Universal Studios Theme Park Adventure - Behind The Scenes (Patreon)

Hey everyone, so... this is the first video since getting the new PC!

Technically I started this one before the old PC died on me, with all of the gameplay recorded and most of these script already written but it was when it came to editing that the PC kinda died and prompted me to start the process of buying another one.

Technically speaking it'd still boot up and all of that but it reached a point where it was crashing every half an hour while editing and I'd just had enough!

I've had a few hiccups here and there (recording gameplay was actually a major issue for some unknown reason for a couple of weeks) but it's all sorted now!

Anyway hopefully the new PC made a difference as you may have noticed...

THE INTRO

So... seeing as I had this new found editing power at my fingertips I thought I'd try something different!

First things first... the logo!

I knew as soon as I started playing this game I HAD to have this logo look right. It's such an iconic one that basically EVERYONE has seen at least once, and I've always loved the scale and theatricality of the Universal Logo.

Like, even from the image you KNOW what it sounds like too! With that orchestral score and the big drums, it's awesome!

Anyway sometimes it's a matter of knowing your limitation and while yes, I could have perhaps made a 2D version of the Universal logo myself, It wouldn't have been doing it justice. It's just too cool of a logo, with too much 3D animation stuff to even look close to on my own... so I sought the services of someone who can!

I don't know them personally, but if you were interested it was this person on Fiverr, which is a website where you can buy and sell small services for a small price.

https://www.fiverr.com/share/vrvyKe

 Anyway, this one 3D animator was making exactly what I was looking for! I just sent over my username and within a few days I had the video back to start playing around with!

THE CINEMA:

Now, obviously with the logo video in hand I could have just shown that on it's own but again, I've always liked the theatrics of the logo and I thought it would be fun to build up to it's reveal in the same way you'd see it in the cinema when going to watch a movie!

The shot I'm most proud of is this one, where the logo is seen in reverse from the reflection of my glasses:

This was "the money shot" that I'd always had in my head from the minute I paid for the video logo to be made. In one form or another this single shot was always going to be a part of the video.

My original idea for the intro involved going outside and having a shadow form over me, to then show the logo in the sky and eventually reveal it as if it were literally my name in the sky... but the reflection wouldn't have really made as much sense there as the earth is in view so I went for the (admittedly better) idea of just viewing it from within the cinema!

Everything in the intro (and the Who Wants to be a Millionaire scene) were all done using a combination of green screen and Gmod

(You can thank fellow creator and friend of mine, TomatoGhost for the inspiration with that!)

It certainly took a while to do as I had to try and use 3D layer effects to make the logo look like it was coming from the right angles when on the screen and on the reflective glasses, but I'm very happy with how it turned out!

One thing I also enjoyed doing which people may or may not spot, was making the different movie posters within the cinema lobby! There's no absolute concrete plans in place right now but each one is a sort of Easter egg to games I'd like to cover in the future!

Easy to miss considering it's literally the first frame of the video!

EDITING:

Once the intro was out of the way (which was a project in and of itself!) the rest of the video went fairly smoothly. The leap in quality I've had while editing since getting this new PC has been nice, and rendering the final video took a matter of TWENTY MINUTES which is ridiculous really, considering it took an hour and 45 minutes before now!

DROW SHADOW AND VARIOUS EFFECTS:

Prior to this video I had previously mentioned that I was going to tone down and perhaps stop using things like drop shadow, and over-the-top editing in an attempt to keep going on my old PC.

But as expected... this really, REALLY isn't an issue any more so I'll be keeping everything looking the way I want to, rather than the way I had to from now on!

Besides, I really like doing the occasional wacky edit (Like the "REAL GUNS" part of this video for example)

WHAT'S NEXT?

I've actually got a couple of videos I'm working on now (the benefit of having a week off from my day job) and I thought I'd show you what one of them is, and hint at the other.

Next up is likely* going to be a short video on a  game called Dodo Peak. It's a little arcade puzzle platformer game that I was given a review code for, and have been playing it a fair bit this week in small bursts. It's quite fun and there's enough there for me to make a short script so Ideally I'd like that done so it's ready to upload next week!

As it's an arcade game, and there's no story as such so... I doubt this will be a long video. Ideally I'd like it to be between 5 and 10 minutes long.

After that, the next bigger review is one I've been planning on eventually talking about some day for quite a while now (maybe 2 years?), but funnily enough it's also published.... by Universal! So my plight with Universal will continue in around a month or so.

I don't want this video to be too "big" in terms of crazy edits, and am going to be going down a more tame approach to the game considering it's a fairly infamous one, that most other creators immediately dunk on for comedic effect... so I'm hoping to avoid blending into that crowd. Hopefully it all that works out!

I'll just say again this is a game I've had requests for, have wanted to talk about for some time... and Ideally I'd like the video out before Crash Bandicoot 4 releases in October, as I can sort of use that game's release to my advantage! I'll say no more!

(You can likely guess exactly what game I'm talking about based on those hints!)

THAT'S A WRAP!

As you can tell I'm a little more optimistic regarding my content again now I have a new PC to work with, but obviously the fact I've had a week off work has really helped too.

I know my job is going to get very stressful again in the coming months, so hopefully that doesn't affect my mental health as much as it did last year... but time will tell.

Thanks everyone for your support, and if you have any suggestions for things you'd like to see from me regarding Patreon content, by all means let me know! For the next video I've experimented with the idea of recording videos of me making logos and the like, but weirdly the video format they've recorded to is a pain to edit with for some reason so I may hold off on that idea until another time.

- Pete