Crafting challenge, week 26

This week saw the construction of a video and not a lot else.  (video here)  This one included three maps which I built from free textures found online.  I like building maps even if I don't use them and I'm starting to wonder if I couldn't build a few more and put them up on DriveThruRPG or something.

Next week is BrickCon so there isn't going to be a lot of action here, though the video is already shot.  The week after that also looks rough.

The best scene in any streamed RPG(TM)

This is The Best Scene In Any Streamed RPG(TM).  It's from the early part of Nebula Jazz season 2 which I'm still watching.  I'm not going to break it down but you should super watch it.  I don't think this would have worked if Adam hadn't played it up at every turn.  Sam, for his part, played into it perfectly.  It's a thing of beauty.

Crafting challenge, week 25

I meant to post this yesterday but got busy and forgot (go figure).  Video is here which concludes the multi-part discussion I'd been going through.  On the one hand I'm happy it's complete as I think it's my best advice.  On the other hand, going back to the days of not knowing what I'm going to make isn't great.

The good news is that my obligations for SHIPtember are now complete.  You can see the goods on flickr.

Crafting challenge, week 24

This week was mainly building one video and avoiding doing what I'm supposed to be doing, namely working on SHIPtember.  My build is not going well which shouldn't really be a surprise except that at this point last year I was already done.  I didn't really have much going on then which isn't true today but I don't think I've even hit the 1/4 mark with this build yet.  That's a little concerning.  To make matters worse, I know I'm missing some parts but don't want to put in a pile of orders right before brickcon.  It's looking a lot like I'm not going to finish for the show and that sucks. 

I'm at that scary part where I don't really want to continue building.  This happens on every big build and on every big multi-day project.  I get it most weeks for videos especially if the scripting isn't going well.  It's now happened so often that I expect it and have powered through it in the vast majority of cases, usually to good result.  This time feels different and I don't know if it's because so much creative energy is going into videos or what, but I really, really want to stop.  I'ma build like crazy today and see how I feel this time next week.  I don't like quitting on creative endeavors but something doesn't feel right and I don't like it.

Crafting challenge, week 23

I think I'm over the halfway point on my "make prep suck less" multi-part thing at which point I think I'm going to seriously explore other ideas for making videos easier.  The response from last week's video was underwhelming and again I note how terribly ironic it is to have that one voted down and the previous one at the top of the subreddit.  I have no idea how these things work but I'm really starting to not like it.

This week does have a bunch of crafting in it but other than the video it's mostly SHIPtember stuff which you can watch at my flickr.  This one's a departure from my normal scheme so we'll see how it goes.  Brickcon looms in the distance, too, and I really need to get on bricklink to buy some parts.

Crafting challenge, week 22

This one gets filed under "that's the definition of irony."  (video here)  Story time.

I saidtyped this last week:

I might feel differently if the response was higher.  It's been overwhelmingly positive for sure, but they're not driving many views and it is a pain to have to go try to drum up support every week.  

I've been going through a roller coaster of emotions every week revolving around whatever the script is and how terrible it might be.  It's usually better once the video is posted but not always--last week was one of those.  I hate having to advertise stuff and it's a real feel-bad moment in my week.  One of the places I'd been posting is the Matt Colville subreddit as it's a place that has mostly reasonable folks and occasionally good discussion.  I didn't post this one specifically because the last one did so poorly there.

I also saidtyped this:

If something significant changes in that time I'll reconsider but for now that's the plan.

Turns out that someone else posted my video to the Matt Colville subreddit.  It was heavily upvoted and drove a ridiculous amount of traffic.  It's driven more than double the channel's total views and more than tripled the sub count.  It's a pretty significant change.  A week later it's still driving subs and views more than the previous 14 videos combined.

The truth remains that building videos takes too much time.  It's also true that I still hate advertising stuff--none of that has changed.  This month I'm doing SHIPtember despite my better judgement so I'll have even less time for other stuff.  I'm not entirely sure how to make sense of all of this but for now I'm content to ride the wave and see where it goes.

Crafting challenge, week 21

This week was dominated by a video but this is probably one of the last times that this happens.  Despite streamlining my process considerably, it's still taking way longer than I can sustain to make these.  I can afford around 8 hours a week before it seriously cuts into other things that I'm currently slacking at including prep for my own games.  Just counting the new format stuff the average per episode is around 12 hours.  This one weighed in at around 15 which basically means it's the only significant thing I did this week outside of work.

I might feel differently if the response was higher.  It's been overwhelmingly positive for sure, but they're not driving many views and it is a pain to have to go try to drum up support every week.  Search is not driving significant traffic despite my careful SEO.  This is not for lack of reasonable thumbnails--mine are clocking in on the high side at over ~5% on average but there isn't enough traffic to drive stuff on its own. 

I'm at the point of needing to figure some stuff out (also, SHIPtember is on the way) and I don't think I can keep throwing time into this bottomless bucket.  Right now I'm thinking I'll finish the ones I feel like I have to make and then only post stuff when I have more to say.  It's looking like three or four more, some of which I think will be short-ish.  If something significant changes in that time I'll reconsider but for now that's the plan.

Crafting challenge, week 20

Video here and if I'm honest, I don't think it's that great.  I didn't feel low energy yesterday when I shot it but the final result is kind of dead.  I suspect the analytics will confirm around this time next week.  I've been thinking critically about the process and

Luckily, I've got more than just a video this week.  These five skellies didn't quite make it into last week's post but they're done now.  Certainly not my best work but I really, really wanted to paint.

2019 finished mini counter:  57/100

Crafting challenge, week 19

Obligatory video can be found here.  Luckily that's not the only thing I have this week.  Over there on the right (hopefully) is a ship.  I noodled with a bunch of ideas before I landed on this particular construction heavily influenced by some of dasnewten's work.  I think it mostly works though there are things I'm not super happy with.  This is the ship we're going to be using in my next sci-fi campaign (starting soon!) so eventually there should be schematics up here for it.

In other news, I realized this week that SHIPtember is only a couple weeks away with BrickCon right after that.  Then I panicked. 

Crafting challenge, week 18

I feel like I did a lot more stuff than I have to show this week but I'm pretty sure I said that before.  Other than this week's video, I wrote this post about filling out Cedarwood details mostly so I could refer to it when dispensing advice.  I also did a bunch more design work on the sci-fi game but again there isn't anything I can show here.

I wanted to post a cool microspace Lego thing I built but I only got as far as noodling with ideas yesterday.  If I'm lucky I'll edit this guy right here and add a picture.

edit:  didn't get done till the wee hours of the morning so it'll arrive in next week's update!

Filling Out a City

About six months ago I made this post where I stuck the Cedarwood map in all of its pixel-busting glory in these un-hallowed pages.  I've referred to it quite a lot over that time mostly when dispensing GM advice.  Well today I want to post some of the finer-grained pieces for similar examples.  So here goes.

These are two of the neighborhoods of Cedarwood in exactly they detail that I built them in when I needed them.  In fact, there's probably too much detail there for what I needed.  For the most part, aspiring GMs don't really need to go into this kind of detail.  In the case of the Kelldra map, we ran like three sessions there so having that detail really helped.  For the Greypeak map, we spent, I dunno, a couple hours there so most of that wasn't used.  

This is a common trap that new folks tend to fall into:  wanting to figure everything out, but if you've watched my prep: tools and tips video, then you know how bad an idea this usually is.  Both of these maps have spaces where I can fill in what the labeled buildings are.  (Pro tip:  those buildings were chosen for their easy representation with the terrain I've built.)  Heck, most of the buildings aren't even labeled so I'm not in any real trouble if I run out.  That's the trick:  GMing magic happens where we leave space because we can fill it in when we have a need.

Feel free to use both of these for personal use but please not in your publication or anything like that (copyright me 2019).  If anyone really wants, I'd be happy to post the rest of the ones I have detailed if it'll help your game be a little more awesome.

In other news, I no longer have to be unhappy about having only a video to post this week :)

Crafting challenge, week 17

Output this week was low but there's been a breakthrough!  (video here)  I've not been a proponent of top N lists but in retrospect, I don't really know why.  Maybe they felt really lame to me or artificially forced content into a form they didn't necessarily fit.  Well, I feel differently now.

This one has been pretty fun.  With a formula, I'm both able to see if a point can stand on its own and mercilessly distill the idea if it seems too big.  The result is a better and punchier set of data.  In my script I'm looking for 20ish bullet-like points which stretches the tape to around 7 minutes which isn't terrible.  I was able to harvest all the advice I've been giving out on reddit and massage it into some hopefully evocative advice.

Because the scope is limited, it takes less time to write and edit.  I also did a dozen-ish read-throughs (out loud--my neighbors probably think I'm crazy) which helped smooth out some of the rough spots.  I found that a lot of the jokes I liked when I wrote them didn't work when delivered and a handful of jokes sort of came out of a lousy practice delivery.  I think this is probably the best piece of content I've put on youtube which helps it all feel more worthwhile.  No idea how it'll be received but I'm hopefull it'll be better than bad.

I also did a bunch of design and graduated my sci-fi game to v0.02 which is a real thing, just not one that has anything to show.

Note:  youtube is currently being very bad and uploading very slowly.  I've fixed the link after many trials and tribulations.

Crafting challenge, week 16

Again I had grand plans for all the stuff I was going to get done and again all I can show is a video.  (I think it's a good one, though.)  I also made this google sheet that rolls character concepts randomly. 

I did do some painting, though not much.  I've got five skeletons from Reaper Bones recent kickstarter that'd been prepped.  I want to explore some blending and weathering techniques otherwise I probably would have burned through these guys.

The way the math works out is 8.3 figs per month to get to 100 which means 67 by August which feels like a long way away.

Crafting challenge, week 15

This week we have things other than a video!  (finally) ((though, the video is right here.))

The Regault pods are finally done and pictured over there on the right.  Like the Veritechs, they look better in the picture than they do in real life.  Everything about this project has been awful and I'm super glad these are done.  I experimented with different painting approaches and pretty much hated all of them.  I don't like doing washes over large areas and I don't like doing base coats.  I wasn't able to reasonably handle pin lines and many of the pieces were so small I couldn't pull the flash and mold lines off of them.

This one goes into the "welp, that sucked" bucket.  I suspect that my OCD will get the better of me at some point and I'll be forced to go over some of the worst parts of these but boy did they need to be done.  The only upside to this whole debacle was experimenting with Pro Arcyl paints which are still awesome.

2019 finished mini counter:  52/100

Crafting challenge, week 14

This week I did a super mess of work but only finished one thing, this video.  This is a little frustrating.  I did manage to move my crafting station to a different room, something I've wanted for a while.  Unfortunately, moving my recording area didn't work out--the acoustics were lousy over there.

I also did a bunch of painting but didn't finish anything so by my own rules, I don't get credit this week.  I also recorded enough video for next week's post and a channel intro but since neither of those are done either, I also don't get credit for those this week.  So, yeah.  Who wrote these rules, anyway?

Two very nice upsides worth noting:

• The new crafting area is much tidier.  It almost certainly won't stay that way for long, but it's got more options than the old area.
• I got my Pro Acryl paints in the mail.  They are awesome.  They seem to go out of stock really quickly, though.

Crafting challenge, week 13

Earlier in the week I thought that things were going well.  By the end of Tuesday night I had already recorded all of my video for the week.  You can see the results here.  Sadly, I didn't finish my editing until Friday.  Saturday I was busy with other stuff, but Sunday, yeah, Sunday I'd finally get to sit down and paint.

Welp, it's Sunday and I've given up on painting for the day.  I had some new techniques to try out and some lofty goals and the short version is both fell short.  The technique for pin lining didn't work on the Veritechs and I ended up stopping after a few hours of frustration.  You can see the results on the right.  I think they're some of the poorest paint jobs I've done in a while.  Unlike most of my pictures, these look far worse in person. 

I could not get the wash into the lines without making a mess and I wasn't able to clean up the mess without screwing something else up.  My ink-infused white paint would come off with staggering ease and washing the whole thing looked really bad.  I was going to start on the Zentraedi pods but it turns out the places you have to paint them aren't at all denoted on the mini which means I'd need to freehand it on every single pod.  Not today. 

I really want to strip these and try again.  The airbrushing went so well but everything else went so badly.  Construction was a huge pain and painting is proving to be a huge pain too.  I'll have some time this week to work on the pods but just like these I suspect I'll get to the point that I just want to be done and leave them looking crappy.  I was so excited to get these and they have been nothing but frustration.  That sucks.  The rest of the unassembled ones will stay in the box until I get the skill to do these better.

2019 finished mini counter:  42/100

Crafting challenge, week 12

Remember how I said I wanted to do more in a week than just a video?  Well, I failed at that this week.  I did get a video up, you can watch it here, but that's all I did.

This one was rough.  The script is long (~350 lines) and even though I think it turned out pretty well, it went through a mess of revisions.  In fact, the main thesis changed after two days of writing which certainly didn't help.  I can make excuses about other time commitments and whatnot but they're not really germane.  This video just took a bunch of time. 

Where did the time go?  Four days to research, writing, and editing weigh in at ~12 hours.  Friday I did nothing--I needed a break.  Sunday I did all the filming, editing, and wrestling with youtube.  That took ~6 hours.  That's ~18 hours for just under 13 minutes of video.  That seems like a lot, and that's despite a lot of stuff going very well like editing. 

If I'm going to keep doing this youtube thing long term I'm going to have to start being way more efficient at it.  I don't think I want to be spending my entire week making one ~10 minute video--I got way too much crap going on for that to be sustainable.  I regularly say "everything is an optimization problem" and this is no different.  I just don't know how to optimize it yet. 

Crafting challenge, week 11

This week went quite a lot like last week with big chunks of it consumed by making and editing a video.  This one's a recording of one of my preparation sessions for a game I ran not long after the recording.  As an added bonus I did a recap of the session afterward.

I did manage to do a bunch of hobbying but unfortunately most of it didn't get finished.  The three badly painted giant spiders on the right are what I did finish.  These are from one of the D&D boardgames but I can't be bothered to look up which one.  They're basically primed, zenithal-ed, and then washed twice with Badger Minitaire Ghost Tints (brown then engine oil).  Next week (scheduling gods willing) I should have at least some swoopy planes.

2019 finished mini counter:  37/100.  I'm about a dozen behind right now :/

Crafting challenge, week 10

A couple things got done this week.  I made this video about initiative and time but it's really about game design, and I built the ship layout displayed somewhere on here.  I needed a ship's blueprints so I could invade it with pirates.  As one does.  This is the v01 deck plan for the Oriens class freighter which I've posted here before.  Feel free to use this for your home games and whatnot but please do not publish it without written permission.

My wrestling with my Robotech Tactics figures continues.  I've got the dozen-ish Zentraedi mecha and five plane-mode Veritechs assembled and primed.  Hopefully I can carve off some time this week to paint them.  I'm also hoping that painting these will be easier than assembling these was.  I am not in a hurry to put together the remaining Veritechs and Destroids.

I've also started prepping another army of kobolds and goblins and I think some skeletons in hope more than expectation at this point.  I'm about 17 figs short of where I should be right now to hit 100 figs painted this year but I suspect the next two batches will get me pretty close.

Crafting challenge, week 9

This week was pretty busy for me but I did a thing which you can find here.  Those of you who know me won't find this surprising in any way but I have very strong opinions on stances and metagaming.  I was going to do something less interesting but when I got to looking at my potential video topics list that's the guy that jumped off the page at me.  I didn't think I could get away with not doing that one next.  

The creation process went long for a couple reasons.  Despite having had a lot of time to think and develop my ideas, I'd never organized them more than explaining stuff in person.  The editing process, for those who don't know, is often where a pile of time is spent.  My first two videos were recaps of articles I'd already published so a lot of that hard work had already been done.  This time around that wasn't true and I covered a couple deep topics.  Between the research, pulling my awful jokes out of it, writing the script, and general difficulty with a medium I don't fully grok yet, it all went long.  

An additional problem is that this week I ran two games. Well, as of the writing of this post, the second hasn't happened quite yet, but the other one ran yesterday.  We were at a point in the other game that I needed to do a bunch of prep which also ate a bunch of time.  Life's hard that way sometimes.  

I don't really want the "thing a week challenge" to devolve into "I made another video this week" but it probably will be for a while until I get things humming along better.  In particular, I've super wanted to paint some stuff (Bones 4 shipment arrived recently) but I haven't made the time to sit down and do so.  I'm also not helped by having started to put together Robotech RPG Tactics figs a couple weeks ago which are in about a thousandy-eleventy parts each so my crafting table is full of partially assembled mecha.  Someday those will be assembled and painted mecha but not today.  Someday I'll also get back to designing my other game, somewhat ironically why I was putting those mecha together in the first place.