Author: ian

The belated Christmas Special episode of Mystery Tapes is complete and will be posted this Saturday! It’s a nice longie at about 38 minutes, and covers 2 VHS tapes!

Polar Express stream is to follow some time early this month. Still not sure what I’m going to do in between gameplay segments. I looked high and low for a gingerbread house kit around Christmas but everywhere was sold out at the time. Maybe I’ll be able to find something now? Do they make gingerbread house kits in January?

Also, if you’re supporting me on Patreon you might notice that you weren’t charged for this month (January). I’m sure I’ll make a longer post or a video about this but I’ve decided to close my Patreon, at least for the time being. Right now it’s still technically open, however it’s ‘paused’ so new charges won’t happen, but the plan is to close it entirely this month. My upload rate last year was really slow compared to previous years, and even though I re-phrased my Patreon to cover not only my YouTube and Twitch but also my other artistic endeavors, it still just doesn’t feel right since I don’t post art or music frequently either. It’s the same reason I sometimes hide the donation button when I stream, sometimes it just doesn’t feel like I’ve put in the work to deserve it. On top of that I don’t offer any Patreon benefits, and I provide way more direct interaction through my website and Discord… it just feels like it’s time. I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time, and the turn of the new year just feels like a great opportunity to pull the trigger. Obviously I’ll still be making videos and streams and whatever blah blah blah. This isn’t a reflection of my desire to stop making things – if anything I’m hoping that this will rid me of some Patreon Pressure and allow me to create more freely in 2021.

Anyway, I rambled too much about that. Like I said I’m sure I’ll do a longer post or video about it this month to post directly to Patreon before I close it out. The headline news here is New Mystery Tapes tomorrow and a Polar Express stream soon where we all pretend it’s still Christmas.

Happy New Year! I’m actually looking forward to 2021, I’m hoping it will be a great year for me creatively.

Did you guys get anything rad for Christmas?

Not really. But if it was I’d push it back a few days so the Mystery Tapes Christmas Special would be done in time. Instead it looks like I’ll just be fashionably late with this holiday video, which I’m weirdly comfortable with. It’s happened so many times at this point that I know it’s no harm done, it’s a weird trend at this point.

The reason it’s going to take a little longer is because today (Christmas Eve) I decided to re-film all of my live action and voice overs for the video. That decision definitely made me miss the holly jolly deadline, but the video is so much better for it that I know it was the right call. Basically what happened is that I’m using that new handheld mic that I used in my camera-tour video, and in my original recording of Mystery Tapes 5 I was just talking way too loud, and all of my lines just sounded way too harsh. Lots of clipping.

So I re-did everything and I’m so much happier with it. Even after all these years I’m still learning about how to properly deliver lines and whatnot, geez. It’s especially been weird starting with crappy microphones where you have to yell just to be heard and then slowly evolving to microphones so sensitive that you can’t breathe wrong or you’ll accidentally tickle people’s earholes. I really do love this handheld mic, though, it gives me something to do with my hands instead of flailing them around all the time. I’d expect to see more of it in videos where I don’t have to use my hands for other things like food prep.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Mystery Tapes 5. It will be a few days late, but should easily still arrive in December. After that, we slog through The Polar Express. I mean, we joyfully prance through The Polar Express.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, & All That Jazz
Ian

Hey there!

Lately I have been working hard on the Mystery Tapes Christmas Episode! The tapes have been watched, the notes have been taken, and filming happens tomorrow. It’ll be close, but I’m still hopeful that this can come together for a pre-Christmas upload. If not, though, it won’t be the first time a holiday video is late. After that, it’s Polar Express Stream time!

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find a gingerbread house kit in time for this year. I went out looking for one recently but the store was shockingly gingerbread-bare, and with the post slammed lately I doubt I’ll be able to get one in through the mail in time. So I’m going to try and come up with something else fun for us to do while I play. It’ll be a good time whatever happens!

Other than that, not a whole lot of news to report. Still spending most of my free time in Blender and Unity, slowly trying to piece together something functional. I really need to learn more about 3D character design, but geez. It ain’t easy.

Hell-o friends! The camera discussion video I was working on has finally been released onto moose2. If you’re interested in cameras, it should be a fun watch! If not… well there’s a decent amount of MJ in there? It could still be fun.

It was an enjoyable video to put together, and I hope it entertains and/or informs some of you out there! For me it ended up being a cool little look back on my videos, and I also got to chase my cat around with a variety of different cameras. So, good times all around.

Hey hey hey hey HEY HEY HEH HEAY! HEY!

Tomorrow should be a good day! First: I finally finished the “low effort” video for moose2. It’s 38 minutes of me talking about the different cameras that I’ve used to film YouTube videos throughout the years. It took a little longer to produce than planned because I ended up wanting to record example footage from each camera, as well as include clips from past videos where I used said cameras. I’m not sure how many people will actually be interested in this topic, but I’m sure for some people it’ll be a lot of fun! For my next moose2 video, I’d really like to keep it lower effort. I’d love to just do a quick ramble about something, edit it to some chill music, and call it a day. But I’m not sure that I can keep myself from injecting extra effort into my videos, it’s just hard for me to restrain myself sometimes haha.

I’m also hoping to return to/complete Illbleed tomorrow! Finally. I’m not sure if it’s realistic for me to expect to finish the remainder of the game in a day, but that’s what I’m going to try to do. Illbleed has been looming over me the past week or so, I need to vanquish it.

After that, next up is Christmas Mystery Tapes (which I’m working on today), and planning for the The Polar Express Stream stream!

Beep boop, I’m transmitting a message from my secret mountaintop broadcast station.

Today I filmed a new video, but not for my main channel. Can you guess which channel it’s for? I bet you can’t. It’s my second channel. youtube.com/moose2.

moose2 wasn’t originally supposed to be a simple stream archive. If you can remember back to when I launched the channel, I actually started off by posting a film-edit-music-video for a song that I composed. The channel was supposed to be kind of like what my website is now, a hub of my other talents/interests separate from my main YouTube shtick. At the time, though, I was only really interested in making music, and as I streamed more often it made less sense to me to post music with static images there.

But now I want to try occasionally making videos specifically for moose2 to post alongside my streams (which I have a plan for by the way I’m sorry for being gone so long!). I really want to keep my main channel as a place for videos that I put a lot of effort into producing, but I’m feeling like some side-videos could be really fun every now and again as kind of a break but still working (my favorite kind of break).

And so far it has been fun! Today I sat down and talked about the various cameras I use to film my shows, of which I have many. I’ve already started editing, and the hope is to finish it tomorrow, but realistically I might need 2 more days. Either way, I feel like it’s coming together nicely, and I think those interested in the topic will enjoy it! And maybe some other people that just need some chill background noise.

So that’s what’s going on now, alongside some 3D modelling and Big Video editing. Also I’ve started watching the next Mystery Tapes tape, and it has not disappointed so far. My house secret mountaintop broadcast station is looking very Christmassy these days, and if you stay tuned I’ll post some holiday MJ pictures soon. She likes the compliments that you all give to her. I hope you all are doing well! Let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see me talk about or do in a smaller/lower effort/off-the-cuff video.

Also, thank you all for the Polar Express stream ideas on my last post! I’ve read them and I shall harness their power and use it for good.

Also-Also, what is your favorite chip to eat? No reason.

December is here, which means this year’s Polar Express stream is coming ’round the mountain. For the record, this will be the 9th year of Polar Express shenanigans for me since I posted the original game review in 2012, I don’t think I’ve missed a year? That makes it one of my longest-held holiday traditions that I still observe, which is pretty wild to think about. It’s just a dumb game that’s honestly not very fun to play through, but skipping it doesn’t even seem like an option at this point.

The past couple of years I haven’t done anything really special with the stream, which I think is totally fine, not every year has to be something out of the ordinary. Most of the time I don’t think about the stream until it’s almost Christmas, which doesn’t leave me much time to prepare for anything else. I’ve actually managed to think about it ahead of time this year, though! So I’d like to try and do something fun with it this year.

I currently don’t have any ideas, but while I’m thinking on it I figured I’d reach out to you guys to see if anybody’s imagination is sparked. I’m just looking for suggestions on how to spice up the Polar Express stream this year. Be it a guest, an extra activity, or something I can actually do during the stream to make the playthrough more interesting/challenging/stupid… whatever! Any ideas. Consider it a public brainstorming session.

Thanks in advance for thinking about it, even if you don’t come up with anything! I appreciate the thought.

Well hey there, it’s another post to my blog, would you look at that. Here’s some up-to-date updates!

Back to the Big Bideo

In a previous post I mentioned needing a break from the Big Video for a while, and that I was going to wait until January to pick it back up again. That was a lie, apparently, because I’m back at it. Taking some time away from it to produce a few regular-length videos was the break I needed to get re-engaged, and I’m back in. No idea when it will get done, but I’m hoping that the remainder of the work goes quickly because there are a few other projects I’m not letting myself start until Big Video is done, just because I don’t have the time to do it all.

Hurry Up and Stream Already You Piece of Shit

That’s what I’ve been telling myself in the mirror every morning the past week or so. Really, though, much like any other time I’ve been absent on Twitch, it’s mainly because my efforts are focused elsewhere and there’s only so much time in the day.

I’ve actually just been really into working on videos recently, which tends to cut into the available streaming time a good amount. On top of that, I feel like the more I work on my game dev side project, the less I want to spend time playing games and the more I want to spend time working on them. I think streaming games is a great way for me to feel productive when I’m struggling to produce in other areas, but when I’m feeling super creative Twitch isn’t that appealing to me because I’m not really creating anything when I stream, I’m just playing a game. If I wasn’t so self conscious, I’d stream some more creative work, but alas I am self conscious.

So my plan for streaming in the coming weeks is to finish up Illbleed, and then.. well I’m not sure yet. I’m tempted to try out some non-game streams to see if that sparks some more enthusiasm, but by the time I finish Illbleed my mindset could be totally different, so who knows. We’ll probably talk it out on stream while we’re Illbleeding.

Despite my best efforts and desire to stick to a stream schedule (or any kind of schedule for that matter), it’s never been easy for me. It’s just not how I function. I’m always constantly hopping between ideas, and getting into a groove with one thing makes me really start missing other projects. But I’m not giving up! I’ve actually got yet another stream schedule idea to try out next time we start a fresh series. I’m going to keep trying new things until we I find something that really works.

All that is to say that I hope you forgive me for my absences. It’s not my first time, it’s probably not my last. It’s just the way the Ian crumbles.

Other Projects?

Nothing to show for my other side projects yet, I’m still in pretty early stages. I’m still focusing on Blender and Unity, but lately spending a lot of time with pen-and-paper just writing down/planning out ideas. It turns out that there are a lot of moving parts with game design, and just opening up Unity and saying “I’m gonna make the game!” might not be the best way to go about things. Who knew?

Other than that, though, like I said earlier I’m very much in a video mood. After posting this I’m going to get back to work on Big Video, and then maybe also start working on the Mystery Tapes Christmas Special that I have planned.

Anyway, how have you guys been lately?

Okay, so I’m halfway there! I’ve set up a new guestbook for the website, where you can easily submit messages, questions, and the like without having to reply to a blog post. This is a kind-of replacement for my Tumblr, but the one problem is that there’s still no way to submit fan art. I’m working on that. Not quite sure how I’m going to go about doing it, but I’ll figure it out.

I’ve updated the homepage. You might not notice a big change if you’re a mobile user, but if your screen is big enough you should see a sleek new 2 column layout. The coding took weeks.

That’s about it for now. I wanted to do a few more website updates, but ran out of time. I’m trying to find the best way to add a guestbook to the site, while keeping the content separate from my blog posts here. It’s a bit of a pain, but I’ll find a solution. Ideally you’ll be able to submit messages, art, and questions to this guestbook. I might just make a separate site for it, honestly.

Sorry for not streaming, still! I’m currently hard at work on a holiday-themed brutalfoods that I’d like to get done before Thanksgiving, so that’s where my focus is at.

Also I’m going to try to post more often, here, even if it’s just dumb stuff. I’ll try and think of some things to write about.