*Checks calendar*
...I missed last week's update and didn't notice!? How did that happen!? Oh... right... I was mad busy... :P
And so I'm going to make it up to you guys. I'm gonna do TWO updates this week! YAY!
I was trying to make it all in one post, but it ended up super long and kinda rambley. So let's have two, more focused updates, shall we? This first one will talk about the craziness that has happened since my birthday, and why I totally missed last week's update - essentially, this post is what would have been up last Sunday.... Then, the second post will be more focused on writing; so what I would have normally posted today if I didn't do the recap. :P
Let's get started, shall we?
A friend of ours needed some help on a work project. The long and short of the project is that he was in charge of doing some sort of presentation for corporate - each store in the franchise had to do it - and he wanted his presentation to be about a new safety video for work orientation. With the suggestion from my husband, I ended up as the editor for the video. This would have been a great opportunity to try to get my foot back in to production if Corporate liked my work. The issue is that the friend didn't even start filming until about a week before the project was due - mainly because he was transferred to a different store.
So the Friday before my birthday I got the footage to edit, but with my mom and sister visiting I wasn't going to work on the project. I therefore spent my actual birthday getting insanely frustrated when I finally tried to tackle the video. My main problem was the footage was filmed on a consumer camera and my editing system wouldn't accept the file format. SOOOOOOO.... I spent the day pulling my hair out and Hubby spent it trying to calm me down while attempting to help me convert the footage in to a format I could actually use.
The next issue was that the footage was horrible quality because the guy who filmed it was clearly an amateur and couldn't hold the camera steady to save his life... :P On top of that, our friend didn't make sure he filmed everything he needed for the video. So after about four hours of editing on my birthday and another six on Tuesday I was maybe half-way through the project. After work on Wednesday I went ahead and finished filming everything I needed, and then spent roughly twelve hours editing!
The end project is only five-minutes long! I stayed up until 2am Thursday morning finishing the edit and fighting with my computer to get the darn thing to burn on to a DVD properly. Hubby and I then woke up at about 5:30am so we could meet up with the friend by 8am and get to the presentation that day! I was so tired when going to the presentation! Worse yet, I didn't realize until we got there that these presentations were being VOTED ON! The region consists of roughly 20 stores - only 10 of which actually had anything they could present - and we were apparently all competing against each other. None of the stores knew what project the others were working on, we could do ANYTHING as long as it would improve the store in some way, and most of the presentations were Powerpoints. Once all the stores gave their presentation, the store managers and regional directors would collectively vote on the best presentation, and that would be sent to Corporate where the winners of each region would again compete in a similar fashion.
I DIDN'T KNOW ANY OF THIS!!!!!
So, needless to say, I was insanely nervous about showing a video I still felt was insanely sub-par. Granted, part of me felt we were shoe-ins because, well, video versus boring Powerpoint presentations; part of me felt bad for those who worked really hard all year and wouldn't have a hope to surpass a video that was completed in less than a week; and part of me still felt like there was no hope of winning because I saw all of these flaws in the video - even if no one else noticed.
I have to say I was a bit flattered and humbled when one of the store managers came up and offered to pay for the video I edited so he could have a copy to show his store! I looked to Hubby and Buddy to see what I should charge, we all shrugged, and in the end I just gave him one of the FOUR copies I made.
Our presentation was right about the half-way point of the day, and the last store to go also did a video - a SAFETY video no less! This meant we were no longer the only store to do an orientation video. Oh, the irony that we both picked "Safety" as the focus! Anyway, the video was clearly filmed with a professional-grade camera and with more cinematographic angles. I got super nervous, until that store was named the runner up.
Our store was then named the winner - which comes with a $1000 reward that we can use either to polish up our current project, or use towards next year's project/presentation. Would have been cooler if ANY of the prize actually went to us. :P Still, YAY we won!
The other store were clearly sore losers. I went to congratulate them on a Job Well Done, and tell them how beautiful their footage looked, but they were already out the building and in their cars by the time I could break away from our store manager congratulating us. According to the regional HR rep that was hosting the meeting, they left so abruptly that they left behind their thumbdrive with their Powerpoint presentation, the DVD their video was on, and the laptop speakers they brought in... The Rep gave the store manager a talking to about the poor sportsmanship....
Anyway, so that was the majority of the first week of my 28th year... Man, was I mad stressed and insanely tired. I spent Friday and Saturday vegging out - mostly putzing around in Photoshop. Probably why I missed last week's update - I was still too tired to even notice it was Sunday!
Regardless, Sunday came, I did my normal "wake up at midnight to take Hubby to work" thing, and then just COULD NOT FALL BACK ASLEEP! I just couldn't do it! Now, when I was first married and couldn't fall back to sleep I used those eight hours to work on my writing, but I was still too braindead to do anything truly creative.
Instead, I finally responded to a message I got from one of my online buddies Neghya. Way back in December - I think - Delaroux created a Facebook group dedicated to the massive population of characters she created for her own little universe. The small group of us all became pretty tight, but alas, I drifted away from the group because I just couldn't dedicate the time that everyone else did. Plus, the group is majorly comprised of the members role playing. I just couldn't spend four hours a day trying to read through the daily set of about 700 posts. Anyway, I recently psuedo-reconnected with Neghya on DeviantArt and commented about how great she did when drawing up the characters of the other group members. I stated that although I didn't have a character for the group I still would love for her to draw one of the characters I came up with for my multitude of other RPGs that I do with Hubby.
There's three D&D characters, one HeroScape character, three vampires - although I only pitched a description of one, and the two characters for the X-Men forum RPG. I also offered up a character I'm creating for the sequel to What Is Truly Meant To Be... but since I'm not even 1/2 way through that story, the sequel is easily a year or two away from its premiere...
Neghya responded that she'd love to draw any of them, but needed references to try to figure out how I picture them... I'm assuming she now regrets this message, because I spent the full eight hours I was awake and alone on Sunday to reply to her.
Being the most recent game I've played, the fact that it's a fandom I'm super interested in again, and the fact that I spent Friday and Saturday messing around in Photoshop trying to work on my pixelart - I went with Amelia "Lia" Madrox, AKA "Obsidian", AKA - my main X-Men character.
I spent a great deal of time finding reference pictures as well as describing Lia. On top of that, I also sent these three pictures - two of which you might recall from a previous blog post.
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On July 27th - since it was my birthday that Monday - we had Lia's 15th birthday karaoke party. Again, this meant I was super focused on the X-Men RPG the weekend before replying to Neghya. This also meant I was again fixated on Hubby's character Chayse "Cajun" LeBeau. So I also spent the weekend oggling up pictures of Gambit as a means to gather references on how Cajun must look.
After sending Neghya the reference info on Lia I couldn't resist sending a mass of reference info on Cajun as well. It's hard to picture Lia without Cajun right by her side... so in case Neghya wanted to include him, she now knows what he looks like. ^_^
The big thing about last weekend, is that the floodgates were re-opened. Roleplaying lead me to think of Hubby's character Chayse. Chayse got me thinking about his suave father Gambit, and how Chayse must have picked up a lot from him. That lead me to do "research" on Gambit. Researching Gambit meant looking up gorgeous pictures of the character, and watching clips of him from the 90's X-Men cartoon, as well as X-Men: Evolution - especially since the latter would be the version that becomes Chayse's father.
I'll admit it: Link from Legend of Zelda and Gambit from X-Men get me all hot and bothered... I mean, why else would ROGUE be part of my handle, right? ^_^
So now I'm totally in to re-watching X-Men, X-Men: Evolution, and I'm in to re-watching one more cartoon... Which one? You'll find out in the next post. ^_^
