#these are kinda old oops im clearing drafts

[scalpelsister]

playing around more with blender and trying to teach myself how to use it. honestly I feel like Calluna looks weird rendered? like she looks different than how she looks in game to me 😅

[madokasoratsugu]

therefore you and me post-production notes (or: murphy’s law as a project that has been two years in the making)

ive had this idea for ‘therefore you and me’ and Fritz ever since i first played CindPhenon. nothing ever fell into place until i played Evermore though, so here we are!

drafting this project was pretty easy tbh (see: hubris). the parallel imagery and everything about the lyrics was right up my alley aha.

fun thing with the lyrics: TadanoCo uses ‘要る (iru)’ in the line ‘Which do you want (iru)? Or do you want neither (iranai; aka negative form of ‘iru’)?’

‘ 要る ‘ as a verb can mean ‘to be wanted’ or ‘to be needed’. 

hence, the line can also be read: ‘Which do you need? Or do you need neither?” or any other variation of the verb’s usage. 

it’s halfway through drawing the lineart that murphy’s law began. 1) i drew ~15 panels on the wrong dimensions, and had to redraw them all (lol), re-grey tone (LOL), and re-ink (LOLOL). it was not a fun three days.

then i lost momentum because of lunar new year (happy late lunar new year btw! happy year of the ox :”) )

anyway: the moment i regained momentum for the project again, i hit a roadblock in the form of overconfident, sloppy drafting (see: hubris is my downfall). 

because of the lack of clear drafting for certain panels (and changes to previous panels), i had to redraft two different sections of the PV while keeping in mind that there was the bridge still to be drafted. fun ! 

i decided to simplify the bridge. can you believe it was supposed to be another animation. i can’t. so i scrapped it.

(slight tangent. Evermore’s release honestly cleared up a lot of uncertainty regarding the direction of the PV and whether or not to include Fritz’s mother (who I still fondly call Beatrice). im really happy the PV never came to fruition before Evermore’s release, as im not sure i would have done half as good a job without Evermore’s content.)

back to the hubris of proceeding with a messy draft - there was a lot of push and pull internally for me as to how much i should keep to the original PV and how much i should just put my spin on things. i ended up doing a bit of half-and-half, i think. 

but really, it only delayed things as i ended up redrafting and having multiple drafts of certain panels haha//

the last two choruses were honestly my favourite parts to draw. the shift from Varg’s clothes and colours to Fritz, Fritz’s acceptance of Varg and the soft way Varg looks at Fritz (and no one else). there’s something cathartic about acceptance and acknowledgement. i think that’s what i aimed to really capture.

also: in between drawing all the panels, murphy’s law 2) my Evermore itchio game file ? got deleted off my computer ? 

it’s a very old, barely functional brick so im lowkey unsurprised but at the same time it was a crazy experience and setback when i needed to reference certain scenes. oh, and Steam decided to not download Evermore too. i still haven’t fixed that one. haha. ha.

i have screenshot posters to thank for uploads of certain CGs, although im still pretty sure its best not to post a ton of those publicly at one shot?

also, i had to scrap the recreation of the famous ‘did you love Varg’ scene because of this aha. looking back now, i think it worked out. 

(another tangent: using referencing as an excuse, i actually took the opportunity to replay Fritz’s route for the third time. i ended up checking nothing at all and falling in love with the masquerade scene again.) 

up till the very end, im still not sure if everyone got that the line “You are love itself.” was meant to be said by Lucette to Fritz. i colour-coded Lucette with her own unique blue for the PV, which was the same hue as the line. i hope that it got across, aha.

with that said, video production was a whole entanglement in and of itself. i think murphy’s law really took up a hammer and swung hard at this stage.

timing was actual hell. im usually not this bad at it, but this project in particular was tricky bc TadanoCo uses a lot of background beats that aren’t overt, which his PV also matches - i think? or maybe im just not good at recognising beats from lack of video/music production haha//

hence there were certain scenes i was stuck at and kept revising because i wasnt clear where the beat was meant to be, what transitions i should use, and when the transitions should be.

subtitling was actually really fun! until i rendered my first version and realised all the subtitles were completely off and blurry.

turns out my project properties were different from my video properties, hence the off-alignment. huh. didnt know those were Actual Things(tm). 

also, quick tip to all vid-making amateurs like me out there: you may have to double the dimensions of the font’s media properties if you dont want them to come out fuzzy. another thing i didnt know lol. 

anyway all this lead to: me needing to spend another evening to redo subtitles. haha. it was not a fun two back-to-back 3am nights + extra evening afterward.

in between all this was countless rendering tests to guess-and-check what’s causing numerous errors in the video btw.

and with those rendering tests came: glaring mistakes in the panel art that i only now spotted and had to fix, and refix, and refix again. then reimport into sony vegas, put it into the video, render and double check if it’s alright. rinse and repeat countless times ! haha ! PV making is fun !

i think i nearly redid a certain scene with the exact same panels once. like i said: not a fun two 3am nights.

that said: i dont know how all this technical issues (and more) popped up and were resolved over two 3am nights and one evening. im not about to question it either. 

at this point: panel art - fixed ! subtitling all redone ! render works fine, everything checks out.

i make the mistake of uploading it directly to yt instead of leaving it unlisted first.

murphy’s law 3) when im watching the vid on yt, the yellow parts in the second verse were completely unable to be seen. 

panic put it on unlisted. people are already watching it and leaving (very sweet) comments. panic delete it.

btw if you’re one of the first three commenters reading this: thank you for the quick response !! it means a lot and made me really flustered in a good way :”))

cue me re-colouring those scenes, redo-ing the section and oops, is that a panel in the masquerade scene where Fritz literally is missing his mask ??? 

i think i lost my mind entirely at this point. from then on i was fueled by spite to complete this cursed project.

at thereforeFINAL.mp4, (version five of the full PV, version maybe 10-11 of all the rendered videos, including tests) finally. finally it is done. 

i upload it.

the end !

(except, not really. because here you are at post-production notes detailing the worst luck i’ve ever had with PV making. 

i learnt a lot from this though, and honestly on hindsight i should have learnt all these from my first PV but nothing went wrong at this magnitude so i kinda just...shelved it aha//

but really, im relieved it turned out well, and that i took the time to redo scenes until i was satisfied. for a PV that’s been waiting in the background for two years now, i think this is the least it deserves. 

if the comic about Fritz and Varg (which i referenced in one of the last choruses, i wonder if anyone caught that?) was meant to be a love letter to Fritz’s route, i think this PV ought to be a tribute to the character himself. 

although - hm, this isn’t quite as good a tribute to Fritz as it is to his route, maybe? i don’t know, haha ! maybe it’s just myself wanting to make excuses to create more for him//

i was thinking of continuing on about the PV and it’s significance to Fritz and Varg, but hm. maybe not on this post. maybe some other one, some other time.

but at it’s core, at it’s simplest, most raw - i think i just wanted to explore what it means to Fritz to ‘want’ and to ‘need’ with this PV.

thank you for watching the PV, and thank you for reading this.

- blu.)