If you missed the Part I, here is a brief summary: after long inner debates, I've decided to go back to make video tutorials and possibly to open a Patreon page once I feel to be able to deliver a solid, interesting "product".
Despite my priority, at the moment, is fulfilling as better as possible the Second Government campaign, these last weeks have been quite boring for me: all my collaborators were (well, are...) on vacancy so I had/still have some spare time to think about something not directly related to our current Kickstarter campaign, paused because of August, the worst month of the year.
As a proper Dwarf, I'm quite slow in taking decisions but once I do, I'm almost unstoppable. My mother told me that when I was a child I started to walk relatively late, only when I was sure to be able to properly walk like a champ.
Or I was just dumb, I don't know. I prefer the champ version, though.
Concerning Patreon, now that I finally take my decision, I started to plan all the details of this new journey and, believe me, there are a lot of things to think about!
The first thing I (ok, we...) made is...set a proper studio!
After all, here in Italy we say that "even the eye wants its part, too", and my first worry about "how I can make good videos" concerned a proper stage to film in.
Thanks to Leroy Merlin, Ikea and hours and hours of documentation on Youtube ("real artists steal"), we managed to renovate my bland office, to create something more...sexy.
And indeed, that dark grey on the wall (it's called "Beluga", even if I'm quite sure that Belugas are white...) is classy. I still have to add some Paul Bonner art on the wall, including the physical proof that I HAVE to keep on making Dwarves (if Paul Bonner asks you to make more Dwarves, you can't refuse).
So, the first problem was solved and after some video tests, we faced the second issue: light.
To shoot a proper video, especially if you want to film little, tiny and detailed things like 28mm scale miniatures, it is necessary to have A LOT of light.
We found that the lamps I use to paint weren't strong enough, so I bought the two mega-lamps that you see in the pic: about 50€ on Amazon, a great deal.
They work really well, and the quality of our first tests of filming highly increased.
To complete the stage, I bought a grey pad (it is normally used as backdrop in photography) in order to have a proper, elegant background for our shoots.
Et voila.
I think that, technically, we are now able to make some interesting stuff.
This is just a screenshot of a test we made with a brave failcast of Sigurd, that despite it was born with a bad resin, it found the same a way to be valuable to the cause as a test subject. Thanks, FailSigurd.
We shoot this test in 4k, but I think that FullHD videos would work nicely too (2 minutes of 4K video are almost 600mb...).
Obviously, don't look at what I'm doing here, I just tried to randomly paint, in order to figure out the perfect frame/focus/etc.
If you are wondering: the best shoots were made with my girlfriend that kept the camera leaned on my shoulder, attached to my ear. Not comfortable at all, but look how cool the frame is, after all here in Italy we say: "If you want to look nice, you have to suffer a bit"!
So, after a week spent on preparing everything to start to shoot my first video-tutorial since 2012, I'm quite happy to see that we are technically at a good level, at least for what concern the video-quality.
Tomorrow I'll start to paint the Hunter of Erdraz, first subject of this journey, and I will be able to share with you more insights about.
I'm quite worried about the audio part, both technically (I don't have a microphone) both "philosophically": I'm not an actor and my english is quite bad.
Learning from Youtube and Patreon, I saw that it's important to establish a "human" contact with the audience, and that means being able to talk in front of a camera, possibly without looking like an abducted prisoner, forced by a terrorist group to read a script with a gun to his head.
I'm a bit shy, so I think that this part of video-making will be a hard challenge for me.
That said, I'm quite excited about this project and I really can't wait to start to make some badass tutorial: obviously, being me probably the only Ligurian not 120% greedy (I'm only a 70% one), don't think that this Patreon thing will mean that you will be asked to open your wallet for anything.
A solid part of the contents that we will create from now on will be shared for free with our community.