Pleasurable Quickies & Money

Holy tits on a donkey, there are people reading this thing!? Hi, hello there, how are you? How's the weather up there?

College dude, thats whats up. It's been up, and thankfully, not down as of yet, although if exams get any tougher, that might go down indeed. Now, when I write, I imagine my english teacher professor reading what I'm writing, and constantly shaking her head. Which is self-critical, but necessary if I want to improve in any way, as like a lot of people, I seem to write how I talk, not in a refined, thoughtful, eloquent and easy to understand manner. But I have been making some videos.

Quickies

I just finished a week of 1-2 videos being uploaded every day, which is awesome, but only possible because I haven't uploaded anything in 2 months, which I spent, at least a small part of, making and finishing some Dead Island videos, amongst other things. I only recorded one episode, Ep. 8, but I still needed to edit 6, and 7 (I completely forgot to upload Ep. 5 when it was finished, which is unusual). There was a small reason I lagged on editing those videos, 6, and 7, I mean, and that's because of a rather funny moment that popped up in 6.

There's a bit in the episode where I help an infected guy and his wife... anyway, I really enjoyed watching it while I was editing, and thought, the scene, which was all in all only about 2 minutes, could be made into a video by itself. It would be something like a trailer for the episode, something I could post anywhere as a kind of advertisement, like on reddit, which is where I usually promote my videos. That idea led me to start working on an end-slate, something that appears after the gameplay is over, a part of the video that would show various annotated videos on my channel, something that would allow for newcomers to delve into other videos on my channel if they enjoyed the "trailer". Nefarious tactics, always.

Anywho, I was never happy with the end-slate I worked on, so after a month or so of nothing, I scrapped it and finished the short video, dubbing it a Dead Island "Quickie", which I think is nice because it sums up what it is very simply, and in the regards of being humorous, the intro is ridiculously goddamn cheesy and terrible. Which is great, of course.

With the Quickies, I want to make something that I can promote for new viewership, and something that has value to people already watching. By uploading a quickie of an episode before that episode is uploaded, I think it works in that regard, by giving subscribers a sneak peek of what's next. Although you could say cutting the best parts of an episode into 2 minutes might result in people losing interest in watching the full episode once it's uploaded could be considered a problem, I don't think it would be.

The Playthrough videos on my channel have never been about making the best, most compelling video possible, they've served more as a whetstone to sharpening my commentary skills more than anything, and of course allowing me to have tons of fun while being able to share it with people.

I also spent a little time on an Ultra HD (as in 1440p) video that I made for Fallout New Vegas, which I will maybe turn into a weekly series, as its just so damn easy to sit somewhere beautiful and record various camera angles for hours hehe. I'll talk more about those videos later, if I make more of them.

And there's one more thing.

I have been making videos on the ol' YouTubes for years now, and among the many reasons I love making videos specifically on/for YouTube, making money has always been something I've dreamed about doing, in a consistent manner. Making this my job would be awesome, extremely aggravating with my current internet as of now, but awesome nonetheless. Of course, I'd have to make videos that get lots of views if that was to ever happen. Looking back to my two most popular videos, both of which are Mod Guides for Fallout 3, I think that if I were to make more mod guides, my channel would grow. There are many large communities of modders out there, and a load of YouTubers taking advantage of that by making weekly mod shows. I love PC gaming, and modding is a big part of that. I also love video production. And I really love making mod videos, which I think is a weird fact, as I never made any more after my first two.

What i'm getting at is, I'm making a Mod Guide, (I'm calling it an "Overview & Installation Guide")
for a mod of Fallout New Vegas. At first I was thinking of making a mod show dedicated to New Vegas, which I was gonna call "Mojave Mods", but instead I'm making a mod series on any and all PC mods for any and all games. I think this is better than focusing on a specific game, and can help deferentiate me from other modding channels, which is always a plus. For every video, I want to not only show off what the mod is all about, but also how to install the mod for whatever game it is. This means finding the mod I want to make a video on, downloading it, installing it myself, playing and testing the mod, gathering footage of the mod in-game, writing a script for the voice over in the video, and finally editing it all up into a coherent sequence that hopefully answers any questions viewers might have.

So yeah, I'm making mod vidsies again. Which is awesome.

Thanks for watchi reading, and have a great rest of your damn life. Do come back and see me though. Obviously.

Good god am I finding Art History to be interesting though. That shit is awesome. Makes me optimistic about college not being a pile of bologna.

The Immediate, Gratifying Beauty of YouTube

So Dwarf Fortress just got updated...

I won't be writing a long schpeel about how much I have grown to love Dwarf Fortress over the years since I first discovered it while reading the Minecraft Wikipedia page. No, this post will be short, as it has been four days since Dwarf Fortress got its first update in over two years. I was anticipating this, of course, being someone who makes gaming videos on YouTube, you try and keep your ear out for things like this. I know DF has a big following, but not large enough to have much competition on the YouTube scene. While there are many videos already about DF, some of them being particularly good, and/or informative, I thought this would be the perfect time to start making videos on DF, as I really had been wanting too for a long time, but never felt compelled enough to do so. When I checked the Dwarf Fortress subreddit for the first time in months, actually close to a year, I found out Toady (the one and only developer) was coming close to releasing an update. As things got closer to update time, I thought making a day one video on the update as soon as it came out would be a really good idea. Hopefully, I thought, with the increase of traffic the update will create, the video traffic would increase as well, makes sense right? So when Toady did finally release 0.40.01, I knew the faster I got a video up on youtube, the better. I checked youtube to see if anyone had already got something up, and other than the famous, and awesome CaptnDuck livestreaming it, nothing had happened yet. I still had some time.

Unfortunately, I happen to be at a friends house with my PC and everything hooked up playing some Fistful of Frags (which is amazing by the way, and completely free). So after a couple of games, I packed up, drove to my house, quickly re-setup, and loaded up the fresh build of Dwarf Fortress. Not making much progress, as I seem to do most of the time, I stopped recording, edited it up (which took a decent amount of time), put the video on my phone, drove down the freeway a few exits, and finally uploaded the video underneath a strong cell tower at 4 in the morning.

Again, I expected to get a few views from the increase in interest for the game, but by the time I got back on my PC, it had 8 views. Granted, 8 might not seem like a lot, but getting a day's worth of views in under 10 minutes feels amazing. I'm not looking for pity or anything, I'm just saying it's amazing to get people watching a video you just made, as soon as you uploaded it. I guess the even crazier thing is that most, if not all the people that watched the video weren't subscribers, which means I got those 8 views from people searching YouTube for Dwarf Fortress videos. And before even a day had gone by, the video sat at over 300 views, and tonight, just over 700 views. I've put up 4 more videos as of now, with the 4th still being sent out to my subscribers. The first video has 700 views, with 40 comments, the second, 140 views, with 16 comments, the third having 57 views (in just over 24 hours) and 12 comments.

This, I must say, is amazing. Making a video for yourself, and your viewers, uploading it, and immediately getting views and feedback, is astonishing. I have never enjoyed YouTube more than these last few days, and all I can do is hope this lasts, even if only for a little while. It's a really crazy feeling, when I'm recording an episode now, I truly feel like I'm talking to my viewers, not to myself. And while I must admit these aren't the best videos I have ever produced, I really feel like making daily videos is the best way to nurture people that are newly subscribed. Consistency is key, and honestly, knowing people are going to watch my video as soon as it's up really makes me feel like recording all the time. It's just so damn compelling, to have an effect like that on people, even if it's just them typing a few words in the comments, or seeing the video get some likes, it has a profound affect on me.

I can see how people really get addicted to this kind of thing. I've heard YouTubing described as an immediate gratification type of thing before, but I've never experienced it like that, like I am now. And it is amazing.

So I just want to say thank you for all the poeple that have supported my video making endevours so far, as it really means the world to me, and I hope it shines through in the videos. Thanks for reading.

WTF Mate?

Seriously, why the syrupy french toast does this damn blog always default the damn font everytime I make a damn post? C'mon guys, this is rediculous. Also, yeah, those weekly reviews of my videos. Not gonna happen.

XCOM Monthly - Every Week

So they say ideas are like assholes, everyone's got one. I totally agree with that, so it makes me wonder, how many assholes do I have after talking about so many different ideas I have for my channel (most of them not actually seeing the light of day at that)? Anywho, here is a post about an Idea of mine. But first, it's inspiration.

Beagle aka Beaglerush aka Beags Bobby, a prominent YouTuber and ShackTactical player (a hardcore online Arma group) has been making a series called Ironman Impossible for a game called XCOM: Enemy Unknown. (Please, check it out, for your pleasure.) He has recently started Season 3 of the series adding the DLC "Enemy Within', and the popular "Long War" overhaul mod. He makes these videos by playing the game on the hardest difficulty, and without the ability to save scum (hence the title "Ironman Impossible"). Without stopping at playing an incredibly hard game at an astonishingly unforgiving difficulty, he then lays over post commentary in each episode showing you how, and why he made every decision that could possibly end the defense against the worst alien threat to humanity since the invention of...uh, asbestos.

Anyway, what Beagle manages to create is an amazing informative walkthrough of really tough game, and jams enough hilarity into each episode to keep you coming back, for me, It's my most anticipated series I've ever watched on YouTube. (Seriously, check out his series if you haven't already.) The only that could top it is when Davidr64yt was making his "X's Adventures in Minecraft" series. That will forever remain as my most loved thing on YouTube, and David was and continues to be a huge inspiration for my channel. But enough about those awesome guys, here is my idea for an XCOM Series:

The way the game works, is every month you spend being commander of the XCOM..uh, I guess we can call it the XCOM Initiative, you spend money on various things to help you win the war against the alien threat to humanity. Each country in the world funds your Initiative, and as the alien menace grows increasingly powerful, each country will start to panic. Once the panic levels of each country reaches a certain point, they will give up on your Initiative, and that means less cash flow going into investments against the alien threat. To lower panic levels, you must use your soldiers to take on various missions around the world against the aliens. I really not explaining these systems all that well, but the main idea here, is that the "Council" of countries meets with you every month, grades your performance with a letter grade (which is hilarious), and pays you for the next coming month.

The Idea here is to make a 20ish minute video of me playing the game on probably classic difficulty, as I'm really terrible (only playing on normal right now, but I can see it becoming a bit too easy), and going month by month with each episode. So Ep 1 will be the first month of the game, probably 3-4 ground battles (which can easily take up to an hour if you're really careful like me), and cut up everything to make it fit into a bite sized chunk of fun, and presumably fail, as again, I'm terrible. I think this would be fun for veterans to watch, as I will need lots of advice going forward with each month, and for new people, it will be fun to see the game go by quickly, so as to keep the attention of someone possibly not interested at first glance.

These will take a good amount of time to not only record, as again, each mission can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, but will also take a while to edit, as compiling that much footage and making a cohesive yet quick video will take some magic. So a weekly series should work, although I'm terrible at the whole consistency thing, and once college starts, I'm pretty sure everything is going to come to complete halt. *Just kidding hahahaha, subscribe to see more perfectly consistent daily videos from me for all of my series hahahaha, I'm not lying, don't...don't look over at my uploads tab...no...wait, wait!* I think thats the first time I've ever uttered the word subscribe in regard to my channel. I'm sure "calls to action" work, but I think I'll keep my begging to myself, thank you. That is until I start getting a regular flow of traffic. Then it's all "selling out" hands on this damn deck.

Anywho, thats just one of my new ideas I'm feeling passionate about with regards to my channel,  I also REALLY want to create an Overview/Installation Guide for the insanely popular "Long War" mod for XCOM: EW, but I feel like I won't sound like I know what I'm talking about If I've never completed Xcom before. IMA A SUPER NEWB, OK :/

So yeah, there is my long winded post about the ol' XCOM, hope that series gets made as I'm pretty sure it would make for some hilariousness, while still being barely informative enough to pass off as a Beagerush "Ironman Impossible" clone. Oh how I adore your XCOM videos. Really dude. The're a little too good. If you havent already watched the first episode by now...

Kelshmo's Channel - Week 1 (06/02/2014) Review

Damn, why so busy man? Can't even be bothered to update the blog. Sheesh.

I'll make these reviews every week, rounding up all of the videos for that week. Even know I'm two weeks behind now. The show must go on!

Real quick here, I want to make my channel schedule official: I'll be uploading a video every week day, and taking Saturday, and Sunday off. At least, I will try to do this. I'm not good at consistency, but as mentioned in my Channel Update video, it really is key to grow a YouTube channel. I love making these videos, and of course I want as many of you guys to enjoy them as well! With that said, lets get on with this week in review.

Channel Update: Summer 2014 (Plans for the Summer)

Sparking the rebirth of my channel, I blabber on about some ideas for the future, and what I'll be uploading for the moment. I'm glad I got every GTA poster in existence with that shot. Those weird egg carton things on my wall are there for sound deadening, I plan on making a timelapse video of me covering my whole wall with that stuff. I bought a folding room divider just to put those things on. Does it work? Kind of. Not as much as I'd like though, I think getting a whole bunch of them on the walls and ceiling will help. But that there is much of an echo here in the first place, but very little bit helps.

S1 Recap - Let's Stalk - Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl

With this video, I start the new way I'm titling my videos. Since I started my Playthroughs of Stalker: SoC and Farcry 2 a year ago, I thought I'd make "recap" videos for the old episodes. This way, new people wouldn't have to watch the old ones if they didn't want to, and I could just start up the next episodes like nothing happened. I'm calling the old episodes "Season 1" and the new episodes "Season 2". I can tell you now that making these "recap" videos the way I make them takes a long ass time. I think this one took over 5 hours, and the yet to be released Farcry 2 Season 1 recap video took over 6 hours to finish. I love the way they both turned out though, and I think that they will prove to be useful, or at the very least, just fun to watch./////

"Das Keycard" - S1/E1 - Dead Island

And here is another playthrough! How am I going to manage that? Not very well probably. Once I throw in Farcry 2, I'll have quite a few games going up on my channel. Not sure any of this is a good idea, but I play what I enjoy, and I enjoy playing what I enjoy. I'm not making any videos because I feel like I have to. I love everything on my channel, even if some of the old stuff is terrible, I still know that I made those videos with the same mind set I have now; enjoy making videos, and the videos will be enjoyable. It's the secret sauce ladies and gentlemen. Not that anyone is yearning to learn about my secret sauce. But yeah, I love Dead Island, always have since I started playing on my ps3 from that rented copy due back to blockbuster in a week. That always went to damn quick. Anywho, my favorite thing about that game is definitely the melee combat physics. No game has ever made each swing of the baseball bat, each punch so meaty, and gruesome. Very visceral feeling. If they made a game like Skyrim with that kind of detail, I think I'd have my favorite game ever right there.

"Josh" - State of Decay

This is in between a one-off, and a playthrough style of video. I just wanted to record some of this game, because you can get into some really funny shenanigans, and I think it turned out alright. I particularly enjoy the beginning of the video, as the gimmicky nature of "You must play this game all the time, or else" is pretty dumb. I'm fine with some persistence in my open world adventure games, but don't make it annoying. And making someone have to come back to play your game in this kind of artificial, bullshit way is nothing but a detriment to an otherwise great game. I think I'll make some more random videos with this game, and maybe some in the sandboxy DLC for it once I've finished up the story. Or maybe I'll skip the story, as it sucks more than a brand new dyson.

"Borov's Key" - S2/E1 - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl

It's great to be back in the world of SoC, such an atmospheric game. Ive been watching some of FPSChazly's videos on Stalker: Lost Alpha. You should check him out, he is a veteran of the Stalker games, and Lost Alpha is fan recreation of SoC, quite a beautiful one at that. 

With this episode, I'm trying a new way to process my voice audio, using Adobe Premiere Pro, instead of Audacity. Normally I would record my voice with Audacity, and then use it's effects like Noise Removal, Compressor, Normalizer, and Equalizer. After that I'd import it into Premiere Pro, and start editing it with the video. But now I'm directly importing the raw, unprocessed audio into Premiere, and using it's own audio processing tools. It has a dynamic Audio Gate effect, which is similar to Audacity's Noise Removal, but works entirely different. I don't know if I like the way it sounds more than Audacity's Noise Removal, but I is a lot faster, so I'll use it for awhile until I either choose to keep using it, or go back to Audacity. You can hear a difference in my commentary if you watch any of my other videos (like the first episode of my Dead Island playthrough).

~~Well, that about wraps up my first weekly review. This was actually a lot of fun to write up, now I'm not dreading doing these every week! I'll see you guys next time, have a good one, and thanks for watching/reading!

Alright, break that champagne.

This is the first post for this version of the blog, and I'm renaming it to Carbonated Studios, which will now be a supplemental blog for my YouTube channel, as the description reads. For a moment in time, this was something of a diary for me, I didn't really write much on it, but still, "I Have A Blog, and I Must Type" is no more. Now it will be a blog focused on the videos I create for my channel, detailing the process of how they were created, and brainstorming ideas for future videos. 

I've been branding the "Carbonated Studios™" name on my videos since I started the channel, but I haven't really explained what that means. From the moment I thought of the name, it's only purpose has been to act as a kind of signature, showing that me, Kelsy Terry, was the one who produced the video. Basically it means I edited it, and occasionally shot and/or wrote it. The name itself has little relevance, I call it a studio in hopes that one day it won't just be me sitting down on my PC and recording gameplay, but something that encomapsses a team of producers, a real company of sorts. That isn't to say anything wrong with the way it is right now, I only mean to look optimistically into the future of what it could be. But for now, it just means I did/made it.

I thought that making an intimate, personal blog was a good idea at the time when I created this, but I much like the idea of writing about my videos more than that. Not to mention that things can get weird if you put a bit too much info of yourself on the internet, you know, small world and all. I was hoping it would lead to a kind of journey blog, for when I (hopefully) start traveling around the world, something I want to do very much. But college must come first, so it will be a a good 5 or so years until that starts, so for the moment, or more specifically, for this summer, I will focus this blog on an ongoing look at video production for my channel.

That all being said, I will still etch some personal notes on this wall from time to time, but keeping it professional (to certain degree) is important to me. There are lots of things I want to do this summer as far as creating videos go, and, again, I plan on making video production related posts for as long as I make videos.

I should really start uploading though, I haven't put up a video in over 10 months. Good lordy, thats a long time. Thats like several thousand years in internet time. 

Well, thanks for reading, and I hope to have a fun and productive summer ahead of me!

Tired High...Tigh

Wow, so a month and a half since the last post already? I guess once a week is a bit too much for me to handle. Dribbling words onto the internet is harder than I thought. I do think about this blog just about every day, and yet I seldom find the energy, or passion to write a post. Which is sad, due to how little effort I'm putting into this thing. Makes me glad no reads it. Yet. And holy shit, actually typing with this keyboard show how thinly spaced apart the keys are from each other. With my fat, clumsy fingers, that gets aggravating very fast. Italics emphasize. Like the repeat-shouting the fat one did in Drake and Josh.

Any way, lets dribble.

And the more I move onto other topics cleanly allows for me to double gap single lines with only a few words, like the one above, and unlike this sentence.

But like this one.

Tonight I am tired, a fun kind of tired. Have you heard of that? A tired, that's fun? Yes, after (at least one of) the busiest day I have ever worked, I've been elevated to an interesting feeling, a tiresome high of some kind. And it happened while I was still working. Things become stupidly amusing, and smiling at customers gets easier than it had the rest of the day. Unless I was actually glad to see the person, or we genuinely laughed. But once I get to this special kind of tired, smiling and asking the automated questions become easier, and at times some customers look at me funny for how long I'm taking at a various task. Believe me, I'm fast when I want to be, like fasted in the west, and careful and precise. I'm the whole damn package. When I want to be. But when I get to this slightly-still-caffeinated-from-fourish-hours-ago, kind over the whole doing-a-job-thing after working so hard, hitting-my-second-wind, ready-to-leave, I reach a certain place in my mind that's sort of like auto-pilot, but without anyone actually at the wheel. Instead, the driver is off staring at honey bees as the vehicle speeds at excess towards a veterinary clinic. That's the sort of mindset I hold while finishing up those last, long hours of the day. Which is perfectly acceptable in our lovely culture. Right?

Holy chipolte, Game of Thrones is rediculously good. I'm glad something can take the place of Breaking Bad for an amazing, high-production value, well-written television drama. Now I must ask how you type that spanish e that chipotle ends with to make it squigly or something...