Hello and welcome to not Feature History, or at least, not an actually good Feature History
To get to the point however, one year ago on this very day I pushed out the abhorrent
creation that was Feature History, episode 1 - The Life of Otto Skorzeny.
Since then we have gone absolutely nowhere and lived through 12 months of mediocrity,
which I’m here today to celebrate.
And what better way to celebrate than to talk about myself?
Don’t answer that.
So let’s, or rather, let me, answer some questions submitted by viewers
To entertain your eyeballs I’m also gonna throw up some Alpha gameplay of Mordhau, which
some sad people will immediately recognise is the game I sponsored their Kickstarter
of in the special History of the Duel.
But without further ado; let’s get some questions in here.
First the common ones.
“Where are you from?”
I’m from and still am in Australia, but for some reason because I don’t talk like
this cunt, some people have a hard time picking that up.
“What’s your name?”
It’d be disappointing if I told you, so just let your imagination go wild.
“How old are you?”
I’m of the ripe old age of 16.
That’ll come as a shocker to anyone that thought everyone under 18 sounds like this.
And now some people also asked for some physical characteristics, such as weight, height, etc.
Only because I assume they’re trying to create Feature History body pillows.
So for that my weight is not quite fat and my height is 187cm, and if you want that in
imperial you can go fuck yourself.
Someone also asked shoe size, which is size 10, do with that what you will.
Anyways, I’ve digressed, let’s move on to actually interesting questions.
“Why did you start a Youtube channel?”
Now this answer will also answer “What is your educational background?”, so I’ll
just throw them both into the same basket.
You see, I was shit at school, not because I couldn’t do the work, I just didn’t
show up to do it.
So I had an awful lot of free time, and an awful lot of panic knowing you can’t graduate
with 20% attendance.
So at the time I had a friend who was making videos, his channel is Lord Quinzulin, though
he doesn’t make them anymore.
Him talking about editing got me interested in doing that again, and when I say again
that’s because I had an old gaming channel which no, I will not share with you.
So I took the first interest I had in mind, which was history, and decided to try animating
videos around that.
As you can see I did do that, and then it somewhat took off after about Episode 4 thanks
to a collab with Jabzy and later a shout out from the Great War.
Seeing as I despised schooling I might’ve dropped out..yeah, I dropped out.
So you’re all taking history courses from a 16 year old Year 10 drop out, so reflect
on that.
Now stop reflecting because we’ve got more questions.
“What is the reason behind the art style?”
/ “Why don’t they have any eyes?”
To answer the latter, here’s why.
[SHOW FIGURE WITH EYES}
Now to answer the former, I knew I had to offer a unique style.
As someone that loved stuff like Lego I was a man of consistent style, and so I had to
find a way to grab a bunch of disparate eras and figures into one aesthetic.
So I brainstormed for a bit, and it so happened I had recently played the game “It’s the
Police” and its aesthetic was lodged in my subconscious, so I just stole it and drew
like that.
Its somewhat easy to draw, only taking about 30-40 minutes to get a portrait out these
days, and I can take just about any painting or photo reference and turn them into one
consistent style.
“What got you interested in History?”
Now this notion will make you wretch at the stomach, but what got me into history, was
Assassin’s Creed.
As a cringey 9 year old I got Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood and immediately started
brainstorming my own Assassin’s Creeds, which led to me looking into a lot of history
settings and finding myself getting pretty interested in the kinda stories and unique
settings you can find in history.
I also more recently got into Paradox games which kind of re-sparked that interest in
history.
As I wanted to make damn sure my custom Crusader Kings 2 guy was accurate and had a cool background.
“Is this your fulltime job” / “Does Youtube and Patreon give you enough to pursue
this full time?”
Well first things first, yes, this is my full time job, as I work 42 hours a week on these
videos.
Secondly about Youtube and Patreon.
Youtube ads are extremely unreliable, as you get demonitised and remonitised and never
monetised and etc, etc.
So originally I didn’t bother running ads at all, and went straight for Patreon, these
days however I run both of them side by side, though I never get my hopes up for a cent
from Youtube.
Patreon is pretty good, and as said, is my main source of income.
Though as you can imagine considering I’ve only ran for about a year, it does not pull
in anywhere near enough to be a full time job.
I make six US dollars an hour, which if I actually had expenses, would be awful.
I’d like to and do hope that I can turn this into an actual full-time job and pay
bills and rent and be all adult-like.
But don’t give me money because you pity me, do it because I told you to.
“How long does it take to make your videos.”
Well about 3 weeks, I’m not lazy, it actually takes that long.
A week goes to all the prep, so research for like 4 days, script writing for like 2, and
then a day to record and edit the audio.
Then begins an awful 2 weeks where I animate a minute of video every day.
Then slap some music on and up it goes.
“What video was your favourite to make?”
Favourite, favourite, favourite.
I’m actually having quite a tough time of thinking of a video I didn’t absolutely
hate by the time I had finally finished it.
There are some I like more than others of course in retrospect, but for making it...hmmm.
Let’s move on to a better question
“What video did you hate making?”
Originally I would’ve quickly answered that as Seven Years’ War.
Which while I did like the setting, back then my animation was very inefficient and the
video was really long.
Though War of the Roses I also didn’t like making, and it shows, as I threw myself into
the video and then realised when it was too late I wasn’t actually that interested in
the setting anymore.
Chinese Civil War also took ages, but that was more so me being completely distracted
with being hospitalised, having my files corrupted, and the ever delicious girl problems.
“What are your hobbies outside of making videos?”
As you can see from what I’m doing in the video, I like playing games.
I play many games, lots of games, with actual friends, I promise, and no I won’t play
with you.
Moving on to
“Why are you such a dick?”
Because you know you like it, don’t you, you naughty boy.
“Have you ever considered branching out into other kinds of videos?”
Why yes, yes I have.
I had ideas for a channel that talks about game lore, Feature Lore or something.
Thing is, I’m busy enough, I get one day off a week.
I need someone to research it, maybe write it, definitely animate it and draw it, and
where could I find someone as talented as me.
Quite possibly nowhere.
They’d also want money, so no, not happening.
I have been talking to a friend about possibly starting a channel that is kind of a podcast-y
/ game-y channel because Youtube definitely doesn’t have enough of those.
It’s also really easy to make.
“What’s the most requested topic you don’t want to do?”
The thing about that, is my interests constantly shift and change.
One day I might wanna talk about some European politics in the 16th century, and others some
Cold War action in Asia.
So I never say no or yes to anything, because I don’t know how I’ll feel when I’m
onto the next video.
There is no plan, there is no area of expertise, there’s just whatever I fancy.
Which will probably be never ancient stuff.
“What video do you like the most?”
Funnily enough as much as I hated making Seven Years’ War I think it’s one of the best
videos.
Fall of Yugoslavia is also pretty good, the Troubles seems to be shaping up okay, and
the Meiji video was fairly solid.
“Which video do you hate the most?”
Anything before Episode 7, they’re just low quality shit.
I’m already planning how I can take those topics and redo them, except for Episode 1
though, never gonna do that again.
War of the Roses is also fairly bad, I think Russo-Japanese War could’ve been better.
Eh.
“Religion”
I’m an atheist, which I think makes you perfect for some nice fence-sitting on any
religious war.
“Politics”
Once again, to the fence, though, with a little bit of right leaning.
That’s Australia’s right, not any kind of munted politics you may have elsewhere.
“Why do you only do wars?”
They’re great for measuring time.
They’re like little microcosms of an era, and they have a structured story to them.
Politics, people, technology, religion, it all comes together in a good war.
Though that doesn’t mean I’m only ever gonna do wars, just I’m most likely to.
And now finally let’s take some frequently asked questions.
[shudder]
And now for the final question
“Please make more videos.”
...no.