The various thoughts and experiences of one individual given the gift of the written word. Now more cynical than ever; The science of selling yourself short approaches life from the point of view that almost everything is essentially contestable. Mass dissatisfaction ensues.
I know all I've posted is my Twitch Show Guides recently. I have been active online, just not here. If you want to check out what I've been doing hobby wise, there is a good chunk of content on my Hobby Blog: The Underhive Hero. I've been heavily invested in my Twitch Channel (as the WKS attest to). I've upgraded each and every stream to have their own personal open/end slates, sourced fitting music for each show and spent some time developing my Discord server to help better 'my' community. I guess it's starting to pay off. I average a follower a week. I'd be very happy if I can get 100 followers in my first year. With this commitment to streaming has come additional content for my YouTube. Pokémon Uranium is progressing well, and while growth is slow here, I am still occasionally gaining followers. I'm trying to figure out how to/ what to do for YouTube exclusive content. I have a few ideas, so we'll have to see how it goes. I'm genuinely sorry that I've not felt the urge to write anything here. It's not that there isn't stuff to write about either... The world is fucking falling apart.
Brexit. Theresa May. Trump The western world is burning itself to the ground; Nationalism is the cry, but Fascism is the result. The world and it's populace have exceed my capacity for stupid. I'm burned out explaining, debating and arguing with people who just yell 'that's your opinion' or 'fake news.' I need time to recharge, but unemployment isn't exactly a fitting environment for that. It'll all come together in time. I know it.
But right now, I feel like I'm in a rut and there isn't a way out. Every aspect of my life has major problems and I have no solutions, other than to watching on while everything crumbles around me. My creativity levels and suffering levels rise in tandem. What's getting me down, is that I'm sure people should know this... But while I get folk congratulate me on my hobby/ art/ whatever else, no one even asks the question... Anyway, ramble ramble ramble. I'll leave you with something that sums up my whole existence for the past few years, and probably the next few. Passing Through A Screen Door - The Wonder Years.
Cigarette smoke dances back in the window,
And I can see the haze on the dome light
I'm conjuring ghosts on a forty hour ride home,
And they keep asking me what I'm doing with my life.
While my cousins go to bed with their wives.
I'm feeling like I've fallen behind.
Well, the highway won
I'm listening to traffic reports one on one
Coming quietly undone.
I was born to run
Away from anything good.
An escape artist's son
Sun-drenched pavement in my blood
The first thing that I do when I walk in is find a way out for when shit gets bad and...
I've been looking for
Tears in the screen door (tears in the screen door).
I've been waiting for
Another disaster (another disaster).
Well I'm still afraid
Like a kid in the sixties
Staring at the sky
Waiting for the bomb to fall.
And it's all a lie
What they say about stability.
It scares me sometimes
The emptiness I see in my eyes.
And all the kids names I've ever liked recited tragedy.
Well, I don't want my children growing up to be anything like me.
I've been looking for
Tears in the screen door (tears in the screen door).
I've been waiting for
Another disaster (another disaster).
But I was kinda hoping you'd say.
I was kinda hoping you'd stay.
I keep a flashlight
And a small knife
In the corner of my bed stand.
I keep a flashlight
And the train times
But you wouldn't understand.
How could you understand?
Jesus Christ. I'm 26.
All the people I graduated with,
All have kids,
All have wives,
All have people who care if they come home at night.
Well, Jesus Christ, did I fuck up?
I've been looking for
Tears in the screen door (tears in the screen door).
I've been waiting for
Another disaster (another disaster).
But I was kinda hoping you'd stay.
I was kinda hoping you'd stay.
I was kinda hoping you'd stay.
If you're subscribed to me on YouTube you may have seen my latest video (If not, you should totally click here and do that now!) In this video I drew an avatar for a good friend of mine we've mentioned here before; EpicErid! The video is the product of 2 separate streams on my Twitch channel (which you can follow by clicking here!). It took about 6 hours to draw and paint, but I've condensed it down to about 20 mins by upping the speed by 800 times! Anyway, you should go check it out, and subscribe for more if you enjoy it!
I have an Inktober post coming in a few days. Inktober is a ink based drawing challenge in October, where you do a picture every day. I posted them all on Instagram while I was doing them, and I'll be posting all the pictures I drew throughout Inktober on here so you can view them at your leisure. I'm happy to say that I managed to 'technically' not miss a day.
The main point of this post is about my YouTube. Up until now my weekly 'Free For All Thursday' Twitch stream videos have been uploaded twice a week (Monday & Friday). I felt that this is a bit of a slow pace of uploads, especially when we're recording 4 to 5 a week while I stream. So from now on I'll be uploading 3 of these videos a week. The new release schedule for these videos will be Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Hopefully reducing the gap between videos will help folks who want to watch them feel less distanced from each episode. I'm also hoping it will allow me some freedom to make different videos, and some YouTube exclusive content too.
Anyway, if you haven't checked out the Pokémon Uranium episodes yet head over to my channel, or just check out the Pokémon Uranium playlist. If you catch up, them join me live of Twitch! That's it for now. Peace! -DH-
It was my good friend EpicErid's birthday the other day (if you don't know who this is, go to this blog post). I ordered her a present, but shipping is terrible, so it has now arrived, but not in time for her birthday. I decided to draw her a thing, and then paint it.... but I didn't think that was quite far enough. So, I upgraded it a little.
If you remember a while back I posted about making Skyrim coasters using a tutorial on Dodger's YouTube channel. I used the same method here, except I used my own hand drawn and painted picture.
The picture was drawn in in Derwent pencils, lined with Faber Castell fine liners and painted with Winsor and Newton Watercolour paints and Citidel Acrylic paints. It was sealed with a Satin varnish and attached to a Slate flooring/ wall tile with ModgePodge Matt finish. Finally some self adhesive cork was attached to the underside What do you guys think? Would you be interested in your own? Hit me up with comments, criticism and any other feedback! Peace -DH-
As the title suggests, this post is all about Multimedia stuff. Let's start with Twitch I've been putting a lot more effort in to my Twitch channel lately; A decent mic (Blue Yeti), A decent Camera (Logitech HP 1080p), More Ram (Now 16gb), Better presentation (in Stream), And better audience interaction (Discord, Steam, Revlo rewards and so on), And the hardest part, being consistent with my schedule. On the last part I have edited my schedule. I will still stream 3 times a week. Tuesday = Technical Tuesday. Where I do more technical things. Usually digital art, painting but sometimes Starter games and mods. Wednesday = The Old School Video Game Show. This is a show I usually co-host with my friend MyWallet. We play things like Super Smash bros Melee (and mods) and a host of other old school games. Thursday = Free For All Thursday. A stream where I get to play anything I feel like/ sometimes the chat/ Revlo participants suggestions. Not only have the details of my streams changed, but also the times. I will now be starting at 8pm UK time, for a few hours each time. This should hopefully allow more folk to join us ^_^ If you can't join me live, never fear, my VOD's are free to watch, but sometimes muted (especially the art streams due to copyrighted music).
With that in mind let's move on to... YouTube Now, I've been working on my Twitch consistently for a while; slowly improving as I go. The downside is I've neglected my YouTube channel. Well that's going to change. I've set an upload schedule. To start with I'll upload 3 times a week. Monday and Friday will be when I upload video's taken from my 'Free For All Thursday' Twitch Stream. Wednesday will be when I upload Super Smash Brothers WiiU Replays and other Smash Brothers related content. In addition, once per month I will post a Speedpaint video taken from my 'Technical Tuesday' Twitch Stream. This will be uploaded on a Sunday.
This schedule is in place as of now. In fact, check out the first video in my play through of Pokémon Uranium bellow!
This is a starting point. I intend to up the pace once I'm comfortable, with plans to create YouTube exclusive content in time. That's about it for now. Please check everything out. Follow me on my Twitch Subscribe to me on YouTube. Watch a few videos, click a few adds and support small time Streamers and YouTubers! Peace! -DH-
If you're subscribed to me on YouTube you may have seen my latest video (If not, you should totally clink here now!) In this video I drew one of my friend's (and potential future member of The Bross) Dungeons and Dragons characters; Dex the Tiefling Sorcerer as an Avatar. The video is the product of 2 separate streams on my Twitch channel (which you can follow by clicking here!). It took about 7 hours to draw and paint (with a few hiccups along the way!), but I've condensed it down to about 20 mins by upping the speed by 2500 times! Anyway, you should go check it out.
Thanks for reading and watching! Comments and constructive criticism always welcome, either here, on the video itself or on the completed pieces Instagram post If you'd like to know what I'm doing follow me on YouTube, Twitch and all the socials @DarKHaZZl3. Also, I've updated The Underhive Hero with some more hobby project goodness, so go check that out too. Peace! -DH-
Hi guys, whats happening? A smol update for y'all today. Recently I've been busy doing stuff... nothing noteworthy for the most part, but I thought I'd let you know about a new show I'm running on my Twitch channel as of this week! If you've read some of my previous entries, or watched my channel before, you may have noticed that on occasion I am joined by my friend Andrew aka MyWallet (MyWallet the Butt Knight). He's a smash player who mains Samus, and labbs for the Samus discord. In addition we've recently started to compete in local tournaments (by compete I mean get destroyed in).
Well, as of this week we'll be starting a show on my Twitch channel.
Every Wednesday he'll be joining me to play stuff... mainly retro(ish) Nintendo games. So, I'd appreciate if you joined us there! So make sure to follow me on Twitch and Twitter to be sure you don't miss it! PS: Here is the shows Twitch banner :D
My YouTube and Twitch endeavors have stalled a little. Editing videos is time consuming, and I don't think the things I stream make for great YouTube videos in the first place....so I'm considering my options in that corner for the world.
That being said, I kinda enjoy streaming...it gives me a regular outlet for the games I choose to stream. I've also been considering a hobby stream....but to do that I need that sweet, sweet new microphone and camera haha.
With streaming in mind, I thought I'd announce a little thing.
I'm going to be doing a give away! Yup. I announced this on stream on Tuesday. When I hit 15 followers on Twitch, I'm going to give away a digital copy of the Starbomb album! A bit of a random thing to give away, but it something I think gamers will enjoy, so...
This will be done through random chance. All of my followers will be automatically entered.
MOAR update! If only I'd been this productive my whole life I'd have A) Finished this project when I starte dit, and B) Probabaly gotten a lot further in life. BUT I DIGRESS! There are no work in progress shots for this, just glorious finished models. This first is Maginos the mage.
This is where the comeback started. I just fancied doing him on a whim (I knew leaving them all on my desk would get to me eventually!). The hardest part was trying to get him to match his more white furred artwork, without being too bright. The way I decided to get around this was to just make the rest with a lot of viable fur darker (Nez and Filch to some extent). He'll look light enough by comparison. I really enjoyed doing his wooden staff and the ladybird. The next up is Filch.
Filch was largely done to be honest. I just was really uninspired to do his fur and knife... and that was still true while I was finishing him off. But I really like how the fur turned out; nice and dark, buy with enough flicks of light grey to give it a good texture. I also decided to spruce up the knife. First I added the little poison tip, to give him more of a D&D rouge appearance rather than just a thief... but ti still didn't fit well. It was then I decided on the slightly battered golden hit for the knife and boom! Perfect. 2 more down. 2 left to go; Tilda and Nez (as well as 5 cockroaches, but screw those guys). Nez shouldn't be too hard... just trying to make him stand out as interesting will be the challenge. I'm still not looking forward to Tilda... too much white :| Anyway, that is it for this update! If you like what I do, why not subscribe and check out all of my other projects? I post non-board game related hobby on The Underhive Hero. Recently I've been doing some Salamanders Space Marines. I've been streaming games on Twitch; mainly Heartstone, Rocket league and more recently Chronicle: Runescape Legends. I also put highlight reels up, and other videos I think are worth it on my YouTube Channel. If you want a head sup on what I'm working on then follow my Instagram and Twitter (Both @DarKHaZZl3). Anyway. That's all for now. Until next time! -DH-
So, I've been streaming Chronicle: Runescape Legends a fair amount recently... And unlike Hearthstone I think I might try and keep this up. So, to further that goal, I've set myself a challenge. That challenge is to compete in the Chronicle Community Cup! If you are unaware (like I was until yesterday) The CCC is a community based competition. You can read more about it here; https://www.reddit.com/r/RSChronicle/comments/4fgu2u/chronicle_community_cup_signups/ And also here; http://challonge.com/ChronicleCCup So yeah, I will be streaming the matches on my Twitch channel and uploading them to YouTube. So follow those links and keep you eyes peeled to my Twitter!! So yeah. Watch this space! -DH-
While I was in high school we had a tradition. A couple of my friends, my brother and I would, almost every Saturday, order 2 extra large Pizzas from Castellos (Buy one get one free!), and spend pretty much the whole day playing |Time Splitters 2 and Super Smash Brothers Melee on Gamecube.
We played for years. It wasn't until we all hit the age where you stop going round your friends to play video games that we really stopped playing. In our group of friends, even in our extend groups of friends, I was pretty good. I mean, we were all decent, but my brother and I played so much that it would always come down to the two of us. This was before the internet kids, so I had no idea of all the crazy shit you could do; wave dashing, crouch cancelling... I just knew that I could probably take on any 3 of my friends and come out on top (unless my brother was involved). So fast forward to the modern day. Trash Bros is out now (Smash Bros 4/ Wii U) and it is a totally different story. I'm terrible at it. I mean, I've gotten better in the last months or two, but I'm nowhere near the level I was at Melee, or the level of my friends who play it now. I remind them of this often. When we play Melee, we have decent, close games. I'm out of touch, and they're not bad themselves. But I still do fairly well. So, a few weeks back, one of my Smash Bros fanatical friends informed me of an upcoming Smash tournament(I've mentioned My Wallet the Butt Knight before, no - check him out on YouTube). We decided to go, thinking we'd be do okay. How wrong we were. We all got knocked out in the first round with no wins. And the same happened in the Knockout round. I manged to win 1 game, and really should have done better in the knockout rounds. My Wallet should have smashed it, but lack of sleep, nerves and general pressure because of the first tournament setting saw him get knocked out too. While we were a bit salty about it, we're definitely up for another one. I have no idea when it will be, but stay tuned! -DH-
Self confidence is something I've had beaten out of me over the years. As a result I'm not overly confident in my ability to anything.
So, a few years back I had the desire to start a YouTube channel. Me and a Friend got super excited about it, and started making plans and doing research. He was exactly what i thought I lacked; the 'not so grump' to my 'grump.' But when push came to shove, he bailed.
This happens often, and eventually, I'd just had enough.
So I decided to go it alone. I set up a channel, but couldn't bring myself to record anything, until Twitch happened.
Twitch gives you the ground to just make something. No editing, no do overs.
So I started streaming, editing the recordings of streams, and uploading them to my YouTube channel.
While I've gotten better, this isn't really what I wanted to do.
I wanted to do YouTube because it would be fun. I just want to share those moments with other people, and I do, on occasion, because of Twitch and YouTube. But I want something more immediate.
So, here I am, frustrated again. The wheels are in motion, but with no destination. I was never one for wanderlust, so I'll try to find somewhere.
Yep, it's another custom Amiibo project. I have a few of my own on the go now, and I really should get round to finishing them off. If you read my last post I have started to make some progress on them again. In the meantime I've been pottering about doing other projects here and there, which you can check out over on The Underhive Hero. While my Custom Amiibo stuff is fairly common knowledge amongst my friends, it dpoesn't really do much for the majority of them; not a great dela of them own the WiiU/ 3DS (which in my opinion is a crying shame!). However, in one of my circles of friends the Nintendo hype is real, and recently one person from said group approached me with an offer. He would provide a load of Amiibo's for me to pretty much do whatever I fancied with them. This way I could widen my palate so to speak, with different style, concepts, colour schemes and so on. As cool as this was, I insisted that he have some creative input too, so that he was happy with the stuff he got back. Also, it gives me a 'working for commission' feel as apposed to off my own passion, which is a different mindset entirely.
Since then we've discussed several ideas, and through that process I've come up with some great concepts for Amiibo repaints and sculpts. A few of those are some time off, and in the interim I wanted to get started on something right now. So we decided to start with Marth from the Fire Emblem series.
While some other projects are going to involve sculpting and stuff, we just went with a simple repaint option with this guy, and it was one we both agreed on immediately (albeit for different reasons). We decided to go for Marth's white outfit from Super Smash Brothers
Marth has been my main since Melee, an I've always played in the white scheme and called him Elvis. No idea why. My friend just thinks he look fabulous in white... So he's currently being base coated in grey, ready for many, many layers of ever lightening grey to white. Fun times ahead. Stay tuned for more updates.
That's all for now. I've got some more interesting projects lined up for the near future, so keep you eyes peeled to my Instagram for your first point of contact.
I think I'm going to shorten the clips of games to fit more in each video. One game per video isn't enough to cover a whole season haha. Ahh well. Back to working on 1 billion different projects at once! -DH-
So if you fancy a break from the Superbowl, and wanna watch some Hearthstone videos, go check it out! Hopefully there will be a lot more of these in the foreseeable future, so stay tuned if Hearthstone is your thing! Like and subscribe and all that :D
So after talking about creating a Twitch channel in my last post I decided to go ahead and edit the footage so I could upload it to my YouTube channel (which as it turns out is quite the feat haha). So after hours of Googling and tinkering...
Yup.....11 minutes. Ah well. Hopefully there will be more to come, but damn it is time consuming. If I can get my streams to record a little bit better in terms of quality, then I'll probably just upload them straight up. Anyway. Enjoy. Please Like and Subscribe to my YouTube channel, And follow me on Twitch and Twitter! Peace! -DH-
So this post with be a bit more diary entry than usual. I'm on holiday from work so thought it was high time I did some of the things I've been wanting to, and meaning to do, for months now. One of which was start blogging again. Not only as a means of expression, but to motivate me to get things done. This is especially true of The Cardboard Cartographer. I'd built up a little corner of the internet for it, and then shamefully let it rot... I totally needed the break, so it's not something I'm going to hate myself for... I just wish I had more time, resources and hands to do these things. I've tried enlisting folk to help out, but it never sticks, which is a shame. The new one issue a month work schedule should ease the load on this one, and I hope I can get it up and running again sooner rather than later! Another thing I've wanted to do for a long, long time is Youtube and the like. I spent a great deal of time researching how to record and edit video and audio so I could do this stuff. Yet I never got round to actually doing anything Something has always held me back. Fear Fear of not being entertaining enough on my own. I had originally intended to do this with someone else, but they bailed on me when we were all set to go. We I'd spent a good while working on various assets for the show, but we never got started.
I still really want to do this kind of stuff, and have friends who want to do it too. But only I seem to be willing to put the hours in to actually research, set up, do admin, organise and actually record, edit and post anything. So as a result nothing has really happened. I did set up my own channel, which I've posted about before. But that fear of not being good enough on my own has stopped me from doing anything. Still, at least I've got my own stuff set up for it.
I've had enough of that fear though. I want to push forward, and if people come with me, awesome, and if they don't, that's okay too. So, here I am, working on several thousand projects at once and trying to have the energy to fight of the apathy that comes form being overwhelmed. To this end I've tried to reinvigorate myself by starting with something that takes a little less maintenance and set up, and that is Twitch. I finally got my head round Twitch and OBS thanks to a little help from my friend Shamus and some googling. I got to re use all my YouTube assets and artwork, so it almost looks like a real thing! There is some tweaking to be done for sure, but I'm working on it. I'll be giving streaming a go once I've worked out said kinks, even if it is only a hobby stream where I sit and build & paint models for an hour. I mean, I'd be doing that anyway, so why not share it, right? Anyway, that's all for now. Links to all the new stuff will be added to the side bars, or you can head to my Twitch profile by clicking here! If you want to follow what I do and when, then hit me up on Twitter @DarKHaZZl3 Peace!
-DH-
I can't say I've had a lot going on in my life, but it does seem to get on top of me.
The Cardboard Cartographer has taken a sabbatical until I feel like the time is right to re-start it. I think the every two weeks schedule was killing me joy wise. I'm also thinking about bringing a friend in to help me out with the playing games side of things...
Also, I finally went and set up a youtube channel. It is mainly for research... eventually I want a multi person channel playing games of all varieties. Time will tell on that one.
If you want to watch my latest project evolve then head to my YouTube channel. I don't have my own URL yet, but in time who knows?
That's all for now. I'll try to get some more updates in soon.... I have been working on several projects, I just haven't been posting about them.
That is a pun. Something I usually reserve for The Underhive Hero, but seeing how this post is somewhat craft related I think it is fitting. I've spent a lot of my free time over the last year watching videos on YouTube. I try to keep up to date on my selected YouTubers shows each day/week and idly trundle through their back catalogs when I'm bored. This is something I never thought I'd end up doing, but there you have it. One of these people is a lady who goes by the handle Dodger. you can check out her two channel here - DexBonus & Press Heart To Continue One day I stumbled upon this:
I love this idea. After a bit more trawling I noticed Dodger had previously made another video where she made coasters with maps and tiles too. I thought this looked like it could be a lot of fun and easily personalised, so I thought I'd give it a go. After some intense research, I found it near impossible to find reasonably priced wooden...anything in the UK. So I headed down to a local discount tile warehouse and picked up a few free samples to try the idea out on. I ordered a Skyrim map from eBay and butchered myself the corner piece. No one is going to want this piece, so I didn't mind messing it up. Here is the result;
And here it is in use (under a 330ml can of coke) for size comparison;
I think it came out pretty well. I think in future I'll mess the map up a little more; added scrunching, some tears and burns maybe.... who knows. Now all I need to do is go and grab a ton of the slate tile I used to make this one and I can have some matching coasters! Not the biggets update I know, but I've been kept busy of late with the usual stuff. Issue 5 of The Cardboard Cartographer e-zine is out. A review of Cash and Guns second edition amongst other things awaits on the other side of that link.
I also managed to do some painting! I finally finished my Lamp Posts for my War Gaming board, you can check it out over on The Underhive Hero or my hobby thread on The Bolter and Chainsword.
I've been working on my Dungeons and Dragons campaign with some story writing, adventure planning and lots of sketches and drawings.
I have started to do some research on another 'rant like' post, so if you miss the Political stuff it might well be making a strong comeback. I cannot abide by the state of things currently.
Anyway that's all for now. Comment, Tweet me @DarkHaZZl3 or ignore this. Whatever floats your boat
