Behind the Scenes - GMTK's New Branding (Patreon)

Hello!

Over Christmas, I spent a bit of time coming up with some new stuff for GMTK. I wanted to update the channel's branding, and come up with new templates I can use. 

Branding is important, because it helps videos feel like part of a greater whole, instead of a bunch of disparate videos. And templates give me a quick way to do things that crop up again and again in every video. 

Before, I would start from scratch every time I wanted to quote a website or show a YouTube video. Now I have a bunch of templates I can use.

You’ve started to see them in the year’s first videos. Lemme show you them in more detail, and break down how they’re made.

So, first up is a new intro. It looks like this:

I wanted something quick, easily applicable to every video, and to use “GMTK” instead of “Game Maker’s Toolkit”. 

First, I made the GMTK logo appear on screen. To do this, I made images of each part of the GMTK logo, like so:

Then, I used the stroke effect in Adobe After Effects to make the lines draw onto the screen. With a bit of creative easing and timing, the lines all sort of draw on at the same time, in a pleasant way. 

I export this as a video, which looks like this:

Then, in Premiere, I do a lot of things to this video file. First, I invert the colours - I realised that it looks nicer when it starts with a white background. Then I use the “Basic 3D” tool to have the image drop into place. After a couple seconds, the same effect is used to make the GMTK logo spin around and then envelop the screen.

At the moment it spins around completely, I apply a tint to make it into a completely black shape.

Then, the video file underneath appears, and has a “Track Matte Key”. This is an effect where you can use a track as a mask. In this case, the Enter the Gungeon footage is using the spinning GMTK logo as a mask - and I’m using the alpha. That means the white background stays there, but the black shape becomes invisible so the gameplay footage shows through.

Put together, it makes a really nice effect. I also reverse it at the end for the end credits page.

I also made some effects I can use for things I need a lot. I've used these before, but they've been updated. Like, showing a YouTube video.

This uses:

A basic transition I made, where about 5 rectangles move across the screen to fill it with a colour. This is given a “Multiply” blend mode to colour the video below. 

The underlying video temporarily pauses, so the viewer can focus on the YouTube video. The YouTube video and description pull up, and use some Basic 3D to imply a bit of 3D space.

And showing a quote from a website:

Similar to the above, but with a Safari screenshot. I have a plugin for Safari to automatically make the window the exact right size for this transition. I can then just replace the screenshot and text.

And finally, an effect to transition to a black screen.

This uses the same track matte effect from earlier, and can be swapped out with any image. In the stealth video, I used a closing eye. In the roguelike video, I used a cog. I can mix these up for different videos.

Now! I should definitely say - these standardised effects won’t mean that every single video looks the same. 

These effects can be changed, adapted, and - most importantly - made to fit the video at hand. For videos about general high level topics, these defaults work nicely. But when making videos on specific games (like Mega Man 11, God of War, or Cuphead), I’m going to continue to have graphics that fit the videos at hand. 

I will also have different templates for different shows. My upcoming video series on multiplayer balancing, for example, looks like this:

So this definitely doesn't mean GMTK will all look the same - it's just a way of making the videos feel a bit more like a single collection, and helps me speed up my process. But still with plenty of room to play around!

Cheers

Mark