Castor Troy vegetainsane@hotmail.com - www.castortroy.net

Note by the author
Ever have one of those strange obessions that consume you so much, you want to give in and want to express it? This is one of those cases... Based on the style of Tainted Donuts, Dragon Bebop Z is a crossover between the worlds of Dragon Ball Z and Cowboy Bebop, (hence the title...). How and why did I come up with this strange combination? I'll explain. The inspiration came when I was reading my old site's guestbook one day, I saw an entry by a certain girl named "SSJ Faye Valentine" who complimented my site. This was around the time Bebop was airing on Cartoon Network so there were definitely going to be alot of hybrid DBZ/Bebop fans from now on. For some strange reason, I read the entry over and over and kept saying "SSJ Faye" to myself. I thought it was pretty cute and began to imagine Faye's hair turning gold like one of the Super Saiyajins from DBZ. I went so crazy thinking about it that I created an animated gif of Faye turning SSJ then later used it as my AIM buddy icon.
I wanted to create an actual movie of Faye going SSJ (it made it in as the ending) but then decided... I wanted to make a video. I've always wanted to make a Faye tribute video but never got around to it. This was originally going to be a pure Bebop video dedicated to Faye kicking ass, doing cool stuff, probably turning SSJ in the middle or the end of it and kicking more ass. When I thought I had a good idea, I realized it wouldn't make any sense. Nobody would understand why Faye would go SSJ without understanding DBZ first and it would probably look pretty awkward. I couldn't make a seperate DBZ video either so I decided to the best way to make my idea work was to crossover DBZ and Bebop together. So basically this video was just a big excuse to bring SSJ Faye to life. The story of the video is that Trunks comes from 20 years in the future to warn Goku and his friends that a dangerous group is coming the take their lives for money in 3 years. After 3 years of hard training, the Z warriors go out to confront their foes in the battle that awaits them... Meanwhile, the Bebop crew comes to the galaxy of the Z warriors to get the bounties on their heads. Will the Z warriors be able to survive? Will the Bebop crew get the bounty? I took a big risk making this video because nobody in their right mind would crossover DBZ with anything. Everyone knows that DBZ has some of the strongest characters in all anime and to put them up against the Bebop crew would be a bit unfair. Plus the fact that I would be accused of ripping of Tainted Donuts. So I had to give the Bebop crew a bit of a chance. I wanted to make this video a bit different than most people would expect. I gave Piccolo, a very underatted character the spotlight of being the hero on the DBZ side and Faye to be the heroine of the Bebop side by taking on and humiliating 2 of the strongest warriors from DBZ, Goku and Vegeta. I didn't want the entire video to be all fighting so I had to find things that were similar between the 2 animes and see how they would interact together. I ended up poking more fun at DBZ than I intended to. I kept thinking of many ideas for the video and when I gathered a few of the ideas I liked, there was one problem... I didn't have a song. I decided to use "Tough Boy" by Ragazzo Duro which is the 2nd opening to Fist of the North Star after watching my friend Mag Launcher's DBZ video "Gohan's day of fun" I thought it was a pretty fun video and I really liked how fun the song sounded. So after making the descision about the song, it was time to put all my ideas together. I couldn't think of a name for the video so I just went with "Dragon Bebop Z". I watched Tainted Donuts around 5 times a day to get the general feel of how masks were used, how to merge scenes, etc... I used Adobe Premiere 5.1 and 6 (Had to use 6 when 5.1 started glitching and wouldn't let me import the clips) to edit the scenes, Adobe Photoshop 6 for editing still shots and certain masks, Adode Illustrator 9 to make the "Dragon Bebop Z" text, and Adobe After effects 5 for masking moving scenes. I started around the beginning of November, worked on the video on and off (Thanks to Gamecube's release, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New years, FFX, and other video games...) and finished around the middle of February. I worked from 6-8 hours a day on the video whenever I decided to work on it. Scenes like Spike vs Piccolo took around 2 days to finish which involved the initial masking and cleaning up any excess bleeding around them. When I reached the final minute of the video, I thought I would either have too much or too less footage to edit. Luckily, I had a few extra seconds of footage leftover so I was able to time the beats near the end to Chaotzu getting blasted rather than timing individual small clips/stills to them. Upon finishing the initial video, I had my site partner Dr. Bond who's really good in the graphics department create the SSJ Faye scene at the end (This got him into watching Bebop... hehe).
Here are a few tidbits and flaws you should know...
- I was going to originally lip sync the "Tough Boy" parts but I couldn't find any good footage especially on DBZ's side to have lip sync with the image matte I put near them. So just decided to use a still with the image matte beside the character.
- I use mattes of the Bebop intro when the DBZ characters are looking for the Bebop crew since Trunks only gave them a vague description of the Bebop crew.
- There's a lack of consistency during the Spike vs Piccolo fight. They meet in the city, fight in a rocky terrain, then end up back in the city. Same thing with Faye vs Vegeta, she wears her normal clothes, then the winter clothes, then back to her normal...
- I didn't time the "Hai hai hai, (or he he he)" part at the card game scene because while editing the video, the card game scene lasted long enough from the start of the instrumental part to the end of it. I tried putting in moving money signs but they ended up looking tacky so I decided to leave it untimed.
- After Faye's encounters with Goku and Vegeta, I was gonna put in a Master Roshi/Faye scene. Unfortunately it wouldn't be consistent with the video.
- I know I put computer screens where there shouldn't have been any but I really liked how a few of these scenes looked.
- Ed appears for a short time at the end. I really didn't have that many ideas for her to be in the video but I just couldn't leave her out! :)
- I didn't really mean for this to be a comedy video and I meant for it to be a fun action one. I'm probably the only person on the face of the earth who didn't notice all the comedy so I gave in and listed this one as comedy along with action and fun...
I finally got to see this on the big screen at Anime Expo and the audience was cracking up throughout the whole video! It got a great amount of applause and that made it all worth it. Thanks everyone!
I'd like to give a big thanks to the following people...
Dr Bond, my former site partner and still good friend for making the SSJ Faye scene at the end, Mag Launcher for providing the song, Eric Kobet for the inspiration from his video Tainted Donuts and for showing this video at Sakura Con and most of all to... SSJ Faye for sparking up the entire idea.

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High Res Music video

Title: Dragon Bebop Z
Premiered: 2002-02-23
From: Hokuto No Ken
Song: Tough Boy LYRICS
Size: 45,6 MB - Resolution 320 x 240 - 1000 Kbps
Time: 5:34
Player: Windows Media Player (AVI XviD format)
DOWNLOAD + Codec XviD 1.1.2

Meri Trunkz81@aol.com - Temple O' Trunks

Note by the author
Time Spent: Spent most time finding and recording footage. 10 hours or so. Time spent on actual video: Many hours over the course of a week.
In the last month, I've gotten a new computer, and my very own DVD player. The first music video I made using the two of these is this here thing! Since the only kind of Cowboy Bebop music videos I've ever seen have been serious ones (for the most part. Tainted Dounuts would be the exception), I knew I wanted to do something fun. Originally, I wanted to make a video all about Ed. Unfortanately, I had no idea what song to use. But, one day I was in my car, listening to my New Found Glory CD. The song "Boy Crazy" played, and suddenly, I felt the urge to use that as my song, however, I'd make the video about both Ed and Faye. So, with that said, here is the story of this video. It's narrated by Spike (with some help from Jet). His situation is that basically, he's always surrounded by totally insane women. The first part of the video focuses on Faye, while the second part is all about Ed. Towards the end, it shows both of the gals just doing nutty things. There was one new thing I did in this music video that I haven't done in any of my previous work. For a fun video, I wanted to have fun transitions, to show that the story is shifting focus from one female to another. I didn't want to use cheesy effects, but I did want to do something fun. So, what I did was I "pushed" the scene along. Ahh... I guess it'll make sense when you see it. I had fun with it, and I hope it doesn't look bad. I'm darn happy with the end result of this video. I think it was a great first project on my new computer, and working with the DVDs was great. This is one of my new favorites, up there with my "Again" and "Traces of Insanity" videos. I really hope you like this video. It was fun to make. I usually get pissy and irratable when I'm working on a music video, and I think people who know me can safely say that I was in a good mood when making this. I hope it shows! Please feel free to write me an opinion of the video sometime, too. Anyway, enjoy!!

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High Res Music video

Title: These Girls Are Crazy (Spike's Valuable Life Lessons)
Premiered: 2001-08-22
Artist/Band: New Found Glory
Song: Boy Crazy LYRICS
Size: 40,8 MB - Resolution 320 x 240 - 1500 Kbps
Time: 3:30
Player: Windows Media Player (MPEG format)
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EnDarkEnd Studios endarkend@mailhaven.com

Note by the author
This is my second AMV. For the anime, I chose Cowboy Bebop. The song is a self-edited (for time) version of "Still Loving You" by the Scorpions with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (original version is 7:30, mine is 4:50). It can be found on the album "Moment of Glory", which was released in 2000. I used DVDs for the source, so the visual quality's not too shabby. ^^ I put a lot of effort into this; spending about 70 hours over a period of two weeks from start to finish. Much of this time was spent on perfecting the timing and beat synchronization, while trying not to make it "mechanical". I tend to shy away from using many special effects (i.e. prefabricated effects) in my AMVs, as I believe they detract from the video unless implemented well and for a reason. With this AMV I wanted to show the darker side of Bebop, focusing entirely on the struggles of Spike and Julia. I felt that "Still Loving You" fit quite well, as it is such an emotional and dynamic song. The lyrics can be found below!

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High Res Music video

Title: Dreams of Steel
Premiered: 2002-08-26
Artist/Band: Scorpions with Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Song: Still Loving You LYRICS
Size: 53,4 MB - Resolution 640 x 480
Time: 5:10
Player: Windows Media Player (AVI DivX format)
DOWNLOAD + Codec DivX 3.11

Abaddon Studios feedback@abaddon.nsolent.com - abaddon.nsolent.com

Note by the author
This is my third music vid. The song is Nelly - Ride Wit Me (Featuring City Spud), which I thought was appropriate for Cowboy Bebop with the recurring anthem of "Must be the money". Anyways, I think this is my best vid yet; it took me about two and a half weeks to put together. I used a lot of lip syncing in this vid, which took a LONG time, and I think it turned out really well. All of the footage was ripped directly off of DVD, so I think you will find that the video quality of the vid is much higher.

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High Res Music video

Title: Must Be the Woolongs
Premiered: 2001-09-07
Artist/Band: Nelly
Song: Ride Wit Me (Featuring City Spud) LYRICS
Size: 29,9 MB - Resolution 320 x 240 - 900 Kbps
Time: 3:29
Player: Windows Media Player (AVI DivX format)
DOWNLOAD + Codec DivX 6.5.1