Eden 3: The End of an Era

Plan for this track was to combine the theme of Eden with the technicality of Eden 2, but it was starting to feel like something I had to do instead of something I wish I'd do. So as it stands as 25% completed it would have been the largest naked track linecount-wise if it were finished. I'm not sure if this will be my final track though.

Link for mobile users: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBGV3rSHNwg
.sol: http://www.mediafire.com/download/qvp75pxtq6g7p85/savedLines.sol

Holy crap, I really liked that compact part. All of it was really good, but for some reason, I really liked that flow. What was planned? If that's only 25% of it, I'd love to know what else you wanted to do with it.

I'd hate to see this be your last track, but I understand the feeling of just not wanting to work on stuff anymore.

EDIT: Rewatched with music. Couldn't before. I have to say I really liked your subtle music syncing. Very well executed.

It was perfect man no critique doesn't need one tbh, the track speaks for itself. I quit making CF2 for the same reason started to feel like a chore.

Geez I love your style so much and you manage to make it shine through in a variety of styles. Awesome stuff as usual. I could tell this was something more than simply the sum of the first two in the series, and even though this is unfinished it still represents a synthesis of the first two tracks to create something larger. I really felt as if your style had finally come into its own in this track, and I got the vibe of an element of closure from even the unfinished product. Amazing work HP, hopefully you're not totally tired out; I love what you make in this game, and I feel like we'd both love it even more if you simply do what you want instead of overworking yourself or fabricating extraordinary demands.

The technicality was amazing enough as it is, but the fact that you synced it beat for beat with the music was pretty much amazing. It almost felt like a more technical version of The Hardest Word, which is awesome, because I didn't realize we would be able to take it to that point. One thing a would mention in terms of the syncing though is that it did feel at times like you were way more focused on syncing to the rhythm, rather than the feel of the music, which is fine, but if you do continue you might want to take that into account when planning out the tricks.

why did it have to be so short ;-;
what's with everyone making these short tracks ;-;
Helios, this track is so good and it ends up being so anti-climatic ;-;

;-;

;-;


;-;





;-;

Wow man.
You honestly have some of the best control of speed of all trackmakers I've ever seen. I 100% mean that, I've never really seen a track synced to the actual beat of the song, that was unbelievable.
The flow was seriously flawless, I am in total awe of this track!

I wish this was longer, I enjoyed that so much, like bloody solid effort.

It flowed so well, and felt so smooth and I honestly can't think of anything negative other than it was too short.

Damn, this was pretty darn perfect. This is the stuff I'd always aspired to make but never did. Seriously, there is nothing bad I can say about this track, and that doesn't happen often . Your vision is really awesome, and I love how perfectionistic you are.

I really hope that your striving for perfection hasn't broke you down. If I were you, I'd try making stuff you like that isn't technically insane. It brought back the fun in the game for me when I lost my motivation.

This track is so good, oh my goodness. I was trying to keep up with what's happening and I was happy to see the slow-mo, but even then this track managed to be so fast that in some parts it's a challenge to keep up. So much amazingness in so few frames, it's a thing of beauty, the way bosh just glides and sweeps through this thing. The xy part was an interesting choice, I think it fit well with the music change there and I'm curious as to what you were planning next. I hope you might revisit this track one day and finish it, but if it's not fun to work on anymore, definitely don't force yourself and simply do something completely different.

"And now for something completely different"

...

I'm looking forward to a next track from you. This is insanely good.

Holy shit @some of those wells and fling combinations
Holy improvement @that XY
HOLY INSPIRED. Can I finish the xy part, or can you give me the sync plan? This track is too good to let go of.

Hey, my ladyfriend wants to know what the song is

shua wrote:Holy crap, I really liked that compact part. All of it was really good, but for some reason, I really liked that flow. What was planned? If that's only 25% of it, I'd love to know what else you wanted to do with it.

I'd hate to see this be your last track, but I understand the feeling of just not wanting to work on stuff anymore.

EDIT: Rewatched with music. Couldn't before. I have to say I really liked your subtle music syncing. Very well executed.

Thanks shua I did have a syncing plan I'd stick to for the major part:

Spoiler:

But as you can already tell, it was way too ambitious

Sheldon wrote:It was perfect man no critique doesn't need one tbh, the track speaks for itself. I quit making CF2 for the same reason started to feel like a chore.

Thank you I can definitely relate to that now... quirk is at times so tiresome.

roflmaoqwerty wrote:Geez I love your style so much and you manage to make it shine through in a variety of styles. Awesome stuff as usual. I could tell this was something more than simply the sum of the first two in the series, and even though this is unfinished it still represents a synthesis of the first two tracks to create something larger. I really felt as if your style had finally come into its own in this track, and I got the vibe of an element of closure from even the unfinished product. Amazing work HP, hopefully you're not totally tired out; I love what you make in this game, and I feel like we'd both love it even more if you simply do what you want instead of overworking yourself or fabricating extraordinary demands.

Thank you rofl. I'll keep your advice in mind

Opal Rider wrote:The technicality was amazing enough as it is, but the fact that you synced it beat for beat with the music was pretty much amazing. It almost felt like a more technical version of The Hardest Word, which is awesome, because I didn't realize we would be able to take it to that point. One thing a would mention in terms of the syncing though is that it did feel at times like you were way more focused on syncing to the rhythm, rather than the feel of the music, which is fine, but if you do continue you might want to take that into account when planning out the tricks.

Interesting... I had no intention of syncing it so 'tightly'. As a matter of fact, often I would just listen to the song over and over again to get the vibe and I'd continue working.

[senpai] kevans wrote:why did it have to be so short ;-;
what's with everyone making these short tracks ;-;
Helios, this track is so good and it ends up being so anti-climatic ;-;

;-;

;-;


;-;





;-;

I'm sorry! Glad you liked it though.

Wolf_Spirit wrote:Wow man.
You honestly have some of the best control of speed of all trackmakers I've ever seen. I 100% mean that, I've never really seen a track synced to the actual beat of the song, that was unbelievable.
The flow was seriously flawless, I am in total awe of this track!

That's too nice, Wolf. Thanks

Yobanjojoe wrote:I wish this was longer, I enjoyed that so much, like bloody solid effort.

It flowed so well, and felt so smooth and I honestly can't think of anything negative other than it was too short.

Sorry for the shortness, but I didn't want to tire myself out

Rafael wrote:Damn, this was pretty darn perfect. This is the stuff I'd always aspired to make but never did. Seriously, there is nothing bad I can say about this track, and that doesn't happen often . Your vision is really awesome, and I love how perfectionistic you are.

I really hope that your striving for perfection hasn't broke you down. If I were you, I'd try making stuff you like that isn't technically insane. It brought back the fun in the game for me when I lost my motivation.

Thanks Raf... I'll definitely consider that

Z_N-Freak wrote:This track is so good, oh my goodness. I was trying to keep up with what's happening and I was happy to see the slow-mo, but even then this track managed to be so fast that in some parts it's a challenge to keep up. So much amazingness in so few frames, it's a thing of beauty, the way bosh just glides and sweeps through this thing. The xy part was an interesting choice, I think it fit well with the music change there and I'm curious as to what you were planning next. I hope you might revisit this track one day and finish it, but if it's not fun to work on anymore, definitely don't force yourself and simply do something completely different.

"And now for something completely different"

...

I'm looking forward to a next track from you. This is insanely good.

Coming from you, that's a huge compliment for me Have you seen the original Eden? I sort of wanted to extend that track to sync with the entire song. No manual parts, just raw metal quirk

Dapianokid wrote:Holy shit @some of those wells and fling combinations
Holy improvement @that XY
HOLY INSPIRED. Can I finish the xy part, or can you give me the sync plan? This track is too good to let go of.

Thanks Dap! All Edens were intended as solo projects, and I'd rather keep it like that We could definitely collab on something else sometime though.

OTDE wrote:Hey, my ladyfriend wants to know what the song is

Last Ride of the Day by Nightwish. If she likes that sort of music, she should definitely check out Nightwish' latest album - it's pure gold

I want to review this thing! It's been a while but seeing how this may be your last track ima do it. Hope it helps you in some way, whatever that way may be.

0:18-0:34
I really liked opening with this section. Super powerful but also very clean and relatively simple. Matches the music beautifully, I can tell when watching at half speed that every single fling was synced precisely to the music. Not much else to say. Well done.

0:35-0:43
This part is really impressive and flows really nicely and it is very good, but IMO it doesn't match the music as well as it could have. The music is down to almost nothing but vocals and yet the track seems possibly more intense than the first section, with some hardcore stop'n'go. (Remember how IGGB made this stuff the intense parts of Blue Champion?) I would have personally done something along the lines of tiny bits of smooth flatsled precisely synced to her voice with liberal airtime, and while I know that you probably would not have liked that idea, what was there was so radically different from what was happening in the music (and from what it evoked in my head in terms of a Line Rider track) that it was rather disconcerting. It flowed beautifully and was quite intense, and that made it "good" enough that it didn't exactly detract from the impressiveness of the track, but it looks like you put in a ton of work in this section and I don't think it was necessary - I feel like it took away from the video-watching experience as a whole slightly. I dunno what would have been best for you to do but I think that what you did was not the best decision you could have made.

0:44-0:52
This section, to my eye, looks like a dramatic drop in intensity, which is good. IMO the previous section was much too intense compared to what the song was doing, and in this section the song bumps it up a notch and the track takes it down a notch and they meet in the middle and match up really well! I should also mention that your ability to switch styles on a dime is really remarkable. I have mixed feelings about the airtime at 0:52, it sets up the next section to start with a bang nicely but I think maybe a manual that slows him down and then tips him might have been a better choice to fit with the music, and then you could have still kept the explosion of speed that works so well at 0:53

0:53-1:10
This was a bold move to bring out guns this big this early in your plan and I can't help but think that is linked to the scrapping of the project. But hot damn is this quirk good. Like, Handlebars is one of my favorite tracks of all time and I feel like you just one-upped the highspeed quirk at the end. However, I have to say that with this intense of quirk I don't feel like the plain old manuals really fit anymore - they come across as an attempt to avoid making more quirk of that intensity. And also that the flings at 1:07-ish do feel oddly less intense.

1:11-1:16
I wished there had been a more prominent style shift here. Maybe the granuals could have been saved for this bit which could have been granu-flanu-pinch-quirk? Or maybe it would have been best to save the big guns that came out at 0:53 until this 6-second section as a teaser for what was going to come later.

1:17-1:23
A couple things bug me about this section. One, the music has a huge hit at 1:07 and next to nothing happened. Maybe the slowdown was just a half second early? (I have seen quirkers overestimate how long those will take so many times I feel like someone should make a PSA or something) And secondly, I just can't get over the choice of making this section XY. This is the arrival point of the entire track - the chorus of the song! And the focus of the track certainly does not feel like XY.

Overall Observations Time!

I would like to make a case that the reason this project was scrapped was not primarily because it was too large of a project. I think this project was scrapped because it was a project that was started with something to prove, rather than something to create. Something to accomplish, not something to have fun with. I think it is most clear in the second section, which is just way too intense for its own good, and the fourth section, which just bites off more than it can chew before we're a quarter of the way into the plan.

The track would have been somewhat repetitive had it been completed because every style (save the third section) was executed with the maximum possible intensity. I would like to throw my weight behind the idea that contrasting sections can actually have far more impact that full-throttle balls-to-the-wall 94.2% of the time until you burn yourself out completely and this fun little flash toy starts feeling like a chore. Why? Because it's more FUN It's more fun to make, and thus more fun to watch. Put a big fat 2-line pinch in your track in a place that syncs with the song and then insane quirk when it ends. Put a slow flatsled section in a slow part of the song and then do modern quirk when that song goes nuts. If you're skeptical you need look no further than the most successful track release in years, Funspiration.

You have to love what you do when you take on massive projects like this, and that doesn't mean beating yourself over the head when you feel the fun slipping away, it means doing stuff that you enjoy and feel comfortable with, experimenting with things that sound interesting, and planning things out so that you will spend your time excitedly making a section like a piece that fits into a puzzle, rather than like a challenge to outdo yourself in intensity at every turn in every possible way. I haven't made this stuff myself so I know I'm drawing solely on my observations and maybe this whole paragraph is totally wrong, but I have seen enough of what projects fail and what succeed to be fairly certain that the projects that are most likely succeed are the ones that are 80% fun and excitement, and 20% hard work and frustration, not the other way around.

So. Back to this track. Well, not really. More like, back to you, HP. You are an amazing quirker, clearly one of the best if not THE best at the present time. I want you to make tracks. But I DON'T want you to make mindblowingly epic quirk that will blow my mind with it's epic mindblowingness. That is the LAST thing I want you to do.

I want you to make random shit. I want you to make a track that only goes straight down. I want you to draw faces on your fling loops. These are all terrible ideas, I know - but my point is I want you to have an absolute blast trying out terrible ideas that don't work... until that you find things that are actually really cool and then use your epic abilities in this game to make something with that idea that will 1) give you a giddy feeling inside that motivates you like nothing else and makes the whole process actually super fun and 2) make all of our brains collectively explode.

Hell, I think that goes for literally anyone can do anything more impressive that a flatsled pencil curve. Go forth and do so.

Still too good to let go of.