5 minute speedpaint process & text commentary! [short soon]

More official Hipster Whale marketing art in between other tasks!!

Did some research on what even feels like Valentine’s day vibes – I guess chocolates are safe!

It was a struggle trying to fit all the Crossy horsey characters in without clashing!! As you can see in the video, I just did one thumbnail and went with what I wanted haha ;D

I worked with and got great feedback from the super supportive and understanding marketing boss Sara for this illustration!

And I did some self review as seen in the speedpaint. I forgot to change something but I have to move on, it’s done!! I need a break from it since I pushed to get it done over my off days. I’m pooped :’)

Edit: oof when this video flops upon release. Ah well it’s out of my hands now.

Happy Valentine’s Day featuring various characters from the Crossy universe! [official post, tiktok & tweet]

Spend some good times with loved ones and/or with your own company! Treat yourself today and/or this week!

Remember to care/show/express that you appreciate people who matter, how they’ve brightened your day/life and help them out/brighten their day some time!

Take your time for some quiet ‘you’ time too!

Writing this blog is one of the ways I get some quiet reflection time. Another thing I do sometimes to decompress from all the tension and stress – I sit there, close my eyes, breathe slowly and let my head drift and be empty ;P

I removed “Love URSELF” from one of the hearts (see speedpaint video above) because it felt too much. Sometimes you’re just striving to accept yourself on a day to day basis and “loving” yourself feels too hard, intense, untrue and complicated.

I do think self care and love is demonstrated through deliberate practice – being kind to yourself, considering your own pace/tempo, considering your mental headspace, energy levels, the promises you make with yourself and listening to your own feelings and the well being of your body. I’m no good at all of these things though – I tend to forget in the moment!

I’m just guessing as I go along with these things!

I struggle with “relaxing”. So the best I can manage right now is allow myself to become a blob sometimes? :’)

It seems like voiced commentary art videos isn’t for me right now:

Hello! From now on I’m scaling back to no voiced commentary as the default again.

This means I’ll do slower, less overwhelming speedpaints (main youtube videos) and super fast <1 minute vertically cropped speedpaints (shorts) with music and without commentary.

I will slow it down & add text/caption commentary where appropriate instead!

After doing 2 edited commentary videos, giving that a go and reflecting on myself, I don’t think this is sustainable for me.

I was stubborn enough to give this a try at first. Apparently this is the way to build an audience so that there’s at least a voice to the artist (and adding more to the parasocial side of things). I should be making 150 videos / consistent videos for two years to get practice, experience and before I can properly judge if it’s working.

I’m just only at video number 2?! And I want to quit already?!
Sorry for creating unrealistic expectations for myself and for any disappointment :’)

Scripting/outlining what I say and recording myself speaking is doable but is most time consuming. I enjoy consuming video essays but it turns out that I really don’t want to create, plan, script, record, process/edit consistent video essays myself. And I refuse to make 150 commentary videos just for practice and mileage – I’m not finding joy and excitement in doing all that work and becoming a presenter, speaker and performer in that way.

I want to get mileage in making art, not with making youtube videos!! I have my hands full with art already – learning, studying/practicing, experimenting, creating things & blogging about it!

The commentary/personality/topic unfortunately becomes the focus of the video but I actually want art making to be the focus!!

I’d rather be writing, rambling and reflecting at my blog instead (and I have been doing so since 2011), even though only a small handful of kind people read them :’) It’s more manageable for me too.
When I do make a lot of art, I also dread having to make commentary videos for each of them!

I feel burdened by this non-art related workload!! Oh no!!
I’m biting more than I can chew! What did I get myself into?!

I didn’t want to make this into another full time workload when I have no time to spare for that! I gave myself more work thanks to my silly, unrealistic hopes that I should focus on youtube to reach more people in an attention economy social media landscape.
I don’t want video making to become a slog and huge obstacle and time sink that blocks me from art making for me.

It feels like my time is being wasted. And evidently I don’t love the process enough to do scripted voiced commentary consistently. I don’t feel like I have much to say that’s important enough to be a planned, edited video.

Also people are much, much more drawn to shorts than the edited videos I spent weeks on. I’ll reveal my likes count from now on since I’m unfortunately forced to see the likes and dislike ratio on my end anyway. Let me hide the metrics from myself – please Youtube ;P

I don’t have the drive, interest and time to continue regular commentary youtube video making right now.

I don’t have the time to keep doing consistent high effort and quality videos without burning out.
My focus is not to be an entertaining/educational youtuber but to focus on art and learning firstmost.

It’s not worth pushing myself to make commentary videos, especially when I’m not trying to make a career out of it (like some of the artists I admire and follow).
I’ll do it randomly and rarely if I want to but definitely not as a regular thing.

Still from the experience I learned a lot about video and audio editing! It’s been super nice to see that there are a small handful who watched parts of videos and a few commenting even! Thank you so much!

After much trying and learning since last year, I need to make it less burdensome for me to make videos, even if it is just unpopular speedpaint videos with music :’) I have been told that speedpaint videos are pointless without commentary unless you’re super good at art so I guess I’ll keep on plateauing.
Anyhoo I have things to learn, art to make, part time work to do, games to play and life things to juggle!

I will definitely consider live streaming small sessions and real time recordings in the distant future!
Focusing on art making at my slow pace. And sharing and blogging about it as usual (:

❧ Do you mind caption/text art commentary instead?
❧ Why are you following this channel? What are you looking for?

❧ Let me know what you think. I don’t even know if my commentary videos are any good. Hmm.

Thank you for being here!

If you were interested in my ramblings, my blog is still going!
Thank you so much if you still decide to stick around as I figure out what works for me :’)

my community post

I’m glad two or so people spoke up and said they will watch anyway!

It does feel like posting to the void so thank youuu!!

At least I did my best! Tried it out! Voiced commentary videos are not as burdensome as preparing to do a conference talk but video essay/commentary is still stressful. I’m not really a speaker and that is why I prefer taking my time with writing.

I might do voiced commentary videos when it feels right to me and when I can afford to make the time to do that. Which is not now. Not really inclined to either unless I really want/have to.

For now I’m just testing out how to improve my videos without voiced commentary so I’ll stick to text commentary! Just stick to being calm and chill with music :0

Reflecting on “Don’t Make A Youtube Channel (Here’s Why)“

As mentioned above, making Youtube videos is so time consuming, energy draining and it’s definitely a full time job in itself. Been doing it on/off for a long time.

Her video emphasises why I don’t want to do too many high effort videos. It’s time taken away from doing art and learning! There’s so much work to do if you actually want to reach people and if you’re aiming for quality!!

Youtube is scarily oversaturated and the quality of the videos that you do see on your feed are backed up by hard work, planning, rehearsing/performing, experimentation, observations, clickbait titles and thumbnails, research, connections and luck. That is if you’re doing it for a career.

Hearing how hard it is to maintain sponsorships, ad-friendly status, reach subscriber milestones, ad revenue, or even get help via patreon/kofi reinforces that you can’t rely on this as a long term career nor as your sole means of survival. It’s a side irregular thing at best because most people have other jobs, projects, commissions or merch/sales for a living.

I don’t think I want to be a full time youtube or stream content creator.

I’m dabbling and learning instead to see what works for me! At best it’s a side thing for me too.

Mental health

I’m super sensitive with negativity (I’m not in a great head space to handle it well) so I’ll need to be careful with the possibility of hate comments, stalking, harassment, people demanding/expecting/pressuring you to do the niche thing they follow you for (I experienced this one because some people remember me for my personal comics) or creepy/parasocial/weird comments or messages (I had a few weird and uncomfortable experiences in the online space and more in person…)

Also hearing about even more video essay/content creator/artist drama, angry mobs and terrifying/creepy/dangerous/stalker situations scared me off further. I’m frankly scared of the extreme parasocial side of things and being criticised without nuance and not being given room and grace to do better.

I definitely dread all of these potential downsides and horrible things from a having and managing a community (which I currently lack and the skills/experience/time/interest to manage that).

We are all parasocial to some degree (it’s normal, can be wholesome, supportive and not negative) and it’s healthy to keep it in moderation – both creators and viewers have feelings and desire connection!! It’s just the negative, extreme, complicated side of it (there’s always creepy people in real life who hide it better online) that I’m wary of and not sure how to best navigate it, shut things down if things and assert boundaries.

Video making for me…

I have always struggled and plateaued with retention and growth since people aren’t interested in my videos, I’m not doing clickbait/marketing well and how it’s an incredibly hard slog for any small channel. I’m boring I suppose among the sea of countless posts and artists vying for attention on the internet 😛

It doesn’t matter since it’s out of my control.

I’m just going to embrace the way I ramble make videos. And get better by practice!

I’m fine not trying to please everyone and do what’s expected of art youtube videos (like voiced commentary) because so far I focus on making the art first and *then* I worry about how I post about it later! So this works against the voiced commentary approach where everything depends on whether I have a good topic and script firstmost for a video. It is not at all art at the forefront – some artists don’t even show their art in their commentary videos because they had no time to.

I’m not super experienced at making youtube videos so I’m just learning and observing from what other people do. A lot of things don’t work for me at the moment so that’s why I’m cutting out things I enjoy doing the least and don’t seem worthwhile and sustainable for me :0

As you can see from this week’s posts, I’m going back to posting the blog post and video at the same time since there’s no voice commentary. And I’ve been doing more art. Doing what makes me happy and what I can actually manage is a more reliable and healthier approach.

Speaking on what I can manage, I made two Valentine’s Day art posts for this week…this is chaos!! I worked myself a lot just to get this week’s blog posts done. I was supposed to post less but I wanted to defy that, had external deadlines and made more art?! And scrambling to make speedpaints, shorts/reels and blog posts?! My attempt to slow things down didn’t work out whoops :’)

I’m going to have to slow down next month and/or compensate further later down the track for study posts too but I don’t know how yet. I’m just playing things by ear so I won’t promise anything :’)

Gosh there’s always things I am behind on but I’m juggling the best I can ahhhhhh :0

Please take care! I hope I am making sense and not making too many mistakes – I need sleep :<

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