Wow 2022 is almost over that's so crazy woah anyway today I want to look back at the year and reflecting on some of the projects I've worked on (and talk about what my plans are for next year!
Videos
This year I uploaded 13 videos to my YouTube channel, which is actually the same number of videos I uploaded in 2021! I really wanted to do more, but 90% of this year I felt too tired to work on anything. Maybe in 2023 we'll get crazy and upload a whole 14 videos!
Last year I had an idea to revisit a lot of old video topics and redo them in my more modern style, starting with a video I did on Garfield Kart. This year I did two more videos like this, Bedrock City and the MVP trilogy. I'm really happy with how both came out. It was nice being able to reference my entire personal history with both subjects, using footage from those old videos as "flashbacks". I was worried they would feel like boring retreads of stuff I had already done, but I was able to revisit Bedrock City with the Raptor Ranch rebrand and compare it to the old park, and with MVP I watched the third movie for the first time alongside talking about the first two again. They both feel like my definitive videos on those topics while also being different enough from the originals, really proud of both.
Speaking of Bedrock City, both that and the Legoland California video were some of my favorites to make. Talking about something is fun, but being able to go to a place to record footage and set up shots is really cool. I would love to do more videos next year that involve having to travel somewhere.
Tetris marks a turning point where I started to include ad breaks with little bumpers in between. These were fun to do and next year I want to make unique ones for each video.
Maybe my favorite "traditional" video I did this year was "A Look Back At CN Real & Destroy Build Destroy". I'm really proud of the script, the video has to cover a lot of stuff and everything flows pretty well. I think it's maybe one of my best videos in terms of editing too. One of my favorite little details is the use of the Fusionfall soundtrack. The music in Fusionfall is all darker, corrupted versions of themes from various Cartoon Network shows, which is what was happening to the actual Cartoon Network during this era, just a near little touch. This era is always talked about in such a negative light and it was nice being able to talk about the positives of it.
My least favorite of the year has to be the LOLCats video. Kind of the opposite of everything I like about the CN Real one. This covers a lot of information, but I don't think it flows together very well at all after the first little bit. Kinda just drags the viewer into a new segment that barely connects to the last, there's not a real good order to things. Editing isn't amazing, it's honestly pretty bland. It sounds like I hate this video, and I don't. There's some good stuff here too, but not all of them can be amazing.
October was another big turning point for the channel. I got a new desk for the first time since starting the channel and created a completely new set. I like the new one a lot, especially the inclusion of the CRT. It gives the video a cool vibe having something playing off to the side, I like being able to talk about Hamtaro and also Hamtaro is dancing in the background while I'm talking. I think the VHS video in particular shows off the strengths of having the TV in the set, and I have a few in the works that'll make good use of it. There have only been three videos so far with the new set, but I'm really proud of these ones.
But one video this year was a much bigger undertaking then the rest. This one wasn't in the traditional style of my other stuff, this was something far more ambitious and experimental. It also took a really long time to put it together and write a script summarizing hours and hours of footage. One of my proudest works, and you can probably guess what this is...
The Mario Twitter Challenge came out so good. I love being able to talk about something I like in a video is fun, but being able to create something original with friends is even cooler. This started out as a stupid joke, but actually going through with it and having it turn out good was amazing. I feel like this was consistently entertaining from start to finish, helped out greatly by the guest segments, and picking different Mario music to fit the tone of each scene was really fun. I like that this starts as a silly challenge, and as it progresses we uncover weird inner workings of Twitter and discover the other Spaghetti John accounts, and my mom finding the account was one of the highlights of my entire channel. This is one of my greatest achievements ever.
Oh, I also made the History of Roller documentary this year too. This was such a massive undertaking, but I managed to take five years worth of history on a tiny group within a small community based around a very unknown remake of a dead game from an obscure website that shut down years ago and make an actual cohesive narrative with a beginning, middle, and end that all flow into each other perfectly. This is really why I make YouTube videos. I want to take these stories, these achievements people make that nobody knows about or would even care about and talk about them with such grandiose that they feel like the most important events in human history. There are some unfortunate problems with this documentary, and is already a bit outdated, but I did the best I could with it. Maybe I'll make a version 2 sometime that just revises it slightly and adds an epilogue, but for now I'm pretty satisfied with it.
Okay Onto The Comic Stuff Now
Aside from videos, I also made some comics this year! Comic Cat Season 5 finally concluded, and I'm very satisfied with it. It felt like a good sendoff for those characters. I'll probably do more Comic Cat stuff in the future, and but this is a good place to stop for now. Comic Cat Zero has been a lot of fun to make. Those old comics are so absurd, but completely unreadable, so remaking them has been pretty cool to see.
I revisited October House this year too. I think year 1 had funnier strips overall, but artistically this year's batch was some of my favorite work artistically. I did some smaller stuff too, like Umbrella Bird and Cooking With Gabble which were pretty fun. The big new comic this year was Tombstone, which I've really enjoyed working on. Part 2 is on break right now sadly because I'm so tired, but hopefully in January I can get back into the swing of things.
2023 Awesome Style
I have a LOT of plans for next year.... meaning I'm probably only going to make like 25% of them. Aside from continuing Tombstone, I want to start a new comic as well. I have two pretty fleshed out ideas, and I don't know which I'm going to do first, so stay tuned for that.
I really want to blend my comic art and video stuff together more in the coming year as well. They've been very separate for a while, and I have some cool ideas to combine them. I've been thinking about doing a video on how to come up with a comic idea, doing a new drawing video after all these years, or talking about some of my really old and bad stuff. There's a lot I could do!
I really want to try some more experimental stuff on the side too. Of course I'm going to continue with my usual style, but since those takes ages for me to make, I want to do weird stuff in between. In January I hope to put out a video I recorded a while back where I play through every Platform Racing 3 level I've made with some friends. Trying a sort balance of written script and live commentary, similar to Mario Twitter.
If I reach 10k subs in the next year, I promised I would do a video reviewing Mickey's Dance Party and the Goofy I'm Blue song, so hopefully we can reach that. Aside from that, I have a lot of ideas, but I have no idea what I'll make. Will I continue the series on Spyro games? Will I review the entirety of Robotomy? Who knows.
I have plans for a very big video as well. A few years ago me and some friends played Dungeon and Dragons and I uploaded a few episodes of it to my channel. I never finished uploading them, but I plan on taking the highlights of the full campaign full of artwork and animations to make it into one big video similar to the roller documentary.
I'm very excited to make more stuff in 2023. Have a happy new year! Here's a cool picture to end this on.
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