18Feb05 (Monthenor): What was I worried about? I finished the VideoEdit project yesterday in an extremely timely fashion. This was probably the smoothest video project I've ever done: Photoshop never crashed, Premiere never crashed, I didn't do a lot of extraneous work that got cut nor did I have to scramble to fill time...And I consider the finished product to be as close to my vodka-Jolt-fueled vision as possible, given my tools and expertise.

Every single piece of this video was done by me between Tuesday and Thursday of this week. The animation is definitely my "vector paths with drop shadow" style as seen in previous comics. I was hoping that I could make the backgrounds and characters distinct and composit them inside Premiere, but I couldn't figure out how to work the Resize option in Premiere...which meant enormous cats on tiny little grassy knolls. So I went back and created each individual frame in Photoshop. All the sounds were done by recording myself on my digital camera, uploading those movies, stripping out the sound in VirtualDub, cleaning it up in Goldwave, and finally putting it into Premiere. This rather asinine chain was necessary because my laptop's mic is busted...a small consequence of falling on the ice twice this winter.

I chose as my subject the nearly unknown Tailchaser's Song, a sort of Watership Down Lite. I'm almost positive nobody else on Fark will pick that book, but by the same token I don't expect anybody on Fark (or here) to even know how awesome this trailer is. The dialogue is straight outta the book, except for the last little bit with Grizraz. His actual line in the book is "I know you. You are no threat.", which is in character but doesn't have any sort of dramatic punch to it. The bit about "making a name for himself"...that's just gold. Sonyadora9 knows what I'm talking about.

Right now Sonyadora9 and I are going "woo!" and everybody else is going "huh?"

Anyway, we have links to the video itself, to the video codec that some people still might not have, and to a torrent. When this contest goes live on Fark I expect the video will get hammered to hell and back, and the torrent is my attempt to mitigate the coming damage. If you (yes, you) know how to run a BitTorrent client, could you maybe help us all seed on Monday? I don't know the exact time the contest will appear, but seeding through Monday would really help me out.

Now I'm free to focus on the second vodka-Jolt concoction, inspired by the absolutely horrid Dracula 3000. The concept of a vampire movie in space is fundamentally sound, but Drac3K really screwed the pooch. I figured I could do better, drunk as I was. I don't quite remember how it goes, but I took notes:

• Interplanetary international space waters
• Eastern European accent
• Buddhists
• Vampires (Kyonshi?)

And then a super cool plot twist that will blow your mind if I just told you, and besides I don't want to spoil it in case SciFi wants to make this an Original. If you really really need to know, highlight the space below, but be warned that it will totally ruin the twist ending.

Everybody's an android!

And Finally, Resolution: The saga of my car ends today! This morning I got a call from Momma Cause's real insurance company. They agreed that my car was a total loss and are going to cut me a check this very afternoon. I figured I'd have to haggle for a decent price and had a list all ready for them:

Blue Book value of car (approx.)

$240

Cost of towing/storage

$65

Cost of brake work done in December, still under warranty (a longshot, I know)

$206.12

Total

~$510

So I was prepared, man. Start at $510 and maybe settle around $350, that sounded fine to me. But Mr. Insurance Man had apparently run some numbers of his own, and immediately offered me $787. I don't know where this number came from, but I graciously accepted his offer before I burst out laughing.

And we all lived happily ever after.