On working alone

While my compy is still getting its pretty little circuits fried from the latest encoding session (closing on 19 hours total for episode 03 now :P), I wanted to mention a few things regarding the fact that I work alone.

For those of you that don't know them, AnimeClipse is perhaps one of the best (if not the best) greek fansubbing groups. One of the first that were formed in any case, as far as my poor understanding goes. So, apparently there has been a discussion in their forum lately regarding one of the latest trends: the so called one-man-fansub groups. Heh, or one-woman-fansub groups in my case.

The same discussion has been floating around in various other anime discussion forums too lately. But I was very intrigued by some of the arguments put forth by the guys at AC. And they seemed to have given this matter some serious thought. Does the group discourage new members from joining? Is there something wrong with the way they work? Do they appear so distant that new people would rather do all the work on their own than try to join them?

I think the fact that these people have thought on it so seriously does them credit. It is obvious that they honestly care about where their group is headed and what they represent as the leading greek fansubbing group. However, I must admit that my own answer is far more simple.

It never really crossed my mind. Also, I'm not so certain I was planning on things to turn out this way. :P

It all started back when I first found out about Porfy no nagai tabi from a random anime site and went "Whoa! An anime series about my country. Cool!". I went looking for a decent sub in anidb, but there was nothing there.

Half a year passed and one day I remembered all about that greek anime series. Surprise, surprise, still no subs. So I thought, what the heck, I'll download the raw episodes and watch them in japanese (watching anime with english subtitles is still less tiresome for me, since I don't have to concentrate on the dialogues at all). But no raws were around either.

A couple months later, I tried out Perfect Dark, a popular japanese P2P. While thinking of stuff to look up and download (including various novels in japanese as practice for my kanji reading skills), I sort of remembered Porfy no nagai tabi.

And then there were raws, as they say.

Long story short, I watched the first episodes and realized that the language was simple enough that I could translate it too if I so wished. And with the experience of looking everywhere for these episodes but being unable to find them still fresh in my mind, I thought I'd see what it's like to sub something. I had lots of fun reading about the secrets of encoding, filters and Aegisub. I took notes on how other groups worked and began to appreciate the work that went into those exquisite releases that I took for granted before. I fooled around, made at least 5 different versions of the first episode and laughed at my results most of the time. I learnt what B-frames and reference frames are. One particular evening, I panicked that some super-secret copyright law enforcing task force might barge into my house and arrest me, so I sat down and read on the legalities of the fansubbing community (much to my relief, Porfy is completely unlicensed, heh). I tried to show some of my first creations to my sister who called me a cartoon watching lunatic for the millionth time (while she was trying to convince me to use more make up, in which case I called her a silly bimbo for the billionth time, don't you just love siblings? ^_^). I picked up a couple of useful words and expressions for my 2級 studying. I then enjoyed fooling around with Photoshop and making this little blog. Took the chance to study HTML tags and a bit of CSS syntax, just coz they're all nice and shiny and they caught my eye along the way. I finished tranlsating the first episodes in not one but two languages and felt extremely proud of myself.

In other words, I had the time of my life.

So, to be honest, I never really stopped what I was doing to think "Hey, I should join a group if I want to do this seriously". Hehe, becoming a professional subber was never really my intention anyway. I do this because it's fun and interesting and, holy cow, people really did enjoy watching the stuff I made while having a good time, so why not? It's like, things sort of happened. Nothing was planned or anything.

So, my plans right now include to keep on having fun with this. For example, researching the new filters that will probably end up in episode 3 was a fun ride down the road of the encoding domain. Heh, my respect for the people of the trade certainly went up (have you seen some of those scripts? like, the really good ones, that include tweakings in the min and max thresholds and weird multiplying variants and sub-statements that make your eyes cross but can perform miracles on a video?). And probably try to keep up by translating as many episodes as possible.

Now, as far as working in a group goes, I want you to know that I'd be the last person to claim I can handle things just fine on my own. Working in a group would certainly produce better results and sort of ensure that the project would continue to live on even after I got bored/tired/quit. However, a small part in the back of my mind feels that joining a 'serious' group might turn this into work. Like, either having to incorporate myself into a larger working unit or being given a working group to administrate. Waaaaaay too much like my morning job, thank you. I need something more unconventional, no strings attached sort of thing to help me relax in my free time, you know?

Anyway, I hope I made a few points. I would like to reassure the guys at AC that their work is awesome and they don't just happen to be one of the leading greek fansubbing groups for their good looks (although I'm certain you have those too :P). Finally, my thanks go to Nadir, both for his constructive comments on what I could improve and for his attempt to bridge the discussion in the AC forum with the unknowing instigator, yours truly, here.

ΥΓ: Προς τα παιδιά της AnimeClipse, συγγνώμη κιόλας που τριγυρνώ ανώνυμα (under-cover! :P) στο φόρουμ σας, αλλά μου τράβηξε την προσοχή και το ενδιαφέρον η σχετική συζήτηση. Θα ένιωθα όμως και κάπως άβολα να κάνω register μόνο και μόνο για να πετάξω τη μούρη μου μέσα σε ένα και μόνο τόπικ, γι αυτό και περιορίζομαι στο blog μου όπου και ανήκω. Επίσης, σόρρυ που γράφω και στα αγγλικά, αλλά μου το έχουν σχολιάσει και άλλα παιδιά (μη Έλληνες) και είπα να τα γράψω μία κι έξω. Πάντως από εμένα, έχετε κάθε σεβασμό και τις πιο αγνές προθέσεις. ^_^