Yeah, this is a video about making videos.
Bear with me. I'm going to explain why I'm doing this.
You see, I'm actually on paternity leave right now, which means that
I don't have a ton of free time. Let me tell you my schedule.
I have a two and a half year old and a one month old, which basically means that my free time is
limited to nap time. That's two hours, seven days a week. And I put out a video every two weeks.
So basically I have 28 hours to finish an entire video, and that is barely enough time to do it.
And it's definitely not enough time to put care into my graphics. There is a lot that
I would like to improve about my on screen graphics and even about this studio, but I
just don't have time. So I decided this couple of weeks to make the time to make things right.
I've been putting that off for more than two years.
And so while my studio is infuriating, what really upsets me are the graphics that I have on
my channel. I had to do them super quickly and I never had time to actually design anything good. I
mean, look at that font, that font is, as the kids say so extra, it's basically like a guy wearing
a fedora, turned into a font for a channel. And there's just not enough detail in the animations.
So I'm going to use this video cycle, this time that I'm working during nap time,
to try to make graphics that are a little bit better than what I have
and that I can use for this channel. My hope is that this will all be mildly interesting for you.
I have no interest in game development, but I love watching this YouTuber — he's
called Pontypants — “sup everybody.” And he is chronicling in these dev logs
what he does to develop a game. Now I'm never going to make a video game
in like Unreal Engine or anything like that, but I love watching his process.
So I want to give you a peek at my process and hopefully, hopefully, there will be broader
lessons too, about creativity or workflow or how I am spending my time during nap time.
So wish me luck as this process goes on and you'll see how I put
these graphics together and what happens on the other side. All right, let's get going.
Should I just do the whole video this way?
It's nap time, day one today. I'm just going to try to find some inspiration. I'm going to go to
Designspiration and check that out. Look at some history stuff. And then I'm just going to drag a
bunch of images into a folder, uh, and hope that some of those screenshots will work.
It is day two, actually got some time this morning to work on stuff. So
I messed around with random number generators trying to create a procedurally generated
pattern that could go in the back of things, but it looked kinda dumb. Uh, so then I just
messed around with some squares this afternoon. I'm going to try to make a couple more designs,
just so I have something to choose from and I can kinda make a decision on a look tomorrow.
Uh, but right now I'm making chicken pozole, which involves hominy. Never had it before.
So we'll see how that goes. And, uh, if I remember I'll report back to you on it.
It’s day three.
It seems like I like to noodle around in the morning,
figuring out like weird technical stuff. So I got this. A plugin called Unprecompose.
That will help me do that. And I also figured out how to, uh, use an expression to attach
shape sizes to text layer sizes. I don't have to always manually resize everything.
And when I say I figured it out, it means I watched a tutorial.
Now I've kind of got to pick one of my designs that I'm going to stick with.
We're at the point where I just need to kind of pick one and move on.
There's no reason to just fiddle around any longer. Is it the perfect choice? I dunno.
Probably not, but it's good idea to just have a look and get going. I'm
going to import my last project for my video about craquelure and just
start remaking things and figuring out what I need templates for. That's the next step.
Back here too, in the same stuff, grinding through templates, trying to get it done. I'm whispering
because the nap’s particularly precarious today.
Today, I'm skipping After Effects and going running. You don't get
to run a 20 minute mile without training a little.
This is a total stunt, never worked like this.
I made one little document template last night. Now, basically all I have left
is the boring stuff. I need to make markers on each of my animations so that I know exactly
when they animate in and out. And that way I can choose when I'm designing something. If
I want to have an animate or not, and know what's going on really quickly.
It took me so long to put that tent back together.
So what are my takeaways after a week of doing this?
When I started this project, my dream was that I would be incredibly impressed with my
awesome looking graphics. That didn't really happen. These are serviceable,
they're better than what I had, but they're nothing special.
That's just going to take throwing time at stuff. And that's something that I'm still
not going to have a lot of, no matter what I do. However I did come away with
three big lessons that I think were useful for me. And maybe they'll spark some inspiration for you.
The first is: make the time. This is something that Pontypants,
that guy that I mentioned at the beginning, he always does this.
If he's stuck on something, he will make the time to improve a skill or an element of his game
that is lacking otherwise. And that's what I needed to do to.
I mean, I've done stuff during this project, like the stuff that I did learning about expressions,
those little programming instructions,
that I haven't done in five years in my real job, because I haven't made the time.
And I finally did, and I'm benefiting a lot from it. The second lesson is to try to cultivate
division of labor. When you have division of labor, you get people who are focusing
intensely on each stage of a project. You can do a similar thing by dividing up your workflow. I
already did this by writing a script, then by putting together an edit and then animating it.
But I can do that even more by giving myself a design day or an animation day,
or maybe an hour or 15 minutes, depending on my time, and use that to focus on each task.
The final thing is follow your energy — whatever you're enthusiastic for, use that enthusiasm
to power you to work through it. I wasn't enthusiastic about research or putting together a
story this past couple of weeks, because I was so upset about my graphics and how bad they looked.
So I followed my energy and used that to make my video. Speaking of following your energy,
it is nap time. And I think maybe this time I'll finally be taking a nap too.
Alrighty, that is it for this one. Uh, thank you for coming with me on this journey. I
literally did not have time to do anything but this, so I appreciate you sitting
through it with me. Normally I do personal in history type videos on this channel. It's
a teeny tiny channel right now. So your likes and subscription really help make it more successful.
Next time I'm going to have a normal history video. I'm pretty excited about it already.
And hopefully I will see you there. All right, bye.