Remi-chan's Cinematic Theatre
#1
I had a thread like this over on RpgmakerCentral and was surprised to see I hadn't made one here. This is a thread where I will share my labors of animation, cinematography and video editing.

First, I feel it's important to scoop you all in on what i mockingly call the Remi "Psyche Avengers Universe" based on the marvel slapfight.

This started as far back as mid 2020 when i hit the subscription goal of 100 on my youtube.

In the midst of this video and at the end we see the first IRL appearance of my Remi-Chan brand in a video, back then wearing a much less pastel version of my scarf. The thing to note of this entry is that at the time i had no idea i would expand upon the idea later thus Angy, Sadgy and Ego Remi all have the same outfit. The main way to differentiate them is their text-boxes, a gimmick that has continued until present day.

here we see Ego Remi disconnect Angy and Sadge Remi from the influentia that drove the writing, given that this subscriber milestone was what prompted a large re-write to be done, blaming parts of myself for the blunder felt appropriate. Making it into a cinematic mind-battle felt perfect since i do have a lot of battles like this in my own head.

Granted, the budget for this sequence is low because it wasn't something i thought would be largely built upon. How wrong I was!

For almost two years, the psyche avvengers universe rots in stasis until a certain Simian Scandal which shows the follow up of what happened with Angy and Sadge Remi.

A revolution is made against Ego, with only a new character "Optimism Remi" showing up to warn them it will go poorly.

it goes precisely as poorly as imagined, with Ego Remi electing to lock both of them within the cage so they could cause no further disruption. Ego Remi at this point is a fairly unknown character whose motives seem mainly in makign the writing for my games as good as possible, believing that the excess of emotion sadge and angy Remi bring to the table instead conflate the games writing with too much conflict. This is a response to the somewhat fair accusations that my characters and their interactions had conversations that were too vitriolic or based in trauma to a degree that it was losing people.

As the beginning shows, Ego Remi had succeeded without Sadge or Angy Remi's influence, Anhy Remi decides to begin a one-man coup, and Sadge joins him. To absolutely nobody's surprise but theres, Ego Remi is able to quickly show them the reason she is in charge.

"I let Ego-Remi run the show because she can appreciate the writer's balance" I say after the mini-movie is over. This denotes that I'm consciously aware of Ego Remi and am letting her run the show.

However, in my next Simian Scandal is where we finally get some of the heavily implied but still necessary context, we also meet a bunch of new Remi's!

It is made clear that before Ego Remi came along, my mind and psyches were running around in utter chaos. Ego Remi reformed the energy of the majority of the different psyches to be more organized and enforce some manner of productivity. We also get to meet a lot of new Remi's in this one, including.
Perseverance Remi: (Red white kimono with two laser pistols.
Apathy Remi: Wears a big coat and weird a single handgun. Very carefree personality who serves as a close aide to Ego Remi.
Sadist Remi: Identifiable by nasty looking knife, she gets no lines and is more just an embodiment of the chaos she once thrived in, but is also seen bowing to Ego Remi's new order.
Goofy Remi: Very colorful outfit and is recognizable by a strange red pistonbat she uses as a weapon. It appears to have some sort of phasing tech that activates on hit.
Warden Remi: Recognizable for using a combo of machine gun and an Uzi, while during the times of chaos she was seemingly an ally of Perseverance Remi, she now serves as a Warden for the cage. it's possible she too was interested in creating the order that Ego-Remi finally brought about.
Goddess Remi: Essentially the self-insert (which is hilarious because all of these fuckers are me) that serves as the person that even Ego-Remi answers to. She wears the closest thing to the brand i wear, albeit with some fancy additions.

In this cinematic we learn a lot about the state of my mind before Ego re-ordered things, we also get to see the scene shown in the 100 subscribers milestone video realized with this new tech and up-to-date outfits, Angy Remi has a hammer now, where as before she just had a big stick. But it's likely that the hammer was always angy Remi's weapon and it was confiscated by Ego after fracturing them from their position in the writing. Helped further show this is that Angy Remi is unarmed during the confrontation with Apathy, perseverance and Goofy Remi meaning the hamemr and later the firestick were likely confiscated.

The basic plot is that Angy's rage is causing wildfires in the neural pathways, blocking off access to various quadrants, making Ego's job to make the deadline nigh impossible, this is a literal metaphor for burn out. There's also Sadge's mourning which is causing rains to flood certain areas making work both miserable and difficult. In response, she sends Apathy to try and convince Angy and Sadge Remi to rejoin the fold, knowing Apathy would not be bound by the hang ups she is.

The Warden gives Apathy a warrant but warns that once inside, the Warden does not interfere, Apathy accepts this and goes inward, it isn't long before she finds herself being flung around and slammed into the ground repeatedly by an Angy Remi, who reveals the point of their coup was that it might inspire the others to action, but instead all it did was shift the focus to Ego Remi's abilities, that they'd made it all about her. While Apathy is largely unworried by Angy's blustering and beatings, Goofy and Perseverance Remi show up to help out. This ultimately leads to Angy Remi being beaten down.

THE MISSING SEQUENCE

There's a chapter I never got to implement due to time constraints that shows the reconciliation of Angy and Sadge Remi, explaining their reasoning for never wanting to be a part of Ego's scheme. This was to be reflected in the first scene where Angy scoffs and Sadge looks uneasy while the rest of the Remi's are kneeling. It's revealed that Angy's motivation for defying her came from a belief that she in her ignorance was weak. That any who cross the Goddess should be witness to a tirade of abuse, while Sadge noted that it was her lack of apparent sadness over what happened over the past years that made her worry. Apathy would then go to remind them that she fully intended to crush any who got in the way, using both of them as shields, but because of that zealotry, they almost lost a good friend that no amount of crushing enemies could ever replace. Angy and Sadge conceded they might have been wrong and agree to give this another go. With both seeming relieved they don't have to fight anymore, the rains ceasing and the fires subsiding.

Then we get to the final scene, which shows Ego Remi revealing to Apathy that it was unlikely they would make the deadline even with Sadge and Angy back, however, Goddess Remi shows up, informing them that despite the rains, the other Remi's continued their work meaning all that was left was to put the pieces together. This is reflective of how I got my drive back a mere month before the deadline I'd set for myself, and managed to get it done despite going through some shit the past year.

Now, the story is ultimately just a bit, and while production values slowly went up, and then spiked up when i got a green-screen, it is for all intents and purposes, just a silly inner monologue that I somehow decided was worth dignifying with a parody of "Marvel Avengers Universe" in a very mocking fashion.

I of course, regret nothing. It was a blast to develop! But I will not pretend it's quality cinematic theater.

No no, if you want quality cinematic theater that's what this is for:

My first really long-form video which delves into my past and history as a game developer. I imagined this would take 2 months, but because I'm insane it only ended up taking two days, entirely book-ending one of the jokes I made in the video.

I will post cinematics in the next post. Just wanted to get my live action and big projects out there first since these have their merits to watching. There's also no real game spoilers in them which makes them very safe and easy viewing!
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#2
Cinematics

Oh boy, where do I start?

I think the best bet is to show where I started, which was with very homestuck-esque MSPAINT animations used to strut up a game which largely looked mspainty.


Some of these hold up but others feel like they could have their time cut in half or even down to a third and still work. his wasn't the first time i had done cinematic work but it was definitely the closest I came to doing something incredible with it.

The next big game i really went hard on cinematics for was Perseverance Full Clearance, with a major difference being that most of the work was now being done by Xiie (Portrait artist) and Apoc, Aku and Andinator (background artists), and all I had to do was work it all together.


All the Time in the Cosmos

Alike all of my games intros, this introduced a large world to get lost in. For menagerie this was the Planet of galaxia and its Myriad, showing the thread posed before you even knew it was one.

This time, we build upon a dystopian alternate version of future London where things have gone very wrong. This is also one of those cinematics where it transitions from one map to another utilizing a cinematic as a grandiose transition. This also is good for showing the villains who live comfortably in a lavish dystopia of their making comapred to our befurred friends who rather a tranquil homely environment. The transition between them signifying the distance in idealogies between the two.

Because You're Magical

Shortly before this scene, Sped and nola are on the run from a band of dread creatures, and are faced with a grate leading to a nuclear silo beyond, Sped encourage Nola to believe she can phase straight through it, and tells her she is magical enough to do it! Doubtful but without many options, and feeling like she can trust the funny red cat man, she does her darndest, and as if like magic, she and Sped phase through it. This helps identify that the 'shadow-dash' mechanic has some real validity in the real world for its use, but also shows Sped knows how malleable the universe is to the whims of those willing to question it. A theme that is very heavily built upon in Intelligence 314th Clash as well.

After this point, these scenes become pretty spoilery, so I will move on to Fantasia, one of the most cinematically ambitious projects I've ever worked on.

The World of VAHNUS

Similar to other introduction scenes, this well and truly encapsulates the world you start in. it also introduced the first character you'll get to play as while credits roll across the screen.

This game comes straight off the coat tails of Intelligence 314th Clash, being set 21 years ahead of its resolution. Though because of the involvement of the majority cast of PFC, it also has a lot of reference to the events of that game and this next cutscene easily shows that best.
Resurface of Traumatism

Furthermore, this game is the first to feature high-definition frame by frame animations, even in small parts. The animations of this caliber are mostly by me, but other people have contributed occasionally as well. This cutscene goes back to the trauma Svoli endured at Esperia's hands during the era of Perseverance Full Clearance and how it is still affecting her today.

To avoid spoilers, I will show one more unrelated to the story at large. See? This game has more cinematics than any game before. Some even sprinkled into optional content, such as this one which also uses PFC's tech of transition from a scene. it isn't the only scene in the game which does this, but it is an easy choice due to the lack of spoilers.
Polaris Arrival

Some of the details you barelt notice are that the planets outside of Postmartia dutifully are orbiting the Blue Sun as this fleet of Polaris Enforcers arrive. This moevment of this is fairly commonin my scenes and help keeps the scene feeling alive even when not much is happening. This can be noticed during the cutscene prior where beyond the window you can see earth slowly but surely moving in the background outside of the window. My mindset is if a scene is ever fully still, then it isn't animated, it's dead.
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#3
Trailers
If there's anything i enjoy beyond anything else, it's tying up years of work into an easy to digest epic trailer.

There's a reason I make one of these just about any excuse I can get. let's start with one of the trailers that made me realize I have something special here.

Menagerie ~Remastered! Official Trailer 1

This was also the first trailer where I had absolutely no third-party voice acting.

My trailers before this point either used third-party voice acting (there's one instance of this) or they had no voice acting, and even some of my more recent trailers follow this trend. For example:

Intelligence 314th Clash: Itchy Patch Trailer

The silly name is based on the fact I did an update for itch.io integration.

PFC and onwards, I really tried hard to do the oice acting angle. Even if it meant hiring voice actors that didn't quite meet the expectations for the characters.

Mostly, Nola's voice actor is too quiet, but it works well enough for this trailer. I've since had Zoe Moodle do the voice of Nola. Casting my Stepdad as Saxxis was also a mistake. if i ever remaster PFC, I will utilize some of the new voice talent I have to fill in these parts.

All the same, the trailer is pretty cool. I was also having a really hard time finding good inspiration for this one, so the fact I managed to push something of this manitude out after I was already fairly burnt out really shows how committed I was to selling the game.

It worked out well, as PFC is one of my most popular games, and is one of the most widely recognized works I've been behind. it rode the itch.io algorithm on high for a good couple weeks.

Moving on to Fantasia...

Fantasia Demo 3 - Official Trailer

There are many trailers for Fantasia, but this one is the one I have received the most praise for. it perfectly melds the surreal and haunting themes the game represents, while using excellent voice acting and dope music to bring together a passion project of five years.

The only unfortunate part is I said it would come out December, where in reality it came three months later. I'll let that slide though, everyone else sure did!
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#4
Been a while since I celebrated a milestone on twitter followers. The last time I did was at 500 followers, that was about a year and a half ago.
A Milestone Worth Celebrating

This one was more vitriolic than I wanted in hindsight. It was more done as a 'fuck you' to the hostility i was facing at the time than a celebration and thank you to the people who had been so helpful.

Fast-forward to December of 2023, and I've hit a new much larger milestone than i expected.
The Milestone of 2,000 Followers

But this time would be different. The drama of mid 2022 was well and truly over by this point. I was able to focus my energy on positivity.
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#5
The second video of the Starchaser Series, is now live.

I bring you:

The Starchaser's Season of Discovery

I started developing this shortly before christmas, and only finally finished it on the 20th of January. I cannot stress how much work this fucking thing was and I'll be glad if this is the only long form story video about world of warcraft I ever create.

Inspiration struck hard with this one, though. So I endeavored to see it through to the end!
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#6
Outdated now, and while it was basically a shitpost designed to thinly veil an invitation to an art exhibit I was the star of, I still feel the need to share it!
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#7
Not really a cinematic so much as a song, I didn't wanna have to create a new thread for it, so I feel posting it here is best.

Be there for me~ (Feat. Fyori Felicee and Esperia Frostwhisper

In future I will be getting a mic with a better general quality and DB-threshold. The louder parts near the end show very well the flaws of my present one. Beyond that, I just need to get better at pitchbending.

I do intend to get a similar song done for the game when it gets much, much closer to release. This would play to a gorgeous cinematic where Fyori convinces Esperia to not let fear dictate her life and let herself have what she desires, which is a life with Fyori. The song is a beautiful culmination of what Fyori learns throughout the game as she becomes more bold and in control of her own destiny.
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#8
This was one of my more inrteresting Yearly anniversary videos. Not only did it feature a rebrand, but some of the first really clever use of live-action.

314 - 6

314... Year 6... Of the crazy chimp collective. We've almost doubled in age since then. This coming March 14th will be our 11th year as the Crazy Chimp Collective! I am looking very forward to working on another video of this caliber for this coming 3/14.
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#9
Xali's Voice Acting Reference

While waiting for Xali's new VA to deliver her lines, I went and had fun doing my own take on them~
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#10
So I remastered this...

Be There For Me

Old song, new mic, new upgrades, better wording.
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