BTS: Every Spyro Level RANKED! (150) (Patreon)

G'day legends, I hope you're all travelling well. Today I want to discuss the process of creating Episode 150... yes it feels like only yesterday we were celebrating 100 episodes, it's just insane! This was another huge undertaking of course so let's dive straight into it!

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How did this episode come to be?
Following the Crash ELR in February of 2020, Spyro was a the next logical step. However I knew that there was so much more work to get done compared to ANY of the prior ranking videos, so Jak and Daxter was produced first as a middle ground. Production on Spyro had a really slow start... I replayed and captured new HD footage of the Insomniac trilogy and Enter the Dragonfly FOREVER ago way back in 2018.

So the original plan was to begin playing through the rest of the games in November of 2020 following the huge Hawktober workload, however I was met with a huge burnout and the accompanying depression which lasted for the rest of last year. This was when I connected with my partner and we played through the original game in Reignited together on a rainy day. That was the moment that kicked my ass back into the zone to begin working. I streamed a majority of the games over Discord as we continued bonding until the final game, Dawn of the Dragon, we completed together. This combined with revisiting the rest of the trilogy via released BETA versions as well as Enter the Dragonfly, we played the ENTIRE series together which helped massively to get me through such a huge job!

Pre-production!
The actual work of ranking levels began alongside beating each individual game until everything was ready for a master rank! The huge problem was completing the script as I knew this franchise had enough content to hit 3 hours in video length easily. Writing happened over a long period of time between March and May of 2021, working on it on and off in-between other video projects, as well as the unfortunate circumstance of being forced to move back into my parent's house. The final script was a whopping 44 pages long which is CRAZY! The previous record for ELR was the original Tony Hawk episode at 36 pages... so I was really worried that it was going to greatly surpass my expected 3 hour mark. It was a pleasant surprise that I was able to perform the video efficiently enough that despite the additional 8 pages, the final product was merely 15 minutes longer in total length. So I'm very happy about that!

The haiku for Spooky Swamp was an absolute MUST! I hit a roadblock with how to approach it given I haven't written poetry since primary school so to make things a little easier, I wrote a quick blurb for the level like all the others and then formatted it into the haiku restrictions. I'm super happy with the final result in the video! 😁

Logos, Graphics and Presentation:
The branding stuff for this episode was relatively simple. The original Spyro logo is one of the first logos I ever attempted to replicate for my videos way back when I covered the Mobile Games in 2017. So it's interesting for me to see how much nicer the new one looks after a few years of graphic design work.

The nameplate animation is always something I take a lot of pride in as well. I like things to be nice and simple, easy to digest but still vibrant with the appropriate imagery you expect from the topic series. My original plan was for some golden sparkles to transition into the graphic kinda like if Sparx flew over or something but in the end, that was going to be too complicated and overpowering given how frequently it shows up. So I opted for the simple fades and a gem animation similar to the precursor orb I featured in Jak and Daxter. While looking for a basic gem animation online, I stumbled into a GIF of the speedway fairy which was perfect for other on screen text during the introductory rules. I was super happy with that find which was when a lightbulb went off to use the Reignited "The Adventure Begins" animations to transition into the start of the ranking. It's those little touches which just add so much to the overall presentation, the same goes for the free camera stuff!

The free camera has become a staple of the Every Level Ranking episodes as it really helps to convey the feeling of each location and offers a break from a constant onslaught of rushed gameplay footage. I was super happy to discover Spyro World Viewer thanks to my partner that lets you explore the original PS1 trilogy and with my friend Petronious having already offered Reignited free camera help, the plan was made to get as much as we possibly could. For past ELR's, the general rule has been NOT to overuse that stuff but for Spyro, I used all of it. There was not a single clip that went unused and it made the video all the more better in the end imo... so expect that in future ELR episodes too!

The final touch in the presentation was my mate Jay's amazing remix of my normal theme music using the Spyro sound fonts. One day he just randomly sent me a demo unprovoked like "Hey man, if I finish this, will you use it?" and of course I said yes. He did such an excellent job of it, absolutely made my day to hear the final product and there was no better place for it than to kickstart the entire episode off with a bang!

Completion and Reception:
It may come as a surprise to many people but writing the script (as well as playing through all of the games) is without a doubt, the most taxing and time consuming part of the process while editing the video is usually quite formulated and easy to find a rhythm with. This 2 hour, 45 minute video was fully edited within the span of 8 days in total... with 2 of those days, I was only able to get an hour of work in due to life shit getting in the way. So it was a good 6 full work days in a row and thankfully, I was able to get it all together just in time to leave for my holiday without the need to work overtime of a night! So I was very happy with that. Rendering the master timeline was a full 10 hour job though! 😅

To see the video go up and receive such tremendous applause from subscribers and people new to the channel feels really good. I'm so glad to have gotten another one of these monsters completed, even if it was an incredibly taxing project to get done amidst life shitting itself for me. The video has performed fairly well so far and got twice the momentum of the Jak and Daxter ELR as I had considered that one dead on arrival when it was posted, given it struggled to garner much attention at the time. So to see Spyro doing fairly well is very nice to see!

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That's a WRAP!
This is without question one of my proudest projects to date, as are all of the ELR episodes so far! I have another smaller, simpler one I'd like to release next similar to the Jak and Daxter episode but on another series so hopefully with all of those games already played and mostly ranked... I'd like to give it some time and then begin proper work on that later this year! But as for Spyro, it was a massive undertaking and one I really struggled with at times given all of my personal life stuff I've been banging on about for months now. So it really is thanks to my amazing partner that I was able to get through this one and I'm so thankful this was something that brought us closer and helped our relationship to flourish through an onslaught of challenges we faced together during this time.

But yeah guys that's it for this, I hope it was an interesting read. Please don't hesitate to ask further questions and until next time, I hope you have a great fucking day. Cheers guys! 😄