"Any card—so long as it exists—has a power that is needed."

Judai whenever something happens to Johan

GX Finalized-Subs!65 (WIP #2)

GX Finalized-Subs!65 (WIP)

GX 65 (WIP) - Shameless Plugs (2), Ryou News Bulletin, and Monkey Mountain

Sorry for the lack of updates on GX 65! While work has been hectic the past few weeks (lovely when a new system for doing some things gets thrown onto you…), I’d been focusing heavily on trying to knock out the translation edits I wanted to work on, notably the ad for the Shadow of Infinity pack featuring the three Phantasms on the back cover of the magazine that both Judai and Shou look at–and I just finished them up after maybe a week/week-and-a-half of work! Though I’d worked on the edits for the Ryou article and Monkey’s business card first before I felt a second wind to try the ad edits, lol.  More details on the process for each of these below the cut, for the curious.

But now that these are all done, and I’ve also already finished the animation/card fixes during the Ryou/Mad Dog duel I’d been working on (save for one, which I’m currently seeing about fixing if possible [though it’s likely I’ll just have to leave it, unless anyone might have some ideas?]), I’m finally ready to get started on the episode proper! Going to start editing the script soon, and pending that last edit, I may be able to have this done by mid-next week.  Once I do, I’m planning to add back the fixes I did in episodes 1, 4, 8, and 22 to 66′s flashbacks and try to get that out soon after, since clipshow and all. Stay tuned!

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GX 65 (WIP?) - A Card Not Played Right

So, I’ve been working on some of the other edits I’m doing for GX 65, and for one of them, I hoped to fix the animation error that happens here as Multiple Slime is attacked by Ryou’s Chimeratech Overdragon; it’s in Attack Mode (and Mad Dog Inukai takes damage after it’s destroyed accordingly), yet has its card under it as if it were in Defense Mode.  I figured this would entail redrawing the tiles under it, clone-stamping some of the gate behind it, applying a little drop shadow, and working it back into the footage as I mask Multiple Slime back in over my edits (see photo #2).  Problem is, as the beam of light comes closer, the tiles light up, and I hoped to light up the edited tile I did, but I can’t seem to figure out a good way to do it (since the frame and my tile edit move to the upper right as the beam comes in, my edit would have a hard stop at its edge unless I also tried to apply it in a later frame, but then comes the lighting issue)–let alone the explosion happening and trying to figure out how to light the tiles up there accordingly…

I don’t suppose anyone might have some tips on trying to do this in Photoshop? Or would someone who’s skilled enough and has some time on their hands be able to take a crack at removing the card themselves if I offered the frames to edit? I would probably just need the tiles redrawn and blended in, a drop shadow to be put under Multiple Slime like I’ve done above, and the gate recreated behind it, but you’d be welcome to do your own thing; I’ve already masked out Multiple Slime to add back onto the edit, so no need to worry about that.  And because the shot only moves to the upper right (no zoom or anything), it should be easy to just duplicate whatever edit is done earlier into the later frames and move it accordingly.  Worst-case, I’d probably just have to leave this error as-is, but it’d be nice to fix it if doable (especially since the dub didn’t catch this and also put their dubified card in Defense Mode under it 🙃).

(It’s funny because I did the reverse of this back in GX 30 with adding a Defense-Mode card under Judai’s erroneously-in-Attack-Mode Tempester, though I didn’t also have an explosion to deal with then, lol.)

GX 65 (WIP) - Read All About Ryou! (1)

Thanks to @paradoxi-kay’s fantastic work typesetting my translation for this magazine onto the cover, I was able to start working on getting it into the footage; first up was fitting it into the first shot it shows up in as Judai approaches the stack of magazines on the ground, which I managed to do last night.

First I took the translated cover and cropped it out into its own image, then I actually had to go in and remove some of the ghosting that happened as Judai’s shadow crept in by duplicating a few frames here/there. I then Power-Pin’d the translated cover into place in AfterEffects, applying a mask of the original cover on top along Judai’s thumbs and the general border of the cover.  After that, I masked in the tied-up string on top, loops and all, and then I keyframed a mask along the shadow of Judai’s hair as it goes over the cover, the keyframes of which I then applied to a new layer of solid gray coloring–this made it so I had the general shape of Judai’s hair shadow there as it moves, which I then tweaked the opacity of, and I topped it off with a new mask on top of that of Judai’s original hair shadow outside the bounds of the cover to make it blend in more.  Really like how it came out!

I’ll be getting some more editing done while I wait to hear from another editing helper on how we’ll tackle the back cover with the three Phantasms and the Shadow of Infinity pack ad (we were leaning towards just recreating it, as redrawing the beasts might be a bit hard [and the dub’s inconsistency with their edit made it sorta hard to work with too], and were looking for some help getting a solid render of Uria’s anime card artwork to then extend like a full-art render–if someone may be able to help here, it would definitely be appreciated!); stay tuned!

GX 65 (WIP) - Shameless Plugs

I thought I’d work on this magazine’s back cover a bit, and I managed to get a good look for this! Photo #2 is my current translation of this magazine’s back cover (which is an ad for the Shadow of Infinity booster pack as it was coming out), and #3 is the dub’s blanking of it–I tried to work on repainting Uria and Raviel a little yesterday, but wasn’t really getting anywhere, so ultimately I decided to work with the dub’s blank’d back cover for now* and worked it properly into this shot (the way the dub edited it, they enlarged the back cover image and kinda rotated it oddly, so I resized it and rotated it back to fit into the Japanese frame; their edit also sorta overstepped the “bounds” of the magazine and overlapped with the pages).  

I’d first worked in a color gradient to the “Phantasms” text up top, but as I rotated the text into place, the gradient kept shifting from how I wanted–eventually, I realized I just needed to make it a Smart Object to keep it in place, lol.  Added a drop shadow to the text as well using a Color Overlay on a duplicate layer, and did the same for the Uria and Raviel names before masking Judai’s fingers over the Raviel text (which I may polish up as I add it to the footage).

The challenge will be working with the back cover as it moves while Judai flips some pages; I may try to split the cover into its own image so I can do a corner pin in AfterEffects to keep the look consistent, but I’ll see what works; may take editing the four moving frames, though, since Judai’s hand moves but hmm…

*Out of curiosity, would someone skilled enough in Photoshop/etc be available and able to help with blanking the cover here (and as it’s shown in a later shot where Shou’s reading his copy of the magazine)? I kinda want to do my own blanking if possible so I don’t need to use the dub’s work, and I’d be happy to commission it if need be (would definitely be crediting in the ending credits).​  It’d be much appreciated!