BTS - Extremely GOOFY Skateboarding (152) (Patreon)

G'day goofers and welcome to the first of four Hawktober 2021 Behind the Scenes blogs! While the special this year was much shorter than previous years, it's still a body of work I'm incredibly proud of given the conditions in which it was crafted and it's a topic I've been eager to cover for years now. All in all, I had so much fun working on these so let's get into the Making-of Extremely Goofy Skateboarding!

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Hawktober Disney Branding!
Just before we make a start on the episode itself, I'd like to talk about the Disney branding for the special. Of course I recreate the logos for each game I'm covering but for the week of Hawktober, there are also additional logos. In the past I've done the Neversoft and Robomodo logos, Activision O2 was used for every episode in the 2020 special so for Disney, it seemed to make the most sense going with a single logo for the entire week again. As flashy as the modern castle logo is, nothing screams nostalgia to me than the old Buena Vista castle. Plus it was era appropriate given it was still the current logo when these games were released. Thankfully it was also quite easy to remake! Redrawing all of the various elements and using some simple transitions and effects, the castle animation was completed in the space of an hour or so. However I wanted to put my own spin on things and infuse some skateboarding into it for some originality. The one idea I'd been sitting on for a year was to have the trail from the shooting star be a grind rail!

For the silhouette skater effect, I actually tried something I've wanted to do for years now which is create a keyable background in a level editor and use it for an effect. I had my Nintendo Switch handy so I booted up the THPS 1+2 remake from last year, within 5 minutes I had a large blue screen with a grind rail and put Leo Baker to work nailing some rad tricks. I'm honestly shocked just how well this turned out. Again this part of the logo was put together in the space of an hour or so and I'm just so fucking happy with it! The benihana and *special trick sound effect* for the win, I love that trick!

Alright... let's get GOOFY!
This is a game I've wanted to play since 2015 when my mate Jay told me all about the game. It just looked so janky and perfect for a review. Sadly when it comes actually playing the game... it's incredibly dull with very little to even say. I played through the entire game in the span of maybe 2-3 hours while on call with my partner which has proven to be an incredibly interesting element to Hawktober this year. Actually having a second opinion there just to take the piss and bounce ideas off of really helped to get my creative gears turning on potential jokes and critique. So the writing process felt very natural on this one.

One part I recall was "the game plays like stringy cheese... whatever that means" which was something I genuinely said while playing and was met with "what the fuck are you talking about Jak?" which just made us both lose our shit cause I honestly had no idea what that was supposed to mean even at the time. But... that is also such an accurate description of how it feels, I dunno. The man GOOF just so lanky and warped with how he moves, it was perfect! Shoutout to my best mate Petronious for grabbing my copy of Goofy AND Disney Sports on GBA for me this year, cheers mate!

Goofy Logo:
Unlike the Activision O2 games which all shared identical logos, it was nice this year to again have a variety of styles, all very bouncy, vibrant and unique. Goofy had one of the easiest however I faced a problem... 2 games this year shared VERY similar titles:

Extremely Goofy Skateboarding AND Extreme Skate Adventure

Given I already knew that there was only one option I was happy with for the latter, I had to mess around and play with Goofy to see if there were any alternatives that I enjoyed. As you can see, I just switched a bunch of the words around as much as possible to see what I could come up with and the winner was Extremely Goofy Eyed Jak because it just made me laugh. Poor Jak, his eyes aren't just square anymore, they're fully fucked! 😂

Original Goofy Plans:
Back when I was more on top of my work before life was so chaotic, I always liked to try and lead in to certain topics. For Hawktober this year, I wanted to tease the Disney theme by actually reviewing The Goofy Movie and then Goof Troop on Super Nintendo. That's a cherished game from my childhood that admittedly, I never saw past the first level so it's been on my to-do list. And then I was going to include the Goofy Movie sequel in Hawktober as it's a skating movie. I've honestly never actually seen it beyond a few clips but unfortunately due to time and circumstances, none of that was realistic to even aim for during that time. I'm disappointed but it's all content I plan to make at some point in the future anyway.
As for the Extremely Goofy Movie, the sequel, well I'd actually like to focus a Hawktober purely on skateboarding films at some point given there are plenty to talk about. Most kinda mediocre but still fun to discuss and a few absolute shockers. So it would probably fit better in that special anyway, a happy accident I suppose.

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That's a WRAP!
Well that's the Goofy episode, it was a very efficient little episode to whip together but still a fun one. The weakest performer of the week, that was very much expected. Coming off of a 2 month hiatus without substantial content, without any momentum going in it suffered for sure but it still did ok for what it was and I was just glad to have a new video going up. For the first time in a long time, I was PROPER excited and happy seeing an upload which felt really good.

Anyway, that's all people! I hope enjoyed that read and if you have any further questions, please don't be shy! Stay tuned for upcoming posts about the other Hawktober episodes and until next time, I hope you all have a great fucking day.
Cheers guys! 😁