Fortnightly Production Update - 04/12/2023 (Patreon)

Welcome to the first Fortnightly Update of Content Creation! (Or FUCC for short)! 

I'd like to make these to keep you in the loop about how videos are going, and to narrow down when I'm expecting to release certain videos to a more specific date.

Given that I've just released my big project of the Retribution video, and am about to move onto the next Observation video and Legacy of Kain, I've decided to give a retroactive report of how the last 2 weeks have gone to provide an example of how these updates will look.

I wanted to have some images to illustrate this, but I'm currently away from my PC, so if I can update this post with the images then I shall! I will be sharing the clips that got cut/changed, so keep an eye out for them over this week.

PART 1: PRODUCTION SO FAR

So how did Retribution go?

Honestly? It was bizarre. Simultaneously one of the smoothest and most turbulent production cycles for a video, with many unforeseen obstacles.

My initial plan for Retribution was to have the whole video out before Halloween, so to make the whole thing within a month of finishing the Halo Reach video. This quickly changed to 'maybe after Halloween' in my head, and I was confident that I could do it since videos like Dark Crusade were made in about 6 weeks, and that was while I was still studying too.

However, a pretty big hit of writer's block saw to it that this wasn't happening. By the time I had the script finished and recorded, I had hoped I could quickly edit it together but I was asking for far too much 'crunch' from myself (crunch being excessive, intensive working over a small space of time) especially when I wanted to have several skits in the video too.

Reasonably, the Skits weren't too tricky to do; they were just a bit time consuming. I really wanted to do some 2011-era Warhammer Parody animation, akin to good friends of mine like Alfabusa and Eliphas, so trying to get the movements down was a bit tricky compared to the Traitor skit in the Chaos Rising video. I'm ultimately rather happy with them, and even if they could've be refined further, they did exactly what I intended them to, which was make people laugh.

And speaking of skits, there was one I sadly had to cut right before the final render, which was about the Chaos campaign. My friend and fellow TTS voice actor Fresh went far out of his way to record lines as Neroth and did an incredible impression, and it was only last minute when I was getting overwhelmed that I had to cut it. An animator friend of mine did offer to make it for me with SFM, but given there wasn't many models available and I was very concerned the video could be delayed if he ran into problems on his end, I declined the help and am asking him to help me with a different video instead!

I'm going to try and finish it up during the week to share here, since I'm rather disappointed I couldn't fit it in before the Friday release time.

The most unexpected obstacle, though, was some devious plan concocted by Nurgle to put me out of commission. I was struck suddenly by food poisoning during the last two weeks of production, which is legitimately the main reason that the video came out on Friday 1st December, instead of  the previous Weekend that I'd hoped for in the 'There Will Be Retribution' video.

But just as everything was wrapping up and I was uploading the video for public release... It got copyright striked. I genuinely considered keeping it, but after some friends knocked some sense into me (or AdSense, really), I quickly made a new version that removed the copyrighted track. The OG version is gonna be shared here soon to show you what it was meant to be!

PART 2: WHAT'S COMING AND WHEN

So with Retribution wrapped up, how is everything else coming along?

Well this early on, everything put on yesterday's production schedule is very much on track!

The Halo Reach multiplayer highlight reel has most of its work on it done already; I've only really got some animation to add as well as in-video subtitles like in Retribution's highlight reel.

As for the next Observations video, focused on Total War's Ordertide, that's coming along swimmingly! I'm going to be gathering footage for it soon and it's script is already in the works, moving at a much faster pace than my scripts often do!

I'm looking to give Legacy of Kain a visit during my downtime to collect footage and notes for the retrospective as well, and once the YouTube community poll for the next Dawn of War video concludes, I'll be declaring a winner for this as well!

As for other projects on my second channel, Thunderstriker, things have been moving slowly while Retribution needed attention.

The fifth episode of Return To Sender is due to be released very soon; it has already been recorded, so questions for the Q&A in episode 6 are going to be collected in its own post once episode 5 is released!

As for The List Goes On, there's been some unfortunate delays in production; our next episode, on Total War Warhammer III, has been recorded but we are still waiting on our artist to finish up the art for the episode.

However, the extended cuts, which are being made available to all paying patrons, will be uploaded here soon. We currently have three episodes with extended cuts: Resident Evil 4, Haunting Ground, and Total War Warhammer III, with the first of which coming during this week's sample posts.

I made the second channel with the intention of doing more beyond Podcasts on there as well, such as hosting vods for streams if I started doing those. I'd still love to stream, but right now with a lot going on, I'll have to see how far I've gotten with my main channel's videos before juggling anything extra.

So that's what's been happening, and how things are going. It sounds like a lot! But by spreading out a lot of this stuff, I'm far more confident that I can create it in a timely manner than I was with stuff like the Dawn of War 2 video years ago.

I'd like to thank you all again for backing me on Patreon and allowing this to keep going. Please keep an eye out for what's to come over the week, and thank you for reading this (admittedly) rather long post! I'm hoping to record updates as audio or video somehow to make them more digestible in the future.