Tapa Update #2 - I'm Bad at Audience Participation

Round two, baybee!

Biggest thing up first: I figured, I'll only do one update every two weeks - fortnightly, one could say - since they tend to run longer than I first expected them to and because I want to keep the notification annoyance to a minimum. If you want more, let me know, but I suspect one every two weeks should be just fine.

That is all. Let's get right to it.

Behind the Scenes
Always Trouble With Lower Austria

In the recent video where I redesigned the Austrian state flags, one in particular elicited the strongest reactions. The feedback was mostly surprisingly positive, but quite a few people didn't enjoy my treatment of the Lower Austrian flag, which I made asymmetrical by pushing the normally lone bottom eagle of the coat of arms to a new, third column on the right. That's certainly the biggest creative license I've taken with any of the state flags, and, as I feel, for a good reason: 

When making the decision to go for a 3:2 armorial banner in contrast to the square Swiss ones, I knew that some motifs of the coats of arms wouldn't really fit the format properly. Coats of arms, as knights' shields, are more of a vertical thing, and since the motifs should fill that space properly, they too need to expand more vertically than horizontally. For 3:2 flags, things need to go right in the other direction. With the other 8 coats of arms, that was somewhat satisfactorily solved by expanding the motifs horizontally, but Lower Austria is a special case since the five eagles need to stay in the configuration of 2-2-1. If that configuration was to be kept, there'd be a lot of blank space left to either side of the motif, which I didn't find all that great. The other option, then, was to move the last eagle somewhere.

Some people proposed putting the last eagle in the middle of the flag, but that changed the feel of the configuration way more than simply keeping the 2-2-1 and going from left to right instead of top to bottom. Putting one eagle in the center, made it the clear focus of the design, which I didn't find fitting. Lastly, that configuration looks like the eyes of the 5-side of a die, which kinda trivializes the design for me.

I went with my slightly altered 2-2-1 design because I figured, the fly end of the flag is usually just hanging there, not fully unfurled, so it's hard to see what's on there anyway. Best to put the blank space of the 2-2-1 on that end, to make the whole thing easier to recognize.

Funnily enough, I found that Lower Austria has had that same problem with its coat of arms design right from the get-go, back in the middle ages. The Babenberg family tree in the abbey of Klosterneuburg showing the mythical inception of the "House of Austria" features a few Lower Austrian flags, and pretty much every single time the painter struggled to put the 2-2-1 eagle formation on a flag longer than high.

So, there's some solace in the fact that the same annoying problem has already been tinkered with many generations before me.

Qomments and Cuestions
Small Oopsie

Okay, so, this is the part where I admit that I often have no clue how many or few reactions I get when I ask for some audience participation. This isn't really my game, so I thought there might be a bit more interest in asking questions and there really wasn't. That's totally fine, though. I, myself, am - aside from making videos thousands of people see - basically exclusively a lurker, not a commenter on things. So, if you look back up to the header for this section, it's now called something different, because, if there are questions coming in on here, I'll gladly answer them, but if there aren't any, I'll just talk about some interesting comments I got on newer and not so new videos.

In spite of all that, there was one person asking a question, and you know what? That's pretty brave and I'm all here for that, so let's hear it!

"Any favorite animals?"

Sloths and anteaters and foxes are pretty rad, so ... now you know that.

Interesting Stuff
The Million Dollar Bet

An Austrian low-budget film in English about a non-athletic gambler in Las Vegas betting a million dollars on running 3 marathons back to back over the span of 24 hours. Sounds weird? - 100%, but it's also pretty darn entertaining idea that's implemented solidly despite the lack of major state financing so omnipresent in Austria's film business. A really refreshing film that's very different from the flat comedies and crime productions you usually get over here.

The film won't be out for a few months, but yours truly was able to see it at the world premiere at the Viennale in october.
Big recommendation, so put the film on your IMDbs or in your notes or whatever you do to not forget about films on the horizon!

That's all from me for now. Thanks for reading the update.
Have a good one!
Tapa