Work on the Goku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei subs has been going smoothly. They're still early in production, but I got the OP and ED done after two agonizing days of karaoke timing. I'm glad to have the most tedious and boring part of the process out of the way at the start, though.
Yesterday I started working on the typesetting, which, while there's a crap-ton of it, is at least more fun than timing. Timing is, really, quite boring except when the dialogue happens to be so good that it can even make me laugh as I'm timing it. (This is one reason I would never be able to stand subbing a show I didn't like a lot.) Typesetting has actually become my favorite part of the subbing process, it can just take a while to make it look good. Here's a little preview of the opening screen:
[Click to View Full Size]
Ooh, pretty colors.
And here's what I put into Aegisub to do that, not counting the regular options for that style (with the blackslashes replaced with vertical bars because apparently Worlds fail at displaying blackslashes):
{|1c&H000000&|3c&H000000&|bord5|pos(551,36)}The Zetsubou Sensei
{|pos(551,36)}The Zetsubou {|1c&H1E74D6&}Sensei
{|1c&H000000&|3c&H000000&|bord5|pos(646,78)}Drawing Song
{|pos(646,78)}{|1c&H23C3E4&}Dr{|1c&H2E8A08&}aw{|1c&HDFD113&}ing {|1c&H950D12&}So{|1c&H851273&}ng
{|q2|fs26|1c&H000000&|3c&H000000&|bord4.5|pos(378,446)}Lyrics by|NHisamoto Natsu
{|q2|fs26|1c&H2C4AA0&|3c&HA5B6DA&|bord1.5|pos(378,446)}Lyrics by|NHisamoto Natsu
{|q2|fs26|1c&H000000&|3c&H000000&|bord4.5|pos(662,446)}Lyrics by|NHisamoto Natsu
{|q2|fs26|1c&H198255&|3c&HA7CEBC&|bord1.5|pos(662,446)}Lyrics by|NHisamoto Natsu
Aegisub is nice because it has a great interface for typesetting like this, but it still takes a bit to match fonts and colors and pretty everything up nicely. For example, because you only get one border per line, each piece of text there is actually two lines overlayed on top of one another to create a double black and white border.
One more, of the title screen:
[Click to View Full Size]
Damn, that is a sweet drop shadow.
And, again, what I put into Aegisub for that:
{|q2|b1|bord0|fs28|1c&H000000&|3c&H000000&|1a&HAA&|3a&HAA&|fad(230,221)|pos(33,96)}[{|fs22}Goku{|fs28}] {|fs30|bord2|fsp4}Sayona{|fsp1.5}ra|N{|r|1c&H000000&|3c&H000000&|1a&HAA&|3a&HAA&}
Zetsubou Sensei
{|q2|b1|bord0|fs28|fad(230,221)|pos(39,87)}[{|fs22}Goku{|fs28}] {|1c&HE4E4F0&|fs30|bord2|fsp4}Sayona{|fsp1.5}ra|N{|r}Zetsubou Sensei
Like the black borders in the first shot, the shadow is its own line set behind the text and it required a ton of override tags to change its color and transparency values.
Though there's a lot of it, thankfully most of the typesetting in Zetsubou Sensei is fairly easy. Really, any text that's stationary is pretty easy. It's when you start needing to make text move or change size/rotation at irregular speeds or patterns that things get tricky.
