesh together. It really feels like it is building something by using elements that we are not familiar with (its more obvious from the original video this was based off of, I'm sure Pony fans will already be used to a lot of the elements seen in the discord world seeing as how its from the show).

Where as, looking at the Star Guitar video that Isaak seems to be basing his project on, we have a much more subtle and laid back approach coming from what we are familiar with, but the music and timing of the visual elements work to single the elements together in a reverse approach to deconstruct our familiar world. We can examine each element to see how something we have been ingrained to see as normal and not unique is really made up of so many different special elements that we already mesh together in our daily lives/experiences so much. Going off the foundation of shots/places of Ponyville/Canterlot that we have seen countless times, the video will dissect the world into these elements while connecting them by the soothing track and musical timing which will spring into its own unique and special reconstruction of the world at the same time its being torn apart.

What the hell, I just found about this thing 30 minutes ago and already I'm proclaiming the artistic merits of a video which hasn't even been made yet. :gonkity:

(?) · by **Isaak** (?) » Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:45 pm

numsOic wrote:Oh yeah you did talk about this one at some point. Lookin' forward to it.

It may be a while before it goes live, though I'll be throwing in bits and pieces of the development process working up to it.

Artificer wrote:DASH LIKE RAINBOW DASH.

OR Fly, yeah.

But your choice works too.

Other possible titles include Fly, Air, Pegasus, Blue, Altitude... probably some more. Actually, I like Altitude a lot more than Flight... I'm sort of not going to worry about titles again after Strive :v:

Rainbow Crash wrote:The stampede scene in Strive was my favorite part of the video, so more scrolling to the beat is a-ok to me.

Headless Horse wrote:This sounds fantastic, and if it's anything conceptually like The Way Through the World of Discord, I'm gonna love the shit out of it.

Well, I bet I will regardless.

Fun fact: I thought of this around... November/December last year and when The Way Through came out, I was kinda bummed. Then I found out it was actually based on an other animation, sort of like Flight so it's all a big coincidence.
In the end it's all about me experimenting with new things and learning. This project has loads of that.

fenster wrote:Its really facinating that both this video and the sound of Isaak's project are both from the same vein of "A journey where the background elements serve to visualize specific beats/parts of the music", but the choices of the music and of the actual destinations/backgrounds can give off completely different vibes. The Discord world video is slow and haunting, with each element adding another scary layer to the visuals and music, literally turning it into a beautiful fusion where the visuals and music seem to make their own crazy diverse world which has this almost organic chaotic feel like venturing through a rainforest or coral reef where you can feel the diversity of life mesh together. It really feels like it is building something by using elements that we are not familiar with (its more obvious from the original video this was based off of, I'm sure Pony fans will already be used to a lot of the elements seen in the discord world seeing as how its from the show).

Where as, looking at the Star Guitar video that Isaak seems to be basing his project on, we have a much more subtle and laid back approach coming from what we are familiar with, but the music and timing of the visual elements work to single the elements together in a reverse approach to deconstruct our familiar world. We can examine each element to see how something we have been ingrained to see as normal and not unique is really made up of so many different special elements that we already mesh together in our daily lives/experiences so much. Going off the foundation of shots/places of Ponyville/Canterlot that we have seen countless times, the video will dissect the world into these elements while connecting them by the soothing track and musical timing which will spring into its own unique and special reconstruction of the world at the same time its being torn apart.

What the hell, I just found about this thing 30 minutes ago and already I'm proclaiming the artistic merits of a video which hasn't even been made yet.

Wow... I... never really thought of it like that, that's very insightful! I've always viewed it as a way of creating one encompassing audiovisual experience, which is what I was aiming for with the Mane Six videos.

(?) · by **fenster** (?) » Tue Mar 06, 2012 4:29 am

Isaak wrote:
Wow... I... never really thought of it like that, that's very insightful! I've always viewed it as a way of creating one encompassing audiovisual experience, which is what I was aiming for with the Mane Six videos.

I'm having a big ----->

<---- moment here

(?) · by **BartonFink** (?) » Tue Mar 06, 2012 6:45 am

PMV Theory

Let's get Zizek in here.

(?) · by **Isaak** (?) » Tue Mar 06, 2012 7:56 pm

fenster wrote:I'm having a big ----->[snip]<---- moment here

No need for that. I actually find it a very creative interpretation, I may not think of it like that, but that doesn't bar people from interpreting it in a way. We're people, interpreting is what we do!

"Bad" news: I recieved a Copyright Strike on my channel for an older video, nothing Pony related, so I lost the ability to upload videos longer than fifteen minutes.

(?) · by **numsOic** (?) » Tue Mar 06, 2012 8:39 pm

That just means you gotta keep making pony shorts forever. :yay:

(?) · by **Aramek** (?) » Tue Mar 06, 2012 8:41 pm

Isaak wrote:"Bad" news: I recieved a Copyright Strike on my channel for an older video, nothing Pony related, so I lost the ability to upload videos longer than fifteen minutes.

Submit an appeal!

"Here's a spoon, so you can eat my ass."

That's sure to get it reversed!

(?) · by **Isaak** (?) » Mon May 14, 2012 3:27 am

Formally started on the preproduction, gathering inspiration, finding out how to do things, animating in Flash is easier than I thought but more... laborious. Expect a big update soon, probably feature article.

(?) · by **Momar** (?) » Tue May 15, 2012 10:53 pm

Oh damn. Shit be hype now :awesomedash:

(?) · by **numsOic** (?) » Wed May 16, 2012 12:19 am

Know beforehand that I'm gonna turn whatever you make into one long gigantic GIF.

(?) · by **drunkill** (?) » Thu May 17, 2012 4:32 pm

Sounds great, I look foward to the front page article :allears:

That preview picture you linked in IRC the other day was quite awesome and intrguing.

(?) · by **Isaak** (?) » Fri May 18, 2012 7:44 pm

Short update: changed a few things around just now, brought it back to the conceptual stage and adjusted my bearings. It's a great development though but that means that the big update will be another few days off.

The overall concept stays the same, but the execution will be different. At the heart of this change is the decision to go with a different song, namely Headphone Girl by Cosmonaut Grechko.

I will stop myself from writing any more now, because I will go off on a tangent and write the whole thing right here, right now and I have stuff to do :v:

(?) · by **Highbrow Dash** (?) » Tue Jul 03, 2012 12:54 am

I'm just going to leave this here, Isaak. Apparently someone on youtube really liked your videos :v:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q8wMrj-yvc

(?) · by **Isaak** (?) » Wed Jul 04, 2012 5:02 am

WOW

Thanks for sharing, that's amazing :allears:

I was supposed to write an update at some point in time here, but I haven't gotten around to actually working on the thing yet beyond

this, which is by now a few weeks old and which might no longer represent what I'm going for. There's also some preliminary outlining done, but not much else besides that :v:

Right now I'm rethinking my approach to this thing, where to start, what prototypes I want to have running soon and I've figured that the Pony is the most important thing at the moment as that's what the viewer will be seeing an awful lot of.
So I'm going to shift my focus towards getting an a flight cycle up and running in Flash, which is where most of the learning will be done anyhow.

I've got the rest figured out animation-wise, the groundwork for that has been laid with Strive Like Applejack and the Roadrunner short for the Anthology 2. The only thing missing from the puzzle is the art style, which might get a bit of a rework.

That's it for now

(?) · by **fenster** (?) » Thu Jul 12, 2012 3:48 pm

Highbrow Dash wrote:I'm just going to leave this here, Isaak. Apparently someone on youtube really liked your videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q8wMrj-yvc

As much as I dislike "here's MY presentation on why this show you never heard of nor car about is amazing", at least he's 100% right in that Isaak's videos make all the ponies look cool.

Isaak wrote:Right now I'm rethinking my approach to this thing ...and I've figured that the Pony is the most important thing at the moment as that's what the viewer will be seeing an awful lot of.

You should use a wonderbolt/spitfire! :v:

On a serious note, you say that you are going to be working with flash, are you going to go over the process of what you did in flash like other projects? That's something I'd really like to see.

(?) · by **Isaak** (?) » Fri Jul 13, 2012 6:52 pm

fenster wrote:You should use a wonderbolt/spitfire!

On a serious note, you say that you are going to be working with flash, are you going to go over the process of what you did in flash like other projects? That's something I'd really like to see.

Yes, I am

I may choose a different animation suite than Flash though, thinking of taking a stab at Toonboom. as Flash is really unintuitive.

Fun fact: I told y'all I'd be focusing on the Pony herself, but then I got distracted and started storyboarding the thing. There's so much to tackle with this project, so many new things to learn. Well, maybe not completely new things, a lot of the things I'm doing I carry over from previous projects.
Anyroad, that's a bit besides the point, what I'm trying to say is that I can't consciously 'plan' this, or anything creative for that matter. I've been trying to scope this thjing, making neat to-do lists and thises and thatses but that leads nowhere. Workflow, tool usage, naming conventions, all that has to... happen as I go along and press buttons and turn knobs. I'm definitely not a :sheepish:

Moral: planning is silly, just do the thing :v:

(?) · by **Paperback Writer** (?) » Sat Jul 14, 2012 10:35 pm

fenster wrote:As much as I dislike "here's MY presentation on why this show you never heard of nor car about is amazing", at least he's 100% right in that Isaak's videos make all the ponies look cool.

That's a big part of the reason why Isaak's PMVs all work so well. I've actually seen a couple of people who didn't care for MLP watch "Race Like Rainbow Dash" and come away impressed despite their disdain for the subject. Presentation is key and the editing, sequencing, and composition are all excellent. They're all things that have an effect on viewers, even if a viewer has no idea what those words even mean. :spike101:

(I know you guys know this stuff already. I just love thinking about the mechanics of film-making and these sort of random thoughts just kind of dribble out of my brain from time to time)

BTW, I forgot to comment at the time, but I found your front page article really interesting and inspiring, Isaak. If you have the time and could write another one, I'd love to read it.

(?) · by **Isaak** (?) » Sun Jul 15, 2012 7:06 am

Paperback Writer wrote:That's a big part of the reason why Isaak's PMVs all work so well. I've actually seen a couple of people who didn't care for MLP watch "Race Like Rainbow Dash" and come away impressed despite their disdain for the subject.

That's awesome to hear!

Presentation is key and the editing, sequencing, and composition are all excellent. They're all things that have an effect on viewers, even if a viewer has no idea what those words even mean. (I know you guys know this stuff already. I just love thinking about the mechanics of film-making and these sort of random thoughts just kind of dribble out of my brain from time to time)

Things dribble from my mind all the time, sometimes they materialize into the Greatest Idea Ever™, other times they make my friends look at me as I've just mooed like a cow :v:

The Greatest Idea Ever makes it totally worth it though

BTW, I forgot to comment at the time, but I found your front page article really interesting and inspiring, Isaak. If you have the time and could write another one, I'd love to read it.

I wanted to make these a weekly thing and have them lead up to Race's one year anniversary, but that kinda didn't work out. Haven't put much energy in the second instalment, Play. I really should get on that, because the tale gets really interesting with Learn and onwards

(?) · by **fenster** (?) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 4:55 pm

I'm probably gonna ask like a billion questions before Isaak's done, but I thought up of just now was the length of the video. The Song you're using is almost 6 minutes long as is, and almost all of the PMVs you have done so far have been relatively short or cut off from full length (well, the mane 6 trailers were anyway). If you used the full song it would be the most lengthy PMV you've done yet but its also quite a long length to work with. Any ideas about the projected length the video will last?

(?) · by **Lhet** (?) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 10:11 pm

fenster wrote:I'm probably gonna ask like a billion questions before Isaak's done, but I thought up of just now was the length of the video. The Song you're using is almost 6 minutes long as is, and almost all of the PMVs you have done so far have been relatively short or cut off from full length (well, the mane 6 trailers were anyway). If you used the full song it would be the most lengthy PMV you've done yet but its also quite a long length to work with. Any ideas about the projected length the video will last?

I can't answer completely for him, but I assume he will cut the song down a little bit, to around 3 minutes. After that it becomes really really hard to keep a video interesting without changing the expression.

Isaak wrote:I may choose a different animation suite than Flash though, thinking of taking a stab at Toonboom. as Flash is really unintuitive.

I'd recommend going with flash (speaking as a person who's never used it but might soon). Adobe products tend to have a huge initial learning curve, but then things . More importantly though, is the support as far as tutorials/other people/knowledge/etc you'll get with it.

Isaak wrote:Moral: planning is silly, just do the thing

Absolutely. I've also found following this works really well for me.

(?) · by **Isaak** (?) » Tue Jul 17, 2012 4:18 am

fenster wrote:I'm probably gonna ask like a billion questions before Isaak's done, but I thought up of just now was the length of the video. The Song you're using is almost 6 minutes long as is, and almost all of the PMVs you have done so far have been relatively short or cut off from full length (well, the mane 6 trailers were anyway). If you used the full song it would be the most lengthy PMV you've done yet but its also quite a long length to work with. Any ideas about the projected length the video will last?

It's two, nearly three, times as long as anything I've done so far, and it'll all be custom. As I'm 'scripting' the thing and doing preliminary storyboards the scope becomes more and more clear, and... it's pretty big :-P

. Too big for me to fully develop while here in Vancouver, I think. But that's good, as I can devote my time here to pure experimentation and divide the thing up in smaller projects like flightcycles, art direction and so on and so forth.

I trimmed about 60 seconds of the song and it clocks in at just over 5 minutes now, but so far that's the only audio editing I've done, and I think can do, without upsetting the song's natural flow too much. It's definitely a break from the format I established with the Mane 6 trailers, one I'm really familiar with, but that's the whole point of this project: jumping down a whole other kind of rabbit hole.

Lhet wrote:I can't answer completely for him, but I assume he will cut the song down a little bit, to around 3 minutes. After that it becomes really really hard to keep a video interesting without changing the expression.

The formatbreak's a gamble and I might reel the project's length in more if I feel it's the right thing to do. With the Mane 6 trailers I could cut the audio at any time I liked, switch things up where necessary. With what I'm doing right now I don't have that freedom, but then again I don't need or want that freedom. They're two different things, the Mane 6 trailers are (mostly) a spectacular assault on the senses that leave you all hyped, this is meant to be more relaxing, thoughtful, allowing for room to breathe and nod your head along with the audiovisuals. Compared to Verb Like Pony it's very slow, but apples & oranges.

I'd recommend going with flash (speaking as a person who's never used it but might soon). Adobe products tend to have a huge initial learning curve, but then things . More importantly though, is the support as far as tutorials/other people/knowledge/etc you'll get with it.

I'm assuming things get better :v:

Toonboom is in essence not a whole lot different from Flash and has an ample supply of tutorials floating about the webosphere, but as far as I can tell it comes without all the hassle and baggage inherent to Flash, which is a program actually not meant for full scale animation like Pony.

Absolutely. I've also found following this works really well for me.

That is neat! What I usually do is sit down right before going to bed, write down the things I really want to do the next day (usually 2 to 3), sleep and then strike things off of my list as I go about my day and do stuff. It's very lightweight and keeps me focused, something I really, really, really, really need because I'm the most distractable person on the planet™. Some times things get added in later on, for instance replying to people on forums.

Which I can now strike off of my list!

e: Pretty much wrapped up the high level 'scripting' phase, meaning I've lined out what will go where in the video. The project now looks like this:

The video is divided in four different times of day. We start out from 0:00 with a sequence of still shots depicting the Everfree forest. Right now the music has no beat to speak of so I can use this to establish the mood and slowly pull the viewer in.

For reference, play this and start at about 0:17.

Note: times are based on the link I just... err... linked, so these are not the video's timestamps. Also all is preliminary.

0:34 hits and a treetrunk swoops in from right to left, acting as a swipe transition to introduce the 'Gondry theme', which is how I've come to refer to the "on screen visuals move from right to left and are synched to the music" bits. We're now going to the edge of the forest, trees going by to the beat which slowly takes center stage as the song continues to build. You can catch a glimpse of Fluttershy between the plants and trees as the undergrowth becomes thinner and thinner.

0:52 The beat stops and a treeswipe reveals Fluttershy in a wide and open shot, nearing Ponyville. She's wearing headphones, because headphones are awesome and I can do cool things with it. Ponyville wakes up and turns its lights off to the melody of the song.

01:09 We move over towards the Applefarm, haven't figured out this part just yet. Will probably include the Apple Family. This part not yet fully conceptualized. Incomplete sentence.

01:26 Swipe transition. We're now clear of Ponyville and over its outskirts. In the background, between the mountaintops, the train we know so very well rides along to the music, puffing smoke and bobbing up and down.

01:43 Ponyville is behind us and we're now over Equestria. 02:01 hits and we hear a trumpet-esque hit. This seems like a perfect way to introduce Pinkie with her balloon for instance throwing confetti.

02:18 Zap! Lightning hits and we're in front of a huge thunderstorm, fortunately Rainbow Dash is flying alongside. The clouds flare up with electricity as the trumpetthingy hits. Crash! Lightning! Tension is rising.

02:52 The build up leads to a still shot. Rarity sits in the foreground, a vista spread out before her with the thunderstorm on the left and Canterlot on the right. Her mane and tail are blowing in the wind. A lighthouse is swirling around its beam and provides us with the next transition.

03:27 Flying over Canterlot as the sun is going down. Essentially Ponyville in reverse, the light's are now coming on to that insanely catchy lead.

03:44 Pinkie's balloon! Now though it lights up to the trumpet.

04:01 We're now entering the tail end of the video. A cloud swipe leads us above the clouds where mountain tops go by to the beat and stars twinkle to that little ditty.

04:37 Sunrise. The night sky fades and we come full circle.

05:11 Fade to white, cue credits.

That's in short what I have in mind. Whatever "in short" means these days :v:

(?) · by **Lhet** (?) » Tue Jul 17, 2012 8:32 am

Isaak wrote:That's in short what I have in mind. Whatever "in short" means these days

I listened to the song and wrote notes on what I might do. (I wouldn't even call these suggestions, just thoughts that came to mind that I might use if I was making a similar style video to that song)

0:17 - Show the sun rising for 17 seconds, while zooming out on terrain and maybe revealing fluttershy's house. Background effects/terrain are mildly synched to the music. (For whatever reason I always think of this as a reference for a music video sunrise intro)

0:34 - Introduce Fluttershy waking up. Morning rituals somewhat fit the music. (lightly enough that you could miss it if you didn't know)

0:52 - Focus on something completely different. Perhaps a long distance shot of the path she will take during the video, or perhaps just focus on showing the headphones she will be wearing.

01:09 - Now really getting ready to go flying - Stretching/practice flapping

01:26 - Still not in the meat of the song, maybe light nongondry flying, maybe walking out the door and seeing birds flying around

01:43 - Now the bass kicks in and you really feel the music, it is the perfect time to introduce the full on Gondry-style effects.

02:18 - Fluttershy falls behind. Still there but no longer the focus because other characters appear to take the spotlight for a bit. Gondry effects still going strong, just less terrain and more weather/magic/balloons/whatever

02:52 - Fluttershy slowly comes back into focus through as gondry effects start to focus on simple terrain again, which gets more and more exciting as the Fluttershy becomes more visible

03:27 - Fluttershy is in full focus, as is the Gondry stuff

03:44 - Still in focus.

04:01 - huge terrain elements (The moon/ocean/canterlot/mountains/whatever) shart to show up, showing that hero is still just a single, small pony.

04:37 - Gondry effects are now an afterthought, things are wrapping up. Gondry effects might still be there but if you hadn't seen the middle of the video you might miss them.

05:11 - End segment. What happens here would be done last and would depend on how the rest of the video went

(?) · by **Isaak** (?) » Wed Jul 18, 2012 7:36 am

Lhet wrote:I listened to the song and wrote notes on what I might do. (I wouldn't even call these suggestions, just thoughts that came to mind that I might use if I was making a similar style video to that song)

Fantastic ideas.

Oh... my... :allears:

This is pretty fantastic stuff, though a lot of is a bit too far out of my comfort zone and this thing is already going way beyond my scope :v:

and I would like to finish it at some point (this year). The focus for me is to improve my art skills and dip my toe into animating things, so turboinvolved custom animation up the whazoo is something I'll probably try my hand at later on. Did I mention I have an idea for that already? Because I have an idea for that already, which is going on my pile of ideas, which is giant, like build a fortress out of it giant...

Anyroad, there are some things in there that got me thinking, especially the terrain getting more and more grandiose as the video goes about its merry way, and maybe I'll use that sunrise as a long establishing still shot. That'll be a great contrast to the Gondry shots while introducing wide and open still shots to the video's language. Right before pressing submit edit: Actually, I might do an establishing shot like that before switching up environments, or maybe I'll let that evolve dynamically as Fluttershy moves and just have them emphasize climaxes in the song I'm going off on a tangent here.
The environment is definitely in the spotlight here, which is great because it doesn't move that much other than going from right to left :-P

Right after pressing submit edit: Also cut an additional 17 seconds from the end because I couldn't make it work "on paper".

(?) · by **Lhet** (?) » Wed Jul 18, 2012 11:43 pm

Isaak wrote:This is pretty fantastic stuff, though a lot of is a bit too far out of my comfort zone and this thing is already going way beyond my scope and I would like to finish it at some point (this year). The focus for me is to improve my art skills and dip my toe into animating things, so turboinvolved custom animation up the whazoo is something I'll probably try my hand at later on. Did I mention I have an idea for that already? Because I have an idea for that already, which is going on my pile of ideas, which is giant, like build a fortress out of it giant...

Actually my intention was to require less animation. The Gondry FX section would be the only animated section. Before that would be things like simple video editing/simple masking, taking things slightly out of context to look like waking/warming up (e.g. Dragonshy when she tries/fails to get her wings out, several pieces from the hurricane fluttershy montage).

Also this video has the whole get ready then fly deal going on.

Click here to view video.

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Isaak’s Grand, Though Experimental, Animation Blog

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