How I won MintyChipMocha's first edit competition

This event happened 10 months ago, and I had to get this off my chest. But anywho, in December 2022, I happened to stumble across MintyChipMocha's video, surprisingly, through YouTube Shorts, the first video as far as I can remember was one of her making smoothies in a fursuit and also the "put the red heart" sound bite.

At this time, I was desperate to get more art of my fursona - I only gotten one from a friend of mine to commission on my behalf, and I'm very pleased to finally get one instead of drawing it myself. While, I can technically practice drawing and all that, I couldn't find a suitable time for it since I do a lot of things already and I have a heightened passion for learning how to code and boring software engineering stuff. And I also didn't have a credit card or any sufficient balance on PayPal either.

The editing competition

So when Minty announced that there was an editing competition at the beginning of this year, she explained further that the first place was a full-body art piece from her.

Hearing all of this, I had feelings of excitement and dread, while I have made videos for 5 or 6 years in the past with Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects in the past, the feeling of dread comes from unpleasant and irrational thoughts from being in 2nd place and being overtaken by others, stuff like that.

While I was fixated on claiming the prize, I had to one-up myself in terms of visuals and try to impress with all of my editing knowledge that I've honed over the past few years at this point; I've been watching CS:GO edits from other talented VFX artists mainly as inspiration for the edit; and since I haven't edited a video for almost a month at this point and I told myself that I only get one shot at this.

With no time to lose, I started to download a dozen YT Shorts from her channel, and during this time, I've been listening to Taeyeon's "INVU" non-stop, and I've considered choosing songs other than K-Pop, but my irrational mind tells me that if my song choice might affect my chances of winning - I had to stick to INVU instead (and it's a catchy song too).

Cooking up the edit

During the editing process, the specific clip of Minty dancing crashed my computer due a certain effect I use which is "Roto Brush", which is an effect where you mask or cut out the subject or certain thing, separating it from the background and the subject. If executed properly, The Roto Brush effect can be pulled off with stunning visuals, but at the cost of After Effects eating a lot of computer resources.

But no, apparently, my mid-range AMD graphics card can't handle it and I had to physically plug my computer off every time it happened... 5 times in a row! After all the technical hiccups, I was finally able to get it rendered and uploaded on January 11, 2023, and it eventually caught the attention of Minty herself!

Here's the final product:

The results

Fast-forward to the announcement, lowering my expectations, I was surprised I made it to first place in the competition! Finally, all those years of using industry-grade software as paid off! I was amazed that Minty likes K-pop which made me feel complete!

Now for some reason, the video had the comments disabled, in an attempt to be fair and neutral, I feel pity for the other contestants who have participated but didn't get a chance to win as I addressed this on a community post.

Minty got back and told me that YouTube disabled it, not her, and I have to eventually contact her on Etsy. Over there, I messaged her back and forth about what my art piece would be and requested to add the GitHub, TypeScript, and BTS stickers that reflect my fursona lol

She did share the winning price with her audience via the Community tab, and while I was going to reply to all the comments complimenting my adorable fursona - I was too busy with a lot of things, but I do appreciate all the kind words! Even though it's already 10 months ago lol

Conclusion

With all the anxiety in me during the competition was nerve-racking, but was it worth it? Yes! But just to get an art piece? I'm not sure. I know would've just saved up money and commissioned her or any other artists, but I was broke at the time and this was the only way I could obtain one.

But in an act of desperation, I joined the competition; and because of this and all this guilt in me, it just felt "morally wrong" deep inside me just because I was so fixated on getting a free art piece, it felt like I was greedy in some way, and I didn't deserve it at all.

Either way, I'm actually very grateful for my prize, that I even printed it in my room! Thankfully, I've been working on MyFursona, a work-in-progress platform that I've designed and wrote the code for, and eventually, getting paid for it! It was just enough to commission Minty and other artists as well!

There was also a second edit competition, but decided not to join to give others a chance and was interested in how it went with the first one! Maybe I might join if Minty decides to host a third one eventually... but we'll see!