Update!!!!

So this is more or less a quick update. I had been doing a project for CyberARTS where I had to remix a movie or videogame trailer into a different theme. I chose to make Prototype into a horror movie. I finished it early last week but it won't be posted until next week. Like I always do here's something extra. It's called Taste of Pain. It's a Naruto timing-based amv. Have a awsome long weekend and see you next week.

Prototype the Horror Movie Remix

I'm back!!!! That's right as promised I come baring a new project. For CyberARTS we had to take a video game or movie trailer and remix it to fit a different mood by using different music and sound effects. The video game I chose to remix originally was Star Wars: The Force Unleashed as an action "movie" but that was too hard to remix so I went with Prototype. I turned it into a horror movie :D. It took scenes from Prototype and Prototype 2 and put them together in my trailer. Unfortunately, I could not get rid of the Machinima watermarks on the trailers so you should be able to see where I edited. Without any further a due...here is my trailer.











So the story behind my trailer is New York City in a state of crisis when a mysterious virus has has infected a sizable number of it's population. However one stands out among the rest, Alex Mercer, the first infected. Unlike the rest of the infected, he gained mutant powers from the virus and proceeded to murder and consume the remaining populace. The army are the only ones who have a prayer of stopping him, but how can you fight an enemy...who can be anybody?

*Dun,dun,duuuuun*


So the song I chose was Night of the Wolf by Nox Arcana for that whole suspenseful feeling to it. I ripped the original track and put it through Audacity. From there I had to edit a 4 minute song to a little over a minute and 30 seconds.As I said before I could not get rid of the watermarks so you probably noticed where I made my cuts, however you would only really notice where I put parts of Prototype 2 in. In actuality I made many cuts to the trailer and rearranged clips to make them work. For the most part, I was very prepared during this assignment. Before we really started, I had my trailer picked out, my audio edited down and the sound effect I thought I would need downloaded. The only thing that I didn't quite account for was one of my trailers being downloaded in a file format that was different from the rest and couldn't be imported properly so I had to convert it to an mov file.



Something that I wanted to do to the character was I wanted to de-humanize him. In the game, Alex Mercer was trying to get revenge on the military for what they did to him while meanwhile trying to get his memories back. The fact that he wants to know what happened to him, and protect those closest to him from the government if a human goal. What if I took that away from him? What if I took that desire to be human away from him and just made him a terrorist? The fact that the military is having difficulty with him not only isn't a surprise but it gives a sense of hopelessness. Btw, did you catch my "coming soon" voice over? oh yea..that was me :D.



That's it for this week. Be on the lookout for the trailers of my other CyberBUDDIES (trademark) see you guys later :D

Also, If the quality of the trailer on my blog was crappy, then I'm sorry. Here's the link for the trailer on youtube.

Basic Audacity w/ a little something extra ;)

Welcome to my first formal CyberARTS blog entry. Wanna be let in on a secret?....If you're reading this, you are a part of history as you are reading my very first CyberARTS tutorial entry. Today, I will show you how to do basic editing in Audacity with the tools I commonly use. Just know, that I just recently got this program installed on my computer so I dont know how to use some tools. I'm filling you in on what I know.

First, take a look at the tools you have at your disposal. On your top left side you have your pause button,play button,stop button, skip to start,skip to end and record button. On the centre left side you have your tool bar which has your selection tool,envelope tool, your draw tool, zoom tool,time shift tool and multi-tool mode. On your bottom right you have your edit toolbar which has your undo and re-do buttons, your zoom in,zoom out,fit selection and fit project buttons. On you centre right side you have your cut,copy,paste,trim and silence buttons. For this tutorial in question, you will be using your selection tool and cut tool. Any other tools in use will be named later on.

First you import whatever audio file you're looking to edit.In this case I chose Zetsubou Billy by Maximum The Hormone. To import you could either drag in the file to the grey space underneth the tools or you can import the file by going into File>Import>Audio. After waiting a couple of seconds your file should import. Depending on what you're doing with this audio you're going to make a few snips from the audio.Use the selection tool and drag it across the area you want to cut out. You can press the play button to make sure you highlighted to correct section you want out. After that, press the cut button to remove the highlighted footage. On the flip side of that, you while the part of the file is highlighted and cut you can paste the cut out file ant the playhead.From there make nessesary cuts to make your audio track sound good and polished.

The opposite effect of the cut tool is the trim tool.

With the Trim Tool, Instead of the highlighted part being cut out, the trim tool cuts out everything else around the selected segment.

After you're done with editing your audio file, go into File>Export. The export file window should appear. Select where you would like to export your file to, come up with a name for it then press save. It will then take you to the edit metadata what gives you the option of including information like artist name,track title,album cover etc. The one thing out of your choices that are not optional is the encoded by section. Now unless you have Lame or some other encoder you can't go any further. If you downloaded Audacity from its site then it will notify you that you need Lame to encode MP3s. If you do have an encoder,congrats!!! It should take a few seconds to encode and export. You should be done :D.

Now for the something extra. Here is a fight from Super Mario Bros Z. If you don't know what it is, think Super Mario World meets Sonic the Hedgehog meets Dragon Ball Z. It was all created with Adobe Flash by Alvinartwork. The fights are pretty actiony and dynamic and I think you'll like it :D. Another thing I would like to share is a Naruto amv. It's well time and it's just all around pretty. The last thing is the X-Men: First Class trailer. Whether you're in favour of it or not here it is. Enjoy and see you guys next week.

Resistance is futile

I have returned. Now all of you are subject to my whims...jk. In my spare time, I like to play video games like Star Wars for example, I like to draw, read comics etc. Originally, in grade 8 I didn't think I would make it into CyberARTS so to spare myself the rejection i never tried but on Parents Night, my mom and Ms. Silverman encouraged me to try in grade 9 so I could join my year 2 group in grade 10. Now, 2 years later, here I am. As far as where I want to go next after CyberARTS..I'm still kind of undecided. I'm open to learning different things but as far as my strengths and weaknesses are in

the tech portion, I could use more practice in Photoshop and maybe Flash MX.

For what I want to learn about this year...I want to try flash animation again. I don't think that my typography assignment last year was as strong as it could've been. Although it's not done here's something recent that I've this year.

Invasion of the small white menace (SNOW DAY)

"Any man can handle adversity. If you truly want to test their character, give them power"--Abraham Lincoln

I think it's a very true and under rated phrase. Proof of how true these words are is the current state of Egypt. But that's not the point...I just wanted to share my new favourite quotation. I also wanted to say that semester 2 will be starting tomorrow which means CyberARTS will be starting on Friday :D. I also have something planed for it but anything can happen between now and a couple months from now that could change my mind. Anyway I'm not feeling very talkative today so I'm gonna go eat, but first, I just wanted to share a few things that I found on youtube. First was the Sucker Punch trailer and the other was the Star Wars: Old Republic trailer :D

Enjoy....THE SITH SHALL RISE AGAIN!!!!! :P