The video that appears to be a test render of a certain blue furred vixen in Super Smash Bros. Brawl? It’s a fake. I made it people. Sorry if I offended, but I just couldn’t resist. Kit had mentioned some ugly YTMNDs about Krystal being a new character in SSBB. She said someone should make a better one. Well, I decided to do one step better and actually make a video about it. At least now you know why it didn’t show up as a news item.

How I Made It

I had no access to a structured Krystal model to use, so it was going to have to be video-based. I fired up my capture device and recorded several movements of Krystal’s. I ended up with one from Star Fox Assault. Krystal occasionally looks up, puts one arm across her belly, and the other vertically to her body. I got that camera angle by standing another Krystal behind her and aiming up, forcing the camera to zoom in and point upwards towards the other Krystal. It looks like this (this version was already looped). Turns out that it is almost perfectly looped without any extra work other than cropping the video at just the right place (her tail is slightly off however).

After the video was cropped, I exported the frames at approximately 10 or 15 frames per second with Quicktime Pro. I imported these, in order, into Photoshop Elements. Then the real work began. I had to manually outline each frame and black it out. I also added the gradient background at this stage. This process took about a day. Once completed, I exported an animated GIF at full quality.

With the hard part done, I needed to do some video editing. I fired up Final Cut Pro and imported the GIF. I had also recorded some music from Smash Bros. Melee, and that was imported as well. During this time, I made the “Newcomer: Krystal” image and the fake Hal screen. The Hal screen was inspired by a certain episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast where they were pretending to show a video not intended for external use. I think that screen was the main giveaway because it wasn’t in Japanese, nor did it use the Japanese title of the game. Anyway, I added that in there, used a couple of effects, looped the animation, blurred it slightly to make up for the hard angles during the creation process, and added sound. The additional sound is a simple synth from Soundtrack.

With my video created, how could I distribute it without drawing attention to myself? I couldn’t go out and say, “Hey guys, look what I found!” You would have known I made it. I came up with several ideas, but ended up with getting Eggman’s help. Since I have a severe dislike for all things Microsoft, why not encode the released version as a Windows Media Video file (WMV)? Eggman did this for me as well as degrading the video quality a lot. I also put the video on Putfile.com, a place known for unreliability and, occasionally, really good stuff. But still, I couldn’t reveal this myself, I needed someone else. That’s where Eggman again came into the picture. I made up a fake Yahoo UK account and emailed him a link to the video in broken English. This was also so that neither of us would have to lie if questioned about it. I further distanced myself by posting that I thought the video looked fake, which is true, of course.

Reactions

I was kinda disappointed that it was immediately regarded as fake by most. I spent two whole days on it! But over the next couple days people let there guards down slightly. Eggman and I had a couple laughs. Eggman also mentioned it on Klub Krys Podcast #1 (at about 20 minutes into the podcast).

Damage Control

Immediately after Eggman made the post on the KLA, I realized that I hadn’t thought out a good exit strategy. Again, I considered several options, but decided to just reveal myself after a time, linking the silhouette idea with iPods (the original idea for the whole thing). This image was immediately recognizable as fake, especially for a Nintendo product. So, sorry if I made anyone mad, but here’s to hoping Krystal DOES indeed make it into Brawl!

Spreading Further

The video spread a bit further once I put it on Youtube. Despite telling people that it was fake immediately and linking to this page, it apparently still tricked a few people. The video was mentioned on 4 Color Rebellion’s Rumor Roundup on July 16, 2006 which was great.

Files

• Game Animated Looping GIF
• Fake Animated GIF
• Fake HAL Screen
• Putfile Version (WMV) – 144 KB
• High Quality Version (MOV) – 5.7 MB
• Watch it on YouTube
• The End of the Ruse Image (iPod Item)