TODEPOND TIMES: Mountain

What is it? It's another weekly edition of the...

🐸 TODEPOND TIMES 🐸

What's new this week?

Part One: DreamBerd Uncaged

Last week, I did a little tech-talk about my (joke) language DreamBerd. This week, I uploaded a recording of it.

It's basically me cracking a few jokes about programming languages, so the humour might be a little bit niche.

The response has been really nice!

And related to all that, the channel has been doing ridiculous numbers. Since the spread of DreamBerd last week, I've seen about 10x more traffic than I'm used to. I'm completely lost for words!

I'm trying to maintain a healthy-ish relationship with it all, so I'm not dwelling on any comments too much (the nice or the not-nice ones).

Mainly, I'm just incredibly thankful for all the support you've given me. Some of you have been here for ages, and some have just joined. Thank you!!!

Part Two: Mountain

Back to business. I've been making a new engine (Arroost) for the next video. And to do that, I've really been building two different things.

1. I've been making the inner-workings of Arroost. The thing that chugs it along, and makes it actually *do stuff*. It's clunky and hard-to-use. But importantly, it's simple and FAST. It's like the engine under a car bonnet. I call it "Nogan".

2. I've been making the outer-workings of Arroost. The thing that you use to steer it along, and make it actually *do stuff*. It's clunky and hard-to-use. But importantly, it's complicated and POWERFUL. It's like the steering wheel of a car, and all the different nobs, buttons, cranks and gears that are attached to it. I call it... "Arroost". Yeah this part of Arroost is just called Arroost. Maybe I should change that.

Anyway, I've been making each part separately. I'd do a bit of work on Nogan, then a bit of work on Arroost, then a bit of work on... yeah.

I'm trying to aim them towards each other, from either side of a mountain. And I've been digging through with them - trying to get them to meet. Sometimes veering them to the left-or-right. Sometimes backtracking a little bit, before continuing on a different path.

I'm relieved to say, that they've finally reached each other! I've connected them together. Arroost can now control Nogan, and Nogan can control Arroost.

It worked!

Part Three: No Music

I've been working away on the next video, Arrows in Arrows in Arrows. And the first thing I've discovered is:

Switching to Davinci Resolve (from the Adobe suite) has been an absolute blessing.

It's so nice being able to quickly switch between modes while making stuff. What I mean is...

I can quickly dive between editing, effects, audio, rendering, etc, without having to switch programs.

Say, for example, I'm making some text move around the screen. If it's a simple-enough thing, I can probably do it from within the editing-timeline itself. But if it's a bit more ambitious, I might need to use a more heavy-duty tool.

With Adobe stuff, this 'switch' involves opening a completely different program. And a brand new project. But with Davinci Resolve, I can stay in the same place, and work with the same thing!

It's letting me be a lot more free and flexible with things. I'm quite pleased with how the title sequence is shaping up. I hope it will set the stage for the weirdness of Arroost, and I hope to show it in a teaser trailer at some point.

Part Four: Future

It feels strange to think ahead to future videos. With the current video so far behind, is it borderline irresponsible? 

Either way, I never stopped thinking about ideas for future projects. But I realise that I have stopped talking about them in these updates.

No more!
I need to get you up to speed!

Where to start...
Ok, I think I've figured it out.

Ever since the first 🌀 Time Travel video, I've been trying to figure out how to make a video that time travels within itself. What I mean is... it jumps around to different parts of the video. It skips ahead, it jumps back, it changes the past, it breaks the future.

There's a really fun example of this that I've seen. I can't remember what it's called, but it achieves the effect by asking the user to manually skip forwards and backwards on the video player. EDIT: Here it is.

This is fun! But, I really want to figure out a way of achieving this without requiring the viewer to do anything. I want them to be able to sit back and enjoy it.

And I think I've got it! It's actually quite simple in the end. I don't know why I didn't realise it before! All you have to do is... All you do is... is ...

Unfortunately, we've run out of time in this week's update. Maybe next time.

Like I said up there, thank you so so so much for supporting me and my stuff. I'm astounded by how many new people joined this week. Welcome! and welcome back to all the old-timers. Wherever you are in the world, I hope you have a great week 🐸

Days since tode fell asleep: 164
Days since bot went missing: 129