It’s been half a year since Majormilk released Super Hidamatsuri, a Hidamari Sketch collaboration 4 years in the making.

Back then, I promised him that we would write about this collab more extensively, as we both had a lot to say. Today is that day.

This article is co-written by MajorMilk, and also includes a word from some of the participants at the very end.

Get ready for a fairly long read as we go over every big moment in the collab-making process.

Chapters

Timeline of events

September 11, 2020

Majormilk mentions the idea of a Hidamari Sketch collaboration for the first time.

timeline01

Further conversations happen regarding the size of the collab, the song selection and the vibe to aim for.

October 9, 2020

The collaboration server is created.

timeline02

Recruitment starts with acquaintances who already like Hidamari Sketch.

The medley draft is uploaded and Medleymakers are invited in the project.

February 1, 2021

Majormilk completes and submits the first part: Sate Sate.

February 3, 2021

The collab logo is revealed.

March 7, 2021

ReaLizer submits the first half of the medley, greenlighting audio production for these parts.

March 23, 2021

Oz Han submits the second half of the medley.

June 2, 2021

Kotatsu submits the credits part: Mebae Drive. The medley is now complete.

From there on, the collab progresses very slowly, finding participants motivated to work with Hidamari Sketch proves to be very hard.

June 1, 2023

An official deadline is announced, with the goal of a New Year’s release. The audio deadline is set to June 30th.

June 30, 2023

The deadline passes with some audio parts still incomplete.

October 24, 2023

After scouting more audiomakers, every audio part is finally complete.

October 30, 2023

The decision to draw a portrait for each participant is made. Artists are invited in the collab.

December 5, 2023

The deadline is moved to February 28 2024, in order to match the 20th anniversary of Hidamari Sketch’s first publication.

January 13, 2024

The collab teaser is uploaded.

February 1, 2024

The collab commercial is uploaded.

February 26, 2024

The last visual part is submitted. The final encode is launched.

February 28, 2024
March 4, 2024

A love letter to Hidamari Sketch

The central point of the collab (and what later on caused Majormilk so much grief when it came to finding participants) was the source material: a Kirara series from 2004. We sought to bring in people who all similarly loved Hidamari Sketch, and had, at the very least, seen the entire anime adaptation.

Major's comment

Ackshully, it was my hyperfixation and I dragged everyone down with me!!!

So this is more of a personal viewpoint of mine, but this collab was conceptualized in 2020 as more of a reaction to the environment of collabs at the time. 2019 was the year of the worst IWF I had organized and despite the very positive reception of Homo Disco, NYD had already let its novelty wear off just two years in. I was quite sick of these collabs. My homophobia had set in.
So instead of organizing yet another high stakes project with a dwindling participation rate, I decided to venture off into subjects that I would at least be passionate about.

This focus on Hidamari Sketch is not just limited to the source selection, the medley itself is entirely made of openings and character songs from the series.

The visual direction

Classic YTPMV visuals were not encouraged, from the very start, a list of videos was used as this collaboration’s visual guide:

Basically: something colorful and sparkly, with an emphasis on scene composition and absolutely no screenflipping!

Major's comment

Okay so for this section, I was heavily inspired by the old MADs of Hidamari Sketch. They had a really cool aesthetic you don’t see anymore. Extremely Y2K-ish sense that you might see on a beatmania PV from the time. While CH is correct that these were my main inspirations, he forgot about one of the most important visual guides for this collaboration.

Hidamari Sketch Dokodemo Sugoroku x 365 game opening

When I watched this opening, I became awash with inspiration. How could such a banger opening be stuck to a shitty 256 x 192 screen for the rest of eternity? C’mon Idea Factory, stop wanking Neptunia and upload it to a secret YouTube account or something.

This was definitely a huge inspiration for the second part’s visuals (the song name escapes me at the moment) the cutout feel to all the animated frames was 100% on purpose. That opening helped me squeeze the visual bone dry when there was no more blood to draw from.

Assembling the Yamabuki Squad

The decision of drawing participant portraits was inspired by the credits of the third Non Non Biyori collaboration (which both Majormilk and I took part in), and the stellar job done by the illustrators of the recent Otomad Dream Match.

We were able to get it done thanks to Majormilk himself and his many artist connections.

Personal experiences

MajorMilk

Mistakes into Miracles

While this message might be lost in the sea of collab servers I left ages ago, I vaguely remember telling mords (my co-host at the time) and some other folks that I wanted to organize a collab that wasn’t either Gachimuchi or Inmu, since those had become too stressful for me. A collab that would be a little more self-serving. At the time it was just a vague promise as a result of the direction either collab was going, but it eventually materialized after I started Hidamari Sketch on my birthday.

In the late stages of both gay collabs, my body was stretched to its limit. Christmas season was spent agonizing over late submissions so I stayed up for several nights waiting for last minute submissions. The last week of 2019 had me receiving an average of 4 hours of sleep, mostly involuntary. So what do I do during this tenuous period? I watch a very relaxing and laid back anime known as

madokers

Yeah, maybe that wasn’t the greatest idea.

This only made things worse (as much as I loved the story.) Really screwed up my sleep even further. So I had recently heard about Hidamari Sketch during my many Kirara binge watches, so I decided to give it a try. And apologies in advance for writing this out of order, but it’s just the way my mind has placed these events.

During my birthday, I decided to pick up Hidamari. I thought it was kinda cute, but also dull. Was a great way to fix my sleeping schedule back then. The girls were okay, but nothing special. Finished the first season and left it in the Do Back Burner for a while. After my Madoka binge, I had lost all hope in myself but I just knew that Madoka was GOD. Fantastic anime, we don’t talk about Rebellion.

After that I decided I needed a palette cleanser so I decided to pick up HDMR again. For some reason this time the show had blasted me with such warmth and love for the characters that I lost several nights worth of sleep over it, only slowing down when the focus was on Nazuna. Maybe it was an uptick in production quality or something but the anime had drilled itself into my soul. I had no idea this was still possible.

For context, prior to that, the last anime that had a similar effect was Azumanga.

Hard to believe, I know.

But holy cow, that was an experience. I feel like it saved me from completely losing it after the disastrous launches from New Year’s. I was a different person after that, I could not stop gushing over the series. I blasted right through the manga and bombarded my own server’s anime channel with panels and screencaps of Yuno saying the cutest things to Miya.

Not sure how one thing led to another, but a mix of dissatisfaction with the collab scene and my own love for the anime somehow conceived the idea for Super Hidamatsuri.

Life is Gay

I gathered a small band of folks from my server that had also fallen in love with the anime, including the very co-author of this article, and put them in a small channel. I had a very low stakes view of the collab at the time. I originally thought it was going to be one of the 114514 “do whatever” collabs that are all the rage these days. So I had no issue with organizing it on a public server. I contacted my nigga in blue and white, FinnOtaku, and asked him to make sense of all my music picks. I listened to dozens of CD releases and organized them using the following process

And dumped them all on Finn. He was a real sport about it and gave me a few variants of the medley. It quickly delved into a coherent medley. When I organize a medley, I like to have a heavy hand in the composition even if I know jack about music. I try to give enough feedback to let the composer know when things feel “wrong.” I wish this process was more present in other collabs, more often than not you have these hosts give little to no feedback and you end up with the most dull and disjointed composition of all time.

(A bit related, but you can really tell early on when a collab’s a good idea when you’re not dueling over the song picks. I’m talking to you, IWF 2017.)

I showed the medley draft to the folks over at Homo Labo and they liked it. At this point, I realized that this was going to be a more serious collab so I moved all organization over to another server. The population was scant, with maybe a dozen people initially joining the efforts. CH and Darius were the first cannon fodder to be drafted into the collab and somehow lasted the entire process. Slowly but surely, it started filling up a little more with some Korean medley makers joining the fray. From the very start, I knew we were always going to be short on manpower, so I told the composers to start working right away. This was not a democratic process like every other collab I had done in the past. This was a MajorMilk autocracy. You WILL make a banger rendition of Koi-iro Shooting or I will shoot myself.

This was all fine and dandy for most of the first half of the year. Medley was received warmly and discussions were productive. Then I ran into my first of many issues. Oz Han could not muster a satisfactory enough composition for Mebae Drive. For clarification, this was in relation to himself. I heard the previews and I liked them. But you know, artists.

So I got in touch with kotatsu. This fella was a pretty talented music artist that had been following me for a while due to my many Yuyushiki artworks. I got in touch with him and asked him if he could drop in and he accepted. While I don’t have many of the details at hand right now, he left the collab but came back later.

Somehow, the medley was completed.

Audiountermensch

This is where the problems really start. The audio phase was probably the most troubling aspect of the collab. I am mainly a visual person, so I have no auditory skills to speak of. I had to beg and plead with many audio participants to stick around. I served them 5 star course meals (full audio libraries from the show) in an attempt to get them to stay. However, you can’t force a participant to maintain interest in an anime he had little thoughts on. We even had a professional musician on board that offered assistance on some of our parts!

But YTPMVs are quite tricky.

After his first submission, we both realized that it was not quite up to par with what others had in mind. In an effort to facilitate a visualization of a “good” MAD audio, I showed him this

【ゆゆ式】BLU RAY Disc

It sort of helped, he added percs afterwards and submitted as is.

The original band I had spoken about earlier had fallen off the wagon so to speak and left for various reasons. Some involved being disinterested with the final selection of songs or had just ghosted me. Some of these guys were audio so it was extra difficult for me to fill in their works.

At the start of the collab, I had too much optimism for my own good. I let the deadlines stretch up to a month. This was a very free collaboration with no clear deadline and lax checkups, so there was little push on the participants to submit anything. I thought that by gathering the equivalent of Hidamari jihadists, that they would automate everything themselves. But our community has some clear flaws, which are strengths outside of organized efforts. They are very carefree and fickle. We make videos on anything and everything on a whim. As a result of my lax direction, many pushed my collab VERY far down their list of priorities. Some pushed it out entirely.

I lost many early members this way and did not realize it until the second year that this rule had to go. Sometime after New Year’s 2021, I enacted the rule that check ups would be shortened, down from a month to two weeks. This helped a little and I got a few more submissions. I decided to also tune down my rule of only getting participants that had done HDMR videos before. The previous rule was never going to work out, most tagged videos on Nico were over a decade old. The authors had long since retired from production. The ones I did manage to scoop up were on their way out. This resulted in, what I would call “cohorts”. These cohorts would be called in waves to help out the collab, only for all of them to leave shortly after. Entire batches of participants were dropped for very similar reasons at the same time. Mostly due to inactivity.

WW2 Pt. 2

While things were problematic in Super Hidamatsuri, the situation for everyone had become even more dire outside our collaboration. During 2021-2023, slews of international collaborations had gone South and stained the view of foreigners in the Japanese circles. It was harder than ever to gather participants. I could not apologize enough for the actions of my own countrymen other than make some melancholic DMs on Discord. These events caused me to raise my command and forcefully remove a participant. He had been responsible for not only submitting a very half-baked audio (with little regards to pitch shifting, lyrics, or any musical sense.) he had also been responsible for one of the most infamous causes of international miscounduct. Some very brave souls removed this person from power and tried to salvage what damage he had caused on another project.

This was not the end, however.

The fallout of the situation could be felt throughout the year, with constant vague and direct tweets from the Japanese at us. It was a rather embarrassing situation for our community. I was getting sick of dealing with it. Even well after those events, I was working hard to make sure our collab would not fall into the death trap of being overseas project #1145141919810 put in hiatus. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for all our Japanese participants. Of all the participants I brought in, most of them would mostly waste participant slots as they’d often leave within a short span. They would be way over their heads and unable to conjure up ideas for their parts. I’d get a simple “sumimasen” and a blank slate. Occasionally I’d get nothing.

While I am still truly sorry for the way some of my compatriots acted, I simply could not brush off the typical Japanese attitude I had been experiencing. I was doing everything in my power to make sure the collab was chugging along. Constant sessions with other people on feedback, assistance with material, etc. I was there, acting as a host SHOULD act. But this was not enough. At one point, I came to a realization.

“This is why the Yakuza ask for your pinky.”

Apologies are meaningless in Japan. Especially with a lack of tangible action from the person.
I had the dullest most copypasted DMs of my life during this period. I replied little to nothing to them. I just clicked Remove and sent them on their way, they were of no use. I hated that I had taken this utilitarian mindset, but after seeing it so often, you start to mesh all their messages into a simple neat little box of disappointment.

The US Postal Office Sucks

After this, I decided to lean on foreign participants I was friends with. Surely these guys would be a little more motivated than before? Took my chances with a close friend of mine, he lived in a certain land where the internet is terrible but was quite motivated to watch all of Hidamari Sketch. I was eager to help and personally shipped many materials and even a neat hand drawn Miya on the box. Paid the postage of 120 USD. It arrived a little bit after a month, half complete because the government of that country is full nanny state trogs that consider Hidamari to be actual child pornography or something. The package was half ripped and one of the drives was missing, which had the materials necessary. It was absolutely terrible.

So we tried the next best thing: Pump his phone with enough data to download the full 30GB set. This was a success. In hindsight, I should’ve done this from the beginning.

Unfortunately, this story did not have a happy ending either. The person had many issues with his life and could not muster to finish watching the anime and ultimately ended being terminated from the collab when a new cohort swept through the server once more. During this time, I figured that I was never going to have a complete set of audio makers in time to finish the collab, so I decided to move ahead and make some visuals in advance on parts that I declared to be less sensitive to audio cues. By this point, I had already cleared Sate Sate due to its limited role in the medley. I started to tackle Ume’s section and asked DariusSheeno to help me make a cute Ume model for the part. Uncertain if this experiment would even work, I pressed ahead and built the model little by little.

It worked!

This part was completed and the visuals meshed very well. Probably my most detailed work up to date. The amount of callbacks to Ume’s CDs were tremendous.

It’s (Finally) Over

Despite this, I had made little progress on the audio front. Participants were still missing and nothing was being done. WOOZYWINKLE FROM THE HIDAMARI SKETCH SERVER, once claimed that the collab was dead. It got to me. Enough to start doing some serious scouting around. The collab was reaching its second anniversary and it wasn’t even close to halfway completion. Things were so dire that I was begging CH to fill in the rest of the audio if I were to not find anyone. I knew I was racing against time. The more I let the collaboration drag on, the more probable other factors would knock participants off the project. I considered just paying a professional composer to fill in the blanks of the project, but never pulled the trigger. I did not have enough funds at the time and it was still not certain they would ever actually do it. I already had a musician drop the other parts, why wouldn’t it happen again?

Fast forward, it is now New Year’s 2023. Two years had passed and the collab was in a rocky position. Many “never ever” collabs were starting to come out. The two FAWL collaborations, the KYM collab, even ManWith10Toes had its full audio leaked. This did not bear on my psyche well. So after I got back from my Mexican backwater vacation, I put my foot down and set some very clear deadlines, check ups would be shortened even further. I asked creators with little experience with Hidamari but were motivated friends of mine to help. When smileyshirt started posting his progress on the server, my stress levels started to come down. It was relieving to see familiar faces patching up my crappy project. While there were times when I had to replace members, it was not the overhauls I had in previous years. I was more than happy to oblige.

I finally had a deadline set for audio, end of June.

While most audio participants did meet this date, a handful of them didn’t. Smiley in particular had made a very detailed guide on the samples throughout the anime and it took some time. He worked super hard on it and the end result was beautiful. Definitely worth the wait.

End of the year was fast approaching. By October, we reached a major milestone: the audio had been completed. That thorn on my shoulder had finally been slayed. The result was wonderful.
First night I listened to it, I had such a WIDE grin on my face. It felt like the auditory version of a house you built by yourself. Very homely, comfortable, and warm. All that sweat and tears, all those DMs to CH where I was borderline suicidal, all culminated to this

audio done

Visuals had finally started to build up, too. The light was near.

In a moment of confidence, I declared that we would have the luxury to do a cute commercial. And since we were in the middle of the Non Non Biyori collab as well, we incorporated their medley artwork. I gathered many artists and asked them to contribute many of our participant’s avatars into Yamabuki High School uniforms.

Things went dandy, the possibilities were endless and asked a plethora of friends to come join. It was frankly the least painful process of the entire collab. They were glad to help and got to work immediately.

However, once again outside forces were having a tug on the collab. End of the year collabs are infamous for clogging up everyone’s time. It was having a strain on myself as well. Then, WoozyWinkle brings to my attention that Hidamari Sketch’s 20th anniversary is going to be very soon. In February!

He gives me the idea to delay the collab and save face by moving it to a special date. I immediately take it to vote to the participants and everyone accepts. A huge sigh of relief washes over the server and we all relax for a bit.

Soon after, all art is complete and our trailer goes live on February 1st. I could not sleep afterwards. The culmination of 3 years of work led to this. Everyone KNEW the collab existed outside of desperate cries for help on Twitter. The reception was great and we chugged along.

Finally, two days before the collab was meant to go live. Aya submitted his part.

On February 26, 2024 15:05 UTC, the final part was complete. The collaboration was done. It had not been in vain. All those people that I promised I would send this collab out the door one way or another, would be fulfilled. I had no words.

Only a GIF.

There is little to say after this. I finished the medley PV with everyone’s cute art pieces on their corresponding sections. Winkle was kind enough to lend me his Hidamari merch for the setting and added a nice atmosphere to the whole thing.

I cannot thank enough to all the people who were part of the original “band” that did not fall off and helped every bit they could through those years.

Special Thanks to:

DariusSheeno
CH FR
WoozyWinkle
nenza

CHFR

Drafted in the Wide army

I discovered Hidamari Sketch in early 2020 as Majormilk kept talking about it on the server. Just like him, I pretty much dropped it at the end of season 1 and didn’t touch it for another 4 months. It was only in the middle of June that I picked it back up, and after having to ask what season 2 was even called, it absolutely rocked my world and I became hooked!

x365 got so deep into my mind that it started overwriting fundamental mathematical constructs in my brain.

ch01

Jokes aside. Hidamari Sketch really did have a huge impact on me. Back in July 2020, I was going through some stressful times: the school I got accepted in was at risk of closing. I was fresh out of high school and had no idea where things would go if that door closed on me. All I could do was wait anxiously for additional news, during that time, Hidamari Sketch was my beacon of light: The relaxed atmosphere, and Miyako’s philosophy of life (don’t stress over it if you can’t do anything about it) helped me cope.

In the end, everything turned out alright. Which I’m grateful for.

Working with MJRMLK

Now, I’ll talk a bit about my experience with collabs.

Over the years, I’ve had the occasion to work in many projects and with many people. Most of the time It’s a fairly straightforward process, I do my part, submit, and voilà. I haven’t had to compromise or give much thought to the “collaboration” part of the work.

Majormilk is the one person I’ve worked with the most when it comes to Otomads, thanks to our similar tastes when it comes to anime, things usually just click. However, when working together, things suddenly become a lot more involved:

  • Tons of messages are exchanged over the course of long brainstorming sessions to come up with a story for our part;
  • I am made to go through many checks and “red corrections” to even get a passing grade art-wise;
  • Then, I have to accommodate voice lines from Non Non Biyori to create a fictional scenario that is BOTH a crossover with Machikado Mazoku AND a reference to Dragon Quest;
  • And finally, I am made to take part in a “coloring assembly line” with live tutoring to help with the many hand drawn assets of our part.

And all of that was just for one single part mind you! And what’s even worse is that I can’t even complain because Majormilk works himself even harder on the visuals. Seriously, a lot of the stuff he does is made completely from scratch!

Despite how involved those parts usually are, they’re still loads of fun, so I was very excited to take part in Super Hidamatsuri when it was announced: not only would I, once again, get to work closely with Majormilk, but it would also be on an anime that means a lot to the both of us. For that reason, I was ready to give it my absolute best.

Working on my part

Disclaimer: while I am talking (rather strongly) about the frustrations I’ve encountered making my part, I regret absolutely nothing. I am incredibly proud of having contributed to this collab and everything I went through was worth it. The following section is meant to be read as a recounting, not a rant.

The audio

To say that this part’s audio kicked my ass would be an understatement, I was at WAR with this audio! To give you a basic idea, my first preview was from March 2021, and my final submission was done in November 2023, long after I completed the visuals.

Let’s talk a bit about the medley, I’d like you to imagine yourself as an audiomaker, now imagine having to work with a medley that is made only of character songs and openings, and that the source you’re working with… is the very series with all those character songs and openings.

Because of (or rather, thanks to) Majormilk not being an audio guy, he went all-in with this Hidamari-only medley, without realizing how terrifying of a prompt “make an interesting audio where the girls are covering a song that they are the initial singers of” is to an audiomaker.

As if that wasn’t enough, my inner showoff decided to pick one of the more high-stakes opening, “Hatena de Wasshoi”, and live up to its legacy.

And so, I started working on my part.

First, I tried playing it straight by using the original lyrics. Taking the voices from the original song was impossible since the medley was five-or-so-semitones higher, so it would have sounded like trash (and my pride wouldn’t allow it).

I did the first thing that came to mind: voicebanks of the four main girls. Making a Voicebank sucks, it’s soul-draining, you spend hours looking for all the syllables, preferably with duplicates in case some of them don’t play nice with UTAU, and then, you have to configure all of said syllables. It’s very repetitive, and yet still requires your attention since all syllables need different values for their config.

So I did a voicebank… four actually… and guess what:

It fucking sucked lmao

Sticking with the original lyrics was simply too boring, so I added some sentencing elements in the first section of the song to make it more interesting. From this point on, I also started working on the visuals in parallel as they would drive some elements of the audio. For example, I decided very early on that I wanted to pay homage to the scene where Yuno rides the truck to the Hidamari apartments in the first episode of x365.

With UTAU’s processing, the voices were blending together a bit too much, I tried making two of them sing harmonics:

I got a passing grade, but still felt like the audio was missing something at a fundamental level: it was way too boring.

In this state, my part was at best a mediocre recreation of a good opening. I decided to put my worries aside for the time being to focus on the visuals instead.

Eight months later, I went back to the audio to give it another shot. I restarted from scratch.

First, I ditched the UTAUs in favor of a more manual approach: roughly pitching in Reaper, and doing additional tuning in Vocalshifter.

I also tried to do something à la “brazilian dog dance” out of desperation, maybe something good would come out of it.

I didn’t like it and scrapped the idea

At the end of the day, I still felt like something was lacking: having the girls sing their own opening song just wouldn’t cut it. For the third time, I restarted from a blank slate, that’s when the idea hit me.

ch08

Time to put my JLPT N6 skills to use, I would change the lyrics of the opening to make them sing about creating an Otomad instead!

I was able to get valuable help from other participants.

ch09

Things were starting to look up, I was more content with the story the part was telling and did a better job with tuning the voice.

I decided that this would be good enough, and declared my audio as “done”. I was able to execute my ideas and tell the story I wanted to tell, so I started fully focusing on the visuals.

The mixing was incompetent, but I could live with it… until I couldn’t anymore.

alt text

Cue in two years later. Mikami started working on the collab’s mastering. I had piled up on experience and was ready to throw hands with my audio one final time.

ch11

What followed was an intense learning session where Mikami gave me invaluable help to improve many aspects of my audio.

From natural singing

ch12

To chords

ch13

To how OTT works in greater details

To long sessions about mixing, balancing, and making my audios less muddy.

ch15

I have learned a lot from these conversations, for which I cannot thank Mikami enough.

At long last, I had won the harsh two-year-long battle against my audio part.

The visuals

The visuals for my part were a different kind of battle. They were not draining because of a lack of skill or anything, they were draining because they took so much god damn time to make!

As I fumbled around with the audio, I started working in parallel with the truck scene.

I started by syncing Yuno’s sounds to different “obstacles” that would rock the truck around.

You can see some of the ideas I started with, they all got scraped in favor of a more stable scene that doesn’t focus on the truck movements as much. As for the last video, I believed I wouldn’t be able to translate that angle change well in AE

For the second scene, I initially wanted to use the Hidamari SVG character icons (courtesy of NoAddedMSG) with backgrounds that kinda represented them (Miyako was the sunshine in Sunshine Sketch, Hiro had food, Sae had a manuscript, but I couldn’t think of much in Yuno’s case thought).

This is the initial draft of the scene, after a bit of polish, it looked like this:

There was too much contrast between each shot, and Yuno’s icon disappeared too fast, causing an awkward rhythm. That’s why I replaced it with the room interior scene, which flowed much better, using Hoshimittsu’s production notes as a reference.

ch22

(For fucks sake affinity please make a linux Port)

And then I ditched After Effects. I basically rendered the truck scene as a PNG sequence and never touched an Adobe CC app after that.

I was learning Fusion at the same time that I was making this part.

ch23

This scene was very fun to make AND looks super good, the way in which I connect the same scenes to a different renderer for the final shot is something that’s made so much easier with nodes!

I then went on to model the hidamari apartments (while Milk was working with Darius to model the Hiro/Miyako Robots at the same time)

The scene with all the audio items was a blast to make, I got a bit more used to Fusion’s 3d and particles systems, having to mix both the openGL renderer (for custom particles), and the software renderer (for proper transparency). Nodes proved extremely useful there too.

once I had an animation for each audio item, all I needed to do was duplicated it and offset the time to get a very nice scene.

Just as a side note, can you believe that After Effects still does not have a “duplicate” effect? Be it in 2d or 3d space, AE users are forced to either mess around with expression and layer indices or use Trashcode Echospace.

I had to draw a bunch as well:

I entrusted Majormilk with my life, and as expected, got hit with many (much needed) corrections in red.

In one of the later scenes, I used a mist pass there to get a depth reveal for the colors. I had wanted to do this kind of effect for a while.

After finishing these visuals, and going back to fix the audio, I was done. I finished this part, it was one of my most intensive, but also proudest work.

A sidequest before the finale

One week before the deadline, Majormilk made the announcement that Hajimari Survival still had a blank spot visual-wise. Aya was having trouble finding ideas so he asked for anyone who wanted to fill in.

Hajimari survival was actually my second choice at the start of the collab, I liked Miyako a lot back then (then I turned into a Yunofag). So I voluntered to do those 7 seconds of visuals.

This time, I used many pre-existing assets (mostly Kirafan illustrations). Because I had to hand-craft almost nothing at all, the part was done in a flash. It only took me about two days to hand in the finished product:

This video was made with Autograph (my second-ever project with this software after IOU).

Final thoughts

I am very glad to see that this collab came to fruition, both because I believe the end product turned out fantastic, but also because it is a huge relief to not have it occupying a corner of my mind every single day. During those four years, I’ve had countless moments where, when idle, my brain would automatically go back to brainstorming audio or visual ideas. While this in itself was fairly common and happened for most of my projects, 4 years is just way too long for a hobby project to stay on your mind, it definitely wears down on your morale and motivation. This is particularly true for Majormilk, whose mental state was sad to see during the collab’s darkest hours.

I think Super Hidamatsuri is a work that is very reflective of the host’s vision. The heavy-handed management is not something that actually happens in that many collabs. I think he managed to orchestrate a cohesive visual flow without limiting each participant’s visual style.

More than anything, this collaboration is a huge passion project, born solely from the love of Hidamari Sketch. We knew from the very beginning that this collab would barely break past 10k views. We also knew that neither the source material, nor the medley, would be appealing to madmakers due to the lack of popular otomad BGMs. But despite all that, we still pushed through and were able to get it done.

From the bottom of my heart, I was glad to celebrate Hidamari Sketch with this collaboration.

Thank you. Stay wide.

CHFR.

A message from everyone

We asked in the server if anyone wanted to leave a small comment about the collaboration. Here are the responses we received:

Hacoco

I participated at the end of September 2023 and was in awe of being allowed to add video to Estl’s wonderful audio. It was a pleasure to be a part of this wonderful and fun co-production project!

(私は2023年の9月末に参加し、Estlさんの素敵な音声に映像を付けさせていただけるというなんとも畏れ多い出来事でした。素晴らしく楽しい合作企画に参加できて嬉しかったです!)

HimahariNeru

I was invited by MajorMilk and I really enjoyed the experience, since watching others contributions, giving ideas to other artists and receiving feedback from MajorMilk everything was great, not only for collaborating with other artist but also because everything I learned.

If I have the chance to be part in another project like this one I’d definitely accept

Index

The first and probably last collab I will ever be a part of.

Oh, in no way because it was bad or anything like that, it was actually a lot of fun, surprisingly interesting and literally the best collab I was ever part of. But I’m just really lazy.

LurkingKaos

It was my first time participating in something like this so I was really nervous at first.

One of my dreams when I picked up drawing was to take part in creative fan projects so I was really happy when MajorMilk invited me.

I get the chance to work on a project with artists I looked up to for years as inspiration and it’s still a bit hard to believe.

It was a fun and I hope I get to experience this more in the future

maimai

私にとってこの合作は、非常に難しいものでした

音声パートの作成を担当しましたが、2回テーマを変えて最初から作り直しました。これは自分の作った音声が全く満足出来るものでは無かったからです。

最終的に完成した音声も、完璧なものではありませんでしたが、映像担当者のお陰でいい動画に仕上がりました。

主催のMajorMilkさんの積極的な活動がこの合作の成功をもたらしたと思います、ありがとうございました。

Creating my audio portion for this collaborative project was incredibly challenging. I had to restart the entire process twice, changing the theme completely each time, as I was never fully satisfied with my own audio. The final audio, while not perfect, was able to become part of a great video thanks to the video editor’s hard work. I believe MajorMilk’s proactive efforts were instrumental in the success of this collaboration. Thanks a lot.

MoonTDN

It’s really impressive to witness MajorMilk turns his hobby into such a well-made collaboration.

Although I didn’t do too much work, I’m still happy & proud that I’m a part of it. Maybe one day we will make the shami collab real just like this (joke)

NoAddedMSG

Elder Wide

I’m probably one of the older overseas fans of Hidamari, getting into the series around the time that x365 was airing, around July 2008. The first episode of x365 was captivating–the fluidity and style of animation in that episode left a big impression on me. Another big influence on my attachment to the series was through Ume’s signature character design: I wanted to start drawing a moe style, and Ume’s art fit what I was looking for. I still remember spotting the English-translated version of volume 3 at the bookstore and getting excited to actually get my hands on it to use as a reference to draw my own cute characters.

Unfortunately, life has a habit of getting in the way: the colleges I was applying to didn’t care much in terms of art portfolios after all! The best I could do was doodles and maybe one art piece every several months to a year.

msg01

I still enjoyed it though!

From the Sidelines

Fast forward several years, a degree, and starting postgrad. Prior to coming onboard, I had joined a Hidamari Sketch Discord server and was posting different pieces I’d done in my spare time. One of them was a wallpaper of the Hidamari emblems in a honeycomb pattern. These got to Major’s server as art assets, and his team had some use for them in the collab.

Initially, I was only communicating with Major via DMs. While several of the emblems were good to go out of the box, I quickly learned the level of polish Major wanted this collab to have, with some undergoing several edits and minor tweaks to get them just right.

This was the level of refinement we were aiming for!

The back and forth eventually resulted in an invite to the server, so we could avoid playing telephone and have our communications public for the other collab members to see. In the end, we achieved a satisfactory end product, and I was pleased with a job well done.

Artist bootcamp

Something that I didn’t realize until late was that Major wanted me to actually draw art for the profile pics as well. Closer to the end of 2023, it was a nightly event to join voice chat with Major, Winkle, and Winkle’s brother, Seck, to hang out and chat. I knew at the time that I was going to make art for myself, having been a super important contributor of a few minor art assets. Offhandedly, I wondered if I should do profile art of another collab member.

“You weren’t doing that already?” was the gist of his reply.

Well shit.

Despite the next few months being hectic with trying to finish the profile art, I feel that it was a big jump forward in my abilities as an artist. The voice chat sessions allowed for critique and guidance in semi-real time, and posting progress in the Discord server allowed easy access to the images for editing.

Compare my first art (left) to one of the later ones (right)! Having feedback really helped in refining my work, from lineart all the way to coloring and shading.

Lineart

At some point in our chats, Major commented over video that I looked like a stereotypical high school bully. Thinking back over it, the statement had some merit, at least in regards to how I used to draw.

As a kid, my method of drawing and writing was a challenge of strength. Pencils and crayons were locked in a death grip and pressed into the paper with full force, as if I were forcing some scrawny kid to give me his homework. It seems that translated to my lineart as an adult, as lines were very uniform and less interesting.

While Major spoke of adjusting the line’s velocity setting, I had no such function on the drawing software I was using (Medibang Paint). What I did learn was that I could make a nicer looking line by varying the pressure applied to the tablet as I drew. I feel that the lines made with this process looked more organic and nicer overall.

You can see that each line stroke on the left has a very uniform thickness: a result of pressing the stylus into the tablet with excessive force. Compare that to the right, where there’s more variable thickness.

Anatomy

Despite being one of my most studied topics in postgrad, actually decent looking anatomy had been a challenge for me. Much like how you can visualize a picture in your head and be absolute shit at turning that to an art piece, understanding anatomy and drawing anatomy are two completely separate skills.

Previously, my method of figuring out anatomy was to draw a head, torso, hands, and feet. After that, draw something close enough to limbs to connect them all together. However, this seriously neglects the opportunity to add form and style to the anatomy! Major was quick to point out the “tube anatomy” that my method of drawing resulted in.

Both the anatomy and lineart critique were super valuable in developing better looking and more stylish style, which I’ve continued to use in my art outside of the collab

Coloring

Coloring was one of the last lessons learned in the process of working on the collab. It’s easy to fall into the trap of shadows being an area hidden from light, so shading is a darker shade of the same color. However! It can be a detriment to the contrast to only using the same color, but darker.

Personally, I was super proud of this version. But pride can get in the way of progress. During one of our voice chat sessions, Major taught about color theory, high contrast color selections, and gradients. I took notes!

I’m dogshit at remembering what my notes mean, though

The main big takeaway was that using a dark, contrasting color instead of a darker shade makes the piece look more visually interesting.

Taking a closer look:

The colors of the left version look flatter and are less visually engaging than the right

Using the part above, you can see the difference that using contrasting colors in place of “same color, but lighter/darker” makes!

Crossing the finish line

Towards the end of the project, we had two additional collaborators who joined before the medley version was released. Being available, I did the final two pieces. I still remember staying up late drawing while Major was waiting on the handoff to finish the medley version.

I took a half-day at work to recover.

I was super proud of the work we all had accomplished in the time leading to the release of the collab, as well as the release of the medley. Many late nights led to exhausting days at work, but seeing both personal growth as an artist as well as progress on the collab, gave me the push to keep going.

Final comments

Returning back to that picture of Natsume above:

There she is :)

I feel like this is the piece that I had put the most heart and soul into, both for this collab, as well as any artpiece I had made up to that point. While the other pieces of profile art was meant to represent each collaborator and their role in the production on principle, drawing my own allowed me to personalize it a bit further.

I had made this as a representation of the many voice chat sessions between Major, Winkle, Seck, and myself. I chose a relaxed pose for Natsume, because these sessions at the end of the day would be a good way to decompress after a long shift at work. Checking in on my friends while working on art was one of the highlights of my day, so she gets a satisfied smile.

Yui Ichii (Yuyushiki)

As the leader of the collab, Major offered a wealth of tips, advice, and critique to help improve my art. Taking the time to redline lineart and discuss color theory and selection has honestly been one of the biggest contributors to the evolution of my style since I picked drawing back up, and I’m extremely grateful for the guidance. He took the collab very seriously, often acting to wrangle everyone towards our common goal. I feel he’s very close to Yui in that way.

Sae (Hidamari Sketch)

Winkle worked nights during the majority of the collab, so our chat sessions were mainly organized around his breaks. He used the opportunity to take some gulps of water, which picked up on the mic. I liked to encourage (tease) him by commanding him to “DRINK” every time that I heard it. While he’s serious at times, it’s rather easy to get him flustered. He’s like Sae, in a way.

Robin (Fire Emblem)

Seck would always punctuate his arrival with the blob Bocchi squeak, so I felt that was an appropriate way to depict him. He did love to mess around during chat sessions, so Robin’s playful expression here is more a reflection of his attitude and joking nature. While he wasn’t a contributor to the collab, I feel his participation in the voice chats definitely made them more lively!

Conclusion

For me, this project was not only a way to show love for a series that means a lot to me, but also a way to grow in my skills and develop as an artist. I feel that every interaction and asset that I helped with has affected me positively and pushed me to improve. I’m extremely pleased with the final product, as well as the growth I’ve achieved in this collaboration, and I’m thankful to have been a part of it.

Shoelace Bother

In Summer of 2023, I did three collab parts back to back including New Year’s Dreams 2023 which took me four weeks alone to put together. Five minutes after submitting my part was when I got the DM from MajorMilk requesting help on yet another one.

I hadn’t even seen Hidemari Sketch before but, thanks to SmileyShirt’s sample guide, I decided to challenge myself to make the push to complete the project.

Even after I “finished” my part, there was a lot I was told to fix in a DM where I learned a lot of invaluable audio tips.

In addition to all of this, this was a unique scenario where I was tasked with making audio for an already-finished visual as opposed to the opposite situation.

All in all, it was one of the most unique and challenging collab parts I did and taught me a lot about mixing and overall scrappiness navigating unknown sources.

Smileyshirt

With MajorMilk’s impressive catelogue of work, and more importantly, the fact that he is a fellow Yuyushiki enjoyer… there was just no way I could turn down an invite from him, despite the fact that I knew nothing about this series whatsoever!

My journey for making my part was a pretty weird one. Me and one of my buddies from high school got together and binged the entire series for “research” so I could properly make a part. I don’t really like to use source material that I don’t feel I’m very knowledgeable about, so watching the whole thing was really important to me… even though there’s four seasons and like a million specials. Between me pausing the show every thirty seconds to jot down the timestamp for a sample I heard (I have no idea how my friend didn’t kill me for this) and the fact that the show is just so long, it took us months to get through the entire thing. But it was certainly worth it!

Because of this collaboration, I had discovered one of my favorite anime series of all time. Hidamari Sketch’s message about growing up and finding your way as a young aspiring artist really resonated with me on a deep level, and because of that I really wanted to make my part a tribute to the entire show, especially given that my part was the grand finale before the credits. My part took a notoriously long time to complete, and I went well beyond the audio deadline… much to my own chagrin and Majormilk’s mild annoyance, lol. But I really wanted to get it right, and I think the final product turned out really well! I’m really proud of the choice to include a line from every character in the show, including one-offs and background characters. I think it really brings out an exciting feeling for the climax of the collaboration.

I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity I was given to participate in this. Thank you to Majormilk and all the other participants! Really cool and nice bunch of people. Miyako supremacy!!!

WoozyWinkle

I was invited to the collab back in 2020 as one of the materials managers and later as one of the artist for the cm. I love hidamari sketch very much, and I was happy to help anyway I could. Knowing a lot of hidamari to an autistic degree, I was able to help out with sourcing parts of the series. The moments of the collab I look back on fondly are:

When I first heard the first draft of the medley. Seeing first hand the parts getting put together.

My realization being one of the reasons for the final delay (in December 2023 I pointed out that February 2024 was the series’ 20th anniversary.)

Getting a Sae art from tatunokosso which wouldn’t be possible without the delay. Putting together the set for the instrumental video.

I hope Ume will have the opportunity to make the hiatuses less frequent and actually finish the series this decade.