Photon ~ Dapianokid ~ Battle Royale

giggity  :rabid:  :rabid:  :rabid:  :rabid:  :rabid:  :rabid:  :rabid:

.sol in youtube video, along with credits

Who could forget: Shotoku is the best, he edited and recorded, that son of a gun. <3

Battle Royale Entry

I eargly welcome critique, reviews (rabid *cough), and encouragement. How have I inspired you today, and how have I improved? :3 What do I need to work on?

Really enjoyed watching you make this. Love the outcome. You actually look like you're getting better as the track progresses.

But what would a good track be without feedback: The smooth flow you were going for was interrupted at times by either unintentional slowing or uncontrolled rotation. Really the only way to avoid those is by putting a lot of time into a small portion of the track or, less work, not putting yourself in those situations. My feedback there is a bit simple, but I thought I might as well cover it.

If you want to further consider, you can play with the line length/spacing/angles to find something visually satisfying to you, as well as experimenting with flow, rotation, and power. (though this process doesn't have to be all at once). For example, think about the difference between Kramwood and SethComposerGuy.

EDIT: Note that I'm not preferring less work over more work, it's just that sometimes you can choose between the two, and it's good to know when.

Holy dang bro, that quirk is incredible. Better than most of the stuff I've done, for sure

This was really a cool exhibition of technical skill, and it flowed pretty well to boot. Once you really nail down the aesthetic aspect of trackmaking (which just comes with experience), you'll definitely be one of the greats. Keep it up bro, awesome stuff!

you got good really fast


work on rotation

Well you've certainly got the patience for learning technical stuff down, which is great! It's something that takes a lot of dedication and time; both of those you've used to great extent. Just keep working on getting his movements to work naturally with the track, and you'll be doing awesome. ^.^ I know it might seem awkward and even annoying at times, but see if you can really focus on that part with your next track. The asdf's can come later.

asdfs oppose everything that makes a track smooth...so until I get better, it's one thing or the another. At the moment, I want to collab a lot, finish my less focused and dedicated short, and then make something smoother.
Krammy, I seriously will redo our collab part. :3 where are we on that? And thank you so much! Suddenly Granuals :3
rofl, that bought a tear to my eye. Know that hearing that was a reward I never expected. Handlebars has my favorite quirk section, and is one of my main inspirations as a whole.
Opal, thank you, as always your suggestions will be a matter of patience on my part. Good thing I'm obsessed.
Chuggers, thanks and will do

I [british accent] literally [/british accent] see you as the next Kramwood: a love for experimentation with gwells, and a knack for making stalls.

Man, you got really good really quick! Haha:P
I really loved the little moments where everything would slow down for one second of airtime before being pulled right back into the track, really loved them.
Also, those granuals were really something else, great job!

What sorcery has happened to the thread to make the tiny text? EDIT: Every track I post ends up being a glitch thread that nobody sees but me, and suddenly fixes itself.
the kind words in this post are enough to make a grown man giggle. Thank God I'm only 16, or else I'd be giggling right now. ;P
The feedback has been wonderful, informative, instructive, and inspiring. I wanted to  make a few random experimental shorts, but this makes me want to shove out another "masterpiece."
This is the first time I don't feel like a noob at LR, after 7 long years
I can't believe how well received the granuals were, I should go make more.

Yup, already surpassed me. good stuff. music didn't seem fitting, and a little airtime never hurt anyone. that's all i got.

Okay so hi. I've struggled with what to say about this for a while. One, because a lot of the stuff in this track is beyond me to make sense of or understand, let alone critique.

But then I got thinking - does the fact that this track is difficult for me to make sense of make it good? Or am I thinking about tracks all wrong?

So I'm gonna say some stuff that might be controversial, and you can take it how you please. Of course I hope that you and everyone else continues to make tracks and post them, and I know that kramwood (for example) wouldn't change what he is doing no matter what I said, and I not only respect that but actually admire it. I'm getting off topic but the point is: You do you, and as long as you make more, I am a happy camper.

BUT. I think the fact that you were surprised the granuals were so well received speaks volumes. These granuals stand out in the track because they are different from the rest of the track. Here's I'll give you a summary of what I see when I watch this track.
1 - gravity well/fling loops. music gives it a cool feel.
2 - slowed down a little, simpler wells
3 - more looping with some fancy looking gravity shenanigans
4 - kramual, upwards air
5 - more gravity looping, various shapes
6 - smaller loops, two inside each other
7 - stacked wells sped him up, then he slowed down, more gravity
8 - cool flatsled granuals on a path
9 - speeds up, granual ends in chaos, then slows back down
10 - some more granuals with some space recycling and some more creativity in how they are used. first time I feel like I have some kind of visual focus to get my orientation in this track.
11 - messy kramual
12 - more crazy gravity shenanigans and looping
13 - speeds up a lot, stacked wells and flings
14 - more gravity looping and fancy looking wells
15 - some cool slow-rotation stuff
16 - big stacked well and stall

That's what I see. I have no idea what contact points you are using or what types of flings you are using, and almost nobody who watches these tracks will - and even if they do they are not going to watch the track slow enough or enough times to be able to tell me what tricks you are doing.

Back in the ZNF era, tricks were easy to identify because they lasted for a second or two - a nose fling, cool. A tail manual, cool. an inverted hand fling, cool. Nowadays, it seems that tricks are becoming much faster and much harder for the viewer to recognize while it is happening - for me it's totally impossible.

This doesn't mean that we should all watch tracks at 1/4 speed so we can see the tricks though - what it means is that instead of trying to do a cool series of 4 stacked well, we should USE these things like tools in our toolbox to make something that means something on a grander scale, and embrace the fact that when we watch a track our brains only work so fast. This "grander scale" can be a 4 minute track synced precisely to music, or it can just be a series of frames that work together to create a moment that says something over 50 or 60 frames rather than 5 or 6 frames. My brain can't process things that quickly. If you make a really cool single well I will have no idea, and even if you make a string of 10 of those cool wells I will still almost certainly miss it. Imagine if gaoyubao made the kramual fling moment in WTM, but he only made it 4 frames long - do you think people would even notice it was there? By making it a second or two long, he effectively entertained us because we saw how cool it looked.

I think it might be a good idea, rather than focusing on individual frames, focusing on what you want to do over the next second. And then thinking about how those seconds create a particular 5-second period, and how those 5-second periods create a particular 30-second section, and then thinking about how those 30-second sections come together to make a cohesive track.

That said, it was really fun just to watch a cool new track release since I haven't seen one in aaaaages. And like I said above, you do you, and keep em comin!

Okay so I just wanted to get something off my mind here that Rabid brought up. Not saying that he's wrong, because I think he makes a valid point. However, I think the crucial part he's missing is not what a particular trick does, but how it affects the track as a whole. The big reason I believe complicated tricks like alt flings and ASDFs are used are not because they are just technically impressive, but they affect the track differently than a simple fling does.

You (Rabid) admit you don't understand what a particular trick is using, but I believe you can see how much they affect the speed and direction of a track more than something simpler. They typically allow the speed to be more consistent during the whole track, rather than generally seeing Bosh speed up really fast, then having to slow him down with something else before continuing with more flings. They also allow sharper turns, and things that actually look circular rather than the overused spiral you would see back in the first couple years of quirk. Alt flings allow for better looking single-directional sections, instead of constantly having Bosh change which way he is going. I could go on, but I think you get the point. Also, you may not notice but tracks nowadays still use single contact flings with the spiral motion quite often, just not with the huge ZNF wells that made them obvious in the old days.

So I think people in general need to pay attention more to not what something is, but what it does. Even though a particular thing may be too short to realize what is happening, they can notice the result of it. This is the part a lot of people seem to be missing when they watch a quirk track. I get peeved when people think their tracks suck because they can't stay on as much of a technical level as some other people, but there is far more that goes in a track than how many contact points you can use at once, or how big of stacks you can manage to use. I think more people would make tracks if they realized this, and not give up because they convince themselves that what they do can't match up. If anybody has additional thoughts for or against this, I think now would be the time to voice them.

I actually have thoughts for both of the points Shotoku and Rabid made.
This is going to be probably the best analogy I have ever made in my entire life:

I watch the tracks other people make a lot like I listen to the various music of various composers.
When I listen to Beethoven, I don't get all fitty because of how un-Mendelssohn-like it is. I don't become upset because he didn't use a device I would expect of the average Chopin piece. I get giddy when I recognize that "Oh! Look, Beethoven did a very wonderfully Beethoven thing that made Beethoven Beethoveny!"
Beethoven is Beethoven. Mendelssohn is Mendelssohn (and the intentional example, as he is very much a merge of Beethoven and Chopin). And Chopin, you guessed, is Chopin. I listen for Beethoven when I listen to (AND PLAY!) Beethoven, I listen for Mendelssohn in the Mendelssohn (and boy have I had to learn how to very carefully pick how I play Mendelssohn), and the Chopin MUST sound like Chopin for an even slightly interested listener to look its way.
My piano teacher says these very words when I play the competitoin Mendelssohn piece I'm working on: "This is not Liszt, don't bang the hell out of it. You can bang the hell out of Liszt, but give 'ol Felix (Mendelssohn's first name) his due respect, play quieter!" and he says s with quite an attitude of irritation. One would expect a person playing Mendelssohn to play as though it were written by him! In the passage in question, the writing is very characteristic of Liszt, using a style and device which Liszt comes along decades later and sees, likes, expands on, and uses much more regularly. Thus, Liszt developed his own unique style BASED ON A DEVICE Mendelssohn USED.

This same thing is true for LineRider tracks.
When I watch Kramwood, I'm not as blown away as if I were expecting the lines to have been drawn by Getthim (just an example)
And when I watch Shotoku, I'm not expecting to see some ~boo XY tricks.
When Gaoyubao releases a track, I never know what to expect.
When I'm in the mood for the manuals of the century, Opal Rider is my go-to guy.
When I watch Kramwood's tracks, I study the .sol, and watch the video sometimes a dozen times to get the full effect. Him including slow-motion playbacks is a useful detail to his particular style because that device allows us to experience HIS tracks in their entirety. I don't watch Opal's tracks that many times. This doesn't mean I care less about what Opal makes or that I like Kramwood's stuff better! It simply testifies to the difference in how one must approach listening to...er, watching the tracks of the various composers in LineRider.

I think of myself as a composer in this game.
Right now, I'm working on device creation. I'm not up to writing the concerti I have in mind yet, but I can beat the hell out of some smaller works.






My style has changed dramatically since I quit working on this track. My focus has been to make my tricks last longer, and to make my intense sections more markedly intense.

I like this discussion. My fueled monologue is run dry for the moment.

alright man you are getting better very quickly a few things you should consider, bunch of unecessary lines in your flings, they are distracting. Stacks are another thing they aren't meant to be pretty. Maybe it's just me but I noticed a lack of grolls include more next time. You are very rudemtary in your form, but powerful, in a few months I feel like you could be close to perfecting your style.. nice job. the quirking field is very competitive I admire your ambition. Im sure it's imtimidating to see all thes amazing quirkers and having to compare your work to it (****ing kramwood) but thats ok he uses performance enhancing drugs

hit test that shit.

yeah he uses hit test so all the lines are used.

personally though idc how much of a mess it looks like, super stacks will always look messy, different between 10 and 12 lines in a super stack doesn't really make it cleaner

Or don't make stacks like me. Makes things look real clean.
Wait, maybe that's why my quirks aren't as popular

^ was talking with rofl on the stream and he doesn't ever delete unused stacks. Straight up lukking-style. He just doesn't bother. Personally, I think the messiness in Handlebars's final section adds to the intensity there even though a large percentage of those lines are not used.

However, messy stacks in Angel would not have made that track look good (IMO) because it was all chill and stuff so your style was perfect for that kind of thing.

ART

What I think makes the least difference in perception is when people have a super stack with 15 lines or something and one of them is unused - does it matter at all if they delete it?

Not talking about the stacks just the flings

Sheldon's point wasn't the stacks.
This track has relatively few stacks actually.
He's right that my flings had randomly placed stabilizers and shit that made it look a lot less clean.