sephfire

That's actually my voice pitch-bent up about 10%. I realized in making the first one that my regular voice gets very boring after a few minutes. Plus, I like the toon version of me being a kind of character on his own.

Remember a few months back when I posted that video on games and storytelling? Well, I found an opportunity to make a "sequel" of sorts. This time, the topic is video games and sex. This is a short video presentation I just finished for my Media Theory class. I'm not presenting it until tomorrow, but I'm more interested in you guys' feedback anyway. I doubt more than a handful of people in the class care about this at all anyway. As before, I loosely emulated Yahtzee's Zero Punctuation review style to keep it from getting dull. Thanks to CarboHydroM and djpretzel for unknowingly providing intro and outro music. Enjoy!

Now, that is pretty cool. I love the processing on the drums, and the whole mix has this great "chill-groove" vibe. I'm a sucker for this kind of style. Taucer pretty much covered the important stuff, but I will be watching this WIP very closely for updates. I'm really looking forward to hearing this one develop.

Still trying to break in as a character animator. I've got a year and a half of Animation Mentor ahead of me, then the job hunt starts in earnest. I'm hopeful. Maybe someday ...

That was actually the third review he wrote before the Escapist picked him up. The humor quality really goes up when he gets to review a game he's actually interested in.

This guy is awesome.

Ooo, I like that intro. This is like a completely different piece. I still don't hear the source in there (which may be because you haven't gotten to that yet), but I think this version has a much stronger vibe than your first WIP. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes.

PixieMix stands as one of my proudest achievements. This is key. I'd say one of my favorite parts about the old VGDJ was hearing interviews with the remixers about their latest releases and such. It really strengthens the community-centric feel of the show. I'd enjoy seeing VGDJ resurface someday.

I'm a bit out of practice, but here's an example. http://www.sephfire.com/music/example.mp3 It's a small clip of your cool pads, starts with your drums and transitions to mine. Mine are pretty just a kick, snare and hat with a few loops distorted and layered beneath to fill it out. It's a bit more of a "groove" vibe than you seem to be going for, but you get the idea. Hopefully this helps in some sort of way. edit: Darn I love those pads. What software are you using?

For starters, that ambient pad intro is lovely. Don't change that ever. Your strings/orchestral-type stuff is pretty flat, though. Every note hits with the same velocity. I'm having a difficult time hearing the source tune in there, but it's pretty subtle in the original as well. I'm probably just missing it. Your drumbeat needs a lot more meat as well. Especially with that layer of pads you have, a nice thick SGX-style groove could sound awesome. Drums and percussion are a really key element to the stuff Tweek and I do, even the chilled, ambient stuff (he and I are both drummers). What you have is a good start, but I recommend using it as the "intro" to your real beat. Use what you have as a kind of "first layer" and build up a nice beat from there. Good luck with it. edit: If you're not sure what I mean about the percussion, send me your drumloop in a wav or mp3 and I can come up with an example for you.

I would lecture you for not owning Okami, but this sounds so awesome ... I'll let you off with a warning. This time ...

One little bit of general advice I forgot to mention before: find a couple artists who have a style similar to what you want to create. They can be professional or fellow remixers, it doesn't matter. Then listen to their stuff and analyze it. Figure out what works and how they put the track together. Try to figure out what makes their style so effective and their sound so memorable. If you can break down these strengths, you can start applying them to your own work and I guarantee you will see improvement.

Hot. Great interpretation of the source. Proceed.

It's good to remember this from time to time.

I'd like to help, but media.putfile.com apparently hates Macs. I can't get the track to play in any of my browsers.

That is absolutely lovely. It's got a pretty unique vibe for an orchestral piece, and I like it. Very dynamic. That softer section at 1:53 is just heart-melting and 2:45 somehow manages to be even more so. I notice that certain drums seem to be a bit heavier in the bass/mid area, but I'm still not sure if that's a bad thing. It gives the piece a nice low-end punch, which accompanies the light, airy orchestration nicely. I'm still on the fence. If you do bring those drums down at all, don't bring them down much. Also, the way the ending just trails off works fine, but something about it just doesn't feel totally satisfactory after that beautiful arrangement. If you plan to rework this track any more before submitting, I'd love to hear the ending fleshed out a bit. Either way this mix is staying safely nestled in my iTunes library. You done good.

You've reminded me that I need to give Kingdom Hearts more love. Something makes me want that snare in the second half to be toned down sightly, but I'm not sure why. But I really like your execution overall. Can't wait to hear more of it.

I like that starting pad synth. You percussion is pretty nice too. In addition to what blue already said, I'd love to hear some more variety in the instruments. You've got a lot of long, sustained pads, orchestral stuff and synths in there which gives you a thick wall of sound that can get tedious if it's not broken up. Maybe some sharper "hit" sounds like chimes or something. Hopefully I'm making some kind of sense. You've gotten quite a bit better since I last popped into one of your WIP threads. I admire your perseverance.

I've listened to the two over and over and I can't decide which I like better. I think blue.nocturne's analysis might be right on the money. This sounds like a WIP I'm going to enjoy.

That's pretty fun. I'd be interested to hear more of this. For suggestions: 1. The drumbeat is probably your strongest element right now, but I'd love to hear some variation in there. Some fills and such. 2. In it's current form, it doesn't diverge much from the source material. You'll want to add a lot of original interpretation to the theme as you lengthen the track. Your synths and everything else sound pretty good to me so far. Good luck with it.

I had started a Katamari remix months ago. I intend to finish it, but grad school obliterated my free time. I hope to get back to it when my quarter ends in June. http://www.sephfire.com/music/angel_smile.mp3 And yes, I don't know what it is about Katamari's music, but it's rather difficult to remix. Maybe it's the the music is so wacky. Maybe it's just hard to think of a way to improve on it in any way. I've been trying to figure this out for years.

For those who don't know, PlatinumGames is made up of people from the late Clover. These are the same guys who made Okami. My hopes are high.

There wasn't anything wrong with Yahtzee's Brawl review. All of his points were valid, but they were faults that fans of the series (like us) can easily ignore. But since it isn't the type of game he likes anyway, the issues were all the more obvious. He's kind of already reviewed Mario Kart by association anyway by covering other Nintendo franchises. Looking at his Mario Galaxy, Phantom Hourglass, Brawl and Paper Mario reviews, it's easy to assume what he'd say. Yahtzee's take on Nintendo franchises: "They're polished and usually pretty fun, but they definitely aren't flawless and I wish Nintendo would use all that talent and money to branch out and try some new things."

I just received this PM at youtube: Knowing the internet, there's an 90% chance this is isn't actually from her, but I'm going to just blindly believe it anyway because its awesome.

That beta was awesome fun. I can't wait until the full game comes out. We'll have to organize some OCR games.