BTS - Disney Sports Skateboarding (153) (Patreon)

G'day legends, I've got another Behind the Scenes blog post for you this week covering one of the most bizarre skateboarding games I've covered to date: Disney Sports Skateboarding. This was a really odd one, a game that I just kind of stumbled into while doing research that ultimately led to what I'd argue... is one of the better Hawktober episodes I've ever made. I'm very proud of this one so let's get into it!

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How did this episode come to be?
So I had never heard of seen anything of this game my entire life. Of course being a Gamecube exclusive, I'd have never taken any notice of it as a child but even as an adult, I had NEVER stumbled into this. That was until one day I was doing a bit of research looking into Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure for a future video, I lazily typed 'Disney skateboarding' into Google and there is was, staring back at me... and entire SERIES of Disney Sports games with a skateboarding title to cover for Hawktober. Honestly had I not discovered this game, a Disney themed Hawktober may have never happened given there are so few games that fit the category. So I was really keen to try the game and discuss it, however I'm also very happy as I'd absolutely love to cover the entire Disney Sports series in the future!

Playing one of the... strangest skateboarding games:
I don't just say this to be catchy, this legitimately is a very strange game to play. ON surface level it's not super abstract or anything, kinda generic to be honest. But the way it feels, it's severe structure issues, slalom meets Pro Skater objectives and just overall being so short. I had fully seen EVERYTHING it had to offer in the space of a single afternoon... maybe 3 hours tops. Sure I could have replayed levels and unlocked some outfits (which I have learned are unlocked by fully completing levels 100%) but what's the point?
Often there is discussion about reviewers fully finishing games before critiquing them. I'm a firm believer in trying to explore as much as possible of course. But there would have been no additional quality added to the video had I tortured myself to play anymore of this one than I had at that point.

Playing the Game Boy Advance port was thankfully even shorter, only lasting me an hour to see all of the levels and crack the shits with how it controls. I was streaming this game to my partner like most of the games covered this year who had no impressions on the console version so I actually found myself being like "no you don't understand, I swear the console game is WAY better... even though it's still dogshit" which was an interesting position to be in. 😅

Experimenting with a 3D Logo!
Despite it's incredible simplicity and lack of any character or interesting design, the Disney Sports Logo actually proved to be one of the more technical logos I've had to create. Text and the basic Mickey shape were easy enough to replicate but it was the animation where I had to stretch my legs a bit.
Photoshop has for the longest time included both video editing tools and a 3D workspace that allows you to take your images and craft them in 3D. I'm sure it gets a lot more advance than that but as a self taught logo maker... I haven't really needed to look into it super deep. The basic extrusion and lighting tools I have used in the past just playing around and even for an episode or two (Crash Nitro Kart revisit comes to mind) but I have always had difficulty with the animation aspect. It's really finicky and I'd often find myself accidently creating animation keyframes for the camera instead of the actual object.

Well while experimenting for another Hawktober logo I wanted to try this year that never saw the light of day, I accidently stumbled into my problem and learned what I needed to do in order to animate the actual text object. So with that hiccup resolved, it was actually quite simple to create a basic animation similar to the original in the games intro and using Mickey's jump to help cover the transition between the original intro and my Square Eyed Jak version. The result isn't perfect, it's a little messy with the 3D edges and lighting in a few spots but I was just so stoked on the result, this is one that I'm incredibly proud of!

Pre-Production and Filming!
Writing the episode was incredibly efficient. When games like this just ooze with funny things or interesting details, scripts tend to fall into place quite nicely and with so few levels, I was able to give each of them a chance to be featured in a way that hopefully felt like viewers were going through the game themselves. One of the best examples of this is the overly energetic announcer... or as I refer to him... Annoying Cunt!
I couldn't resist going in and layering as many of his annoying sound bites in as possible but for real, even though it may seem exaggerated in the episode, he does NOT shut the fuck up. The frequency of his fuckery is legitimately like that while playing and it actually gave me a headache after the first 2 levels. Thankfully you can turn his individual volume down in the options thank god but I thought it'd be fun to do a real basic edit to sell the headache with a head explosion. So I sat and just screamed and thrashed around, cut it at the right spot and then just did a super quick edit in Photoshop with some generic blood effects over the top.

This episode and the Goofy episode were both filmed in a single sitting, both on camera and voice over in the space of about 3 hours which is incredible. It reminds me of prior Hawktobers where the crunch just reached stupid levels of rushing through but in a weird way... that actually makes it easier to get done. My brain focusses a lot better on a strict deadline so I don't fuckup my lines and have redo things nearly as much.

Originally this video was intended to be filmed at my old house, so there were plans for far more shots of game systems and games etc. just for presentation sake but given I had to move out and I'm filming in a different space, that also helped to reduce the amount I had to get done. Those parts were either replaced just with alternate video or cut entirely, such as a terrible joke trying to poke fun at the fact that many creators will be like "lucky I already have this system plugged in so let me film myself putting the game in because I'm a totally unoriginal nerdy gamer guy" type shit. I'm bad enough for that normally I think... didn't need to be there.

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That's a WRAP!
Overall this episode turned out really well I think, it's one that I am very happy with. It hasn't performed as well as I would have liked given this game doesn't tend to get a lot of coverage, despite it being really fun and interesting to discuss. But oh well, coming off of a 2 month hiatus with no momentum, it was fully expected. With the Simpsons Skateboarding episode to follow, I knew that would steal the show for the entire week and help boost the other videos up so I honestly wasn't too worried about it in the end.

But yeah that's all I have to say on that one folks, I hope you enjoyed that read! Please don't be shy to ask any questions and I'd love to know your thoughts on the episode. Still two more of these posts to come before the end of this year so stay tuned but until then... I hope you all have a great fucking day. Cheers guys! 🛹