In the Rose Garden / Utena's 10th. Giovanna celebrates by committing suicide.

Giovanna · Back to Top

That's right. Next year, Shoujo Kakumei Utena will be ten years old. I've been thinking, in the last few months, of a fitting way to celebrate this milestone. And it is a milestone, considering the staying power this series has had for me, and for all of us. Ten years old and we're still here.

I'll spare you the details of this decision-making process, and say that it seemed fitting to me for Empty Movement to have a revolution of its own. That is, to come full circle to where it started. EM is a little over six years old, and it started, first and foremost, with the gallery. I had spent a couple years madly collecting SKU merchandise, much of it incredibly rare at the time and even now, and that was the first thing I could think of to do with it. Share it.

I've overhauled it more than once before, but this has always bottomed out at layout changes and slight improvements in navigation. The gallery, as I'm sure you are all aware, is a god damn behemoth. It's huge. And when I first created it, I did so with the most intuitive organizational system I could think of, but it's grown out of that structure, and is, I admit, rather clumsy if you're unfamiliar with the source material. Furthermore, while the image quality of the majority of the content is far better than most any anime gallery you'll find on the internet, most of it was done in my Photoshop infancy, and at a time when lots of people were still on dialup and/or unwilling to sacrifice speed for quality.

What am I getting at? I'm completely overhauling the gallery. When I say 'overhauling', I mean every little thing you can imagine that I'm capable of improving on is getting done. I'm tossing the organization by source material and going by subject, so that you can easily locate all movie artwork, all game sketches, all series character designs, all images from episode 26. I'm adding a huge amount of content, screencaps of the episodes at a rate of 160-250ish per episode, as well as the awesome awesome 195 pages of character design sex that morosemocha's hooking me up with. Much of the content that's there is getting cleaned image by image; the Maison pictures pulled from the CD-ROM were painfully over-contrasted and many suffer from tragic image compression problems that were faults in the source material that I now have the skill to if not completely correct, than vastly improve. Some images I'm going to such length to improve that I'll be offering them in lossless 24-bit PNG format, because I think most of us are willing to download a 400KB picture of Touga if there's absolutely none of the JPEG compression that for some reason eternally plagues his hair. (Seriously, jpegs and red don't get along.)

The gallery has been used for a thousand different things by the people that have found it. Some of you just wanted high quality pictures to drool at. Others have used them in countless websites, wallpapers, and winamp skins. Others still have used it for getting plenty of reference material for cosplay. Many have used it for inspiration and reference material for analysis. (I'm taking steps especially to cater to this crowd, as will be clear when you see what images I choose to keep in the screenshots.) I'm about to make all possible uses much easier for you folks.

Resources and my skill level with server-side programs have both improved dramatically over the years, and I'm planning to move the gallery to PHP-run gallery software program. This will vastly improve my ability to organize what will very likely end up at least 7000 images, and unless something goes very wrong, the gallery will be searchable. Yep.

In other words I'm about to undertake a gross amount of work. Frankly I suspect if I wasn't fueling this with a sex drive I can't use for medical reasons, that I would know better than to attempt it. (Yay Freud. school-freud ) I've kept it kinda a secret because at first I wasn't sure I'd be going through with it, and then I wanted it to be a surprise. But...fuck that. Why? I want everyone to know this is what I'm doing when I'm not posting to the analysis threads as much as I'd like. emot-frown And to be honest, I need to be able to bitch and moan about how much work it is and how dumb I am for starting it. I need to be able to do things like this:

GOD DAMMIT HAY UTENA WHY DON'T YOU GO BURN IN HELL WITH YOUR GOD DAMN ANIMATED PANNED SHOT COMPLETE WITH SWIRLING ROSES THAT I JUST TEDIOUSLY REMOVED AND COMPILED INTO A COHERENT WHOLE BECAUSE I'M AWESOME.

Or this:

HAY TOUGA, IF YOU WEREN'T SUCH A PIECE OF ASS I WOULDN'T HAVE SPENT HALF MY DAY AT WORK CLEANING JPEG COMPRESSION OUT OF YOUR HAIR IN IMAGES LIKE THIS ONE. (Don't see what I did? Compare to the original.)

In short, this thread is going to be where I vent frustration, answer questions, log my progress, and perhaps recruit some help later on when it's time to start inputting the search terms for a dizzying number of images. I'll also occasionally post images here that I've cleaned and assembled and such. Consider it like a trailer for an upcoming release. emot-biggrin

Feel free to tell me how god damn awesome I am, and how I deserve blood sacrifices and tributary orgies.

KissingT.Kiryuu · Back to Top

you are awesome.... *bows down*

were not worthy! were not worthy!

Imaginary Bad Bug · Back to Top

We all etc-love Gio!

allegoriest · Back to Top

*worships and cheers you on~ emot-biggrin *

I myself kinda actually like the organization (helps know what's in a book when you go to buy and all) but being able to search would be preeetty awesome.

(Strangely enough I was thinking a few days ago what it would be like if I could just go POOF MIKI and get Miki pictures O_o)

*can't stop staring at how lovly the sky came out in the utena picture and touga's hair, even though its on touga @__@*

Ragnarok · Back to Top

Fantastic!

How do you like your blood sacrifices performed?

Razara · Back to Top

I think that I'm looking forward to this more than I was looking forward to Christmas this year. O_o

Please don't work yourself too hard.

BioKraze · Back to Top

I have but one thing to say to you, Gio:

YAYY!

A Day Without Me · Back to Top

Dear Giovanna,

Please have my babies.

Lovingly,
A Day Without Me

Giovanna · Back to Top

A Day Without Me wrote:
Please have my babies.

....but I don't want kids. emot-frown

Here, have a pan of Nanami that took about 20 shots to get around the damned roses.

Emiemipoemi · Back to Top

Holy crap you are amazing. emot-aaa

Imaginary Bad Bug · Back to Top

Just... wow.

Those pan extracts (there's a weird term if I ever made one up...) are amazing. Yay for Nanami!

Amazing work, I look forward to the complete collection when it's ready to go!

Hinotori · Back to Top

You're amazing as usual.

Don't get yourself hurt, though. D:

ShatteredMirror · Back to Top

If you kill yourself doing this I will never forgive you. So don't die. And I'll be constantly nagging you to do things like eat and sleep.

Maarika · Back to Top

The pan shots are very cool!
I go to the gallery every time I need reference for my drawings. It's very useful! And it seems the improvements you're planning to make are very very big. I'm especially glad you're adding more screenshots. For instance, there are no Black Rose Arc screens at the moment. emot-frown

Also, I'm surprised you've been keeping this gallery on html for so long. Especially 'cause it's so huge! I would have probably given up on it long ago. I think switching to PHP is a good idea, especially 'cause there are so many different gallery scripts to use.

I think the most well-known is Coppermine gallery http://coppermine-gallery.net/index.php
It's quite customizeable, at least when it comes to layouts. It has so many features but not all of them are very useful. Things like "Random image" etc could be turned off. The same goes for user registration, commenting and so on. I haven't really used it that much to know all about it, but for me it works just the way I want it.
Using a gallery script would save you from a lot of work, so I highly recommend it. (Although, making a layout would take a while emot-gonk )
I don't know whether you want to use Coppermine or something else, but setting it up is very fast and most of the time goes for uploading the images 'cause everything is done through the admin panel. (Except the designing )

Clarice · Back to Top

emot-aaa

...Yasha's already asked me to marry her, but you are more than welcome to use me at any time you want. (Share and share alike, I say! ...see, we all DID learn something at Ohtori after all!)

Tenjou_sailorsaturn · Back to Top

Gio,

You and Yasha are my Gods (or Godess?)
I worship you. etc-love

Tenjou Sailorsaturn (Tenjou)

Frosty · Back to Top

Just as Maarika said, you can't imagine how many times I've clicked on one of the images and left it on the screen, or printed it out and brought it to school so I could sketch a certain position or facial feature.

Sure, definitely, whenever you need help with the next phase, lemme know.

Make sure to take time out for yourself... come complain when things aren't going smoothly, and we'll remind you: It's your back breaking work, that guarantees the arching of ours! school-devil

Thanks a million times!!! I'll toast you at midnight! etc-love

Dani · Back to Top

Wow, Gio, those pics you posted are amazing. The clarity is stunning, really. Thanks so much for tackling this project! Please let us know if you need help with anything. Happy New Year, Everyone!

Speaking of panned shots, this is my favorite pan shot in SKU (Ep. 36). Anthy's expression seems sad, like she's given up. And it's a shot that the viewer can't even really see without a pause button since the shot goes by so fast. This is the only picture I've ever been able to find of it and it's pretty blurry.
Warning: Anthy is naked. NSW
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q249 … ok5-41.png

Maarika · Back to Top

Dani wrote:
Speaking of panned shots, this is my favorite pan shot in SKU (Ep. 36). Anthy's expression seems sad, like she's given up. And it's a shot that the viewer can't even really see without a pause button since the shot goes by so fast. This is the only picture I've ever been able to find of it and it's pretty blurry.
Warning: Anthy is naked. NSW
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q249 … ok5-41.png

I remember that! I think there is no better version. The screenshot I've seen was blurry too. That's a shame, those Akio and Anthy pics are the best.
Hey, come to think of it, it's like a mockery! They give us awesome scenes but they make them blurry and only show it for a brief second so we end up having hard time getting the screenshot. emot-mad

Hehe, I find it funny that an actual screenshot got a warning. emot-biggrin
Perhaps that's why they only show it for such a short time so that they wuoldn't have change the rating of the show.

Clarice · Back to Top

Dani wrote:
Wow, Gio, those pics you posted are amazing. The clarity is stunning, really. Thanks so much for tackling this project! Please let us know if you need help with anything. Happy New Year, Everyone!

Speaking of panned shots, this is my favorite pan shot in SKU (Ep. 36). Anthy's expression seems sad, like she's given up. And it's a shot that the viewer can't even really see without a pause button since the shot goes by so fast. This is the only picture I've ever been able to find of it and it's pretty blurry.
Warning: Anthy is naked. NSW
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q249 … ok5-41.png

Sweet merciful crap, I never realised that that was what Anthy actually looked like in that shot. [can't stop staring] It's beautiful and lovely and so damn creepy. Oh, how I etc-love this show...and Gio, too. emot-tongue I wonder if we could talk her into doing us a pan shot of that...although right now I'm worshipping her just for the Nanami one. Wow. emot-keke

Sskessa · Back to Top

Thank you so much for doing this. I look through the gallery often and use them for reference for fanart and for wallpapers. I can't wait to see the new material, especially more pan shots. It's stuff like this that makes this site so great, and stand out among all other fansites.

Dani · Back to Top

Maarika wrote:
Hehe, I find it funny that an actual screenshot got a warning. emot-biggrin
Perhaps that's why they only show it for such a short time so that they wuoldn't have change the rating of the show.

I've thought the same thing about those quick fly by "couch" scenes, the creators are hoping to sneak stuff by.

Clarice wrote:
Sweet merciful crap, I never realised that that was what Anthy actually looked like in that shot. [can't stop staring] It's beautiful and lovely and so damn creepy.

Yeah, I've often speculated what her expression is supposed to convey. I mean, this scene is right after Utena has "won her" for good by defeating Touga for the last time. She and Utena are on the SAME SIDE of the bed for the first time during the entire show. Anthy is in her nightgown ready to go to bed. Then Utena whispers Akio's name in her sleep. Then what? Anthy decides THEN to go and have sex with Akio? After she's all ready for bed? Is it that she's given up? Or is it that she's decided to let Utena see for herself what's really going on? So is that screen shot Anthy waiting for the axe to fall when Utena comes in and finds them? Or is it Anthy resigned to her fate? Hmm, sorry for the topic change.

Back on topic: Yeah, Gio, when you get to this one (many episodes away, I know, no rush!), I'll be very happy. I think these types of screenshots will have the desired effect of fueling more speculation about what's going on in the show.

Giovanna · Back to Top

Dani wrote:
Back on topic: Yeah, Gio, when you get to this one (many episodes away, I know, no rush!), I'll be very happy. I think these types of screenshots will have the desired effect of fueling more speculation about what's going on in the show.

Ding ding ding! The idea with the screenshots is I want to provide a reference source for analysis especially, and I'm sizing them at 550px wide, so that except for horizontal pans, people will be able to link directly into the forum. (This is about 100px smaller than the source material, but screencaps are a little blurry to begin with, there's no loss of detail.) That's why while most of the screenshots are just the appropriate shots, I'm taking a lot of shots that I think would be valuable for analysis. Episode 1 especially is packed with shots of the school itself (it's really a neat looking place), and I bothered to take like five shots of Saionji right before he hits Anthy at night in episode 2, because each frame seen in sequence shows you how beaten down he looks. I drove myself god damn nuts because I wanted a specific frame of Touga right before he grabs Utena in the scene with the can of tea, because he 1. smirks rather rudely, though it passes so fast she doesn't notice, and 2. closes his eyes when she's speaking, something he also does when he's dueling Saionji. Miki's getting a similar treatment because I'm finding myself repeatedly surprised by how many smartass expressions he tosses out in this arc.

As for Anthy...good morning! emot-smile
NWS
http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q60/ … orning.jpg

This isn't the copy that will appear on the gallery, since it's not pulled from a DVD. (Hasn't arrived yet.. emot-frown ) Also on my copies, both, the last frame where you see the rest of her ass is just not shown without blending into another frame. I even busted out VirtualDUB so I could go frame by frame and check. Hopefully it's in the DVDs, though if it is, capping it is going to be an unholy bitch. emot-gonk (Anyone know of a program that screencaps DVDs but also allows you to navigate frame by frame in pause?)

BTW, holy shit is that on the vector list. Actually all the shots of Anthy on the couch are. etc-wankgirl

Edit:

Yeah I ruled PowerDVD out, it's the program I used for the original caps I did on the site and the resulting images were awful. I'm using VLC Media Player because it takes the best caps, and also allows me to slow to .13x, which is pretty good considering there are shots and pans that take less than a second to come and go. (Sup Dios in Juri's first duel!)

Ragnarok · Back to Top

Giovanna wrote:
(Anyone know of a program that screencaps DVDs but also allows you to navigate frame by frame in pause?)

PowerDVD is pretty good for that. Going forward, at least. It has a tendency to skip over a bunch of frames if you navigate backwards, which is annoying. (That may just be my copy, though; it came preinstalled.)

Dani · Back to Top

Giovanna wrote:
As for Anthy...good morning!
NWS
http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q60/ … orning.jpg

Beautiful, thanks. etc-love

#1 | Back to Top12-30-2006 07:14:42 PM

Utena's 10th. Giovanna celebrates by committing suicide.

#2 | Back to Top12-30-2006 07:29:33 PM

Re: Utena's 10th. Giovanna celebrates by committing suicide.

#3 | Back to Top12-30-2006 07:55:51 PM

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#4 | Back to Top12-30-2006 08:30:20 PM

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#5 | Back to Top12-30-2006 08:42:51 PM

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#6 | Back to Top12-30-2006 08:52:24 PM

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#7 | Back to Top12-30-2006 09:37:01 PM

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#8 | Back to Top12-30-2006 10:03:57 PM

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#9 | Back to Top12-30-2006 10:37:27 PM

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A Day Without Me wrote:

#10 | Back to Top12-30-2006 11:08:31 PM

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#11 | Back to Top12-30-2006 11:10:19 PM

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#12 | Back to Top12-30-2006 11:24:24 PM

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#13 | Back to Top12-31-2006 12:50:00 AM

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#14 | Back to Top12-31-2006 04:27:10 AM

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#15 | Back to Top12-31-2006 06:14:08 AM

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#16 | Back to Top12-31-2006 09:04:45 AM

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#17 | Back to Top12-31-2006 09:51:37 AM

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#18 | Back to Top12-31-2006 10:05:17 AM

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#19 | Back to Top12-31-2006 10:24:19 AM

Re: Utena's 10th. Giovanna celebrates by committing suicide.

Dani wrote:

#20 | Back to Top12-31-2006 12:35:27 PM

Re: Utena's 10th. Giovanna celebrates by committing suicide.

Dani wrote:

#21 | Back to Top12-31-2006 01:18:24 PM

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#22 | Back to Top12-31-2006 01:31:09 PM

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Maarika wrote:

Clarice wrote:

#23 | Back to Top12-31-2006 02:17:17 PM

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Dani wrote:

#24 | Back to Top12-31-2006 02:46:37 PM

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Giovanna wrote:

#25 | Back to Top12-31-2006 03:13:55 PM

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Giovanna wrote:

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