WELCOME TO 2019!!! (Blog) (Patreon)

Hello to all and Happy New Year! I hope you all had a fun, safe time the past week with holidays and celebrations. Hope everyone got some cool Christmas presents and wicked feasts and all that good shit. How was my holidays? 

Pretty good. Not as productive as I would have liked but that's the last 6 months finally catching up with me.

(This is a longer post than usual but please, bare with. Lots of good and important stuff)

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A Quick Piece on what I've been up too) As is the way here in down under land, spent Christmas at the beach. Sleeping in the wilderness, meditating by the ocean and exploring a bunch! THAT was fucking good! We've gone away every single year of my life to the same place for Christmas, except for the prior year... first time we didn't make it. And quite honestly, I hold that fully responsible for the shit start to 2018 I had to deal with. So actually getting there this year, it's only a good thing! Here are a couple shots I got while I was away...

Please excuse some of the more "arty" shots, I took (and loved) Photography in College so I love a bit of that. Download the full res image below for a closer look if you like! :)

Return to Content Production) I've got video of all these shots too. Maybe if I do like a 2018 recap/2019 update kind of video, some of it might appear there but I'm not sure if I want to do that yet. What I have managed to stay a little bit productive on during my break was getting ready for a huge, single episode I thought of almost a year ago that I'm keen to get out. Along with that, plans for January is getting beaten a stack of games for the next major production. That 6-part series review on a topic very close to my heart (not necessarily the games, but what they represent) so I'm looking forward to working on that goes as follows:
-ALL PRE-PRODUCTION completed by the end of January
-Entirely shot by the end of February
-Post Production in March/April for release either April/May OR, between CTR Nitro Fueled and Tony Hawktober Year 3

That other big single episode project, I'd like to have up before this series review to hopefully help it perform better. Taking quite a gamble on the big episode but if it does well, it should give everything a boost right before a major series.

As for what's coming up sooner, I've got no idea what I'm reviewing before all these bigger videos down the line. However, I'll be shooting a Top 10 this week (finally) along with some Game Testing episodes. Expect these to start showing up at the END of this month. You might be able to see, trying to just get a heap of stuff done so that it can wait to be uploaded to by myself time on other things. These types of plans never seem to work out for me but with how jam packed this year already looks with 3 major projects already on the books, along with Crash Team Racing and whatever else... it's gonna be a big year!

Immediate Road Blocks) Some of you may have saw before Christmas during a live stream of Crash 2: N-Tranced on GBA that my Framemeister shit the bed. Trying to resolve that issue has been a nightmare. The thought of having to ship it back to Japan for repair or replacement (before February, within it's 1 year warranty) which would make it literally impossible for me to work on stuff... for like 6 weeks, at least. Given shipping times and all that, and give the SHEER AMOUNT of shit I need to get done this year, that couldn't happen. Just the other day, I was considering the ultimate reality of having to get another one JUST to hold me over, should i have to send my original off and then keep a second as a spare in the future.

LUCKILY TODAY, I managed to setup my RGB modded NES to bypass the adapter into the Framemeister I thought was causing the problem and... IT WORKED! What this means is that there is NOT anything psychically wrong with the device itself, JUST the adapter/cable that plugs half my systems into it which... already got a replacement on the way. SO I'm really happy about that, incredibly confident once that arrives, all will be good to go once more as I've isolated the problem to the defective adapter! So big relief New Year's morning on that one.

And just for reference given I can finally play my modded NES, here is the comparison of how it looks modded, compared to the previous setup (the middle Mega Man at the bottom is how composite looks into the Framemeister which doesn't do a whole lot for it, without modification).

Re-branding, New Equipment and Patreon Stuff) You may have seen me mention last month that I was looking to re-brand a lot of stuff with the channel this year. Working it, hoping to have that all figured out by the end of this month. Already figured the Patreon Credits with look and function a lot better. You can CLICK HERE to see an example of that!

Along with that, a Patreon advertisement and the new $2 reward tier will be coming either by the end of January or sometime in February. That will be the "Behind the Scenes" option with:
-Written blog posts like this one detailing the Making-of both for review episodes that DO and DON'T get a full video covering that stuff.
-Early Access to the full Making-of Episodes and Outtakes ONLY
I'll talk more about that when the time comes and offer the first one free so people can see what they'll be getting before pledging. I've wanted a third, middle tier for a while now so I'm excited to launch that!

JANUARY'S PATREON PODCAST: Expect to see this later in the month as Cal and myself are both focused on other things. This episode will also most likely be a freebie to go along with promoting the Patreon, so people can get a taste of what to expect by pledging.

Now I always talk about my one major tech purchase per year. Well unfortunately, I'll have more than one given what equipment I need organized for Tony Hawktober AND future content but we'll get to that down the line. The major thing I'm looking to upgrade right now is my camera. I've had my current one for 2 years now and in the past year (especially these last few months) the focus on this thing has just totally gone out of whack! Here is a shot that REMAINED in the Taz-mania episode as it was the best looking one I had:

Now everyone's first response is to ditch the auto focus and use manual control but the problem is... it seems to retain prior settings or something fucking weird and I can just never get it focused correctly. Hell even on full manual control, I've seen it switch focus randomly and it's ruined a lot of stuff in recent times. Reminder of those photos from my trip, I know how to focus a camera, mine just likes to not work whenever it feels like it and with all the crazy shit I do, I need reliable equipment.

So just for full transparency with you guys, that's something I'm looking into right now as a serious priority. The last 2-3 months of Patreon funds have been stockpiled as what I didn't need for Hawktober and Episode 100, got me through the rest of 2018. I really do mean it when I say that Patreon is keeping this ship a float and making it a lot easier to deal with these kinds of issues so as always, thank you all so much for the ongoing support! :D

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Closing Thoughts) RIGHT, I know that was a shitload of info to take in and I'll probably reiterate a good chunk of it, should I make that update video. Hate doing those though, especially in January but there is a lot to be said right now. What I'm most looking forward to in 2019 is to keep some momentum flowing between major productions and maintain that same level of quality people have grown to expect in recent years. It started rough but 2018 may have even surpassed the level 2017 set, which is something I deemed impossible to be honest. So while I'm now thinking 2018 may be impossible to top, I'm remaining optimistic. If I can get these big projects completed efficiently with some new gear and make an effort into consistent uploads across the year, I think this is going to be a good year for all of us!

So I'll see you very soon, thanks so much for reading and I hope you all have a great fucking day. Cheers guys, let me know if you have any questions or whatever! :)