Blog: I Escaped Jury Duty (09/18/21 - 09/22/21)

Welcome to this week's blog! My weekend was pretty relaxing. I played some video games, I did some woodworking, and I got excused from jury duty! All in all, a great weekend. Let's get back to work.

Saturday, September 18th - Editing begins

As you may remember from last week's blog, I had to re-record my narration due to audio issues. So this week, I finally get to sit down and start the actual editing.

I love having a macro lens, especially for this video. I can capture some great shots of these toys. I think I'm going to introduce each character by using their toy counterpart. Sadly, I don't have a figurine for Wario or Donkey Kong. I thought I had a Donkey Kong one somewhere, but I can't find him. If you are a fan of my older work, you may remember this DK figure wearing a Miami Dolphins helmet. 

Anyway, I hopped online and bought Wario and DK for a reasonable price. The DK one is cool because it is his original sprite from the arcade game. It's a perfect look for this video!

I'm covering eight characters in this video. I imagine I can get 1-2 done each day. Hopefully, by the end of this week, I'll have a preview for you all to watch. 

Sunday, September 19th - More AI Magic

Well, my beloved Miami Dolphins were embarrassed today on the football field. But I did get some good editing done today.

When I talked about the U-Force video, I noted that I use a program from Topaz Labs that can enhance videos using AI. Well, I have another program from Topaz that can enhance images as well! 

On the left is the original image, scaled up 400%. On the right is the image scaled up 400% using AI. It's pretty incredible what these programs can do. It makes the videos look better.

Today I finished the Mario section. It was one of the longer parts. Tomorrow I'm hoping to knock out Peach and Luigi. 

Monday, September 20th - Peachy

Fantastic progress today. I did some fine-tuning on the Mario section and finished the Luigi and Peach sections! 

One tricky part of the day was I needed to get footage of Peach from the original Super Mario Bros. Of course, that means I had to beat the game. World 8 is pretty challenging, and it took me a few tries, but I finally conquered it. 

I also had to emulate some Virtual Boy games. Emulating that system has certainly come a long way. For example, when Angry Video Game Nerd did his episode, he zoomed the camera into the eye lens area. Luckily, I don't have to do that. 

Tomorrow, I'll tackle the Toad and Yoshi sections, and maybe even start on the biggest area of the whole video: Donkey Kong.

September 21st - Munchakoopas

Another great day of editing. The Toad and Yoshi sections are done! Are any of you aware that Yoshi's scientific name is T. Yoshisaur Munchakoopas? This is from a 1993 character manual Nintendo released to licensors to accurately portray Nintendo characters in their products. I wouldn't believe anything in there. But it's still fun. 

I also got the Donkey Kong figure in the mail today! Wario should arrive tomorrow.

September 22nd - Almost Done!

I was editing the Bowser section of the video, and I found this cute b-roll of a dog. Look at this happy dog!

The Bowser and Wario section is complete! On Saturday, I'll tackle the Donkey Kong section, and the video will be done! So by Sunday, expect to see a preview here on Patreon.

I hope you all have a great rest of your week. I'm going to enjoy my two days off and give my pups a bath. They stink.

- Norm