Sonichu Taffy's Annotated Sonichu - Simonchu and Bananafunkle finished!

[Wrathcaster]

Do sub-episodes get their own track? I'd live to pair "The Rise and Fall of My Heart" to this:

I like imagining Chris as a pissed off rapper after Hannah trolls him. And the lyrics prolly accurately describe his state of mind then.

 

[Salt Water Taffy]

Hey guys, sorry I've been out of commission for the past few weeks. Thanks for all the musical suggestions - I'll keep those in mind when I get back to work on my reader's guide, but in the mean time I'm going back to work on TAS for a bit. And it took me three months, but say hello to GitM chap. 16 and interstitial!

Ghost in the Machine: The Ballad of Nadine Rosechu - Chapter 16 - I Put A Spell On You

Chapter 16 - I Put A Spell On You

nadinerosechu.tumblr.com

Ghost in the Machine: The Ballad of Nadine Rosechu - Hide and Seek

Hide and Seek

nadinerosechu.tumblr.com

(next chapter is Evil is Afoot, more Naitsirhc-y goodness, so hopefully I'll be more pepped to write that one.)

 

[Salt Water Taffy]

It's Sonichu's (real) birthday, so sections 7 and 8 are up!
https://taffysannotatedsonichu.tumblr.com/tagged/Director+Amenities/chrono/page/43
I've been a busy little Taffy this past month (and I've been actively putting off school work to get these pages up for today, which I should not make a habit of), but I'll try to get #9 and #10 up sometime soon (as in, not in a month).

 

[Salt Water Taffy]

I'll try to get #9 and #10 up sometime soon (as in, not in a month).

Okay, when I said "not in a month", a month to the day still counts, right|?

Salt Water Taffy's Annotated Sonichu

taffysannotatedsonichu.tumblr.com

Unfortunately, all things TAS are going to have to be put on ice for a bit during finals. But that does end in less than a month, so hopefully I'll be able to finish Sonichu 10 some time by the end of June.

 

[SneaselFox]

Okay, when I said "not in a month", a month to the day still counts, right|?

Salt Water Taffy's Annotated Sonichu

taffysannotatedsonichu.tumblr.com

Unfortunately, all things TAS are going to have to be put on ice for a bit during finals. But that does end in less than a month, so hopefully I'll be able to finish Sonichu 10 some time by the end of June.

Take your time; also I was perusing the cast of characters, and I found an error: Tempest Shadow isn't a troll character, she's from the 2017 MLP movie.

 

[Salt Water Taffy]

Hey guys, long time no see. Unfortunately immediately after I finished up with my classes there was a family emergency and that ate up most of my time and energy and I only picked up TAS & GitM about a week ago. But here's sections 11 and 12.

Salt Water Taffy's Annotated Sonichu

taffysannotatedsonichu.tumblr.com

I'm working on chapters 17 and 18 and their interstitials all at the same time, I think they'll probably be done by some time next week. As for the next section of Director Amenities, I'm going to try to force myself to work on it next week too. Sorry about going six weeks without posting anything, I'll try not to let that happen again.

 

[Vorhtbame]

Hey guys, long time no see. Unfortunately immediately after I finished up with my classes there was a family emergency and that ate up most of my time and energy and I only picked up TAS & GitM about a week ago. But here's sections 11 and 12.

Salt Water Taffy's Annotated Sonichu

taffysannotatedsonichu.tumblr.com

I'm working on chapters 17 and 18 and their interstitials all at the same time, I think they'll probably be done by some time next week. As for the next section of Director Amenities, I'm going to try to force myself to work on it next week too. Sorry about going six weeks without posting anything, I'll try not to let that happen again.

Family's more important, Taffy. Thank you for the new entries!

 

[Salt Water Taffy]

How the Pokémon Came Into Our Pokeballs

INTRO How the Pokémon Came Into Our PokéBalls. 10/30/99 (Intro.) For my English class in late September of this year, I had to write my own myth. So, I figured "Why not make a myth about how Pokémon...

taffysannotatedsonichu.tumblr.com

I've been meaning to discuss some of Chris's non-Sonichu related prose for a while now, so I put together this little number. I thought "How the Pokémon Came Into Our Pokeballs" would be a good place to start as Chris's first notable piece of prose, and I think at some point I'd also like to cover the Bionic the Hedgehog prose story, the High School Story, maybe Story of My Current Days.

Side note: thinking of rebranding one more time for the end of Sonichu 10. I kinda want to go with a red and black color scheme with either Alec or Evan's execution page in the background, which would be cool and very ominous for the end of the issue, but also maybe a bit too morbid? I'm also considering using the "Independence Day" speech page with a red white and blue color scheme, but that page is just a bit too wordy (and cropping the words would kinda defeat the purpose of that page).

 

[Bardle-B Jones]

Keep up your -autistic- awesome work, you fine kiwi.

 

[Salt Water Taffy]

So it's been way too long since I last did anything for TAS so here's section 13. Only five more sections to go!

Salt Water Taffy's Annotated Sonichu

taffysannotatedsonichu.tumblr.com

And two more chapters and three interstitials of GitM:

Ghost in the Machine: The Ballad of Nadine Rosechu - Mama, I’m Coming Home

Mama, I’m Coming Home

nadinerosechu.tumblr.com

Ghost in the Machine: The Ballad of Nadine Rosechu - Chapter 17 - Smooth Criminal

Chapter 17 - Smooth Criminal

nadinerosechu.tumblr.com

Ghost in the Machine: The Ballad of Nadine Rosechu - Don’t Tell Mama

Don’t Tell Mama

nadinerosechu.tumblr.com

Ghost in the Machine: The Ballad of Nadine Rosechu - Chapter 18 - Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay

Chapter 18 - Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay

nadinerosechu.tumblr.com

Ghost in the Machine: The Ballad of Nadine Rosechu - We Gotta Get Out of This Place

We Gotta Get Out of This Place

nadinerosechu.tumblr.com

Also, you guys like my new color scheme of impending doom? (my apologies to Alec for plastering the image of him getting fried at the top of every page)

 

[Salt Water Taffy]

Hey guys, it's Taffy. TAS and GitM are going to have to go on another long hiatus. I hate to disappear right after I just went on a long hiatus but there's been a family emergency and between that and how under the weather I've been feeling generally I just don't feel like I can work on anything at all right now. Don't try to finish TAS for me. I'll be back someday. Just not soon.

Edit: I feel like I've been using the excuse of "family emergency" a lot to explain these many massive hiatuses of TAS/GitM, and I'm sorry if it seems like I'm being redundant. My entire life has been basically exploding since the start of the year, and every time it seems like things have settled down someone gets really sick (sometimes me) or someone dies or something goes horribly wrong or something and I just feel like I can't be creative or informative or anything. I'm really sorry. If I could go back in time and tell my younger self one thing I'd tell 2018 me to hurry up and at least finish Director Amenities before the new year because it all goes downhill in January.

 

[Super Colon Blow]

Hey guys, it's Taffy. TAS and GitM are going to have to go on another long hiatus. I hate to disappear right after I just went on a long hiatus but there's been a family emergency and between that and how under the weather I've been feeling generally I just don't feel like I can work on anything at all right now. Don't try to finish TAS for me. I'll be back someday. Just not soon.

Edit: I feel like I've been using the excuse of "family emergency" a lot to explain these many massive hiatuses of TAS/GitM, and I'm sorry if it seems like I'm being redundant. My entire life has been basically exploding since the start of the year, and every time it seems like things have settled down someone gets really sick (sometimes me) or someone dies or something goes horribly wrong or something and I just feel like I can't be creative or informative or anything. I'm really sorry. If I could go back in time and tell my younger self one thing I'd tell 2018 me to hurry up and at least finish Director Amenities before the new year because it all goes downhill in January.

One understands. Sometimes life just repeatedly takes a shit on us and there's no energy for anything but getting through it.

 

[Salt Water Taffy]

Hey guys. Things are getting back to normal at the house of Taffy, and TAS and GitM are slowly coming back to life. Since the next chapter of GitM was already supposed to be a single chapter with no interstitial afterward, so I imagine that'll be up fairly soon. Thanks for putting up with my bullshit and I'm sorry for all the delays.

I've been doing a lot of artwork on my off time, though, since I find it's more relaxing than writing, including a lot of Sonichu artwork. I'm putting together a DeviantArt pages for all my doodles. I already finished a title card for each of the Sonichu episodes (I posted the Sonichu 0 drawings on the fan art thread a few months ago, but the rest of the comic is up on my DA).

SaltWaterTaffyStevie - Hobbyist, General Artist | DeviantArt

www.deviantart.com

 

[shadhardblogger19]

Where is your comic remake exactly? Send me a link. Thank you!

 

[Salt Water Taffy]

Where is your comic remake exactly? Send me a link. Thank you!

Not certain what you're talking about. Are you talking about Ghost in the Machine (which I don't consider to be a Sonichu remake and isn't a comic at all), or the episode title cards (which aren't a remake but rather fan art), or do you mean the Sonichu fan jam (which is a KF community project which you're free to join, check out the thread on the CWC forum)? Cedric is the one doing the remake that is also a comic.

 

[shadhardblogger19]

Not certain what you're talking about. Are you talking about Ghost in the Machine (which I don't consider to be a Sonichu remake and isn't a comic at all), or the episode title cards (which aren't a remake but rather fan art), or do you mean the Sonichu fan jam (which is a KF community project which you're free to join, check out the thread on the CWC forum)? Cedric is the one doing the remake that is also a comic.

Um... I am looking forward to fan art after the title cards!

 

[Salt Water Taffy]

Hey guys. Thanks for sticking with me and all of my bullshit. It's been quite the hectic month on top of a long string of hectic months. So, here's the rundown - I started working on Director Amenities section 14 and GitM chapter 19 shortly after I finished their previous sections, but then I got hung up on this one paragraph of TAS and then I put it down for a few days, expecting to pick it up again shortly. Then my favorite cat suddenly got deathly ill and that took up a lot of my TAS/GitM time and I just didn't want to write anymore. I found that doing those Pokémon drawings for the TAS Deviant Art really took my mind off of things and relaxed me; unfortunately A) these proved somewhat addicting and B) it only really dawned on me after I started getting going that, counting Megas and Alolan forms, I'd signed myself up to do eight hundred and seventy seven drawings, so I've been trying to crank out a lot of those - one hundred and forty four down, seven hundred and thirty three to go! Then this morning I suddenly remembered that I'm sitting on the most important and the most infamous scenes in all of Sonichu and saw that my Google Doc hadn't been updated since July and that headache inducing paragraph was still there just as I'd left it last month, so I cranked out the rest of section 14 today.

I'm not going to make any promises anymore about when the next section of TAS is going to go up, or for anything else, for that matter. And, as much as I love TAS, I'm glad that I have other artistic outlets too - it's the reason I've stuck with GitM for so long. It keeps me from feeling stale on any one thing. And I hate to spread myself even thinner, and do things I know my KF audience doesn't give a shit about, but it's what I feel I should be doing. I'm not trying to drag my feet because I'm getting close to the end of Sonichu (besides for the first time since I started TAS Chris has been actively pumping out content on the regular - there's a good chance he'll be done and colored with Sonichu 14 and 15 by the time I get there).

I should also let you know that I'm going back to school (still only part time) first week of September. That's going to spread me thinner still, as it's not like I can use literally anything I've been working on for school, for obvious reasons. But I'm not going to stop TAS or GitM, even if it seems like I'm slowing down to a near-standstill as I bury it under mountains of doodles. Again, I really gotta say thanks for the continued support, both here and on Tumblr. You're all absolutely wonderful.

Salt Water Taffy's Annotated Sonichu

taffysannotatedsonichu.tumblr.com

 

[Salt Water Taffy]

So, uh, remember back at the beginning of the year when I said I needed music for a big Sonichu project? Well, for the past nine months (well, by "the past nine months" I mean January through March and then like the past two weeks) I've been working on something for the people who love Sonichu but don't want to read the really long comic or the even longer annotations. So Stevie and I have been working on -
Taffy's Annotated Sonichu - The Movie The Shitty YouTube Video!
I realized for all the talk there is about Chris, there's really not a lot of talk about Sonichu the comic aside from dramatic readings. There's the Ben Saint video, which I love and it's a fun watch, but it's also really haphazard and out of order, GenoSamuel covers the action of the comic fairly thoroughly but it's buried in his massive documentaries, and then there's A-Loggy garbage like DStecks or Dillin Thomas. So, I want to take the TAS format into a new medium, at least this once. But I'd like to get some feedback before I go any farther, so here's Sonichu 8 as a sample issue.

Sonichu 8 Test Video

Hey guys, it's Bonnie and Stevie from Taffy's Annotated Sonichu. We're working on some non-blog Sonichu content, and this is the proof of concept for Taffy's...

www.youtube.com

First things first, I actually sound like that. I swear my voice hasn't changed at all since I was eight. It might even be higher now. I'm definitely going to rerecord most of the voice lines for the final project, and in general one of the things I need to work on the most is sound mixing.

Second, I decided to go in and add in the disclaimers after I'd already put in all the other images, and I realize that it's kinda goofy to have the somewhat serious disclaimer and warning overlaid with the blaring horns of Centerfold - in the finished project, the disclaimers will play in silence over the beginning of the video and the Centerfold intro will come in with the RATG title card.

Third, and this is the biggest one, I want some feed back on the captions. I did some of the captions with the outer glow (which I can't add in the Premiere caption maker or the text graphic maker, so I have to make a unique Photoshop page for each page with glowing text) and some with just a drop shadow (which I can add in the text graphic maker; without a drop shadow most of the text is somewhat hard to read). I'll want them to be uniform in the final project, so which should I go with?

Fourth, I'm thinking of cutting out all the snarkiness (like the joke about the TV MA version of the comic and the "night in November" part), I'm worried they're a bit too A-Loggy, but at the same time I'm worried if I don't include any jokes aimed at the comic people will think that I genuinely think Sonichu is a good comic (which I don't, because "good" and "endlessly fascinating" are completely different things in my book). So when I go back to rerecord the dialogue should I try and go for just the facts with no commentary what so ever or was the balance I struck okay?

Fifth, you'll notice I call Chris "she" in the opening disclaimer but "he" everywhere else - since the world outside of KF is much more of a stickler about these sort of things I've decided to strike a balance by using male pronouns for Chris before 2016, which is when he officially got his name changed, and female ever after.

Sixth, for some reason the uncensored versions of pages (including the introduction to Jason - since Chris censored out his middle and surname in post-Miyamoto versions of the comic) and some of the snippets/closeups are really blurry, I'm looking into fixing that.

Seventh, I'm not going to use Holding Out for a Hero over the end credits of the final version - we're putting the specials immediately after Sonichu 8 so Holding Out for a Hero was the next music cue. If the wording in the credits seems a bit off center it's because I put together most of the credits cards so that they'll fit more credits in the final version. Same goes for the sloppy The End card.

TAS and GitM are still coming along (actually I put out a chapter of GitM at the top of the month).

 

[Radium]

so here's Sonichu 8 as a sample issue.

Sonichu 8 Test Video

Hey guys, it's Bonnie and Stevie from Taffy's Annotated Sonichu. We're working on some non-blog Sonichu content, and this is the proof of concept for Taffy's...

www.youtube.com

That music mixing is painful, unless your goal was to drown yourself out. The pace of speaking is weird, it feels oddly stitched together and for some reason the format doesn't lend itself to cutting every single pause like it was Zero Puncation. But it has editing and effort, which puts it in the top 50% of CWC content by default.

Also not sure I like keeping a native 480p resolution, even if there aren't any available natively high-res versions of the comics. Maybe frames or borders around the image? Or some kind of upscaling, although I'm not an expert in what kind of results you'd get.

Spoiler: Testing

Thinking on it I did some 4x tests with the program Paint.net. Using the Bicubic, Nearest Neighbor, and Supersampling. I like the first(Bicubic) the best, but the second(Nearest Neighbor) keeps the nice and crusty pixels visible for that authentic feeling. The third(Supersampling) just looks blurry to me, but that might be me messing it up.

If I was forced at gunpoint to make an edited Sonichu comic reading thing, this is probably how I'd format it. By highlighting the page/area I was talking about in color, instead of zooming in to force people to stare closely at each individual image. With them side by side to fill the frame.

 

[Salt Water Taffy]

Thanks for waiting, everybody.

Salt Water Taffy's Annotated Sonichu

taffysannotatedsonichu.tumblr.com

Ghost in the Machine: The Ballad of Nadine Rosechu - Chapter 20 - Great Balls of Fire

Chapter 20 - Great Balls of Fire

nadinerosechu.tumblr.com

Ghost in the Machine: The Ballad of Nadine Rosechu - Burnin’ For You

Burnin’ For You

nadinerosechu.tumblr.com

Ghost in the Machine: The Ballad of Nadine Rosechu - Chapter 21 - Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

Chapter 21 - Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

nadinerosechu.tumblr.com

Ghost in the Machine: The Ballad of Nadine Rosechu - Rainbow High

Rainbow High

nadinerosechu.tumblr.com

And, for your consideration, a new and (slightly) improved version of the TAS video, this time with Sonichu 0 as the guinea pig issue.

YouTube

www.youtube.com

I know I definitely need to rerecord every single voice track before the finished project, but I think I'm at least in the right direction on sound mixing. Also, what's everyone's thoughts on the new background?

Thanks again for putting up with me, everybody.