Channel Expansion Musings (Patreon)

Excellent news! Freedom week has been extended! Last week I talked about how the schedule is looking quite good. Well, I got quite a lot done, including plenty of the important stuff such as thinking about the direction of the channel & working on the backend.

I also got a lot of writing done, such that once again, I’m entering this week with a mostly clear schedule! What am I going to do with this free time? Lay foundations.

IKEA

Tomorrow will see me going to the adult crèche. Jess & I will be picking up new things for the office, including more set materials. The idea is that my current recording room should be properly kitted out such that it can handle multiple different camera angles & tones. Ideally I’d like the A-Roll (IE talking head) segments to feel a little more tailored to each type of video. What feels best for lore doesn’t feel best for news, etc.

GROWTH & DELEGATION

Creating value is all about replacing your-self. When I’m tied down making thumbnails, I’m not writing. And writing is the core of what I do. Last week really drove that home for me. I was able to commit significantly more writing time to the Wrath documentary, and (I think) it shows.

This is quite well timed with Jess’s schedule. She does the Patreon art along with the game dev studios other artist, Ethan. Being more focused on characters, animation & concepts, we’ve hit a stage in development where she has quite a lot of free time.

So, as of this week, I’ll be getting Jess used to thumbnail creation. I’m also going to see if she can help with reviewing scripts. I’m then going to see if she can work on the edit annotation process. This is where edit notes get annotated onto the scripts word document. They act as a guide for Conall & a shotlist for creating model viewer shots & getting cinematic B-Roll. Jess comes from a storyboarding background, so I know that she can think like an editor.

I’ll keep you updated on how this goes! Right now I’m very hopeful. Having more time to write would be lovely, and I also find that my work feels more meaningful when it’s providing income for others & building something larger than myself. Spending 3 years in my bedroom taught me the importance of that!

There are broader plans for the future that depend on how this goes. One of these plans would have a 4th video every week that would be a part of a very, very cool series. It’d easily be our highest production value thing yet, but I’d imagine that if it’s going to happen, it would be 3-6 months off. It would also require bringing on an illustrator/animator. That’d be a large commitment, so I don’t want to rush it.

Past that I’m getting Matt to do more for the channel! Matt is a programmer from the studio. He’s the paladin that you’ll have seen in our 2v2 footage from the channel, as well as the raid footage. Matt, like me, plays every class in the game. He has an extensive knowledge of just about everything in WoW. So, moving forward, I’m going to delegate more of the guide research work to him, as well as a number of special projects. There are things like “WoW, Nintendo Switch Edition” that have been on my video to-do list for months. It’s becoming pretty clear that I’m not going to get them done along, so having him on board should help get some of the more creative / innovative content out.

Alright that’s the juicy stuff! As for content, we’ll have a video on the Shadowlands (which is on early access) as well as a video rounding up the patch 8.1 class changes. Hopefully the news gets to be Warcraft focused this week - I must admit I’m a little tired of Diablo Immortal & it’s fallout.