Let's hope these plans don't go awry

Look at me, actually blogging on a somewhat regular basis, WHAT IS THIS SORCERY? HAVE I BEEN POSSESSED? Possibly. Though my sister hasn't screamed "SATAN, LEAVE THIS PLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!" in quite a while. In any case, I'd like to catch you guys up on what I spent yesterday doing.
Since I'm now just about two months ahead on uploads for YouTube, and I've got nothing left to edit, I've taken the time to sit down and plan out the next steps for my channel! In regards to Unfair-Y Tales, I chose a new 20th episode (One of my original twenty was added into another existing episode), and then went about ordering the remaining 13. Then I spent pretty much the whole afternoon working on the outlines for ALL of them. I was hella proud of myself, but I certainly didn't stop there!
I started working on my new series, (I'm just in the planning stages right now, I haven't had time to sit down and get footage) and I've got the first set of videos planned for Skylander Path Guides. I've decided that I'm going to cycle through the elements, but if I've got two of the same skylander, try to hit up both paths in one pair of videos. I was debating on whether or not to just go in alphabetical order, but I figured that would not be very fun. 
I'm going to go through all the skills in the tree when I do the top tree of a Skylander. If I've only got one of that Skylander, and I'm in the bottom tree (assuming none of my friends have the same Skylander), then I won't be touching upon all of the skills, only the bottom skills in the tree. This way, if one of us gets a Skylander later on that I've already done the bottom skill tree video for, then I won't confuse the audience by having all of the skills touched upon in the Bottom Tree video instead. The other confusing thing will be Wow Pows, so I will list in the title the version of the Skylander, so you'll know if they have a Wow Pow or not.
I was trying to decide exactly how to deal with the Skylanders, as in, where to start for each game, which Skylanders to start with... and I came up with a progression of where the Skylanders come from. It's going to go like this: Trap Team>Swap Force>Giants>Spyro's Adventure>Spyro's Adventure>Giants>Swap Force>Trap Team. Then the cycle will start anew! I have the entire first cycle planned out, so sorry if you want to put requests in... Not just yet! The Elemental Cycle is going to go like this: Darkness>Air>Undead>Tech>Magic>Fire>Water>Light>Life>Earth and it will reset when I'm done with Earth each time. When I run out of skylanders in a particular element, I will just continue onto the next element (You might have guessed that there aren't many videos I could do for Light & Darkness since there are only two different skylanders in each of those two elements). 
On the Twitch front, I've been looking at that table I've had sitting on my channel for ages, and haven't actually done anything with. I spent a bit of time yesterday planning out how exactly to have those streams go, as in, how to play those particular games. I now have a set of games that I intend to play the entire way through, games that I should do in multiplayer, and games that I should play in Co-Op. Some of those overlap in multiple sets, but at least I know now the format in which I intend to play them! This is, in addition to the other streams I have planned.
There's a lot of good stuff coming, both on YouTube and on Twitch, so stay tuned!
 

Movin' On Up!

I've had a pretty good last couple of days, so lemme tell you all about it! 
On the eBay front, as of yesterday, I finally got to the ALMIGHTY CYAN STAR, AW YISSSSSSSSSSSSS (That's 100 feedback, aaand I'm still at 100%). This will bump me up in the search rankings, and my store has actually been doing pretty well as is recently too. It's actually really exciting to be succeeding at something that I've been working on for quite a while. That feeling of success through perseverance is just the best.
On the YouTube front, I don't know if you all out there know this, but I take weekly notes from my analytics. For the first time in... I honestly can't tell you how long, my most watched video last week was not a legacy video (When I say "legacy," I mean a video from back in the day, usually one from pre-college). My most watched video last week was How upgrades work in Dungeon Defenders 2. This is exciting for many reasons! 
For my most watched video of the week to be a non-legacy video, that means I'm doing something right. I've been sticking to YouTube for like a year and a half now, and I was kind of getting worried that I'd never get anywhere. That all changed when the fire nation att-- I MEAN, when Unfair-Y Tales began, but it really seems to be taking off now. The other thing that this makes me happy about is that I've been able to help someone, somehow. 
I have a really vested interest in tutorials or breakdowns/walkthroughs. I love to be able to help people, and especially when it's something that I know a lot about and I know other people might not. The fact that it's a tutorial that is doing so well only makes my desire to work on Skylander Path Guides intensify. I was worried about what kind of tutorial/breakdown to make after I stopped playing Rumble Fighter, but I think that I'll be doing fine with all that I've got planned at the moment! 
I'm actually right now about two months ahead on uploads for YouTube, so I have time to work on new series. I also realized that I need to get some requests done too. I can't forget the people who have helped to shape my channel over the years, and I want to support you guys just like you've supported me!

Filming devices

After using my Vita, camera and camcorder to film Superpowerful Bonanza games twice in the recent past, I've learned some things about them! I figured I should write them down so that I can remember. In case anyone else is wondering about them or is attempting to try recording videos with any of these devices, maybe I can help you out too!
The camera I used, and have been using for a while (I recorded [SGS 001] Mystic Defender and a few other Genesis games with it), is a Sony Cybershot DSC-S700. It's actually a hand-me-down from my good buddy Tethrinblaze because the only other cameras I've got are a polaroid I-Zone and this really old somewhat fancy camera that when you take a picture, it imprints images of the TMNT on the film! Neither of those are very good for recording video, so he gave me his old camera. I've got a 1GB card in there now, and I've learned through filming SPB that you can fit just about one hour of footage on a 1 GB card if you're recording video. The video is recorded in full screen mode. 
The PlayStation Vita is the next device that I used and I filmed the first two Unfair-Y Tales (Not counting A Dramatic Reading of a Yearbook Signing) with it. I've got a 16GB card in there right now and I haven't even come close to filling it up yet, and I have a lot of junk on that card! The Vita has a hardware limitation where it can only record 30 minutes of video at any given time, so you have to keep that in mind. The good thing about that is that it has a beep alarm to tell you when your 30 minutes are up. I kind of wish it told you beforehand, but any kind of alarm is a-okay by me! You need to manually start a new recording once the 30 minutes is up too! Regardless of which camera you use, video is recorded in full screen. 
My fancy-pants new Camcorder, the Samsung HMX-F90 is my newest piece of hardware and also takes the prettiest videos. I've got a 32GB card in there at the moment and I haven't come anywhere close to filling it up at this point. What I learned about recording video with it while filming SPB is that instead of the 30 minute limitation that the vita has, this camcorder has a 20 minute limitation. It automatically starts the next video after the 20 minutes are up, but there is a 3-4 second delay between the two video files, which can be kind of annoying... This is the only recording device I've got that records in widescreen format. We've also come to find that while the memory card is not an issue, the battery life is only good for recording about two hours, continuously. I used italics there because it's not really two hours, it will die before the second hour is up, but you can turn it on and record a bit more before it dies for good. 

Ahhhhh! THE BORDERLANDS!

I've been a huge fan of the Borderlands series for years. I can't even tell you how many hours I've logged in total across the three games and the many platforms I've played on. I don't usually go out of my way to repurchase games that I already have, unless they're going to be giving me a lot extra. The first game I did that with happened to be Kingdom Hearts II.5, because I have wanted to play Birth By Sleep for YEARS! I never had a PSP so I didn't get a chance to try it out...
Wait wait, wasn't this supposed to be a post about Borderlands? Oh yeah! Anyway, Grim was kind enough to get me and a bunch of other people a copy of Borderlands: The Handsome Collection for PS4, and we started to play it last night. Within the PlayStation ecosystem (PS3-PS4-Vita), you can actually transfer files around willy-nilly for one character at a time between consoles, so I could have potentially moved over all twelve of my Borderlands 2 characters onto the PS4 but I chose to take it slow and only move over one character, my level 14 Mechromancer, Gaige-archy. We ended up doing the beginning again and... for all of the hours I've put into the game, especially doing the first 2-3 hours of the game 12 times for me personally, and countless other times helping people... For the first time ever, I found playing Borderlands boring. 
I don't know if it's because I've done it so many times, or... I don't want to help new people or what... But... It's actually kind of scary that I suddenly became bored with something I absolutely love. I did absolutely everything in the first game with Brick and Lilith and I never got bored jumping back in to play with my friends. Hell, I didn't even get bored slumming through Pandora all alone. 
Maybe once we get past the beginning everything will be peachy-keen again and I'll discover that love I once had, but... maybe not. There's still The Pre-Sequel! to play, and that will at least have something new for me to do. I have a copy on Steam so I can't move over my characters like I can with BL2, but I haven't played Wilhelm, Nisha or Aurelia yet, so that will hopefully (fingers crossed) be very very fun to try out! 
The real thing I want to get down to is how many times can you play the same game before it gets boring? How many times can you re-hash the same thing before it becomes stale? Apparently fifteen is my limit, give or take. There's a lot of remakes and remasters coming soon, and I just don't think it's a very sustainable environment, in any sort of medium, yet... There are more of these re-'s coming out now than ever before. I'm a little worried for the future of entertainment at this rate...

Just one of those days

You ever have one of those days, where you wake up kind of early, and you don't feel sluggish, there's no haze about you, and you just... I don't know, feel good about the day? Today is one of those days for me, got up, got ready, didn't hit a single snag, and now I'm ready to deal with the day!
Well, the filming parties, though we didn't do everything on the schedule I had originally planned both went relatively swimmingly (Minus the whole GrimJak falling down the stairs and kneeing a hole in the wall... That's some Unfair-Y Tales stuff right there!), and I'm happy to announce that I'll most likely be making filming parties a regular thing. Okamigakure will live again, not in forum form, but in FUN form! HELL TO THE YES! 
In other words, I may be separated geographically from my clanmates and many of my friends, but that's a silly thing to stop us from getting together. It's high time I realized that. I used to have a phrase I would use with the international students at college and I don't know why I haven't applied "Distance can't separate friends" to my friends from home and elsewhere in the States. Seems kind of silly, doesn't it? 
I should have enough footage to tide me over, and I've learned enough about PowerDirector at this point, that I can officially start my next tutorial-type project. I'm really happy to announce a new series coming to my channel in the near future: Skylander Path Guides! 
For those of you that don't know, each skylander has a branching skill tree, so generally speaking, you need two of the same character if you want to have all of their moves at your disposal, without constantly resetting or with Series 2 skylanders on, switching trees. I haven't seen too many people actually do this, and I think that it's actually really important to know which path you want when you jump into working on your skylander! You might think one tree is really cool, and then absolutely hate it, and that ends up making you reset the skylander back to level 1... Nobody wants to do that, and I figure I know enough about all of the skylanders at this point to actually make these videos a reality.
I had a specific plan for skylanders that have been around since Spyro's Adventure, and I'm happy that I finally realized how to make it happen in the actual videos! I'm really excited to have something to do that can help a community that I'm part of now that Rumble Fighter is no longer in my life!
Don't forget that Unfair-Y Tales releases every other Sunday for the duration of Season 1, but... If I have enough footage from these two filming parties, I might even get to start up a third series too! Be on the lookout Tuesdays on my YouTube channel for Skylander Path Guides in the coming month and also for a surprise new series in the future too!

Filming Parties

So, I've got a lot of time on my hands lately, and I've had plenty of things sitting on the backburner just waiting to be completed for quite a while. I think it's high time I started getting to all those little notches in my work notebook, don't you think?
One of the things I have realized, or at least have been seeing more and more of over time, when it comes to gaming channels on YouTube (Like mine), they don't exist in isolation. For the most part, every major YouTuber has a community that they exist as part of, as well as collaborate with on a regular basis. While I do have great friends like Tethrinblaze, Kenbei and TheBurningPunch, I just don't do enough stuff with them. I do a lot of streaming over on twitch with the group, but certainly not enough stuff on the YouTubs for it to sustain.
THAT'S ALL ABOUT TO CHANGE! You can expect more videos of group plays on my channel in the near future! This started with the Superpowerful Bonanza party, where GrimJak made a very valid point: It's not necessary to have a holiday for us to party! I intend to take this to heart, so... There will be another Superpowerful Bonanza party in the near future, but you'll have to wait a bit to see the results, since... I'm still airing the original!

In addition to that, right after we have that filming party, I intend to have another filming party for another game that I have been meaning to film for years! With that video I'll be introducing you guys to someone new in the group, if all goes according to plan! I've been too lazy and/or scared to get a lot of this stuff done, but... not anymore! 

LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED! 

 

The next Let's Play

I know I had been telling you guys for a while that the next Let's Play was going to be Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, but since y'know, I'm not part of a couple anymore, it'd be pretty difficult to play Couples' Co-Op! Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects story will be over by the end of this month, so I would have been starting Brothers next month. With that being said, I have a few other ideas for what to do instead! 
There are a lot of other series I have been planning out for quite a while, so I think I'm going to spend some time getting a few of those off the ground, while getting requests done and giving a lot of games with very little footage some love. I'd like to have at least one video game series that I can come back to every now and then like I have with Unfair-Y Tales going right now. For far too long since I stopped playing MUGEN regularly, my channel has just been all over the place... I'd like to get at least something of a bread and butter kinda game/video in place.
You can certainly expect more tutorial/guide series/videos in the future cough Skylanders cough though, so you needn't worry about that. I may not be teaching in a classroom setting, but I still love to help people! I might even be starting up one of those new series pretty soon, so keep your eyes peeled!