How I Abridge

How did I pick it?

I decided that I only wanted to test the abridging waters, so to speak, and would only do a movie at first. Bear in mind this was before everyone was getting into Inuyasha and its movies. My first pick was the DBZ Movies, but then Neighborhood Cluck decided they were going to do it, so I pretty much knew to quit while I was ahead.

At that point, no one had done a decent Inuyasha abridged, so I decided to do my favorite movie of the four, Swords of an Honorable Ruler.

Samurai X, I had always loved until it was taken off of Cartoon Network. I had rented the Motion Picture once, and loved it too. So, when I was deciding what movie to do after Inuyasha, this and Pokemon stood out. Well, you can guess which one won.

While I was waiting for lines from Samurai X, I thought about starting my own series. Doing a one-shot of Zoids always appealed to me to do after Samurai X, and one night I just decided to give abridging Zoids a go. It worked, people loved it, except for Shogakukan, whom I've been battling with forever now.

Source Materials[i]

I actually ran into a bit of trouble with this. I tried using Bittorrent, but I could only get an .mkv file, which I had no idea how to convert to get it to work in WMM. I wasn't going to use Limewire, that's for sure and I wasn't able to download anything from Youtube except in .mp4 or .flv format. I used various conversion programs for over a month.

Then I stumbled upon this neat little program/website called Veoh. Loved it and I still do love it.

Zoids Zero I managed to find a decent torrent though.

[b]Scripting[i]Scripting[i]

I had no method for scripting Inuyasha. I just sat down and tried to think up jokes for every scene. It didn't work too well.

Samurai X had about the same lack of method.

Zoids Zero though, I thought ahead a lot in terms of plot points. I had to in order to will myself to make a commitment to a 26 episode series.

My method for Zoids Zero is that, I'm the creator, whatever I can work with I work in, whatever sequence I can work with I work with. I try to cut down on these extraneous scenes and characters, to avoid a lot of confusion and monotony.

One thing I will say is very important though: make sure you form your characters well. Remember, they are however you created them to be, so take the time to make sure that 1) they fit the original character and 2) they fit into the story you're telling as well.

Voicing

I'll get more into this in the next forum with Inuyasha and Samurai X, but I'll divulge for Zoids.

I decided that Kirkland was going to be French, Omari would be German and Lineback would say "My name is Lineback!" at some point during the series and I built their voices over that. Everyone else sort of came to me as I was recording. I had almost no one with the exception of Doc, Judge and Leena planned in how I would do their voices.

Bit's voice was especially annoying. I tried doing a Richard Ian Cox impression, which sucked. Then I tried making him Australian and Irish in that order and quite frankly none of it would fit. It wasn't until episode four that I really started getting into the voice that he has now. Everyone else's voice just came and went.

Editing[i]

I got someone else to edit for Inuyasha, and I never got to edit with Samurai X, so I'll be focusing on Zoids again.

Episode one was absolutely horrible. At that point I wasn't using Audacity, and I was just getting used to editing an actual abridged series. Lines merged into each other, the lips didn't match the dialog, eugh! The music at the end didn't even sync well. Episode two was just as bad.

It wasn't until episode 8 that I started using Corel Video Studio, a program I highly recommend. It crashes a hell of a lot less than WMM and its just easier to use. I'm even capable of masking, to a degree.

Audio editing, I use Audacity. It is essential, almost. I used to get sound effects from a site called Soundsnap.com, but they went commercial and started charging, so I said screw them.

I hope this helped. If nothing else, you can use it to not make the same mistakes I did back when I first started.

I was going to ask about your group recordings, especially if there done in different places, but I see you said you will cover that topic later...

Ah, I don't do group recordings. I have people send me their lines through email, and then I edit them.

If you want to do a group recording though, the best bet would be using skype.