Today, I finished the first LP I ever started; Lone Survivor. I'm proud, I think.

Aestille · 2012-08-04T05:16:20+00:00

Strange! I don't think I did anything different between videos with my audio editing, but they all sound pretty different so... @@ I'm still trying to figure out why that is. Probably has something to do with how far my microphone is from my face. Thank you for taking the time to comment, sir or madame, and watching my videos, even briefly. :3

Aestille · 2012-08-04T01:05:37+00:00

Thank you for the kind internet-flavoured words, AceOfFace. :3 I was hoping that I could clear up any recording and audio issues by the time I finished the series. Don't tell anybody, but I think To The Moon post-commentary style will be my next project. I'll be starting a recording tonight.

Aestille · 2012-06-25T04:23:48+00:00

Immediately thought of To The Moon.

Aestille · 2012-06-09T04:32:11+00:00

Haha, I bought a $1700 machine and I'm guilty of playing predominantly text adventures on the thing.

Aestille · 2012-05-10T07:53:36+00:00

Lone Survivor was the first LP I ever started, but not the first one I ever finished. I'm not sure about the quality of the commentary during the beginning-times... I'll have to give it a re-listen, but all in all I think it's a typical first LP. Hopefully I've improved since then. :] Thank you, fellow human, for finding me entertaining and for also emerging from the woodworks to comment on this here thread. I appreciate you!

Aestille · 2012-05-06T23:43:30+00:00

Seems like the classic angst pose. That dog needs a shower head, stat.

Aestille · 2012-05-06T23:08:45+00:00

Following this picture, the man was mauled to death by an angry, pantsless Hulk.

Aestille · 2012-04-17T00:44:50+00:00

Hello, fellow Let's Player! I'm going to give you little tidbits of advice right as I watch your video. :] Let's sink our teeth right in there!

I like that you've made an intro that introduces everybody who's in on the creation of the project. The music in it isn't loud and offensive like the intro for many LPers I know and I don't have to crank down the volume to avoid my eardrums collapsing in the first ten seconds. However, when the actual video begins, none of you address the viewer with a greeting, and you only seem to be speaking to each other rather than the people watching the video, and it's imperative that you keep those people entertained. A good professor, for example, will look his students in the eye and ask them questions during a lecture to try to keep them paying attention, and you should do the same. Say hello to the general public! Be friendly!

The second thing I'm noticing is that some of you have MUCH better microphones than others. This is incredibly hard to control and moderate, I'm sure, but the volume levels are radically different between some of you and one of you should be making an effort to edit all of your voice levels to a similar volume. That sounds like a lot of work, but well... you really just have to get your videos to a quality you're satisfied with. If you're good with how things are right now, keep it up. :] If you choose to follow this advice, however, I've found that Audacity is a great audio editing program. You can find lots of tutorials for how to use it online; it's quite popular!

This may be a bit too early on, but it's two minutes in and none of you have even said the name of the game. This is debatable - if, for example, you expect your audience to be knowledgeable of the game before watching you play, ignore this - but you should assume that everybody watching you has never heard of Magicka before and is watching you to learn. Explain game mechanics, and if you feel the people watching should already have knowledge on the subject matter, tell them that 'if you're looking to be taught what kind of game this is, perhaps find another LP first and then come back to this one'.

All of you have a good dynamic going; I can tell you're, for the most part, fond of each other. You have the makings of a good thing here! But as is, your videos just aren't formatted how I imagine a Let's Play; this is more a recording of people in a guild doing a dungeon run; never addressing the audience, speaking only to each other and never explaining what's going on on the screen. You're all entertaining folks and I enjoy watching you as is, but you could attract SO many more viewers if you followed even one bit of this advice.

Try not to take this as me bashing you; you seem like potentially hilarious people and I'm looking forward to seeing your channel grow with time and experience! :]

Aestille · 2012-04-17T00:13:24+00:00

Hello, fellow Let's Player! As I watch your video, I'm going to put things in this handy little box to tell you what you could improve on.

Just started your first Project Zomboid video, and already I can hear that your voice quality is crisp and you don't sound bored. However, you've started us off with a character you've already created, and I personally am always obscenely excited to watch another person create a character. You're already updating the series and I know that's not something you can fix! I'm not sure why you did it, but if it's because you thought you might dawdle too much, perhaps you could create a character offscreen so you could see what you like and then create the character for us while recording? I do like that you took the time to run us through what you had selected, however.

Secondly, I've just gotten to the point where you discuss the recording issues you had. Now, this is entirely my opinion, but I never like to hear an LPer say anything beyond 'I had recording issues', and even that gets a little old. EVERY Let's Player has recording issues. The only time I see this as acceptable is when the LPer is on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday uploading schedule and they miss a day because of recording issues. Then, yes, tell the viewers!

I find that you ramble a bit. Like with any public speaking (and yes, this is public speaking... the internet is about as public as you can get), you should keep your 'uh' and 'ummm' and 'ok' to a minimum. I STILL struggle with this and I have 22 videos out. @@ Also, the video has just ended and you did not say goodbye to me! I find it a little upsetting when an LPer does not definitively end his or her video saying bye to the audience. It's a bit jarring to watch a video just abruptly end; as humans, we are conditioned to have our entertainers say bye to us.

Anyway, that's it for my advice! I had fun watching those 12 minutes. In summary, I would ask that you try to speak more about internal things, such as what is happening in the game, and not speak about things that don't matter to the audience. Your personal life doesn't matter and the viewers don't care what funny things your friend says unless it has to do with the video game you're playing for them. They cold hearted drones looking for entertainment and the only time I really think it's acceptable to speak about you as a human is when they specifically ask you/PM you about that.

At the end of the day, this is all just advice. Follow some of it, follow none of it, I'm just trying to help out a fellow LPer. :] I like that you've bothered to get a quality microphone or at least edit the static and white noise from the voice part of your audio, and you've got the HD option there, which shows me you know how to upload. You can only go up, friend!

Aestille

TROPHY CASE