Progress Update: Soon...

Shh... do you hear that?

That sound...

That rumbling in the distance...

It sounds like...

I could be wrong, but it soooounds like... a new video is coming out.

Not right this very moment, but soooon. It's so far along. There are but a few precious steps, and then you can all bask in the glow of what is officially the longest list video we've created so far.

Clocking in at more than 20 minutes in run-time, and 9 pages in length—and that's single-spaced, mind you—this thing is a true behemoth. I don't know what I expected when I decided to tackle one of the most prolific authors I've ever seen, but I severely underestimated what it would take to capture the most important parts of Pratchett's work in one video.

Nevertheless, with some help from Felipe, I've toughed this thing out, and before long you'll all have another precious TF video in your watchboxes~

Let's talk about how I got here, shall we?

Where are we now?

Done with the visuals.

Well... not officially, actually, but we're done with the main body of the visuals. As of maybe one hour ago I've officially finished adding all the visuals to the timeline and animating all of the assets that need animating.

Still, if you look at our progress bars, you'll see there a little sliver—about half an N's worth, if I understand my own units of measurement—of work left to do for animation. And that little sliver is solely about animating Talebot, the video intro, the ad spots, and the outro.

All of that comes out to about a day, maybe a day and a half of work.

After that? I get to find some music for each of the list items (eight altogether—a new record for the show, actually), put together a thumbnail, and package things up for release!

Then it's on to the short story...

What's next?

I mean, I kind of spoiled this bit with how I ended that last section, but that's okay. Let's just wax descriptive on that point, shall we?

The engineers ($10+ patrons) and I have talked a bit about this during forge sessions and come up with a bunch of interesting ideas. I won't spoil any of that here, but suffice it to say it should be a good, fun story with a shockingly large amount of subtext.

I mean, I guess it's not all that shocking given I'm writing at the end of the Pratchett series. Really, the more shocking part of this is that it's a "good, fun" story. A lot of what I write for the show is in some way tragic. Somebody dies, or cries, or does both.

This time I really just want to write something pleasant for a change. 

Let's see how capable I am, hey?

Anything else?

Two things, actually! Quick things.

• 1. Thumbnails are changing — Most of the videos get somewhere in the ballpark of 500k-1m impressions, and only a fraction of the views. After reviewing things, although I love the current formula for thumbnails (dressed up taleoid + topic text), they just aren't effective at grabbing the attention of the casual viewer. So I'm going to be experimenting with something a bit simpler, and a bit more... abrasive? I want to stay as far from clickbait as possible, but they viewer has to get what they're looking at at first blush. Not only that, but they have to question it hard enough to want to click on the video. So, revision time. We'll see how this goes.
• 2. Taleoid pins! — We've been sleeping on this for a while, but it's officially happening! With each new series, we're going to release a limited-time-only pin to match! It's always going to be a taleoid dressed for the occasion. Once the series is over, the pin will disappear and, expect for on special occasions, it won't be available ever again.

These are insanely exciting changes for me. They could singlehandedly change a lot about the monetary success of the show, which could in turn change the speed at which I can produce it.

I'm giddy in the way that characters in movies normally are before somebody slaps them and they calm down.

That isn't an invitation.

—

It's been a good couple of week! Let's keep the steam hot and the engine roaring. I'm gonna get some sleep and go back to the wheel first thing in the morning.

New video inbound!

—Benji