AveragePixel

New Video (Accuracy Doesn't Matter) + Behind The Scenes

Hey everyone, guess who actually managed to upload again? Apologies for the silence but to my credit, at least this one didn’t take 3 years to finish, that’s gotta count for something right? If you’ve not already seen it you can view it by clicking here :) (video).  Its a video about accurate depictions of guns in games and why they aren't important.

In this post I wanna talk about a few things. Namely the completion of this latest video, the future for myself/my channel and also to offer an apology/explanation for suddenly closing my patreon months ago without communicating why. I’ll start with that last part.

Why I temporarily closed my Patreon

Anyone whose been here prior to this current upload may have noticed that I abruptly closed my patreon creator page out of nowhere only about a month after I uploaded my previous video about Arcade Racing games. For that I'm sorry. Short answer why is that after the toll that video took to create, i was feeling incredibly burnt out and wasn't making any progress on anything new and the guilt that came from that lack of progress led me to close the page as I felt it wasn't fair to be charging people monthly for something I wasn't doing. This isn’t the first time I've done this, it happened shortly after I initially opened my patreon after uploading my Reload Animations video 4 years ago. I also closed it back then for the same reason.

Thing is it probably won’t be the last either but this time if the guilt/procrastination starts catching up to me again I promise I'll at least post a notice here 1 week in advance to let people know its going to happen. But I also hope to work a little more consistently so it doesn’t come to that (more on that later). With that all being said I wanna talk about the recent vid and future projects.

The Video (Accuracy Doesn't Matter)

In this section i want to cover the major beats regarding this videos creation. So this vid didn’t take nearly as long for me to finish than I expected (around 9 months). It’s mostly because I wanted to work on a much smaller scale compared to the Arcade Racing vid, where that vid had a dozen different sets and scenes, this video consists mostly of only 1 3D space as the main set. The “Armory” Scene.

But another big reason why it took far less time to finish is thanks to the Arcade Racing vid. One of my goals with that video was to start building a 3D asset library that I could easily pull from to help build and populate scenes with objects. It helped me to give any space that dense, lived-in kinda feel, y’know?  And considering how much shit i made for that vid it came in very handy when I started working on this one. A lot of original models had to be made for this video but it was a lot less of a time sink than it would’ve otherwise been.

Nonetheless this let me focus on the real star of video. The Guns. I ended up modelling a total of 21 guns featured in this video. Not all of them were made explicitly for this video (more on that later too) but all of them were modelled to be as modular as possible. most of them have their own suite of attachments that can easily be removed or fitted on to other guns that have the same rail size as is the case in real life.

Here's a preview of every single weapon from the video in no particular order

AK47

AK105

AKS-74U

AR-15

BENELLI M3

M45A1

CZ BREN 805 A2

GLOCK 45

HK 416

HK MP7

KRISS VECTOR

LEMAT/LEMAT MKII

M16

REMINGTON M870

SMITH & WESSON MODEL 19

SIG P226

IWI TAVOR TS12/ MX GAURDIAN

UZI

CURSED WINCHESTER MODEL21

NERF MAVERICK REV-6

Of all the above guns, the maverick is the only one i've held in real life :)

NEW CHARACTER

As with the Arcade Racing video, i still wanted to evolve my content in some form which is what lead to me redesigning my character again, ultimately settling on a 3D Design. Not gonna lie, this was really intimidating to approach at first as ive never been good at drawing or modelling people, nor have i ever animated a 3D Character model. This was going to be my first time at that.

Despite that, having now done it i can safely say that i find 3D character animation far easier and faster to work with than traditional 2D. I've still got a lot to learn and improving to do but there's just something so liberating about how quickly you can iterate on posing and blocking that makes it so much easier to work with compared to my previous 2D workflow. Any future vids will likely have a new 3D character model in them as im pretty happy with the style i settled on and the aesthetic choice to depict my characters emotions via the little 2D pixelart icons throughout all the dialogue scenes.

As always, all the 3D work was done in Blender with the pixelart texturing being done in Aseprite

Anyway, those are the major things i wanted to talk about with the videos creation. As always this video was edited in both Premiere Pro and Adobe After effects. There really isn't anything sexy about that part of the workflow which is why i never show any screenshots of it. I guess if you're interested here's what my premiere timeline ended up looking like. What a nightmare! (derogatory)

If anyone has any questions regarding other elements of the vid i'll do my best to answer. But now i wanna move onto what the future holds regarding my goals and my content.

The Future

Truth be told I'm a little uncertain about what i wanna do next. I don't currently have any ideas for future video essays but im sure that'll change. Thing is, as much as i enjoy working on video essays and connecting with people more casually through them I really want to create something original. This could come in 2 forms, a short animated film idea that i've had for a long time, or a game. Since i've fleshed out these game ideas a lot more imma talk about it.

I've got too many game ideas (not gonna lie, most of them are zombie games) to count but one that i've quietly been working on using the Godot engine is a short zombie game that's heavily influenced by Shaun of The Dead, specifically that one scene where he walks to the convenience store (if you know, you know).

So far what I've most been working on is environment art assets and weaponry which is what i hinted at earlier when i said that not all those previous gun models were made for the video. All of them are game ready but specifically the Benelli M3, SIG P226 and S&W Model 19 were made specifically for this current game idea ive been working on. I'll reveal more about it as it continues to manifest and in all likelihood i'll make some devlog style videos documenting the process to be put on my channel. Just like my vids any Behind the Scenes content will be posted here for patrons.

It's far to early for me to be talking about release/pricing but at the very least i ideally plan to make these small games free to everyone supporting me here and downloadable via Itch.io.

Conclusion :)

By no means do i plan to stop making video essays or the content people are used to expecting from me. For now though im gonna take a short break to try and brainstorm ideas for the next vid as well as continuing work on this funny little game project. I hope to have more to show soon.

Over all i just want to thank all of you, both new and old who have come to support me. It is greatly appreciated and i wouldn't be able to do it without you. If anyone has any questions about anything please feel free to reach out here and i'll do my best to respond. Thank you again

Art In Reload Animations Behind the Scenes Re-uploaded

Hey everyone, as mentioned in my previous post I've re-uploaded the Behind the Scenes Video for my Art In Reload Animations video from 3 years ago. The video is unlisted on my second channel and should hopefully be viewable to everyone here through this link (https://youtu.be/wEEjs9IZTGU). 

Like I said previously, the information might be a little outdated and doesn't 100% reflect my workflow currently but it's still very close and hopefully there's some useful information in there. 

Just wanted to leave a little update at the bottom here mentioning that I'm feeling a little burnt out after finishing the Arcade Racing vid after how much effort it took to complete but I'll do my best to get over it and continue working on my next vid. Thank you all again for your support and thank you to all the new patrons that've come here from my most recent vid. I very much appreciate it : )

Again, here's the link for the Behind the Scenes Video: https://youtu.be/wEEjs9IZTGU

New Video Is Out (Update + Behind The Scenes Images)

Hey uh, been a while huh? Just wanted to write a post to accompany the release of my newest video (found here: https://youtu.be/OG8mMSscaC0) to talk about what’s going on with me and also explain some of the restructuring I've done to the pledge tiers on my patreon. I'll also be making this post public so anyone new coming over to the page can get a taste of the kind of stuff I post here plus it serves as an explanation for where I've been.

So despite the fact that I'd gone radio silent over the last two years I never stopped working on the next video and hopefully the end product reflects the effort I put into it. Granted, there was a brief period where I'd sorta given up on it partially because of the monumental amount of work that would be necessary to finish it but also because of some personal struggles that i’d rather not go into. regardless the video is out and I'd like to think I did my best. It was a fucking nightmare to finish it but i hope it was worth the wait.

Moving forward I do have a couple ideas for my next video with the main one I want to pursue revolving around Environmental Storytelling in Zombie games. I’ve always been a whore for zombie games no matter how shit they are and one of the most fascinating elements to me is the way they utilize environments to convey a message. There’s a lot of zombie games that do it really well but more surprisingly are the many good examples I've seen from otherwise terrible video games that I'd really like to talk about. In terms of scope, this video would only be around 20 minutes in length (initially this is how long i planned for the arcade racing vid to be, lmao) and to significantly cut down on the 3D workload i planned to have the whole video set within a single barricaded house because it just feels very appropriate for the topic. That being said, I still haven’t quite found a “hook” for the video so I'm still working on that and hopefully it’ll come together soon.

Lastly I want to mention how I've changed pledges on my patreon. Previously i used to offer a behind the scenes video to accompany a main channel release on a higher $15 tier but since making that behind the scenes vid is also a lot of effort and i don’t really like the idea of locking useful information behind a paywall, i’ve decided to just make 2 functionally identical tiers (both $1 and $5 respectively) that grant people access to any behind the scenes information I share on this Patreon. While the $5 tier exists it is the same as the $1 tier, it just exists for people who are feeling especially generous. I feel this is a lot more fair to everyone that decides to pledge as they’ll all be receiving the same updates and information but it also means that I'm not over promising on rewards that I'm not certain I can deliver on. I may think of new tiers in the future once I find a reward I can reliably deliver on but for now this is how it is.

Oh and for patrons both new and old, I only ever made one Behind the Scenes vid for my old “Reload Animations” video from 3 years back. That video was hosted on someother site (I forget which) but I eventually took it down. I'm thinking i’ll re-upload it to my second channel if that’s something people want then link it on here so you can watch it. The information is a little bit outdated and there’s some new software i’ve picked up since, but it still serves as a nice companion piece to the reloads video and maybe it could be helpful to someone.

Anyway I think that’s just about everything I wanted to say. Your support means the world to me and I'm incredibly grateful for every person that’s stuck around to see this video finally get released. Here’s hoping the next one doesn’t take 3 years to finish. To close this off I’ll leave you with some behind the scenes screenshots of some of the more complicated scenes I made for the Arcade Racing video, there were a lot of them :).

Closing the Patreon indefinitely

Just making a quick post to let everyone here know that im gonna be suspending my patreon indefinitely as of tomorrow. It’s been weighing on me for a while but i cant in good conscience continue taking peoples money when its taking me so long to deliver a video with only lack luster updates as to where said video is at.

For now though Im gonna continue working and i’ll start the patreon back up once it’s released whenever that may be. My time management skills are absolute trash so i cant safely make an estimate but maybe this move could provide me with a little more incentive to get it done quicker.

Thank you again for supporting me.

Video Update (New character changes, Second channel video, etc)

Hey, it’s been a while again, sorry for the prolonged silence this is becoming a bit of a trend. Thought it was about time i made some sort of an update so you know that i'm actually still working on this video.

I've spent my time on a few different things but lately a lot of my focus has been on learning to rig models and animate with them (mostly mechanical objects, you know where this is going). This stuff is about as difficult as i expected it to be but I've been making a lot of progress and i'm now capable of rigging all 16 of the car models that i currently have ready for this video (I’ll leave an image attached of the first finished rig i made along with a real janky animation test i did with it) I've got quite a lot to say about how i got all this working but i’ll save all that stuff for the behind the scenes video once it's all finished. The car that im showing off here is the car that will belong to my character in the video, it’s loosely based off a 1988 AMG Hammer.

Speaking of my character I've updated the look of him for this next video (image attached). I’ve been meaning to do this for a while because i'm honestly kinda sick of looking at the old one considering how long i've had it for. There were other scrapped versions but this is the one i'm most proud of and that i'll be using.  

Beyond aesthetic choices i've still been working on the script and i'm at a weird point that's got me struggling a little. Since this video is partially based on events that are still technically unfolding its brought me to a position where ive had to kinda re-consider my approach to the second half of the video. Im gonna do my best to keep powering through it but let me just say that this’ll probably be the last time i'll do a video on a topic that hasnt already resolved itself, shit can be hard to keep up with and even the smallest new detail can force you to change things pretty drastically. It feels weirdly familiar to when i was trying to keep up with all the PUBG controversies for that video back in the day… crazy times.

Anyway i hope everyone is keeping healthy and washing their hands, what with all this pandemic stuff going and once again. If you're feeling truly starved for content and you havent seen it I did end up uploading a little something to my second channel that may interest you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQchyz4Nlao

And once again to all of you I sincerely appreciate everyone that has stuck around supporting me. Thank you again and I hope to have more to show you soon.

A Quiet Month of progress

About time i posted something here

Sorry for the quiet month, I'm sure you've noticed by now but im not really one to appear unless i've got something to show. Been struggling to write this post and as a result i guess i’ll keep it brief.

In an effort to avoid writing as much as possible ive spent most of my time with my head firmly stuck in Blender preparing models for the Arcade racing video. Among other things i’ve currently got 11 car models prepared out of an estimated 16 so far. Organising the UVs/texturing them is going to be an absolute bitch but it’s worth it for the end result. I’ll leave an image of the 11 ive got so far attached.

I’ll have to get back to writing eventually but until then i’ll likely finish all the cars first and finish this second channel upload i have planned too. I’ve been working on a second channel video for a number of days in the background and it should be out pretty soon considering i’ve finished the most tedious portion of the editing. I’ve probably put more time into the visuals for it than i should’ve but i guess i still hold myself to a certain standard regardless of where the video goes. I’ll leave another image or 2 attached relating to this video as well since im pretty proud of what ive come up with.

Anyway i just want to say thank you again to everyone here for the support even despite the silence, I can’t express how grateful i am for that. The sparse uploads and few tweets might be a bit of an indicator but i’ve never been a particularly loud person. Regardless I sincerely thank you all for the support.

Video progress update/ Second channel plans. Writing kinda sucks

It's that time again.

I think i sorta forgot how much i hate writing until i came to the point that i had to start doing it again. I've been struggling a lot with staying focused when writing as of late but that's not to say that things arent coming along. Im still working forward with the arcade racing video and in order to break up the monotony of typing ive been spending more time preemptively working on visuals for it.

I've got a list of classic and iconic cars (mainly from games) ive been compiling for the video that i intend to model and if you know of any that i should probably include feel free to let me know and i'll add it to the list.

Also, im working on some videos to upload on my second channel because i like the idea of having an outlet to upload smaller easier to make videos that are more gameplay oriented in between the huge undertaking that is the main channel videos. Im already well under way with it and the images i've attached to this post are related to content that'll be going on there. (Yes i still want these videos to be of a noticeable quality though not nearly to the same degree as main channel content)

Oh and one last thing, i think my pc is pretty close to dying. My pc has been showing issues since as far back as August last year, about halfway through editing the reloads video. Im not sure how much life it's got left in it but ideally i want to be able to get at least one second channel video out of it before i purchase a new pc. This is the main reason ive been so cautious about progressing with any main channel videos and i've also been trying to hold off on any large purchases until this whole "Australia is on fire" situation has fizzled out a bit. Either way i should be able to afford getting a new one when the time comes and i'll continue to backup all my important files as i've been doing for the past couple months now.

Next time i post here i should have some decent car models to show off  

What I've been up to and Australian Wildfires

Looks like it's that time again when i post a bit of an update regarding video progress etc. I'll  talk first about what i've been up to and leave the "heavier" subject matter till the end because my country is currently on fire and it warrants mentioning because it may have more of a direct impact on me soon enough if the situation escalates.

Alright so im still working forward with both of the ideas i mentioned in a previous post (Arcade racer mystery and COD zombies reflection/critique) and i recently finished working on some models that have definitely got a spot in the latter idea (related image). Progress has been a bit slow since im still in the scripting phase (which is usually the most difficult for me) and i haven't had a whole lot of spare time since i had to finish the Behind the Scenes video and i also did some commission work for one of the games i featured in the Reloads video.

If you're curious about that last part, I was contacted by the creator of Get To The Orange Door not too long after the video came out and hes a pretty cool fuckin dude. He offered me the opportunity to do some pixel art animation for the game and I couldnt have been happier to be able to contribute in some way. If anyone has played GTTOD  keep an eye out for some familiar pixel art animation somewhere in the game.

But anyway, now that the Behind the Scenes video and the commission work is finished i can focus more on moving forward with my own personal work. Much like my last video, there's a fair bit of learning i'll have to do if i want to be able to produce the ideas i have in my head but hopefully I can make them live up to the expectation i've set with my last video. More details will come as i get further into the videos creation. 

Also i feel the need to say thank you for the support you've given me as of late, I've had a pretty shit year and my channel blowing up has definitely been the most notable part of it. I Was kinda hoping the rest of the year would be a breeze after that happened but then Australia decided to spontaneously combust. You're probably already aware but Australia is currently being torn apart by wildfires and whilst im lucky enough to have not been directly  
affected yet, the fires appear to be making their way to my town and are currently very uncomfortably close. As if being forced to constantly inhale smoke for the last 2 weeks wasn't already shit enough. At this point things are only getting worse and unless some environmental miracle occurs it doesnt look like they're going away anytime soon and i'll have to continuing dealing with my town being shrouded in smoke.

Either way im fine for now and im just hoping nothing too serious happens.

With all that being said Christmas is like 2 days away so let me just say Merry Christmas to everyone and i hope you all have a happy holiday and once again thank you so much for the support. I really appreciate you all. 

Update on the Behind the Scenes Video

Alright so I want to say that the behind the scenes video has been more of an undertaking than I initially expected. It's close to done and it should be up this coming week at the max, in the next couple days at the minimum. I just wanted to post this for the sake of transparency so you all know what's up. Also im gonna include a turntable of the intro scene from the reloads video that'll appear in the Behind the Scenes just as a little teaser for everyone.

Once again, apologies for the delay.

Behind The Scenes will be up this week.

Just wanted to make one more post letting you know that the Behind The Scenes video will be up this week just in case there was any concern. Im just trying to make sure the video is cohesive and understandable, hopefully.

Update For the next video (What's Happening Next?)

Yo thank you to everyone who's  decided to pledge, you've no idea how much I appreciate it and I can't thank you enough. I just want to give you all a little update as to where I'm at with the next video and what I'm working on.

I've got two ideas that i'm working on but im still partially torn on which one i'd prefer to pursue first. Without giving too much away the first one is something i've been researching and keeping track off since April of this year about an arcade racing game that never came to be. It'd be part Nostalgic reflection on arcade racers and how they've influenced me and my experience with gaming growing up since arcade racers are a decent staple of my childhood mixed with an exploration of a game that for some mysterious reason was never released despite being poised for success.

The second is all about Call Of Duty's Nazi Zombies mode which is also a huge staple of my childhood. Much like the previous idea it'd be partially a nostalgic piece appreciating the roots of the game but also a critique of what happened to it over the years. To say im disappointed with what happened to COD zombies post Black Ops 2 is an understatement to say the least but I have a fuck load of fond memories that i'd really like to put into video form and I know there's a fair few people out there who share that fondness with me. 

But yeah that's pretty much it. I've been working with both of these ideas but im leaning more towards the first one since not only have I done alot of research but i've also done some animation tests that i want to improve upon for the video itself and I think the topic has the capacity to allow me to make some pretty cool fuckin visuals that im kinda excited for. You've probably seen the test animation before whether on my twitter or youtube but im gonna attach it again because it's relevant to the post.

Again thank you for pledging, you people are awesome and to the Thanks Dude x15 tier people hold tight because im close to finishing the Behind the Scenes Video and it should be up soon

Behind the Scenes tier video soon

Currently working on the behind the scenes video follow up for the last video about reloads, shouldn't take long to finish. 

Had the idea of maybe adding a $20-$30 tier at somepoint with a special patron only t-shirt that I design myself as part of the reward. I'd have to figure out how to actually get that all done and it likely won't be happening for quite a while but it's an idea nonetheless