My Magnum Opus

Ever since I booted up my old desktop Mac a few weeks back, I’ve written a few posts about some of the goodies I pulled out of it.

My personal favorite so far regarded the Super Smash Bros. wallpapers, which I tried to coincide with the release of Smash Ultimate.

Then I wrote about Armagetron Advanced, a game I really loved playing back in the day.

But I found a whole host of other things from the oughts and early twenty-tens, including elementary/middle school assignments, the first chapter draft of some fantasy novel I tried to write as well as memes or projects that provide a very distinct look at the kind of trash I loved growing up.

Oh, and when I say memes, I mean trashy memes all saved up on my desktop.

True.

Comedy.

Gotta love those old Memebase pulls.

Sifting through the garbage brought me to something that I ultimately came to refer to as my magnum opus. A project with so much love and passion put into a creative route I’ve since abandoned that it was actually astounding.

In my “fun stuff” folder, I found these three files partitioned off:

My immediate reaction was a hell of a cringe. Flashbacks to a true period of weeaboo sensibilities that left me doing things like watching all of Dragonball, Dragonball Z and Dragonball GT over the course of a few months in middle school.

True story.

Not only was there a “fan animation” based on Naruto, it was made in the primitive programming language animator Scratch.

Back in the day I used the program religiously, and even made some animations that went into official school broadcasts at Adams Middle School.

Also a true story, but for another day.

I couldn’t imagine anything good coming out of this animation from 2012 Jason… Yet I was blown away by just how great of a product I pulled together. So much so that I went through a lot of trouble to get the final (though unfinished) animation into a format where you all can see it today.

For your viewing pleasure, here it is:

First off, the fact that I didn’t remember spending a single second working on this until I found it again is such a travesty.

This was from that same era when I went to sprite animation camp like I talked about in the Smash Bros. wallpaper post, with all the sprites pulled from The Spriters Resource.

They were taken from a game called “Naruto: Ninja Council 3,” which to this day has some of my favorite sprite work in an old-school DS game.

I can say I confidently knew that because Ninja Council 3 is still a treasured part of my games collection:

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Now for those of you who don’t know, the video is based off the fifth anime opening to the original Naruto series. Crunchyroll has it uploaded here for you to see, and I’d recommend doing so to understand how much I tried to replicate.

It’s incredible to me how I actually grasped the concept of timing scenes to the music so well (mostly). I even went so far as to put the little floating heads in the sky to represent Sasuke thinking about his past!

I adore every second of it.

The journey to get this to you here today was far more complicated than it may appear, however.

It all began that night when I opened up the old Mac and watched this animation in Scratch for the first time.

As it turns out, the only way to pull projects off of Scratch was to go to the program’s website. Unfortunately…

That wasn’t much of a possibility for a computer that hasn’t been updated since 2012.

Thus the true quest to save my magnum opus began. At first I attempted to record it externally with my iPhone:

Needless to say I was not able to get the kind of quality I wanted out of this.

After a few more attempts, the best solution wound up being a QuickTime screen recording. That got the video in its purest quality!

However it wasn’t possible to do screen and audio recording at once through the older tech.

So… it’s a good thing I had the song file in that original folder!

Don’t ask me where I got it because I don’t know and it was probably illegal.

When I pulled everything onto my laptop, it became a 2 a.m. adventure to Frankenstein the video together with its original audio timing:

In iMovie, naturally.

Mind you, it happened at 2 a.m. during Finals week. Big tests coming up and here I was laughing like a maniacal idiot, cutting together an old Scratch animation from 2012.

Me rescuing six-year-old files from extinction: pic.twitter.com/r1oriGJosr

— Jason Rochlin (@jdrochlin) December 6, 2018

Should be asleep because I have class in a few hours, but instead I’m doing Frankenstein surgery in iMovie to try and revive an old animation I did using Scratch back in 2012.

The more I watch this over the more I’m convinced it is my magnum opus.

— Jason Rochlin (@jdrochlin) December 6, 2018

I’m glad I took a few weeks to get to this blog post because now that I’ve marinated on it, the whole situation is hilariously ridiculous.

But all worth it to finally get that finished project up on YouTube so I can show it off!

Except the process of getting it uploaded actually made the whole story even more ridiculous. Just thirty seconds after the video went up, I got this:

Sony Music actually blocked my video in Japan and demonetized it.

Which is such a shame, I was really looking forward to the ad revenue out of that video… On my one subscriber storage channel.

It was interesting to be on this end of the YouTube algorithm for once. Gives me a bit more of an understanding of how terrible this must be for creators who have their livelihoods contingent on the site.

For me, it just means any of my readers in Japan won’t see my magnum opus. Sorry!

All this being said, I’m really proud of 2012 me. He’s the kind of man I wish I was now.

I’ll never not smile looking back at this, because no matter how many awards and scholarships I get for my writing as a journalist, none of it will truly be as personal as the actual fan animation I made surprisingly well back when I was 15.

Now if only I had finished the damn thing.

 

Turning the Twitter ticker up to 100

As someone who typically feels like he couldn’t care less about social media, this small life update came a bit out of left field for me.

I apparently have 100 followers on Twitter now!

Probably small change all things being equal… But to be fair, it doesn’t exactly feel like I’ve tried too hard to get to that point, so I’d be willing to consider it a badge of pride.

See I started using Twitter as a part of my Communications 201 class in 2016, where one of Professor Frank Russell‘s assignments had everyone tweet things to him as a ‘test’ of being able to use the site. Since it’s an important journaler’s activity.

Ever since, my Twitter has been a somewhat mixed bag of advertising my blog posts — which brings up a whole other interesting debate about how meta this post will be when going onto the site that I don’t want to think too hard about now, live tweeting on occasion and then doing just quippy, small life updates.

Oh, and posting my Nintendo Switch and 3DS images. Because I still haven’t figured out a great way to pull those down without social media assistance just yet.

I’ll have to give an extra special shout out today to Matt Ford, who became my 100th follower on May 20. Because yeah… The fact that this happened two days ago should probably be an indicator that I don’t pay nearly enough attention to Twitter.

Hell, just looking more closely at my account for the sake of writing this short blurb has actually reminded me that I haven’t seriously updated my profile in god knows how long.

I may have picked up a new Frankenstein-adjacent avatar when my family went to Universal Studios a few weeks ago, but I’ve apparently still been listed as the news editor for the Daily Titan despite only having been an editorial assistant last semester.

(Sorry about that, Amy and Brandon. I’ll give you guys an extra bit of attention here to make up for it.)

I might be making a big fuss over essentially nothing, but what can I say. If Cal State Fullerton has taught me anything over the past couple years during classes where I’ve been forced to get more invested in social media, it’s that building an online presence is important.

Maybe this can be a wake-up call for me to actually pay my social media some more mindful attention, just to make sure I don’t fall too far out-of-date.

…

Although to be fair, if I had to guess it was this tweet was probably the one that pushed me over the edge.

You can tell what kind of finals week it has been when my sister gets this gem. pic.twitter.com/kkW8imXmGB

— Jason Rochlin (@jdrochlin) May 17, 2018

So here’s to more dumb (and not-so-dumb) things coming in the future! I appreciate all the love and support I’ve gotten thus far, and I’m hoping to connect with more interesting people while continuing with this long journey called life.

Movie Magic, ladies and germs

Ever since my dad shifted careers to start working for the movie ticket broker Fandango, we’ve had the chance to enjoy a number of benefits.

Up to this point those benefits have been rather specifically movie ticket related (for obvious reasons). However, today we got to take advantage of benefits related to the company’s attachment with NBC Universal:

That’s right, we went to Universal Studios, y’all.

I had a blast spending the day with my family — pictured above in the featured image if it wasn’t clear to everyone — and just wanted to take a little bit of time to debrief myself from the trip and publish a couple of the pictures. Who knows, maybe that can serve an auxiliary purpose of showing some people the theme park/studio lot who can’t get there.

He says as if there aren’t plenty of outlets for that already.

But I digress. The day began, funnily enough, with work. I still work with the Gladeo League, and every two weeks (more or less) we have meetings over Google Hangouts. Naturally I forgot that today was the day I had a meeting at the same time as we needed to drive up.

Luckily it took plenty of time to get up to Universal.

Check out that fancy map

I would like to take this chance to apologize to Michelle and everyone else again for having to deal with my jostling around in the car during our meeting. If any of you happen to be reading this.

That said, even if you guys are reading this, I’m sure neither you nor the rest of the audience is interested in the logistics of driving to a theme park.

It’s all about the parking, after all.

Yeah we parked in the Frankenstein Lot. Also yeah, I got my sister to pose like everyone’s favorite amalgamate Universal monster. Also also yeah, my dad photobombed the picture.

But do I care?

Nah. It’s a great shot.

But hey, let’s jump into the park shall we?

Just kidding, got you! First I wanted to talk about this.

Look at these trees with me. These are trees outfitted with mist sprinklers. Sprinkler trees. I don’t know who came up with this idea or where they are now, but wherever they may be they should be happy I’m not there. Because I’m not sure whether to smack them for being so silly or hug them for being a genius.

It’s just so perfectly weird in all the best ways. I’m still trying to sort through my thoughts and we caught these walking into the park at 10 a.m. or so.

Okay. Now let’s get into the park. Seriously this time.

The first thing we did was wander the length of the main level to check out the different facets made available to us. Eventually we settled on the Studio Tour as our first stop.

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Not included in my photo slideshow above is the interactive portions of the Tour, most notably.

The ‘ride,’ if you’re interested in calling it such, features two 3D virtual experiences. They both took place inside dark rooms with imposingly large screens surrounding the trams, which sat on rocking bases to simulate motion. One was based on King Kong and the other was based on Fast and the Furious.

There were also a number of examples of soundstage tricks throughout the time strolling around the studio lot, all capped off with a fun, snarky tour guide. Who started off the journey making fake airhorn noises.

Fun stuff.

Also in case you were curious, the Fast and the Furious portion of the Tour was just as ridiculous as the movies. Somehow they managed to pack two-and-a-half hours worth of insanity into about five minutes. Great stuff, honestly.

After finishing the Studio Tour, we moved over to check out the Simpsons region of the park.

Welcome to Springfield, population… A lot.

“Closed until Disco comes back.”

Playing carnival games!

Winning three-eyed fish off of carnival games! Also a blue monkey.

The wait for the Simpson’s Ride was a little rich for our blood, so we decided to go straight from there to the Lower Lot.

I didn’t get a picture of the escalators down, but there were seriously at least seven. The lot is built into a crazy steep mountain.

At the bottom there are a few rides, but Aly and I did not tackle the Jurassic Park ride specifically. A few years ago I took the literal plunge with my dad when we weren’t expecting what it entailed, and the picture that was taken of us that day still graces out living room.

But that’s a story for another day.

Today our time in the Lower Lot consisted of two rides: Transformers and the Mummy.

The Transformers ride was okay, though I frankly don’t have much to say about it. It was a 3D experience similar to the two portions of the Studio Tour I described, except moving around rather than being stuck on a single panel.

It did manage to be just as ridiculous as the Fast and the Furious portion of that Tour, however. Though that is a given considering it was based on a Michael Bay experience.

I think my tweet from that time sums up my thoughts pretty succinctly.

Time to find out what it’s like to not know where we are in a scene because of bad cinematography. Except in real life. #UniversalStudios #TransformersYall pic.twitter.com/9VOsA7PraL

— Jason Rochlin (@jdrochlin) April 13, 2018

Somehow the ride incorporated that mentality while also containing an arc where Optimus Prime died, then came back to help save the day. All within the span of about five minutes. Good stuff.

From there we moved into the Mummy, where a lot of the fun came from the lead-in. Mostly watching Aly freak out as we got closer to the front.

Here she is stealing a book.

Gotta love the magic of subtitles.

The ride itself actually wound up being way more intense than either of us expected. It accelerated ridiculously quickly — but of course the park planned things specifically to take photos right when those G-forces hit.

As a result, we got this gem.

I thought very hard about using this for the featured image.

But if I did, I wouldn’t be able to zoom in like this:

Talk about 100 percent pure magic.

After finishing in the Lower Lot, we moved up into the place my family was looking forward to most:

Hewlett Packard land. Everyone’s favorite technology-driven world.

I jest of course, but we really were excited for the Harry Potter stuff.

There were a couple of awesome things about this part of the park specifically. First and foremost, Butterbeer:

That stuff is real good. Enough said.

Then of course, the wands:

So many wands, so little time.

My dad’s job includes a discount at all the stores in the park, so we were all able to get wands of our own. Personally, I snagged a Luna Lovegood wand because of how beautiful a shape it takes:

It looks like a broom or an arrow, and it’s great. I also managed to get the last Snitch keychain on the rack and it’s just as beautiful. I’ll have to figure out what to do with it, since I’m not sure I want to actually stick it on my keys. Looks fragile, man.

My dad also got one of the special wands that interacted with parts of the park and he looked real cute walking around waving it at things.

But anyway, the other great thing about Harry Potter was the fact that my friend Tiana just so happened to be coming to the park today as well, so we met up there and jumped on the big attraction.

This statue was a little too suggestive for us to handle like reasonable adults…

But otherwise the decor was amazing.

Honestly the line going into the ride was the best part. It had so many amazing facets to explore that were all recognizable rooms from the movie.

The ride itself was just okay, though. Fun but a little overwhelming when it rolls you totally upside down as your feet hang free.

I tapered off on photos around this part of the day. My phone had trickled down into single-digit percentages so I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my abilities to keep it alive. Basically we ate at Mel’s Diner, I had an obscenely complicated trip around the park attempting to find a bathroom and we wound up over at the Minion’s Ride. Based, of course, on Illumination’s Despicable Me.

I’ll be honest, that ride was probably the worst part of the day. It was cute, but very impersonal compared to the way a lot of the other rides were presented.

Also it reminded me a little too much of the mobile game my sister messed around with a few years back, honestly.

On the way out we hit a couple of stores.

Welcome… To the photo I forgot earlier.

Aly being her dorky 50’s obsessed self.

The globe store.

Aly being a dork x2.

Also here’s something we found in one of the stores that will stare into your soul for the next few nights.

Terrifying.

From there we left the park, took that neat-o picture I used for my post’s featured image out by the big globe and went over to City Walk so Aly could drag us to Voodoo Donuts.

That, in a not-so-concise nutshell, was my day at Universal Studios. From there we drove home, where I got in some more Don’t Starve on the oh-so-convenient Nintendo Switch:

Guess who unlocked his favorite character during the drive home from Universal? This guy. ❤ pic.twitter.com/0RbcIxG7Oa

— Jason Rochlin (@jdrochlin) April 14, 2018

Then I started working on this blog post.

Don’t think I have too much more to say without things getting weirdly meta and self-contemplative, so I’m going to leave off where I started. I had a great day with my family and I can’t wait to see where we wind up next.

Spooky Scary Summonings

As we quickly approach Halloween, a number of things come to mind for me. Firstly, I can’t help but think about how fast October passed by this year. Honestly it’s just felt like a blink since the Oct. 1 and it’s ridiculous. However, I suppose I can’t complain excessively about that, because I’m also in a place where I’m remembering that Halloween is, frankly, one of my favorite holidays. Perhaps my favorite holiday really.

I always love how the stereotypical aesthetics of Fall mix so brilliantly with the scary and kooky sides of Halloween (Even if we really don’t get that ‘stereotypical’ Fall in California. It was 107 degrees in Fullerton last week, no joke). I love the movies, artwork and other media that characterize the season so wonderfully, everything from Nightmare Before Christmas to – this year – Stranger Things Season 2. Which as of this writing I haven’t finished so I better not see any spoilers around the comments here.

He says knowing all he would do is invite spoilers.

I love candy, I love costumes and have plenty of good memories with both going way, way back to the days when I dressed as Buzz Lightyear in elementary school. Or maybe even preschool? Not totally sure actually, but either way the feeling remains.

Yet, with all this positivity, an unfortunate other fact still comes to mind… The fact that I really don’t have a Halloween. This year, Halloween is Milo day at Cal State Fullerton, and that’s been our life on the Daily Titan for the last few months.

Milo day, or alternatively Miloween as we’ve been calling it around the newsroom. Or Halloqueen as I believe I saw him refer to it as at one point, though I don’t remember where. But a rose by any other name and all that.

Instead of having a fun, costume-filled Halloween, I’ll be all fancy in the press box with reporters from the L.A. Times and other big newspapers hoping our school doesn’t burn down – but prepared to cover it if it does. Though I can’t complain about the opportunity by any means, and I’ll be grateful to the College Republicans club for letting me join that V.I.P. experience, I will admit there’s something that feels empty about the whole thing. Perhaps some element of childhood’s loss in the face of real world responsibilities if I’m looking to be poetic about it.

Though more realistically I think I’m just starting to worry more and more about it as we approach the day of, something I wasn’t really doing a couple months ago when we were just building up to things.

But hey, even if my personal Halloween won’t be very Halloween-y, at least I can live vicariously though other means.

That’s right, you thought I was going to be strangely existential and sappy for this entire post? No way man, I’m here to talk about some Fire Emblem Heroes Halloween goodness. At least partially as a way to cut that sappy existentialism…

I’ll be totally honest up front with this one, I’m not exactly feeling the whole usual shebang I go through with each update to this game. Partially because of the whole Milo build-up, I’ve been pretty exhausted lately. There’s a few things I’ve been meaning to post about on here, like a story I got published last week and a little mathematical romp I took through Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links, but I haven’t gotten around to either of them.

I didn’t want to skip out on this banner entirely however, since I really love Halloween. So instead I just think I’m going to pass on the professionalism this time around but still go ahead with talking about this.

I’ll just take the opportunity to gush about all of the wonderful things this banner brings, and I’ll leave it at that. Because there’s seriously a lot to gush about when you consider –

Just look at this Sakura like GOD damn she’s got an adorable costume. For real she was always my favorite amongst Corrin’s siblings across both Birthright and Conquest, and the fact that she got this really great costume was part of what made me really excited for this banner.

Plus, she has amazing potential as a mage killer with a weapon that deals super effective damage to all colored mages and a sky high resistance stat. She’s great, I love her, and I’m no doubt going to be spending lots of orbs to get her in my collection if I have to.

Those cat ears man, they really maximize the adorability factor. They even bounce around during battle and… Man, it’s just too good.

But then we also have the boy Jakob here. I’ll be honest, Jakob is arguably my absolute least favorite character from Fates. His son is great, but getting him through any sort of relationship to end up with Dwyer is a bit of a nightmare because his chemistry with everyone is just… Really bad. I don’t even actually remember who I paired him up with in my run of Revelations, that’s how bad.

His regular Heroes counterpart sort of made up for that since I actually use my 5 star Jakob somewhat regularly… But that counterpart doesn’t even hold a candle to this one.

This guy is basically Frankenstein wielding a bow that has a string made of pure lightning that has heavy armor while being weighed down by golden balls and chains. Just the design alone is bananas, but combine that with the fact that he’s our first armored archer and he gets distinction for being unique as well.

Oh, and he’s also the first Halloween hero I summoned:

That also helps my appreciation for him. Damn he’s looking good.

Also, his quotes are just wonderful. A few of my favorites include:

• “Believe you me, monsters are not half as ghastly as… People.”
• “I would gladly serve treats to my liege, Corrin. But to children? The nerve.”

Talk about all sorts of gems hidden away.

Oh but wait, what’s this? Another armored unit? And this one is an armored mage? That’s crazy!

What’s this again? It’s Henry? The super fun sadistic crow-toting mage from Awakening who’s an absolutely perfect candidate for anything Halloween? Fantastic!

One more time? What did you say? He’s a vampire too? A vampire that carries his coffin around like a shield that shoots out ghosts? Well slap me silly and call me Sally, that’s an A+ character right there.

Wait wait, what’s that? You say there’s someone even better on this special summoning banner? Well you must me joking, how could it possibly get better than Henr-

Oh. Oh I see.

Nowi here, while undoubtedly being somewhat creepy Loli bait as usual, is still actually incredible. For one… Well, look at her. In the least creepy way imaginable, Nowi dressed up like a witch with the big mage hat is one of the cutest things ever.

She also has a spell book that shoots out ectoplasmic cats to attack enemies. Which is a negligible design detail and all, but it’s still amazing and continues to maximize the adorable meter.

Oh, also, while we’re on the subject of good design from Henry, have I mentioned the fact that Nowi is a pegasus knight? But instead of riding a pegasus she rides on a broomstick. A broomstick. Because she’s a witch. It’s low key absolutely genius character design, and I want her.

Especially since the flying mage archetype will make a perfect addition to my flying units team. Just… Uhh… Don’t pay too much attention to the picture of her in the summoning banner image. Because it kind of makes it hard to advocate for something when it depicts a young-looking girl with a strangely suggestive closeup of a broom between her legs. Just saying, might want to chill there Intelligent Systems.

I’m still going after her of course, but still.

The characters aren’t even the only things that are wonderful about this banner, though.

Seriously look at these level designs:

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I don’t have all that much to say about the Paralogue itself, since it just boils down to the Order of Heroes enjoying the Harvest Festival with dressed up heroes all hoping to win a year’s supply of pumpkins.

Which makes sense… I suppose? Not that I’ve been able to figure out how you can keep pumpkins fresh for a whole year.

But that’s besides the point because look at all the spook. Just glowing jack-o’-lanterns and spooky gothic architecture everywhere. It’s amazing.

Have I mentioned I really love Halloween? Because I do.

That’s not even all though, because the artwork for the battle backgrounds is somehow even better!

Just… Just look at how pretty this is. I can’t even say anything more than the fact that I love how pretty it all is. I’m genuinely at a loss for words right now, I’m living out all of my Halloween in these levels right now it feels like.

Though part of that could also be me being exhausted, like I mentioned before…

In fact, I might as well cut things off here. Everything I’ve gushed about is all that the game has added in, so there isn’t anything more to say honestly. I’m just going to let everyone look at and appreciate the wonderful artwork in this game, because seriously the artwork is one thing that keeps me coming back for more.

That and the rush of dopamine that I’m sure comes with each newly collected orb and summoned hero. Gambling is a scary, scary thing. Luckily I’ve found an outlet for that sin that’s less… Destructive than it could be.

Okay, but for real it’s definitely time for bed. I need some rest if I’m going to be ready for Milo coming very, very soon. Perhaps I’ll try to catch up on those posts I missed after I’m a little more relaxed and freed from my inhibitions after his visit.

Until then, I also did intend this to be a test of a potentially shorter way to make Fire Emblem Heroes posts. Or at least, more shortly produced posts. Since somehow this still wound up being 1,700 words or so. If you enjoy this format better than usual, let me know in the comments below!

I might not be used to the more informal free-flowing thought process this comes with, but I’m sure I can get used to it if it’s popular.