June at KosoruCG

Oh my gosh, half the year’s already gone! As usual, I’ll start by explaining the cover. That’s [Invade R]. My longtime fans are probably familiar with this series, but if you’re new, you might not have seen it. Since [Invade] is one of my super early works, I’d even say it’s one of my most iconic. And I’m planning to remake it in June.

Actually, according to that annual plan I abandoned for a while and just picked back up, June’s schedule should be:

June:

• Leave this month open to address unfinished tasks and plan for the second half of the year.

But honestly, there’s not much going on with the community stuff. The only unfinished task on my list is probably adding an exclusive FANBOX# for the 1500 subscription tier. As for the annual plan, April’s “Collaborate with another creator to produce a video about an isekai girl team” and May’s “Remake the Picnic video” got pushed back by me. I’m not sure how long the delay will be, but I don’t think it’ll be too long.

This is a shot from [World Gym 2], which I’m currently working on alongside [Invade R]. Basically, I’m aiming to finish [World Gym 2] within the next two weeks, but it probably won’t take the full two weeks. Then, I’ll use the remaining time to prep for July’s commission, which is Illya’s yuri commission. That’s also in the annual plan. But since I don’t have detailed enough models ready, I need to spend time before July getting the models set for these videos. If you ask me, I have no clue how long Illya and Chloe’s models will take, so I’m just budgeting two weeks to sort out July’s commission.

If I wrap up [World Gym 2] quickly and get the July commission stuff sorted, then [Invade R] could drop this month. If not, it’s getting pushed to July. But July’s video is a yuri theme, which is a type I’ve never done before, so I’m guessing it won’t be a walk in the park. If you ask me when [Invade R] will come out, I’d say late this month at the earliest, or late next month at the latest. I’m still eager to get this content out to you guys as soon as possible.

Since [World Gym 2] is coming out first, let me give a quick rundown of what it’s about. I think the first episode had a solid foundation—great theme, characters, and setting. But I forgot what I was rushing for back then, so I didn’t polish it much before releasing it. Whoa, when I say polish, don’t worry—I’m not spending three months perfecting a project anymore. That time cost is just not worth it, and I can’t keep doing that. I think [World Gym 2] will have more shots and a longer runtime, probably close to the style of [Ending]: adding more poses and camera angles to stretch the video length and pack in more content. So, this scene actually has three characters, though Pekomama is the main one. I genuinely believe longer videos are more practical, no doubt. Considering a normal, healthy person can’t take care of their physical needs in forty seconds, I’m leaning toward stretching video length within my limited resources to keep things healthier for everyone.

Now let’s talk about [Invade R]. If you’ve seen the original, you’ll know it’s pretty much impossible to cram the entire [Invade] series into one episode. Two reasons: First, FANBOX has a 300MB upload limit. If a video goes over 300MB, I’d have to host it somewhere else for you to download, which sucks for everyone. Second, [Ending]’s 1K version is 200MB, and the 2K is 260MB. That means anything over three minutes basically can’t be uploaded to FANBOX. But I really don’t want to cut down the [Invade] series’ content. If I trimmed it to just three minutes, I might as well not bother remaking it. So, [Invade R] will probably end up as [Invade R 1/2], [Invade R 2/2], and [Invade R After]—three separate videos. That’s basically enough to be a month’s main update.

So, worst-case scenario: I’m swamped all June, so only [World Gym 2] gets done. Then July’s tied up with commissions, so no [Invade R] either. If that happens, August’s lineup would be [Invade R 1/2], [Invade R 2/2], and [Invade R After]—those three videos. That’s basically the plan. I’ll do my best to finish these videos and then find time to catch up on the annual plan stuff I’ve left hanging.

Getting back to the topic of waiting, in a way, I actually think some things are worth waiting for. Take No More Room in Hell 2, for example—its launch was a total disaster, pretty much as bad as Fallout 76. So here’s the question: should you polish your work or not? Obviously, making something good takes time. If you take the time to polish it, people have to wait. But if you rush it out half-baked, you’re basically feeding everyone crap. So how do you solve this? Let me tell you what I think you should do.

“Don’t waste money on shit nobody cares about.” [Ending] proved this point. [Ending] was made super fast, and for its content and length, I pulled it off with a great cost-to-value ratio. Are there flaws? Yeah. Do they matter? Nah. It still looks good and was done quick enough that people didn’t have to wait forever. But don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying everyone should skip polishing and churn out a bunch of half-assed stuff. In reality, you can’t skip those steps. If you’re some newbie creator hearing me say this, you might think, “Hey, KosoruCG says don’t waste time polishing, just make sure there aren’t any huge flaws!” Then you go off and make a bunch of rough, sloppy stuff. Let me tell you, that won’t work. You still have to go through that phase where you seriously study your craft and care about quality. Let me share a recent story with you guys to explain.

A few weeks ago, my dad texted me saying he had something important to talk about and asked if I had time for a call. As far as I know, he’s currently traveling in China with my mom. They said they wanted to see the landscapes those old Chinese poets wrote about in person. Well, that doesn’t sound like a trip where urgent stuff would pop up, but since he said it was important, I told him I was free. He called me right away and told me my cousin’s kid, who’s in elementary school, wants to get into making content for social media.

Oh shit, that sounds like a pretty serious deal. Who’d want their kid doing social media stuff when they’re still in elementary school? He told me my cousin’s worried this kid might do something dumb because they’re kind of aimless, so she wanted to ask for my advice. So my dad wants to add both me and her to the same group chat so we can talk, and she can ask me questions.

You know what’s the creepiest part of this whole thing? I’m a fucking active creator, working in this industry right now. If anyone’s got questions, it should be the kid asking me what to do, not the parent coming to me for advice. Then we got into the group chat, and she said she was busy with work and would reply later. And just like that, three days passed. Well, I guess she’s really that busy. Then, three days later, my dad was the one who spoke up first, asking, “Have you guys talked?” Only then did she respond, saying she’s still thinking about what questions to ask because she can’t come up with any.

You know why you can’t think of any questions to ask? Because this isn’t your job. It’s obviously not you who should be asking me questions—it’s your kid who should be talking to me. But fine, I didn’t say that. I just asked her, “So why does your kid want to get into this industry? Do you know their motivation?” Her response was that she “guesses” it’s just because it looks cool. Okay, to be honest, I don’t think she’s taking this seriously. So I told her, if you want to make sure your kid isn’t just acting on a whim or trying to dodge schoolwork, you should have her make a 50-second video for you. The topic can be introducing her favorite anime. Just 50 seconds, and she only has to show it to you. If she’s not even willing to do that, then you shouldn’t worry about this at all.

I told her this would test the kid’s ability to argue a point, express themselves, handle the camera, and edit a video. Plus, 50 seconds is a pretty standard length. So I said, have her do it and then we’ll talk. Well, her response felt kind of practical, but honestly, I thought it was too shallow, so I’m not thrilled about this whole thing.

She asked me if it’s possible for an elementary school kid to become a YouTuber. Why do I say I don’t like this question? Let me tell you.

The answer to that question is obviously no. You can’t make money doing this right now—unless she’s okay with her kid filming child porn, which, yeah, would make a ton of cash. But no parent in their right mind would agree to that. So it leads to another question: if she doesn’t start now, when will she? You know the dumbest thing about education? They cram a bunch of stuff you might use into textbooks and create a system, an SOP, trying to quantify success. Success is never something you can replicate or manufacture. If you stop her from trying just because it’s not viable now, she might never get there. You can’t expect her to do nothing from elementary school through high school and then magically become a content creator after college. That’s just not how it works.

But at the same time, I told her you’ve got to set a stop-loss point. You’re the investor right now because you’re raising her. You need to make her show results before you keep supporting her. So let her run her own channel. If the views or follower count don’t grow, you’ve got to make her quit. And you need to make it clear to her: it’s not that your mom doesn’t support you doing social media—it’s that you couldn’t make it work. It’s not up to your mom; it’s the market that decides.

You know, I’ve heard way too many sad stories. There’s always a bad guy or some excuse holding people back from success. My high school classmate would tell me his parents wouldn’t let him do something, so now his life sucks. A relative might say they’re doing so bad because they have to take care of their kids. An old coworker would complain that his life’s a mess because he’s stuck supporting his parents.

So my advice to her was: let her try, but keep an eye on her subscriber count and views. If it’s not working, you’ve got to stop her. And make sure she knows it’s the market rejecting her, not you holding her back, so she doesn’t end up resenting you later.

So if you’re trying to get started as a creator, don’t just hear me say I’m gonna ignore some visible flaws and copy that. If you always do that, you’ll never learn how to fix flaws or refine your work. You’ve got to go through the whole process—learn to polish and all that—so it becomes a choice you make, not the only thing you know how to do.

Alright, that’s all, Time to get back to making videos. If you’ve got any questions, feel free to hit up my server or drop a comment below. I’m happy to answer.

https://discord.gg/AVm3TGhdYC