The Grinch - Behind the Scenes (Patreon)

Hey guys, I did it! I actually managed to make the video happen before the end of the year!

I made sure to capture some screenshots and images of a few things I'd like to say about this video so, let's get started!

How the video game about:

I've actually had this video planned since around September, as I bought the game on Ebay at the same time as Muppet Monster Adventure.

All 3 of the games I bought at the time arrived the same week, so I gave the Grinch a quick test run to make sure it worked and that was that. It had been sat on my shelf waiting ever since!

As I mentioned in the video I've actually had my eyes on ths game for years now, but I'll give a little more detail here. I actually did play this at a friends birthday party a few months or so after the game was released.

I don't remember much about it, but I do remember it looking and feeling a lot like the Bugs Bunny game I had (Lost in Time), which obviously make a lot more sense now.

We never did play it long as the same friend also had a copy of Spyro Year of the Dragon for his birthday, as we we all sat around watching and playing that more! Funny how things like that stick in my memory, but yeah...

So despite the game ending up being kind of "meh" I'm glad I have it in my collection now. Janky 3D platformers are kind of my jam at the moment, anyway.

How the video changed during production...

Once I came to the conclusion this was not going to happen before Christmas as work was stacking up at my day job and I kept coming home tired, ill and with plenty of headaches so...

The day I realized it was going to miss the mark for Christmas was the day I figured I could easily poke fun at it by changing the intro logo, and doing a special drawing for the occasion!

As you can see, it's the Grinch but dressed up in my Crash Bandicoot Christmas attire instead of his own, and the classic title of the book altered to fit my agenda with the video... but yeah, it was just one of those eureka moments that turned out fine, I think!

Editing...

I think this video served as one of the best (or worst depending on how you look at it) examples of just how much difference cutting out the crap can make

Due to me being kind of ill, and generally not feeling too great I ended up taking around 40 minutes to record my voiceover lines, which after editing eventually became around 17 minutes in total. IT's easy to think people making these kinds of videos don;t make mistakes but trust me, we all do!

Splicing together multiple takes of the same sentence is something I do occasionally if I can get away with it. There's several instances of that in this Grinch video. All but one of them were indistinguishable by ear after listening to it back a few times so, yeah.

THE THUMBNAIL ARTWORK...

Ok to this one I think will be of interest...

The way I do my thumbnails at the moment is to generally have 3 items on show, and that's it:

• A picture of me in costume or in a pose to match the tone/subject of the video
• The word "Review" stylized in a way to match the subject of the video
• A decent quality image of the main character or thing associated with the game I'm discussing

The problem with that formula for this video is that there isn;t really any good quality images of the Grinch, as he is in the game at a good quality.

Ideally I was after a picture of him as he is on the front cover, as that's the only time you ever see him in that pose... so naturally people would know I'm talking about the game, and not any of the various films or books.

The best I could find was a decent quality image of the Dreamcast box art, but the logo being in front him him meant it would have looked weird having the name on show too...

I eventually found a full body show of the Grinch, as he is in the game, in the pose from the cover of the box from what looks like a scan of a magazine (don't ask me which magazine, I've no idea!)

It looked the part but was a little too small for my liking, as it wouldn't have looks great blown up for the thumbnail so... I redrew the entire thing by hand, at a much higher resolution!

This particular image of the Grinch is thankfully quite cartoony in nature, which meant I didn't need to spend too long going into details. I went over the entire image in black pen for the outlines, and got the basic shades of green I needed from the original to use or his fur, and the shadows.

Just to give you a sense of scale, this is the final version of the drawing I used in the thumbnail alongside to image I used as template, both at their respective original resolutions!

The same can be said for the "original" Behaviour Interactive logo. I couldn't find any decent quality PNG's of it so I just stretched out the crappy quality one I found online and remade the whole thing at a higer resolution.

The font is slightly different, but the image is on screen for like... 3 seconds so it's fine!

Changes to the video...

Not much changed for the video to be honest. I actually had most of the ideas and notes made for this game before the Spyro Reignited Trilogy went live as that video was delayed... so when it came to filming, I did mostly everything that was planned.

I did originally consider having the video open with Petronious bursting through the door, moving around erratically and throwing the sack of present around a lot more.. but I figured I've done plenty of that in the last few videos and didn't want to come cross as a one-trick pony.

With it being Christmas and a Dr Seuss game I thought ti best to so some soothing shots of the house dressed up for Christmas and come up with some sort of rhyme for the occasion.

I did alter the narration for the bits I filmed in the opening sequence though, to accommodate for the lateness of the video... but that lent itself nicely for that alternate title card I mentioned before.

That's a wrap!

I hope you enjoyed the last video and Behind the Scenes of 2018!

Here's how the video ended up looking once it was finished:

What comes next...?

Well, I have a few games on my list here that are in the "100% going to be made into videos" pile for 2019.

Some of these fall into a series of games I'd like to cover back to back, and I've even spent what ended up being Christmas gift money on a couple of things that will make those videos visually look as good as I can make them...

I'll fill you in on more information closer to the time! :)

Before any of that there's a couple of games that I feel I'll be looking into right away to start January off... so until then, thanks VERY much for your support this year!

Two of the games covered this year happened as a result of your pledges and will continue to help fund other bits and pieces for the videos I make!

If you have any suggestions on what else I can do here on Patreon, or anything else in particular you'd like to know about the video production... just let me know!

Take care, be well and I'll catch ya later.

- Pete :)