Its been a chaotic couple of months since the last update. I’m currently on my way to finally graduating college (hopefully) and joining the big boys in the real world. However never fear, I will always be around regardless!
Lets talk about a few updates.
If you’ve been in the Discord or even around in the twitch channel at some point, you will probably have noticed that I have finally been able to change my name, and sync it across most platforms, thanks to the release of JTV names on twitch. Its pretty nice not having a bunch of random names all over the place!
As usual, I’ve also been hard at work updating channel aesthetics and general perks over the past few months. My overlays have updated slightly once again, and there is now a new and improved “professional” offline stream panel. A few folks have asked what I use to make these graphics, or if someone makes these for me. Since the beginning of the channel I have always made my graphics. I started out by using plain old paint.exe; then I upgraded to paint.net, a free program designed to mimic many of adobe photoshop’s features without the massive price tag. Eventually I moved on to the beast itself, Adobe Photoshop. Nothing compares to this program, and if you can get past the initial hurdle it is certainly worth the time you put into learning its functions.
Even though my overlays may not be ultimate professional tier quality, I think the improvements have definitely shown through time.
[Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors]
This was one of the first games I fully played through. There is barely any resemblance of an overlay here.
[The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD]
Overlay had progressed quite a bit, but still in its early stages.
[Persona 4 Golden]
Later overlays over time showed massive improvement over the bare originals.
[Mega Man Star Force 3 Black Ace]
And now we have come full circle with the current design.
I think one of the important lessons I have learned over time with these overlays is that more is not always necessarily better. This means that while adding a bunch of notifications, bit cup, bit boss, flashy scrolling text may look interesting and cool to you, more often than not if it is not done properly it simply ends up deterring from the viewing experience. Remember those flashing banner ads back in the day on the web? Pop up videos when you browse to a site? People don’t like having things shoved in their face. An easy rule to follow is simply to ask yourself “Does this actually serve a legitimate purpose? Do I really need this here?” That alone can help you massively improve when deciding whether to add new things. Notice in my previous overlays I would tend to have the satellite icon on the left; MegaMan art on the right and top, and alternating gifs with images somewhere on it as well. In my opinion, everything just looks cleaner without all of that stuff going on. This is my opinion and design choice of course; there very well may be more professional overlays with more going on and can pull it off, but that isn’t the style I’m going for here (and by all means I am not a professional graphic designer).
In terms of anime, I actually have not had much time to chip away at my backlog. However in a random whim, I did sit down and binge through the entire season of One Punch Man, a hilarious anime with amazing visuals about a hero with a very unique problem. It is an anime that is definitely worth watching if you have the time (countless people had told me this and I had passed them down before), and it is an easy 10/10 for me to recommend.
There isn’t much more to say regarding updates. I have slightly upgraded my stream setup once again; I am now sporting an Audio Technica AT2035, which offers better noise isolation and superior sound quality to the Blue Yeti that I was previously using (I couldn’t even rip a fart with the Blue Yeti before, that thing could pick things up across the house).
We can also finally welcome to the table the greatest hero of all time: Yu Narukami! Right alongside the other greatest hero, of course.
The next few months for me will be a time of great change, and hopefully I will be able to succeed and be able to continue bringing content to the table. Perhaps I will finally begin to work on that web forum upgrade I’ve wished for so long..?
Make sure to follow the Twitch channel and join the Discord to stay on top of the community!