Click for more photos from my Paralympic torch run

If you’re a resident of Vancouver, the Olympic phenomenon has likely been on the tip of your tongue for the past year or more. There’s been the construction, the endless street closures and newspaper headlines about everything from beefed-up security to budget overruns. For myself, as an employee for the past three years of a not-for-profit associated with the 2010 Winter Games, it’s been my focus for even longer.

All of this hoopla and angst finally culminated this past February and March in Vancouver’s Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. By the end of it all, the reviews were largely positive. Vancouver residents had had a great time. There had been this coast-to-coast outpouring of red and white patriotism. Oh, and most important of all to Canadians, our boys walked away with hockey gold.

While this was all fabulous, for me the Olympics touched a more personal chord and inspired something that had nothing to do with sport and everything to do with getting my life back on track.

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There are a lot of resources out there on the technical requirements for making a fan video. These tend to cover things like how do you capture video or what editing software to use, so I figure that ground has been well tread at this point. Instead, I thought I’d take a minute to write a bit about what goes into the editing aspect of a great fan video and give you the opportunity to watch some of the best fan videos ever created.

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So after not doing a fan video for years, this is the second one I’ve done for Castle in less than six months. For more on what the series “Castle” is about, I refer you to the blog post for my first Castle fan video, Oh my God.

While I knocked off that first video in less than two days, this one I’ve struggled with for several weeks. The idea to do a video came to me almost immediately after hearing Daughtry’s song, Life After You, for the first time. The lyrics of the chorus are ‘All that I’m after is a life full of laughter / As long as I’m laughing with you’ which I thought was a perfect way to describe Castle’s outlook on life and his affection for Beckett. That was actually something I realized fairly early on in the editing process–if Oh My God had been from Beckett’s point of view then Life After You was definitely Castle’s take on the relationship. I also felt that the melancholy turn the song takes between the upbeat choruses fit well with some of the darker things that have been going on this season. Castle’s investigation of the murder of Beckett’s mother and the emotional fallout from that are a major thread in the series this year and one that feels very different from the lighthearted goofiness of a typical Castle episode.

And that’s where I really began to run aground with this video.

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I was thrilled to discover this morning that the Warcraft comic that I began as simply an exercise to solidify my tablet skills has now won an Honourable Mention slot in Blizzard’s monthly World of Warcraft comic contest. Entrants submit under their Warcraft character’s name, so you’ll find me listed as ‘Nymeera’.

Notoriety is really the only reward for this particular contest, but I’m very happy regardless. I have such respect for the Blizzard artists and to simply have something of mine sitting on that website is fantastic.

click to enlarge

Just a quick note to say that I finally finished that Warcraft comic that I first started working on back in… err, September?! Yeesh.

Well, it’s done. Yay!

And even better, I’m feeling pretty comfortable with my tablet now. I got lots of practice doing a variety of different techniques which helped steady my wobbly hand. I don’t know that I’m quite at the stage that I would want to freehand sketch the initial drawing on the tablet as opposed to on paper, but I can now ink and shade with confidence.