Various Projects Updates!

Hey all! Hope that the holidays treated you well and that 2024 has started off on the right foot for you. It certainly has been a productive past two weeks here, but not with any SPEEDRUN EXPLAINED videos. I'll get more into it later, but the next SPEEDRUN EXPLAINED video is a short one, and I should be able to fully make it next week and have it to you all. Let's get into all that I've been working on since finishing and releasing the Outer Wilds video.

Oblivion's Fatal Flaw

So Patreon used to have a goal feature, where you could select specific milestones (be they based on total Patron count or based on monetary thresholds). They got rid of this feature in spring of 2023, which is a bummer since I enjoyed and used the feature. In its place, I added a couple goals to my Patreon's "About" page. I feel the need to go through and explain this because I'm not sure how visible that section even is for you all. We hit 400 Patrons a month or two back, meaning that I'll edit and release a video I filmed in October 2021 but never got around to touching the footage (long story). The video's concept is me talking about my biggest Oblivion nitpick.

The past two work weeks I've been focusing on a handful of items in a large to-do list, with this being one of the big two things I've been working on. I've fully assembled the filmed footage and have that part all set. I spent all of yesterday playing Oblivion and doing a bunch of random things to capture what should be all the required footage of that game for the video, and I'm intending to edit that aspect of it today (experiencing some issues importing the footage, but think I have a workaround). Once I've gotten the footage inserted, the video will be probably around 80% done, with there being just one additional section to edit that doesn't use Oblivion footage that I'll need to make a few visuals for, but nothing too involved, mostly text on screen. I'm planning to keep working on this in the background over the coming weeks, and hope to have it out to you soon here on Patreon! I'm honestly not sure if the video is even going to end up being good, but hey, a promise is a promise, and failed projects are still something I'm proud of. I could see a world where I might film and insert a bit of extra footage and release it on my second channel, which brings me to the second thing I've been working hard on these past couple weeks.

Second Channel Content

Over three years ago (Fall of 2020), I set out with the intention of streaming somewhat regularly and editing the VoDs into videos for my second channel, 2matoanus. Well, I hit a snag very early back then. I was able to edit and put out two videos from that stream, but the back half of the stream was me playing a game with my good friend Jabo. There were lots of really fun moments when we played together that I wanted to make sure I edited into a video, but I was incredibly intimidated by editing down the multiple hours of gameplay into a video. It fell to the wayside and I never got around to editing any other VoDs. Well in the past two weeks, I finally got around to editing that stream down, and finished editing it! I was able to make two videos from it, one around 10 minutes long and the other around 14 minutes, and I'm really really happy with the end results (particularly the 10 minute video). This was the only gaming from stream that I wanted to edit into a video, with everything else I want to edit being from Just Chatting streams, which are much, much easier to edit. Now that that's out of the way, I feel confident with getting back on the horse and continuing to edit those streams, and start editing more recent streams into videos.

My goal for this year is to release a lot more videos on my second channel, hopefully with some consistency. I have a plan in place to help with that workflow, but part of that plan requires me to fully finish editing the old VoDs from 2020 first (there's some good stuff in there that I really want to make videos of). I'm hoping that over the rest of this month, I can finish editing the old stuff into videos and can then get on the new workflow of editing newer streams. I'm likely going to sit on these new videos I made until I get a few more edited and ready to release, but I've scheduled the two of them to release here to fill the gaps between the next two SPEEDRUN EXPLAINEDs.

The last piece of this second channel puzzle is that I went and rebranded my second channel from 2matoanus to tomatoangus. There's a handful of reasons for this, but I'll to summarize, calling the channel 2matoanus feels a bit more constraining on myself in terms of what I might want to use the channel for. I'm really looking forward to making more videos like these and putting them out as supplementary material to the SPEEDRUN EXPLAINEDs, as they're super fun and very rewarding to make.

Film Podcast

This is something I'm super excited about. Going to keep this part super short and brief, as I'm not sure if it'll ever actually release (seems like it will though). A very, very good friend of mine and I have been working on making a podcast together, which is something we've talked about doing for a long time. He and I have a really strong creative connection, and we've always wanted to make something together, and this is what we've landed on. So far we've recorded and edited two episodes, but we want to record a good handful and feel both confident with it and also the drive to have it be an ongoing thing before we release anything publicly. But things have been going great so far and we're having a lot of fun with it, so it eventually releasing seems likely!

SPEEDRUN EXPLAINED #58

Baldur's Gate 3 is a really, really short speedrun. I haven't even began working on this video yet, but I'm confident that if I start on Monday, I'll have a polished final product by Friday (the day before I leave for GDQ). Not much to update on it other than saying it's going to be the focus of my efforts starting on Monday, with all the aforementioned projects going back to being stuff I work on on the side. I'm confident I'll be able to balance both making SPEEDRUN EXPLAINEDs and the aforementioned projects though.

SPEEDRUN EXPLAINED #59

This SPEEDRUN EXPLAINED will be for Half-Life 2, which was chosen by you all in the most recent Patron's Choice poll! I'm really excited for this one, and it's honestly going to be a doozy due to how much tech there is in the run and how long it is. Think the Half-Life 1 video but twice as long. The runner has the run recorded and we have a call scheduled for next Friday to go over it. I'll begin focusing on this video once the Baldur's Gate 3 video (and all its additional things like the ad read) are finished, meaning that production will be in full force for it starting at the end of this month. Because it's going to be a beefy video, it'll likely be out sometime in March.

Alright, I think that's everything! There's been a handful of other random things I've been working on, but it's mostly behind-the-scenes stuff like organizing files, setting stuff up for future streams, and of course filming and editing the most recent Retrospective (which was a big boy). Again, I hope that you're all doing well, and looking forward to what 2024 has to offer! Let's make this a good year.