Happy to be able to say: I have a new solo cover!!! ✨✨✨
So twelve and a half years ago, I uploaded my very bad "fandub" of For Fruits Basket to youtube—my first cover that I put online. But like. Recorded in Windows Movie Maker with a $20 microphone. Mispronouncing everything and singing the wrong words.
Fast forward to when the 2019 reboot of the Fruits Basket anime was announced, I knew I definitely had to cover the opening theme—no matter what kind of song it was, no matter if I actually sounded good on it or not LOL! Hit up my friends' art and instrumental commissions, immediately started recording when the song came out, and I was set on uploading in April because I have other projects to worry about.... Until I got sick for 2 weeks, was on biz trip for 1 week, never fully recovered, had to focus on other things. :c Singing this was a struggle! In any case, I'm just very glad that I finally finished it; this is a super meaningful project. 💖
Bless my friends sherry and Dibur for making me sound and look this pretty?!?! sherry's art is just wonderful and warm and adorable. TuT And Dibur's instrumental makes me feel like a princess.... Do check out their links below to support/commission them!
There's a special reason behind me holding a basket full of candy in the illustration: I wrote a "future generation" fanfic called Candy Basket as my 8th grade novel lol. A friend and I wanted to make it into an anime (literally drawn in Microsoft Paint) and I was going to voice the cat character, but this is something to share more about another day~
A few weeks ago was the round 1 end of the newest, hottest chorus battle Ascension. Before I rave on and on about my own group, here are some of my close friends' groups that I highly recommend a watch through!
🔹 CYPHER - Redmoon :: Absolute legends. My favorite boys. ❤️ Truly, I admire every single member of this group and I LOVE that they are a CB repeat group! This time they came back with AN EPIC ORIGINAL SONG written by one of their members Toast who just released his first EP which you can buy here! I highly recommend checking out the lyric translations for Redmoon and the rest of Toast's songs as they're just poetic artistry. Everything about Redmoon is flawless....
🔹 The Prison Girls - Division Battle Anthem :: Badass rapping girls!!! Everything is so cool and I've never known of a CB entry as rap-centric as this before! So impressed!!
There's an abundance of great, impressive, fierce, beautiful, sweet, hardworking groups in this battle and you can find them in this playlist~
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It's kind of like a long-time dream come true to finally form a group with some of my favorite singing homegurls Mimi, Chiisana, and Aerin/Erin ❤️❤️❤️ Of course Mimi, Chiisa, and I are very used to working with each other, and Aerin has always been one of Gemini's closest friends and supporters so she's basically family. (Aerin and Mimi have also recently made a duet channel so please subscribe since they'll be active there. ^^) The four of us have great synergy and an honest, comfortable, trusting dynamic that allows us to really try our best—and so it's unbelievably gratifying and touching to hear from...actually a handful of people.......that we were their favorite entry vocally ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; omgggggggggg............ how is this possible?????? what a dream come true... It's especially flattering because our visuals are so strong that it's crazy that people are still able to give attention to our vocals? ToT
We sang the Japanese version of "What" by Dreamcatcher!! It was fun to get to show our colors as we're all also k-pop coverists and Dreamcatcher's songs in the k-pop scape have the unique quality of sounding like j-rock!
And of course the staff are the real reason our entry turned out amazing....
neneki was an incredibly dedicated mixer whose magic touch was what seamed our vocals together and made us shine! She's been dealing with some terrible circumstances but she still chose to work hard towards this entry in spite of everything—and for that, we're indebted to her big heart. ;; Please consider checking out her audio editing commissions as the income would mean a lot to her!
minty⁺ art speaks for itself.... I had a friend describe her art style as "timeless" and I think that's right on the nose. It's visually appealing as hell and she represented us as pretty, fierce, and vulnerable all at once. So freaking perfect. T^T How lucky were we to get Minty art..... I love it too much....
We were also privileged to have pKotetsu and shippa work on the animation and they really brought to life this story of 4 students trapped in nightmare scapes! I really love that we each have our own spoopy situations and how the color grading sets each world apart. Honestly both of our animators were dealing with reallyyyy busy lives during this round so it's crazy impressive how the animation still came together despite how little time they had to work on it. ;;;
Actually Chiisana and I last minute helped out with the animation to take a little off their shoulders—I animated the rap portion and Chiisa animated the bridge! Luckily we had pKotetsu's comps and settings as a base and I'm happy with how my portion turned out ;o; I felt like I leveled up as an animator from this!
Hello hello! I procrastinated blogging a lot in the past few weeks but I've been doing well! I've dedicated a lot of my time to singing projects but not in a burnout sort of way. ^^ My business trip earlier this month was incredibly exhausting but it's for one of those causes that feel warmly gratifying and fulfilling—I edited a video that celebrates some of the brightest students in the country with the strongest knacks for scientific research and potential to improve the world, and they always fill me to the brim with inspiration and pride every time I work this event. ;A; These students are so brilliant, ambitious, sweet, and hardworking; I love being able to share their stories and share their research, showcasing impressive and fun sides to them, and letting them see themselves as heroes. In comparison, they make me feel stupid and unpassionate but I try to think that my part in doing my heartfelt best to create videos that spread the message about their achievements and help them be proud of themselves is important too. ;o;
On this trip I also met up with Sonny for the first time over delicious ramen!!! We became friends many years ago through our blogs so it's super meaningful to me to get to post about our first meeting here. ❤️
Also got dressed up for the fancy gala at which my video was shown at the end of the trip!
Hmm, what else has happened... Chiisa and I got tickets for NCT 127's US tour in May! The ticketing process was painful but yay we're going! Also just one mere month before the concert, MY FAVORITE GROUP IN THE WORLD Lovelyz was announced as performers for the Korea Times Music Festival in LA 😭 Even though I had to book plane tickets and a motel, I'm gonna be exhausted from being busy, and my bank account has a chunk taken out of it from my lung situation, I thought of course I have to go......... How much would I regret it if I missed Lovelyz' first ever appearance in the US? ;;; Sadly Chiisa can't come but Fome wanted to accompany me so it's going to be his first kpop concert ever wowowow~
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March 16th was my singing fam Gemini's 8th year anniversary!!! We wanted to be more active so on top of a new project that's being worked on, we also thought it'd be nice to pick up a really old project that we recorded back in 2014! I had actually mixed it back in 2015 and shockingly the mix was not bad at all, I was kind of proud of myself..... But it wasn't up to current standards and our old mics sounded like crap, so I went and basically redid the majority of the mix L-LOL.. orz;;
A-and then I was going to make kind of a simple lyric video with chibis and just like.... particles and our dumb representative symbols from 2011, BUT LOOK WHERE WE ARE. LOOK WHAT THE NOOBIE ANIMATOR DRAGGED IN FROM AFTER EFFECTS HELL... I sold my soul for over a month animating this in most of my free time while listening to 37 episodes of Shokugeki no Souma dub in the background LOL. It was my first time making a 3D scene and I learned a ton of new things just for this video ^^;;; Please look upon it kindly!
We were all amazed at how our vocals from 2014 don't actually sound that bad ahaha. Of course we've all become stronger singers since, but man this really feels like the ~essence~ of Gemini that we're most familiar with. I'm incredibly proud of the six of us and how we've stuck together through all of these years—making us one of the few permanent singing groups in the communities we've been in that's this old and somewhat active. Especially in the past couple of years, we've been hearing a lot from people that have been supporting us for a long time or tell us that we inspired them, and that's just soooo amazing and heartwarming..... I really want us to keep going if that's the sort of impact we can have. ;^; ❤️❤️❤️
It's a good week of uploads!!! I published my solo cover last week and today, the best friend [goddess] Chiisana uploaded her solo cover! We worked hard on our videos so it's nice that we got them done QUQ Fun fact: we both sang, mixed, and animated our own videos!✨
【歌ってみた】Shokugeki no Soma OP - BRAVER 【小さな】
I'm slain!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are not deserving of Chiisana's vocal cord vibrations. Her talents transcend human capabilities. Chiisana is a literal goddess and angel. I can't even begin to fathom how she does what she does. This animation is badass. And just..just listen to her belting. Are you still alive? Yeah, me neither. I want Chiisana to sing at my funeral. I love her so, so much.
t h i s i s t h e c o v e r o f t h e c e n t u r y
💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘
【Cover】 JUNNA / Shooting Star (eng.) 【Eva】
And then there's my cover which I wrote about here LOL.
This was my first time mixing, animating, AND drawing for a video! Albeit they're very low quality, childish doodles because that's all I can do. ;o; (The main illustration is by soemei 💞)
Tbh you wouldn't think that a mix for this type of cover would be difficult at all, but this was a struggle through and through. All of these years of using a Blue Snowball—which has the reputation of being a difficult mic—I'd NEVER had nearly this amount of trouble T_______T Matching my mic quality through all of my takes was an absolute nightmare that I probably spent at least 10 hours on over the span of the year. I wish I were joking when I say that I probably did some sort of EQ adjustment to literally every single syllable in this song. Recording this cover was the reason I decided to finally upgrade and take up Fome's offer to long-term borrow his extra mic passed down from his uncle lol;; Considering what I had to work with, it now sounds somewhat consistent enough so I think my long hours of EQ bore fruit, yay!
I don't even know what to say about the animation haha. It's pretty simple. I wish I had good aesthetic sense and had better creative ideas adlkfjslf but luckily I had pretty soemei art to make up for it!
Fun fact: I just discovered today that my cover might just be the only... existing version of this song on youtube....... I-I can't believe.... Gotta make a shout out to Victor Entertainment—I'm so fortunate that they actually approved my copyright dispute ;u;
YASS!!!!! IT'S DONE!!! It'S FINALLY OUT IN THE WORLD!! And it's gotten such an explosive response so far omggg thank youuuu QAQ
It's been a wild ride executing the Youtaite React AX (Anime Expo) special, from filming outside for 3 hours in 108 F / 42 C weather, to the crazy complicated edit that it became and how many things kept popping up that needed to be done before it was ready to go. It really took me over 50 hours of working on this after the shoot to get it done and ready for upload..... Under the cut, I'mma discuss the post-production process in more detail!
For this episode, we put up a clipboard during the youtaite meetup for anyone to sign up, with only the info that they'd be doing a challenge and not to spoil the answers. We then had participants watch entries from a selection of the chorus battles with the most participating entries/were the most iconic for their time, and they racked up points by guessing the song, group, and CB.
We got some hilarious struggling as well as folks expressing their love for entries/groups/their friends—so I think it's pretty entertaining and full of heart. ^^ Everyone did great! I'm also in it kind of as a host.... I swear I tried to cut my intro out but it didn't make enough sense without someone spelling out the setting and what was happening... I don't even know how I let Fome talk me into that ending. That's not me.
Anyway! I also asked them questions after the challenge and got lots of wholesome answers, so that's what the next episode is going to be composed of. Someday. When I....make time....to edit it.
Ahhh, where do I even start... I can't remember the last time I was this happy and satisfied with my life. ;u; Not sure why but I feel like I'm more in tune with myself than ever. I can't remember if I ever felt like, "Wow I am a healthy person!" the way I do now. It's probably good luck and good timing that a combination of things has led me to this, and I hope I don't take it for granted haha. I feel worry-free, I feel proud, I feel confident and self-empowered, I feel loved, and I feel like I have things I enjoy and look forward to. It's crazy.
So let's start with my I Wish collab, because I feel that it was likely a trigger in all of this... In my last post, I said my confidence in mixing took a nosedive, so I was pretty scared about getting back into this mix. ;A; But as I did, I realized that I really didn't hate the mix...? All I remembered was my dissatisfaction and struggle with it, so I had low expectations, but honestly I hadn't done a bad job at all...? So I spent about 5 days working on it more, took advice, redid the mastering, improved it, and just kind of threw in the towel when I was riding up against my self-determined deadline for the evening before Valentine's LOL. I'd say considering my current ability, I'm about 95% satisfied with the mix, which is pretty amazing!!!!!! There was so much frustration that I was hitting my limits, so I thank the heavens that I might still yet have potential in me. Also, I was pretty scared about the animation, because I'm really not experienced in animating and the standards for both aesthetics and technicality have risen ridiculously high (due to animators' hard work, respect) in this community. In the end, I've accepted that it's really not bad for being my first animation in AE and for being primarily a mixer/vocalist. Some seemed to like it a lot, yay ;o; <3
I'm really happy about this collab... All 12 of the other girls in it are suuuuch sweethearts, super supportive and gracious, and wow their voices. *___* They're all fantastic and I'm grateful they agreed! I'm glad to see them receiving love and extra recognition through this. ♥ One of my favorite things is that I was privileged to be in a place where I could invite and bring together friends from different communities—so I was able to have friends (and a new friend I stalked down because I liked her voice LOL) from the youtaite community, long-time friends with whom I've been singing since 2010 (Zoey and Chiisana since 2007 actually!), and some friends that I met in 2016 through the k-pop coverist competition PRODUCE90. That's a super beautiful thing to me ;____; And the adorable art makes me clutch my heart!
And of course, I'm proud that I was able to complete this collab at all. It's actually been hitting me with a lot of guilt throughout the past year, whenever I had to deprioritize it in favor of other projects, whenever it was me that was holding up the entire thing... I had wondered if I was wrong to be so ambitious to be organizing, mixing, animating, rapping in, and recording additional harmonies for a 13-person collab. The more time went by without me completing it, the more I felt I was failing—and I also didn't have the confidence that I could make it up to expectations. But ultimately... in this economy when most non-chorus battle collaborations never see the light, I'm glad I could shine some on this one. ^^
HONESTLYYYY it was good luck more than anything that I happened to be able to finish it up right around Valentine's Day, which I believe helped it get such good reception for being a collab of a kpop song most have never heard of before LOL!! I'm so grateful for how well it was received, like ;_____; it exceeded my expectations tenfold. ;___; There was so much love! Not to mention that I don't have any expectations for my youtube channel anymore, because I'm pretty much a washed up unspectacular person whose subs are mostly from ancient times and I cover mostly kpop despite being most active in a non-kpop community, and I've basically come to accept that it'll be this way until there's a turnaround. The amount of views/likes/retweets may not match up to others' works, but for me, it was shocking. Thank you.
It truly reminded me of how supportive and full of love the people around me are. ;o; It felt like it was the birthday of me and everyone else in the cast!
As for everything else in my life... After a few weeks of work being very stressful and deadline-ridden, it's been slow and chill for the past 2 weeks, which I've uh been taking advantage of LOL... I know it's going to get busy again soon, so I'm enjoying this. Typically I'd feel guilty over not being productive enough.. and I always feel like a failure for how late I can't drag myself out of bed until and how late I get to work...... but lately, I still think, "Wow I did amazing anyway!" Q^Q I'm quite pleased with myself for taking care of myself and how good I feel about myself despite whatever. I'm in such a good mental and emotional condition that I was able to shake off something that would usually put me in an unhappy and toxic mood. I haven't let physical discomforts get me down either. I don't know how long this will last, but I'm grateful for it right now. I also feel that I've found a good balance of doing good towards others, without giving away too much of myself, which is pretty important to me after how burnt out I was for a while. I'm glad I have time to spend on hobbies and indulgent fangirling—they bring me a lot of joy. I think I'm more comfortable with myself now. The other day, I noted how green the hills were and thought that a cloud looked cool, which I wouldn't have said a year ago!! I'm proud that I've been going to kpop dance class weekly and that my acid reflux has diminished a lot since I started going on a diet for it. AND!!!!! I might be doing a new solo after all, since I felt like recording it and actually enjoyed it ^^.... It's been a while since I truly enjoyed recording. I'm happy that I can work on passion projects, that I can feel "inspiration."
Also I think it's worth noting that right now I'm happy about the friends I have and—gross moment—about how wonderfully blissful and strong my relationship is. I owe a lot to Fome.
YEAH OKAY WELL HERE'S "I WISH" PLEASE APPRECIATE THE 12 BEAUTIES I GOT TO SING WITH!!! <3333
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.
It happened. Gemini came back for another chorus battle, one year after LSO ended. Our visuals crew from LSO all either had their own ACB groups already or were busy, so we've got new friends on visuals now ;o;)b They did amazing things!
And as usual, Gemini members split up the mixing work, with me on main mix and mastering. Aaaaaaah I have to say it was not easy—for any of us on the team for that matter; we were all busy with work and/or school or.. had to evacuate from a hurricane...... Okay, it was very rough. Thankfully there was a 24 hour grace period after the deadline, because we couldn't submit our entry until 19 hours past the deadline. @___@ And it was really nobody's fault in particular, because the video finished rendering at the same time I finished mixing. Or maybe it was my fault because I was the one doing the rendering (god bless fast work laptop) and I had to split my time between mixing and figuring out all the right plugins and assets. But still, that's really fucking embarrassing to me—that I was mixing up until about 18 hours past the deadline. I'm deeply disappointed in myself about that. The mix ended up sounding pretty good I think, thankfully!! I appreciate having been told that this might be my best mix and I want to be proud of that! And I don't know what I could have done differently that wouldn't have impacted others negatively unless we settled on a bad mix. It's not like I was mixing slowly or that I procrastinated? As soon as the vocals were passed to me, I mixed every night when I got home from work, until I slept sometime between 2 AM and 6 AM. On the weekends, I mixed literally all day long, with only two occasions I had already made plans to spend with friends. Sometimes I would sleep with an alarm set to go off in 3 or 4 hours. And on the day after the deadline, I wasn't even at the point where I was tweaking minor things—I was still mixing and trying to make things cohesive. Aaaaaaah stress and sadness. In conclusion, I suppose I'm just not meant to handle this sort of a timeline. Anyway, it'll take some time for me to recover, but I'm glad that we got an entry in after all!
[Edit: Two days later I just learned that we were the very last entry to submit...... iiii feeeeel soooooo baaaaaaadd screams]
Also, I animated a small section when I had some downtime at work last week. xD It's the shouting part at the bridge with the stage lights, which is... pretty simple but I had just learned how to use lights in After Effects for the first time for this!
Whining aside, here is our entry and please enjoy!!!
【A-L1】 Innocent x Haven 【Gemini】 - Please feel free to turn on/off CC for singers' names! - Theme Interpretation: "What is bliss?" Take my hand and let’s find it together! Start with a smile and run with me - towards that Haven with an open heart. MP3: https://goo.gl/AJ61dL ACAPELLA: https://goo.gl/PFWakB SCRIPT: https://goo.gl/7WTbh6 VISUAL RESOURCES: https://goo.gl/hhgFdb Song: INNOCENT BIRD x SEVENTH HAVEN - Mashup Inspired by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDHj5... Title: SEVENTH HAVEN Artist: Tokyo 7th Sisters (セブンスシスターズ) Composer: kz (livetune) Title: INNOCENT BIRD Artist: AZALEA Lyrics: Aki Hata (畑亜貴) Composer: Tetsushi Enami (江並哲志) Arrangement: Tatsuya Kurauchi (倉内 達矢) VOCALISTS Eva - http://www.youtube.com/waterpixieva Mimi - http://www.youtube.com/mimimoiselle Ryan - http://www.youtube.com/RyanEatPho 小さな (chiisana) - http://www.youtube.com/ChiisanaChanx3 Jeffrey - https://www.youtube.com/jevacado Jay - https://www.youtube.com/jaysingyou MIXERS Main Mix - Eva Timing - Mimi Tuning - Ryan EQ - 小さな (chiisana) ARTISTS Concept and Design - pash & kane Vocalist Sketch and Base Lines - pash - http://piikoarts.tumblr.com/ Coloring & Staff Art - kane - https://www.facebook.com/mprincekane Line Art - Ange - https://twitter.com/qqnge ANIMATORS Sawヽ( ・∀・)ノ - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZc_... 小さな (chiisana) Eva - We now find our six protagonists in university, where they play whatever the heck games they want. -
I actually ended up quite liking this project haha. Everyone sounds so great.
And admittedly especially, I feel like.. it's a huge honor to have been able to work with and sing with Enae. *A* From what I've seen, he seems to usually just mostly do his own thing, and he's so very talented!
