#[pro-tip: once the gifs load refresh for simultaneous viewing]

[kaiowut99]

GX Finalized-Subs!114 (WIP): Screaming into Place

Getting some work going to prep everything for finalizing my subs for GX 113 and 114, and as part of that, I thought I'd try to take a crack at an error that happens here which first turns up in 113's preview for 114, and then wasn't addressed in-episode, subsequently being kept by the dub too.

So, as Judai orders Neos to attack Professor Satou's Attack-Mode Scab Scarknight, Satou activates his Scab Scream Trap Card, which reduces the Battle Damage there to zero before letting Satou send Scarknight to his Cemetery/GY to destroy Neos and summon Crying Scarknight through it. The way it plays out, Satou declares the activation, tells Judai that he won't lose to him, and the card here glows as we fade into Scab Scarknight before it starts to glow and chip away, its pieces flying towards Neos and making him go boom.

But given that, I thought it an error because it doesn't really make sense for Scarknight to be the card glowing, since the effect Satou described isn't coming from it--and throughout the series, shots like this are used as a card's effect comes into play, typically as a Magic or Trap Card gets activated on the field. (And since it's in Attack Mode, Scarknight's card wouldn't be on the field with it [it'd be horizontally under it if it was in Defense Mode].)

So, I thought I'd apply some AfterEffects skills (and a Light Rays tutorial) to try and fix it, giving me what I have here after messing around for a few days (albeit very briefly each day bc work). First, I made a proxy for Scab Scream in Photoshop, then CC-Power-Pinned it into place in AE with some color correction and light blurring. After that, I tried to see if any YouTube creators made AE tutorials on lighting up a card like the original shot, to no avail; most of them were around setting and then flipping cards up in 3D, which while useful wasn't quite the goal, lol. So, I found one on the CC Light Rays effect and was able to play around with it enough to get something that I liked in replicating the original glow here decently.

To account for the fade into Scarknight, I took this into Sony Vegas, where I faded it into about 12-14 frames of Scarknight post-fade that I reused (the original shot actually loops it some too--the dub, meanwhile, hilariously faded into a still shot of Scarknight because of how they dubified the card, and you can tell because his aura suddenly jumpstarts). I then played it a few times (or 20) with the audio from the episode to make sure I felt it natural with the SFX and all, lol.

But overall, hopefully that looks good! Not as 1:1 as I'd like, and if anyone has dabbled in AE for things like this, it would be nice to make it a bit more similar (I would've liked a way to make a few points on the art light up rather than just the total center, for example [and it did make sense to center it on Scarknight's body in the Scream art], or try to recreate the glowing lines around the card more [which I couldn't really keep due to the fade to Scarknight]). I did toy with the idea of masking out the original light-up spots for use with a new solid-color layer to redo them some, or masking Scarknight out from Scab Scream's art and making a light-up glowing effect from that, but wasn't really feeling how those were coming out. But that said, I think this'll work nicely enough--though yeah, open to improvements on the off-chance anyone else has dabbled with making cards glow like this in AE, lol.

[kaiowut99]

GX Finalized-Subs!113 (WIP): Digging Up Dirt

Working on stuff for 113 and 114 some more, and for 113, I wanted to go ahead and translate this more blink-and-you'll-miss-it bio on O'Brien that Echo sends to Amon early in the episode. It's a quick shot at 64 frames long as the map of Cobra's compound changes to this bio being transferred to Amon, with the bio transfer itself taking up 47 frames (or a quick 1.5-2 seconds), but with my penchant for thoroughness/consistency and what-have-you, I'd have been remiss not to translate it, lol. And since the dub decided to go with... random text (what language even is that lol (they at least go with something like [Latin?] come 5D's text replacements), I made a version for the dub as I've been doing with these text edits (which I may use for reasons later).

(Edit breakdown below; also, pro-tip if viewing in the tags or on the dash: click into the post on my blog, let the gifs load, and then refresh for simultaneous viewing~)

Although, I did worry initially about not being able to translate this because the shot in the Astral_Union DVDRip that I'm working with had the text decently blurry--but luckily, Zichs over on NAC (who's been working on encoding some clearer/higher visual quality DVDrips for GX as well as 5D's+) was able to shoot me a much clearer frame from the DVD footage itself, and while there are a handful of kanji that were still harder to make out, I was able to read much more of the text while making an educated guess or two at what the lines with the harder-to-read kanji were saying. That said, the text in the red box was still pretty unreadable, and it didn't seem any sharp-eyed Japanese fans transcribed any of this, so I had to leave that as-is unfortunately.

So, I worked on this over a few total hours between Thursday night and today, once I translated the text, and first used Photoshop to place the text over a frame of the blank screen (luckily didn't have to do any editing to make it blank, as there's a fair few frames of the blank screen before any of the text starts streaming in--though the dub for some reason places their random-language name-replacement text a few frames early over these blank frames). I gave the text a light outer glow blending to imitate the original light glow on the text, and applied a light Gaussian blur/noise effect.

Once I was happy with how the text looked, I threw the English edits into Sony Vegas, where I first used masking to recreate how the text gradually streams in frame-by-frame. I then masked in the original red box so that it and its text streamed in as it did originally, and masked O'Brien's photo separately over the screen so that I could then recreate the light screen flickering on top of everything. I also applied a very slight extra Gaussian blur on the text since I thought it was a bit too un-blurred, and then just copy/pasted the masking keyframes I applied on the subbed-English edit to the dub-English edit.

Overall, as the gifs above show, think it came out nicely for a quick shot like this!

Also, for reference, I've transcribed the text on this below, along with my initial translation which I had to tweak some to make my edits look nice; "X"s indicate where a kanji was unreadable:

[Japanese]

オースチン＝オブライエン ・デュエルアカデミアウエスト校2006年度チャンピオン。 ・XXXデスクロージャーデュエル大会優勝。 （プロフェッサー・コブラ主催） ・XXはウエスト校よりデュエルアカデミア本校へ留学中。 ▶プロフェッサー・コブラ ▶デスクロージャーデュエル 「RED BOX UNREADABLE」 ◦XXデッキ　ボルカニックバーン （XX） デッキ ▶モンスターカード ▶魔法カード ▶罠カード

[Initial Translation]

Austin O'Brien ・2006 champion at the Duel Academia's West Campus. ・Winner of the first Disclosure Duel tournament. (Organized by Professor Cobra) ・Has left the West Campus to study at the Duel Academia's Main Campus. ▶Professor Cobra ▶The Disclosure Duels [RED BOX UNREADABLE] ◦Primarily utilizes a Volcanic Burn deck ▶Monster Cards ▶Magic Cards ▶Trap Cards