BTS - Hawktober 2019 (Part One) (Patreon)

Hello! Sorry this took a little longer to get out than I first expected. I've been on a big downswing now that this project is finished and needed to take it easy. Since there is so much to cover, yet not enough for each episode to get it's own blog, this will be the FIRST of TWO Behind the Scenes posts. Here we'll be covering Week One of Hawktober 2019, CLICK HERE to check out Week Two! (coming soon!)

If you haven't seen it yet, you can also click here to watch the Making-of video episode that is on the channel for further information on the project!

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Day One: Portable Pro Skater Games!
The big theme this year was covering all of the portable games, meaning many compilation episodes featuring multiple games in a single video. Naming episodes like this is always a trick because it can get messy quickly depending how many different things you're talking about, so the name Portable Pro Games felt like a very natural step. That was already decided in late 2017 following Year One of the event (when this episode was originally also going to include the GBA Pro Skater games)!
The first logo I made for Hawktober this year was for the GBC episode. Since there is no single developer for all of the handheld games, like Neversoft or Robomodo on console. I thought it would be fun to experiment a little with the system logos, something I haven't really done previously. Both the Color and Advance both have very simple screens with high contrast, vibrant colors so it was a lot of fun making these.

The final result was a simple white layer with the Hawktober hole cut out, with a colored background moving behind it.

For the rest of this episode, there honestly isn't much to say in regards to production. This was the first episode filmed of the special which is why I'm quite reserved, as I'm not fully in the zone yet. I was being bothered at the skatepark as well, not in a bad way, just some stoners hiding out in a nearby pool who were interested with what I was doing... but it's just like "excuse me, can you please be interested about 50 metres that way?"
I was surprised the length of this episode reached 17 minutes in the end, which was mostly due to Pro Skater 3 on GBC having a lot more to discuss than I expected. I had tried the game back in 2018 when I bought all of the Gameboy Tony Hawk titles. I played it for 5 minutes and was like "yeah, this has nothing" but the mental difficulty and skilled required to truly showcase that game, made for a very appealing goal for myself AND topic of discussion for the final episode!

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Day Two: MORE Portable Pro Skater Games!
Splitting these 2 episodes apart really left the GBA episode out to die, there just wasn't enough to talk about with this one given the games are both simple and actually quite good. So it was much shorter and with the "MORE" in the title really affected the videos performance in my opinion, when combined with the mediocre thumbnail. This was the second worst performing episode out of all 10 this year.
The logo for this one was the Vicarious Visions logo featured in THPS2. Given they were so influential with both the system and this series, on the system, I had to get one of their logos. This character/logo interaction is something I feel like everyone fancies with a whopper logo, so I painstakingly removed the background from every frame of the original, then simply applied it to my own background. The SP model Gameboy always looked like a quarter pipe to me (a cancelled idea for Hawktober merch by the way) so I felt it fit perfectly with this animation.

Some with a keen eye may notice the GBC Hawktober image on the screen and not the correct GBA version. That is simply a mistake on my part not noticing the minor differences, as this was finished prior to the unique GBA Hawktober animation.

As far as getting this episode done, it was an incredibly simple one. Filming was done in the space of 20 minutes and was a pain in the ass, given it was an uncharacteristically hot day for the time of year and the sun was directly in my eyes the entire time. However, I picked this spot to mirror the first Hawktober where I used the same position. I think it's a nice look at how as much things changes, they also stay the same, as can be seen with the graffiti on the wall in the background.

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Day Three: Tony Hawk's Underground REMIX!
Remix was an episode I was really excited about, just finally getting the chance to play this game I'd heard so many good things about my entire life. I had to buy a PSP and quality cables to get it hooked up to the Framemeister setup and I must say, it was well worth it. The GBA games in this episode... not so much.
My review of the first Underground GBA game was originally much more brutal, given how unfair and cheap the game is. However, I did something never do during the making of this.. and that's watch someone elses' review of the game! Unintentional joke thieving is a real thing and I've been hit with it once or twice over the years, so I tend to stay away from other peoples videos on whatever I'm covering, to avoid hearing a good line and forgetting where I heard it, unintentionally leading to me using it as if it were my own, without realizing. I know that sounds super sketchy but it's happened to me, both accidently using other people's material AND other people using mine.

Anyway point being. I was watching I believe minimme's Tony Hawk Game Boy Episode (not 100% certain) and he mentioned the health bar/pads and protection thing. I had no idea about that so I went back into the game very late, tried it for myself and was actually able to beat the final mission thankfully. So I reduced a lot of the hate out of that episode to make up for my own mistake, still mentioning that it is an easy mistake to make. That made the final review a lot more balanced and at the end of the day, I'm glad I mentioned it. Otherwise I'd have had 100's of comments about it, similar to the Big Drop mistake in 2018, which I was referencing and correcting in this episode!

The logo process for this episode was something different. I knew that I wanted to try and reuse some of my old logos from the first Hawktober, both for sentimental sake because that's where it started. But also because I was on a massive time crunch. I was able to go back to my old files and tweak some things quite easily, including updating the episode number on the Underground stencil that you can see for all of 0.8 seconds. The Hawktober logo though, I did want to go back and remaster the UFO animation from THUG2. Given it was such a nightmare at the time, I wanted to redo it to show how far I'd come with my graphic design skills.
Unfortunately, the old files for this were even more corrupted than when I made them originally back in 2017 and without the original video files of myself, I'd have to re-shoot which I simply didn't have time for. So I instead went with the Neversoft logo I didn't do for 2018 Hawktober trailer, basing it off of the E3 reveal of Underground. I think the static TV effects make for a basic, yet still effective animation.

One cut idea from Hawktober in general this year, spawned from Underground 2. There is a scene in the game where a tennis ball launcher in spun around in a circle and whoever gets hit in the nuts, is eliminated. I did consider finding a machine like this, or building one or faking it as a way to introduce a new portable system into the mix, like the PSP. Obviously the logistics of that were too complicated so I was going to settle with a wheel to spin, again influenced from Underground 2, trying to get some references to the games in there. However, I felt like the outcomes would be too obvious and again, the concept was too complicated to implement which is why it was scrapped.
This episode of Hawktober 2019 was the second BEST performing episode which was admittedly surprising to me. Usually the good games simply don't perform as well as the terrible games, but I guess Underground 2 Remix was an exception!

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Day Four: Tony Hawk's American Sk8land!
This was the first episode of week one that actually showcased some more personality driven discussion, based on my own experiences with the games, as the GBA port was an abysmal mess... which means an easy day for me!
This was the second day of filming at the park and when I arrived, there were people EVERYWHERE. So I instead went onto the other side of the big wall and sat by the entrance way. It still had the feel I was going for, it kept the sun out of my eyes and it was a new spot to film. You might be surprised to hear this, but possibly the most difficult shot to film of the entire special was this one right here.

I had to film the DS screen for the drawing segment, but the sun was too bright even inside the little tunnel. And if it wasn't that, the faulty DS screen would mess up the drawing. This right here was 30 minutes to finally get something usable.

The scene where I'm messing around taping my feet to the RIDE controller board I created in 2018, was something from the Pro Skater series I've always wanted to parody, but never found a natural way to include it. Sk8land seemed like a good fit so I grabbed some tape and filmed it. This was in my own yard at home (thank christ) and given how much fucking around it took to actually get something that looked good again, the logistics of doing this at the skatepark probably wouldn't have worked on my own.
Even though I'm happy with this episode, it maybe could have used some more gags like this. There was some additional camera segments cut just for the sake of time and keeping this efficient with filming, meaning that there is a large chunk of the video without any breathing time.

The title screen on this episode featured my attempt at replicating the art style found in the DS game. Yes, I actually drew this myself. It is far from perfect but for the time I spent on it, I wasn't not going to use it. For the actually Hawktober logo, again, I attempted to draw a clean version of this spray can found on the menus in the game but I wasn't skilled enough to replicate it. So I got my art friend Lucy who helps me out a lot with various things and she whipped it together in a matter of 5 minutes. Cheers mate!

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Day Five: Downhill Jam Revisited!
Breaking up certain episodes to create 10 days of videos instead of the originally planned 7, meant that the end of Week One and start of Week Two, aligned with the respective endings and beginnings of Year One and Year Two of Hawktober. So it seemed fitting to return to the place where the original Downhill Jam episode was filmed to take a look at the portable games. These were originally intended to be featured alongside Tony Hawk's Motion AND a quick look at Downhill Jam on the Wii with motion physics (a common theme among those titles). In the end, Motion deserved it's own standalone episode and I cut the Wii version out, simply because I had absolutely nothing to say, given the game is identical to the PS2 version we previously covered.

The most frustrating aspect about filming this episode was that I'm technically standing on a road. Occasionally, cars would drive past so I'd have to move my camera aside, meaning I had to re-setup the shot for almost every take. I was also having a lot of trouble with the camera takes, given some of them are quite long.

There isn't a whole lot to really get into with this episode as it's so simple. I was happy with the final result and despite its simplicity next to other episodes, I think videos like this can be fun sometimes. My big goal with critique was to get the point across that despite the GBA games major limitations, that this should not automatically warrant blinded bashing. The game is mediocre but despite that, is a major technical achievement and does offer some fun gameplay in all of its limited form.

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That's a WRAP!
Well that does it for Week One of Hawktober 2019! All in all, it was a basic, somewhat average week of content that underperformed to an extent, compared to previous Hawktober content. However, I knew that the second week of content had all of the big hitters, which I'll cover in greater detail here in a Part Two coming up soon! Until then, I'm more than happy to answer further questions anyone might have so don't be shy, leave a comment. Thanks for reading and I hope you have a great fucking day, cheers! 🛹