Doodley is Half a Year Old! (Patreon)

Hi! I hope your May has been going well. It's time for another gigantic wall of text.

Now that the Patreon has settled down, I'm a lot more comfortable with my work/life balance. My May has been unexpectedly busy/taxing on the life side, so I'm glad I didn't make promises that I couldn't keep like I predicted.

Also, everyone has been nothing but supportive. Pretty much everybody stuck around through the single tier transition, which is amazing. Thank you!

I realized that with June coming up, we passed the half-year mark on Doodley's existence. Animating Arms was released Oct 7th, so we're 7 months in. I'm kind of shocked -- everything always feels like time is moving both extremely quickly and extremely slow.

I suppose 5 videos released in that time isn't too bad, but I was hoping to have more by now! Lots of work on unreleased videos and other stuff, I've been streaming for a while now, plus other milestones like the Discord server getting partner, so I guess it's a lot more than it feels like, but...time is moving too fast, dammit!

Being past the halfway mark to the 1st anniversary made me re-evaluate what I want to have done by then and how much work there is to do, so let's take a look at that.

The List

Here's a short list of everything I want to do by the anniversary, and I'll go more in-depth on each afterwards.

Videos with Mid to High Progress:

• 100k Q&A (Next up, late May to early June)
• The Animated Short Films of The NFB (late June)
• Children's Animation Deserves Better (July or August)

Videos With Little to No Progress:

• The Basics of 3D Rigging (Julyish)
• The Basics of 3D Modelling (September)
• Animating Eyes (August)

Projects To Be Done by the Channel Anniversary:

• Gimberly v2
• Gimberly Lore/Short Film (gasp?)
• A new character rig (double gasp?)

Videos In-Depth

Up next is the 100k QnA -- I have less progress on this than I'd like for reasons that will be obvious soon, but I'm hoping the actual production is brisk as I know what a lot of the visuals and editing will be for various questions. (Videos like this that are easy to visualize in my head I've realized I can edit together super quickly, like the Gimberly video.)

After that, The Animated Short Films of The NFB is almost entirely edited (by Mel), so I just need to wrap up the edit, make the costumes I need for it, and then animate. I don't expect it to take more than a week or so of animating once I get on it, but I want the 100k QnA out first since I promised that a while ago.

Children's Animation Deserves Better has a mostly completed script, and I'm debating using it as a test of handing some of the work off to an editor and animator so I have room to work on other Doodley projects. I haven't decided yet, but that's where I'm leaning! I'll talk more about that later.

The Basics of 3D Rigging, 3D Modelling, and Animating Eyes are all main tutorials I plan to do largely by myself. My hope is to mix them between projects and videos handled by other people.

I've moved the rigging tutorial up a bit because it's the one I think will be the strongest and do the most "good" in the world having it out there, so I want it out the soonest -- originally I had it after the modelling tutorial (modelling before rigging, of course) but I think it's too important to delay.

Animating Eyes is the next in the Animating the Body series and the one I can most easily visualize at this point. "Hands", "Faces", and "Mouths" require Gimberly v2, so they'll come later.

Projects In-Depth

So! Gimberly v2, huh?

There's still no work done on v2! Yeah, videos just take up...so much time. I really need to strike the balance I'm looking for to make it realistic to get that out. But lately I've been very motivated to get started on it, so I'm hoping to get a move on it after the 100k QnA.

I am debating whether or not I want to stream it. I've talked about this in places, but I'd like to make a full Maya character creation tutorial, A to Z. But, I'm probably too busy for that and it will likely be more realistic to do that if/when Doodley is a full-time thing. But at the very least I could stream some of the work to Supporters. The goal is still to have it out by the channel's anniversary.

And if you read above and are reading this, yeah, I'd also love to have a "lore" video done by then, and a new character. It's a lot, but with some good planning and help from others, it's not too unreasonable, I think... So let's talk a bit about that.

...Huh? What's the new character? Don't worry about it.

Growing The Channel Further

I've been thinking about where to take the channel in the long-term and what to do for additional help.

I keep coming back to this idea of making the next few years about growth. I'm in a unique position where I've been handling everything by myself while also doing a full-time job, and I like it that way. It puts me into the unique position of focusing entirely on growth, because I don't need to make any sacrifices to live off Youtube while I'm still getting my footing.

But it also limits my time and availability, and the past few months have shown the reality of that, so I'm rethinking my approach.

For a while I've been hesitant to hire animators or editors because I want the soul of the channel to remain. But I've realized that a large part of the channel doesn't really need my direct involvement 100% of the time: clip hunting, editing windows moving in and out, animating Doodley gesturing, it's not really something unique to me, but takes up a lot of my time. It's really only the main tutorial videos that require my 100% input.

I've talked about this in earlier posts (i.e. why Mel mostly edited the Canada video) so it's nothing new, but it's now moved to a higher priority, basically. With Patreon support, Super Chats, ad revenue and etc, I'm going to make it a higher priority to bring on editors and possibly animators to help with videos.

What that looks like is still to be determined -- as mentioned, the Children's Animation video will be the first real test of that, so all I need to do is finish the script and start talking to people. Mel is now busy with her own project that's going well, so I'll be testing some new stuff, like having an editor cut down a VOD and then potentially onboarding them to a main video. We'll see how it goes!

Aside from that, getting animators on board is tricky. It's expensive, and I'm picky. But compared to editors, I know a lot more animators I can talk to, so we'll see what happens with that. It'll probably take much more time, but I think it'll be great long-term.

My hope is that I can onboard someone I can trust to animate with Gimberly v2 for the "lore" video I mentioned.

That's the goal! Hold me to it! Let's see if it sticks.

Future and Beyond

One last thing. With the last video blowing up, I've been thinking pretty deeply about things.

Disclaimer: None of this is set in stone, and there's still far too much I want to do with Doodley before any of this happens. But it's stuff that's been in the back of my mind for a while.

I've been researching the early years of channels comparable to mine that have since grown immensely, to see how long it took and what they were doing early on.

I don't plan on becoming the standard white bread Youtuber or storytime animator or anything (if you ever see me step foot in VidCon you can assume I've been replaced by pod people), but I would be lying if I said I didn't have greater goals and projects I want to meet.

I recently tweeted an old 2019 project I had lying around because of the Dreamtective Patreon post I did recently. The last time I talked about that project in 2019, my audience was a lot smaller. People still loved it, but it felt way less tangible. This time, it was in front of a lot more people who responded extremely positively, and it felt like it could be real.

One of the things you see on my Twitter and Discord is this banner:

It's a bit old at this point, but I still really like it.

Doodley's art style is extremely simple and clinical, which is what I want. It's easy to make, easy to follow, and fits into the tutorial/learning vibe the channel has. I like it that way.

But! I've been thinking about doing a second channel, sometime in 2024, where I'm more relaxed and myself, and it features this aesthetic. Let's call it Doodley in Space. (Or, Twodley. Or David Twoacre. Or a name that doesn't make me shrivel up and die. Help.)

My hope is this 2nd channel solidifies and focuses some of the identity of the main channel. For example:

Doodley: Extremely high-effort. Tutorials, learning, 3D, analysis videos, etc. Streams are all work in Maya, live tutorials, etc. Checkerboard, program aeshetic, grey, etc.

Doodley in Space: Lower effort, easy stuff. Fun videos, stories, less serious analyses, clip compilations. Video game streams, more Vtuber-adjacent. Colorful, brushy, space aesthetic.

Doodley as it is today is actually fairly different from my actual aesthetic, but I think it perfectly fits what I want to do with that channel. I love teaching and helping others, but it's always been slightly odd to mix that with streaming and other stuff like that.

Meanwhile, In Space would be me, in it's truest form, being a bit more relaxed and myself, and the aesthetics reflect that. I can also take some of my biggest ideas with Vtubers to it's farthest forms and experiment with more complex aesthetics and visuals. Also, editors are more loose and have more freedom, making it easier to upload often and consistently.

In theory, the 2nd channel can also fund big projects as a whole, getting into some of the very long-term goals I mentioned earlier, or huge tutorials on the main channel, etc.

Both exist simultaneously, and I really do mean that. I know it's part of Youtube's Greatest Hits to create a second channel and then the original channel never gets uploaded again. But trust me, Doodley is far too important to me. I genuinely believe it's improving people's lives and doing exactly what I wanted it to do in the industry, so it's not going anywhere.

It's more comparable to Dankpods doing Garbage Time and The Drum Thing, I think. Passions closer to his sensibilities, but separated since they have different purposes, and each are symbiotic to fund various projects as a whole.

With the context of everything, it should also be obvious that I only plan to do this if I manage to get the help I'm looking for. Doodley comes first, and there'd be a lot of stuff involved to even get any of this online, like making the Vtuber rig and etc.

I guess my question is, what do you think of this? None of this happens for a long time. Do you like this idea? Do you have feedback? A better name than Doodley in Space? Any name better than Doodley in Space? Please feel free to be brutally honest, I genuinely would love to get your thoughts.

To anyone actually reading all of this, you're a legend. TL;DR I'm more open to getting direct help with videos and I'll be getting that onboard in the next few months. Gimberly v2 and some extra stuff before the anniversary. 2024 has a possible second channel that should support the first more consistently.

Thank you as always! I hope all of this is interesting to you. Have a good weekend.