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Information

• Member: Castor Troy
• Title: Dragon Bebop Z
• Premiered: 2002-02-23
• Categories:
  • Action
  • Comedy
  • Fun
• Song:
  • Ragazzo Duro Tough Boys
• Anime:
  • Cowboy Bebop
  • DragonBall Z
• Participation:
  • Megacon 02, Megacon 02 (2002-02-22)
  • Anime Central 2002, Anime Central 2002 (2002-04-19)
  • PortConMaine, PortConMaine (2002-04-19)
  • Sakura Con 2002, Sakura Con 2002 (2002-04-26)
  • A-kon 13, A-kon 13 (2002-05-31)
  • Anime Expo 2002, Anime Expo 2002 (2002-07-06)
  • Otakon 2002, Otakon 2002 (2002-07-26)
  • Moobies.net Free Hosting Contest, Moobies.net Free Hosting Contest (2002-10-15)
• Comments: Video #47
  
  Apparently FUNimation Productions likes this video. :)
  
  This video gets too many hits for it's own good.
  
  New XviD version under local link. Same quality, smaller filesize and actually fades all the way out.
  
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  This is probably the video most people associate me with, especially the ones who haven't seen my old works :P
  
  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.
  
  Here's the link to the AIM buddy icon if you want it..
  -down for now-
  
  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 Boys" 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 boys" 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. I had the greatest honor of meeting him at Anime Expo 2002 and he's cool with this video.
  
  and most of all to.....
  
  SSJ Faye for sparking up the entire idea. As of this writing, I have not yet been contacted by her :(
  
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  Convention appearances/Awards
  ---------------------------------
  
  For information purposes, this is to confirm this video played at the following conventions...
  
  Megacon 2002 - Best Comedy
  Anime Central 2002 - Best Comedy
  Portcon Maine 2002 - Shown
  Sakura Con 2002 - Best Other
  A-kon 13 - Best Overall, Fan favorite
  Anime Expo 2002 - Shown
  Otakon 2002 - Non Competing, Shown in Fan Parody block and Screening 1 (tape 4).
  moobies.net contest - Best Comedy/Fun
  amv.org 2003 VCA - Nominee for best fun video
  
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  Thanks for watching everyone!
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  NOTE: If you got the CD I passed out at AX 2002, the version I put on it is 8000kps. Why? Just to fill up space on the cd of course :P
  
  Remastered version coming in the future!