Here's my contribution to the Loveless fandom. As I haven't decided yet if I want to send it to any future contests, I'm only posting it publicly on YouTube for folks to watch. It's a Loveless AMV set to "Silence" by Delerium (featuring vocals from Sarah McLachlan).

Title: Voiceless
Anime: Loveless
Music: Silence by Delerium (feat. Sarah McLachlan)
Creator: WTF Productions
Category: Drama/Romance
Spoilers: Yes
Notes:

Ritsuka and Soubi: the magic, the mystery, and the heartbreak of their relationship.

Click here to watch this AMV on YouTube


In addition, I've uploaded all WTF Productions AMVs to YouTube under the account name productionswtf. So if it's 3am and you have the sudden urge for Irish Enchilada, you can satisfy that craving here.

I've also uploaded C&C Productions' vids (Let This Be The End Of Evangelion, Portrait Of A Serial Killer) and MILF Productions' vid (Seed of War) to the same account. Just call it nepotism at work. ^_~ Again, all of these vids can be viewed on YouTube under the productionswtf account.

Enjoy!

Current Mood: accomplished

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OH MY FUCKING GOD.

I just got an email from Frank Spinath of Seabound about my "Soul Diver" AMV.

He saw it on YouTube and wants a better copy of it.

Excuse me while I die. Then dig up my mpeg-2 version and upload it for him, because HOLY SHIT.

Current Mood: ecstatic

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Whoa. Updating for the first time from Eastern Daylight Time zone and knowing that it's not going to change anytime soon. Weird. We crossed into Ohio tonight and decided to spend the last night on the road here rather than push for Pittsburgh and risk an accident when we're so close to home.

Got to meet up with catiechu on Monday which was lots of fun and involved surprisingly few one-way streets driven down the wrong way. Kansas City probably wouldn't have been nearly so difficult to navigate had half of it not been blocked off for construction. Still, we got to see (and take pictures of) some lovely urban decay, as well as have some most excellent bubble tea. It's just too bad the Indian restaurant next door wasn't open.

Today we went up the arch in St. Louis, and then checked out native american ceremonial mounds nearby before we hit the road. The sun today made up for the spectacular thunderstorm we drove through yesterday - even us cynical Pittsburghers pulled off of the road when the visibility hit less than five feet in front of our car and waited out the worst of it. The lightning was great, though. I've never seen lightning so beautiful in my life. It would be worth coming back to Missouri just to see it again.

Less than a day's drive from Pittsburgh now as our journey nears its end. It's been fun, but after the past couple weeks of craziness, I'll be happy to spend a few normal nights at my parents' house with our cat once again. On Thursday starherd shall leave us again, and Friday we've already got a 4-5 hour house-hunting block planned out. At least we shouldn't have jet lag to worry about for once. ^_~

Happy trails, folks. We'll return to your regularly-scheduled Kasra soon enough.

Current Mood: sleepy

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Hard to believe, but yes, two AMVs in one week. Honestly, though, I cheated. This is one of the videos I made for Yaoi-Con 2005. At the time I'd had to use less-than-ideal quality footage (of the HK variety) to complete the video in time for the contest's deadline. Since then the series has been released domestically, so after finishing "Freude", it was time for a re-master of this vid. The video quality is significantly improved, and I'm a lot happier with this version.

Title: Torn
Anime: Sukisho!
Music: Torn by Seabound (lyrics)
Studio: WTF Productions
Category: Drama/Romance
Spoilers: Yes

Notes:
"If you love me you will find me."

The repeated refrain drove this video into being. It's an exploration of Sora and Sunao's relationship as it pertains to Sora's clouded past and the traumatic event that led to the divide between them.

I don't know how accessible this video will be to those unfamiliar with Sukisho!, even though I tried to cut out as much of the extraneous side stories as possible in keeping with a coherent narrative. The video is based on a BL (Boy's Love) anime, and there is one non-graphic sex scene. (Yes, the one with pink hair really is a guy.)

Download this video from animemusicvideos.org

Edit (04/11/06): Removed expired YSI link. If you want to watch the vid but don't have an animemusicvideos.org account, leave a comment or email me privately and I'll send you a download link.

Current Mood: accomplished

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It's been almost a year since I offered up a new vid for download, so to make up for it I'm offering a two-for-one bonus. The first is "Freude", a Weiss Kreuz AMV I've been working on off and on in some form over the past year, though had been in the planning stages for far longer. The second is the first solo project from my lovey freeptop of C&C Productions, a Yami no Matseui (Descendents of Darkness) AMV named "Portrait Of A Serial Killer". You may recognize this video if you attended the Yaoi-Con AMV Contest last year where it premiered.

Here's the quick lowdown on both:

Title: Freude
Anime: Weiss Kreuz (TV/OAV/Gluhen/Music Clip Animation)
Music: Joy by VNV Nation (lyrics)
Studio: WTF Productions
Category: Character Profile/Action
Spoilers: Yes

Notes:
Aya doing what Aya does best, which is chillin', killin', and looking damn good in the process. While the video isn't pairing-centric, there's a little bit of everything in there. (Don't blame me if Aya's an abusive boyfriend, though.)

"Freude" is German for "Joy", the name of the song used in this video.


Title: Portrait Of A Serial Killer
Anime: Yami no Matsuei (Descendents of Darkness)
Music: Pretty Toy by Velvet Acid Christ (Freeptop Edit)
Studio: C&C Productions
Category: Character Profile/Drama/Serious/Horror
Spoilers: no

Notes:
A decidedly different take on Muraki, stripping away his sex symbol status within the Yami fandom to expose the brutal serial killer and rapist he is. Very gruesome, so if you're at all squeamish about animated blood and gore, you probably want to skip this video.


Both videos can be downloaded from the Glowing Cross AMV page:

http://glowingcross.net/amv.html

"Portrait Of A Serial Killer" can also be downloaded from animemusicvideos.org here, if you'd like to be kind and save my bandwidth. :)

Enjoy!

Current Mood: excited

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I couldn't help myself - I made another X AMV. After dealing with Weiss Kreuz animation for so long, any anime with more than two frames of animation per second is pure pleasure to work with.

Title: Soul Diver
Anime: X TV
Music: Soul Diver by Seabound
Studio: WTF Productions
Category: Drama/Serious
Spoilers: Yes (episodes 1-13)

Notes:

While the title "Soul Diver" refers to Subaru, this vid centers primarily on Kamui. I originally attempted to make the vid using only footage from episode 13; after that spectacular failure, I pulled from 1-13 for the footage used in this video.

Lyrics can be found here or here.

This vid is dedicated to sephyelysian, a close friend and an inspiration to me.

Special thanks to vr2lbast for taking time out of her day at work to help me out with the title and give me an overall sanity check on the vid while I was in a panic last Friday. *hugs* I owe you one.

Download 'Soul Diver' AMV (49.7 MB)


Edit (05/10/05): Removed expired YouSendIt.com download link and replaced it with link to vid on animemusicvideos.org. If you would like a copy of the video but don't have an animemusicvideos.org account, contact me and I'll provide an alternate download.

Current Mood: sleepy

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starherd is awesome. When I'd given up all hope of kawaii_omi/Nagii/bishounenomi/NightSorrow ever getting taken to task for her AMV plagiarism, Starherd tried one last time with the new animemusicvideos.org admins:

( Starherd's email )
The reply, impressively, only a day later:
( animemusicvideo.org's response )

So far the account still exists and Nagii's vids are still downloadable, but I suspect it's only a matter of time before the admins take care of the issue. I don't know what kind of hassle is required to remove vids from their local drive (especially with the amount load on the server at any given point in time), but if animemusicvideos.org goes through with what they've promised then I will be satisfied. Whether or not this will teach kawaii_omi a lesson, I don't have nearly as much faith; when she was banned on deviantart, she came back under the username NightSorrow, albeit so far without any blatantly plagiarized works to date. I don't care if she or her brother come back to amv.org so long as any videos they submit are completely their own work. Hell, I'll even leave opinions and tips for improvement.

Just don't rip me off again, bitch. All you had to do was ask first. You're 18 years old; try acting like the adult you claim to be.

Current Mood: victorious

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Today is the twenty year anniversary of the Bhopal disaster.

A summary of the Union Carbide Bhopal disaster, the worst industrial accident in human history

I had a long entry written up with my feelings about it, but livejournal just ate the whole thing. I'll try to reproduce a bit of my feelings here, though, because it's something I feel very strongly about, both as a chemical engineer and as a fellow human.

( My feelings on Bhopal )

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Kasra's Yaoi-Con 2004 Report

Includes pictures and a general overview of my con experience.

Enjoy!

Current Mood: sleepy

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I'm still a little floored by the whole thing - starherd can attest that I nearly passed out when they announced it. There were so many damn good vids in that contest, and while I thought freeptop and I had made the best video we possibly could together, the award still surprised me.

If you'd like to see the video, you can download it here on animemusicvideos.org. Alternately, if you don't have an animemusicvideos.org account, bug me when you see me online (kasra77) and I'll send it your way over AIM. (I'm also willing to send it via CD-ROM through snailmail, but give me a little bit of time to recover from the con first.) It'll probably also go up on Glowing Cross on the next update, but that's probably at least another couple of weeks away, as I've got a half dozen things in the queue in front of it priority-wise.

starherd's awesome Fruits Basket vid "Come With Me" won Best Technical. Poke either of us online if you'd like a copy; with any luck it should go up on animemusicvideos.org for download in a few days.

Long version of my con report is forthcoming. I've been sitting on the vid stuff for a couple of days until I got the audio re-encoded and the vid uploaded, though, so I couldn't wait. :)

Current Mood: happy

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I thought we were done with this, kawaii_omi. I thought that after what we went over on kemi_koi the first time (which you so helpfully deleted the first time, so there's actual proof you'd read it) that you understood stealing edited footage from someone else's anime music video and calling it your own was unacceptable. I'd hoped maybe the two very negative reviews (and horde of "1" star ratings) on animemusicvideos.org for "Young Killers smiles" might have driven the point home in your small brain. (Confused? Reference this post for details. There's a much more detailed explanation on my journalfen account, but I'll be damned if I'm going to link that here.)

Apparently I was not clear enough. Let me try again.

Using another person's edited anime music video footage is PLAGIARISM. Not only is it not acceptable, but it shows a lack of creativity on your end by not cutting the footage yourself to your own timing/fades/transitions. You're not fooling anyone, and I will pursue whatever avenues necessary (be it on animemusicvideos.org or through fandom itself if necessary) to let everyone know.

If you think you can pass off your plagiarized vid at Anime North, you've got another thing coming. You haven't seen me raise hell yet but if that vid gets played I'll wank all over the animemusicvideos.org forums myself.

In conclusion, I'm sick of you plagiarizing "A Killer Smile", I'm sick of you plagiarizing me, and I'm tired of taking this shit laying down. I'm willing to forgive a lot and let it roll off of my back, but this is bullshit and I'm tired of being stepped on.

Prepare for war.

Current Mood: pissed off

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Not the show, the fanfiction. Or fandom, if you prefer. All non-fangirl/boy (and non-interested) parties, plese skip this and move along. Nothing to see here.

While I'm glad to see the fandom growing and to see more fics getting posted by the day, there's some little gripes I've got that have the potential to grow into future fanon if someone (probably me) doesn't take up her bitch stick and beat people. Or, more peacibly, get her ass back to politely reviewing fanfiction and debating the finer points of characterization as it pertains to canon and events preceding and affecting the story.

I've done my homework. I've sat down and timelined Gluhen from start to finish; I've read what drama cd translations I can get my hands on, and I'm as far up to date on Side B as information about it can be found on the web. If something is labeled as 'Gluhen fic', I will read it, regardless of pairings, warnings, or perceived skill level of writing. I run a fanfiction archive, and for the most part I enjoy finding the rare gem buried in the mire of fanfiction.net.

So what's setting me off? ( Just a little bit of fanon, and perhaps a few misconceptions. Click here if you dare. (Oh yeah, and Gluhen spoilers. That's a given.) )

Those are all of the ones I can think of that have set me off recently. I know there's more lurking about, but I don't have the heart to hunt them down at the moment. I think I'm depressed enough looking over the list. Still, regardless, I've found a lot of good Gluhen fanfiction I've enjoyed, and sometimes it takes reading past the cliches - sometimes with the addition of a nicely-worded review or critique - to find something worthwhile underneath. That's why I keep reading.

Current Mood: ranty

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I am very pleased to announce the the Glowing Cross: Weiss Kreuz Gluhen Fanfiction Archive is up and running now at

http://glowingcross.net/
Fanfiction is sorted both by author and by pairing, which is something I haven't seen a Weiss Kreuz fanfiction archive do since the White Cross site shut down late last year. Additionally, on the AMV page I have full mpeg-1 renders of "Coming Home" and "A Killer Smile" up for download right now. Those videos will get rotated over time; I'm hoping to guest-host some Gluhen vids in a couple of months when I run out of my own AMVs to shamelessly promote offer for download.

The Kyou Aguri Fanfiction Contest is still going on - deadline for entries is March 31st, 2004 23:59:59 PST. Additional information can be found on the site.

Thank you to everyone who has helped me get this site up and running in the past month, but most especially to amet, for the really kick-ass layout.


And now I'm off to spam mailing lists and communities before I go to bed. I can't believe it's actually finished... x_x

Current Mood: accomplished

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Just a couple quickies to announce:

1. freeptop and tg2k's AMV, "Let This Be The End of Evangelion", has been uploaded to animemusicvideos.org under the username "Freeptop". If you have an account on animemusicvideos.org you can download it. If you don't, go get one! You'll have a two week waiting period before you can download, but once that's past, you can go and download to your heart's content many of the best anime music videos available out there! (and a lot of really crappy ones, but hey, that's how it goes)

This AMV won Audience Favorite, Best Comedy, and one of the Judge's Awards at Katsucon X, so (IMO) it's definitely worth checking out. Besides that, I'm required to pimp it, since it's made by the husband half of WTF Productions.

2. The newest WTF Productions AMV (well, "anime music video" in only the loosest sense of the phrase) "Irish Enchilada" is available for download now as well. Farfarello, Omi, Weiss Kreuz, Ricker, and a lot of lip-synching. For the moment I'm only serving it over AIM (kasra77, as usual), but I'll probably upload it to either animemusicvideos.org or glowingcross.net at some point in the future.

To date it is the only FarfOmi AMV known in existence, and we are all very happy to leave it at that.

"Irish Enchilada" is available in mpeg-1 format. Because of video quality issues, "Let This Be The End of Evangelion" is currently only available in a DivX .avi format - though having rendered it on a Mac, I can at least guarantee it's compatible on both Macs and PCs with the latest DivX codec. If you have any questions, feel free to direct them this way and I'll do my best to answer them.

Current Mood: amused

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Everyone who knows me from CMU/real life, ignore this post. (Except starherd, of course.)

Anyhow, just a quickie announcement: I now have a livejournal for my fanfiction named kintave_haro. I'll be posting most of my old stuff up in there in the next few days, and eventually I'll get around to posting some new (or at least, unseen and/or unfinished) ficcage in the near future. I'm hoping to keep all of my fanfic together in the same place, since ff.net keeps changing their rules, and archives only last as long as they're maintained - and most of my work admittedly just isn't really appealing to fangirl masses at large. And with my lame circa 1995 html skillz, I can't be relied upon to archive my own work.

So go look. Or don't. I'm just generally tired of hiding everything I write behind locked livejournal entries.

(And CMU/RL folks: Don't blame me if you decided to look and were subsequently traumatized. I gave fair warning.)

Current Mood: accomplished

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Or, in other words, what Kasra has been doing in her free time since getting laid off.

Title: Winter Born
Anime: Weiss Kreuz Gluhen
Music: Winter Born (This Sacrifice) by Cruxshadows
Category: Action/Serious

It's a vid for the new members of Weiss, Kyou Aguri and Sena Izumi. As such, there are major spoilers for Gluhen in this AMV. If that doesn't bother you - or if you have actually seen Gluhen and are interested enough to check it out, you can download the .rm version of the video here:

http://www.nightmoose.net/~ooer/AMV.html

.mpg and .avi versions are available from me via AIM (kasra77). The .rm version is pretty decent, but there's a few scenes that didn't render well in Helix Producer - I'm experimenting with different settings to see if I can fix that problem. If I do, I'll upload a new version.

Enjoy!

Edit: Made a new .rm render that eliminates all of the aforementioned rendering problems, and uploaded it.

Current Mood: exhausted

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After a more-than-month-long delay brought on by unemployment, parents in town, and other miscellany evils, I have finally finished writing up my Yaoi-Con 2003 con report:

Kasra's Yaoi-Con 2003 Report

I've also put up a temp page for the AMVs we submitted to the con. Currently only two of the vids are available for download from the page, but if you're interested in the others, catch me on AIM (kasra77) and I'll be happy to send them to you.

WTF Productions Yaoi-Con 2003 AMV Page

I'm about ready to collapse now. I think this catches me up on everything I've had hanging over my head for the past couple months - though if you're expecting something from me and you haven't gotten it yet, feel free to harass me - chances are I've got the time to take care of it now, if nothing else.

Current Mood: exhausted but accomplished

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Stopped over at starherd's tonight to pick up the Gluhen Ken costume. Couldn't resist getting a few pictures while I was there...

( No, your eyes do not deceive you. That is indeed mpreg Gluhen Ken. )
( Well, shit. Maybe Omi wasn't the guilty party after all... )
( No, neither of us are RanKen fans. But who are we to pass up a photo op? )

Current Mood: evil

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Went home for lunch and managed to upload "A Killer Smile" while the server wasn't quite so busy:

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=15554

I also heard back from the people running the Fanime AMV contest, and both mine and starherd's submissions have been accepted. Whether they choose to screen them or not remains to be seen, but at least we know both vids got to them and were not disqualified ahead of time.

I just wish there was a way of knowing what AMVs they're actually going to play - but that would kill the suspense, I guess...

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After some fussing last night, I finally managed to add an entry on animemusicvideos.org for "Coming Home" and upload the mpeg of the AMV to their server. So in the case that you should happen to have an animemusicvideos.org account, you can download the AMV from their server here:

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=18601

Accounts on their system are free - registration is required, that's all - though I heard that there's a two week waiting period before you can actually start downloading videos. *shrug* If someone happens to know (or goes to register and encounters that problem), please let me know.

Just in case that's a problem, I also left a link for the page where you can download the newer .rm version. There are only minimal differences between this version and the older one I released last month - namely, a couple of very small transition edits, and a noticable lack of interlacing in the final render. Overall, I'm much more pleased with it.

Tonight I'm going to try once again to upload "A Killer Smile" to animemusicvideos.org's server - it timed out the three times I attempted it last night. I did upload a new .rm file of the version I submitted to Fanime - go to http://www.wingboys.com/amv.html if you're interested. Just note that the .mp4 link is still the old version.

Current Mood: accomplished

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I made a temp page for the new AMV, so that I had a place to direct people until starherd updates the WTF page. So in case anyone is interested:

http://www.nightmoose.net/~ooer/AMV.html

Please, please do a "Save As" to get the file and do not stream it. Come to think of it, I should probably just make it a .zip to prevent that... maybe when I do the nice render this weekend...

And it only took me two weeks to make it, in the end. That's a far cry from my previous efforts. Though speaking of which, tonight will be a marathon editing session on it, before capturing it to VHS, for shipment out first thing tomorrow morning. It's crazy that AMV entries for Fanime have to go to *Georgia* of all places, but with the help of Priority Mail, it ought to get there by the Thursday deadline. I'll be putting delivery confirmation on it so that I know, one way or another.

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It's over.

Well, truth be told, it's been over since Monday morning at 6am when I dropped Caer off at the airport, but it's taken me until now to recover and catch up with the past week of my life. Yaoi-Con was incredible - overwhelming in all of the right ways - and I had a terrific time.

I'd meant to post regular updates on the con as it progressed, but there just wasn't enough time to do that. So if you're interested, you'll just have to be happy with my con report:

http://www.nightmoose.net/~ooer/yaoicon_report.html

It has links to my pictures in there as well. I took over a hundred of them with Freeptop's digital camera, but in the end only uploaded 77 of them.

Details on how the AMV contest went are also in the report, in case you haven't t read starherd's livejournal entry yet.

I can't believe it's over. Now what am I going to do with all of my free time?

Current Mood: accomplished

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