TMM 022: Arcane Ugly Meets Street Art

Five more paintings underway for Arcane Ugly chapters on Life Beyond Death, Potion Making, Wands, Familiars and Mutations.

I'm trying all sorts of techniques for these from painting to tracing to AR drawing apps and paste ups. I'm trying to channel something a bit street art and grunge.

A 3D print of the Walking House is officially in the mail from Danny! So excited to rip it open and start putting it together. No confirmation on the price of the 3D model yet, that'll be up to Danny.

A 2022 goal has been giving all my tools homes so Zane has been hard at work making some boxes for some of the special ones. This one is for my wood burner and is made from plywood off cuts.

I needed a phone holder for some art apps I'm experimenting with and it was 9pm and the shops were shut so I decided to make one using loose odds and ends from around the TV studio. I'm proud of it and it was good to practice making things with unfamiliar tools. Now I use it for video calls too!

I've also managed to resurrect my old camera (that fell in a bucket of bleach last year) and the photos it takes as a result of its broken sensor are really cool. These photos are unedited straight out of the camera!

Okay, let's talk editing!

Editing is my favourite part of the process of making videos, it's just sitting back and reaping what you sow.

I like to take my time with my edits, it takes about 6-10 hours to edit one video. A real editor could do this much more quickly with clever hotkeys and a real workflow but I've never really pushed myself to be more efficient.

I work linearly, and I play the video from the start after any major change to make sure the flow of the video is good. It's very time consuming to work this way but helps me keep the pace of the video going.

Typically I edit without music, then bring in music and re-edit around it again. That way I know the video isn't just being carried by the good music, it's also an okay pace without it. Finding good music that suits can be very hard but that can be the next Purposeful Production tip.

With simpler videos which are just footage, a voice over and music, I try to make the pace really fast. I edit it entirely once, then I re-edit the edit and then when I think it couldn't be made any more efficient, I edit it again.

With YouTube you're encouraged to make videos eight minutes long for optimal ad revenue and promotion but I think a video is only as long as it needs to be, and if I'm not hitting that target I'll always add more to a project rather than extend the edit.

Arcane Ugly chapter on Mutations is underway, currently in the hands of another writer. I'm promised it's going to be very weird.

In terms of art, I'm experimenting with incorporating street art influence through adding paste ups and stickers and stencils.

I'm writing a chapter on the undead, designed mostly to solidify that in Arcane Ugly, dead means dead and true resurrection is mostly unheard of.

Also a chapter in wands, because there have been so many suggestions for wand law in YouTube comments I've gotta make em canon.

And airships! I'm so excited about airships.

Okay, so here's how you get bulk paint for crafting or painting. All the Arcane Ugly painting I'm doing right now couldn't be accomplished without this tip and neither could my 6ft gaming tables.

House paint! House paint is the best way to buy bulk paint. You don't want the cheapest stuff or the most expensive, you want the brand tradespeople use and you buy it in sample pots or if you know you're gonna use a lot, get bulk if you can afford it.

If you get decent stuff, it will dry as quickly as your craft/artist paint and the constancy and coverage will be similar. You can even use it watered down like a wash if the quality is okay. Some hardware shops will sell heavily discounted tins of paint too if they've been mixed wrong, or no one collected it or they got dinged up.

You can also get house paint really cheap with a Facebook/Gumtree/Craigslist ad or garage sales or reuse markets.

The story I heard as a kid was the first Citadel paints for painting miniatures were rebranded house paints. Not sure if that's true, but it's a good story!

Bonus Tip

Check your local second-hand shop for some cheap Hell Pit Abominations and Nurgle Spawn. This one was $1.

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The Miscast Minute - brought to you by Trent and Rachel. Have suggestions for what you’d like to see? Let us know!