jelloapocalypse
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2024 Projects - Roadmap
🕑 Added 2024-02-22 19:56:57 +0000 UTCI realized that things have been pretty quiet on my end the last few months for a variety of reasons, so I figured I should make a post detailing what I've been working on and what order things are likely to come out in.
2023 was very much a year of me being hired to work on Secret Projects for things other than Epithet and my YouTube channel. I tried and failed to balance those projects with my own work because I always prioritize other people's work going smoothly over anything I'm working on. That's because when other people are that guy and get in the way of my projects, I want to kill them! So I never want to be that guy myself! Yay!
I had one major writing project on and off from January to July, and then a second major directing project which I expected to last from August through Oct/Nov, but it actually lasted through until January 2024. Whoops. What are you going to do. I'll talk about those when I can talk about them, which will not be soon.
I was also trying to get the PoP book out, which has been unnecessarily difficult, and my last goal of 2023 was to finalize most of the remaining Kickstarter rewards. I still have three books to write, but those come after everything else is done, so getting the signed copies shipped and all the physical busywork off my plate was my #1 priority.
I was busy in December, January, and I'm out of the country for all of February, but this upcoming year I'm finally pivoting focus back to my YouTube channel and I'm going to be focusing on the following projects:
THE DOKAPON VIDEO - (ETA Late March would be nice, but April is more likely)
A video breakdown of all the mechanical issues of Dokapon Kingdom and its 2023 port, Dokapon Kingdom: Connect. Vixen, Aloha and I played this on stream a few months back and I became obsessed with the sheer badness of its design. When something is bad, I like to research into why. Was it underfunded? Was production rushed? Was there a problem with the staff? Or was the developer just genuinely incompetent? In this case I'm almost certain the answer is the latter.
This video is sort of a spiritual successor to Let's Make a Pokemon Game and Let's Make an Animal Crossing Game, but it's much longer and more mean-spirited than those were. This also serves as practice for me editing a video of this length for the first time so I have a little more experience under my belt by the time I get to the Jetters video, which, yes, I am still working on.
This video is about... 60% done. It's nearly two hours long and requires a ton of visual work and lots of footage-gathering. Also math. Lots and lots of math and graphs.
SO THIS IS BASICALLY ONE PIECE
When StiB was close to ending, I knew the only series that might be a good fit for a future installment was One Piece. The correct formula for a good StiB is a franchise I know a lot about that has some great elements but a lot of undeniable flaws. That's One Piece. However, Oz was not interested in doing OP because Oz hates the art style.
Bo's willing to do it though!
We've got about a third of the video storyboarded, but we keep getting hit by Real Life issues. Bo's got chronic bad luck this year and I don't feel comfortable giving any kind of ETA on this because while there's a small chance things will settle and work out smoothly, I think it's more likely a tornado will crash into their house.
...Which actually did happen to the illustrator of the Fire Emblem/Zelda/Star Butterfly videos!
When this is done it'll be the longest StiB.
DOGS IN LOVE 3 - (Late Spring, probably?)
Dreading working on this one, to be honest. To my recollection, I already sorted out most of the clips I'm going to use for it, which is a big chunk of work done, but doing the animation with the portraits takes forever. I spent entire days correcting the issues on the portraits I got commissioned for DiL2, to the degree I didn't even bother hiring the artist to make more for the 3rd video. Like, what's the point if I have to spend hours upon hours correcting all the coloring issues between the portraits that makes them unusable?
Originally I was going to ask Bo to help me with the only new portrait I'll need (Gacha's evolution), but Bo's busy with StiB OP, so I'll... cross that bridge when I come to it, I guess.
I like Dogs in Love a lot, I don't really enjoy making it. It isn't the kind of video editing I enjoy. I like coming up with silly, unique effects, transitions and visual gags to pepper over gameplay footage. But there's so little to work with on the Colosseum/XD footage that you just have to do an insane amount of character animation to cover for it, and doing that animation is boring. Then doing the SOUND DESIGN for that character animation straight up sucks.
But yeah, I gotta do this eventually, so what are you gonna do.
For years I've been planning to do an edit-down of our Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance / Radiant Dawn games, but honestly I kinda just want to move on to more video essay work in the future rather than this gameplay editing stuff. Those videos take a LONG time. The only easy one was the Skies video, which only took a month.
I dunno, we'll see. There's some amazing gags in those playthrough but I feel like we've moved so far past them as improvisers now?
In the meantime you can watch AndYetNoBananas's two amazing animations covering the Ashnard Fight which is pretty inarguably the highlight of the playthrough.
EPITHET BOOKS 1 + 2 - (I plan to write both of these in Spring but I don't expect to see them anywhere for over a year, given my publisher's current track record)
Look. Writing is easy. Writing is fast. I wrote all of PoP in like a month and a half, and that didn't have source material to pull from. These books do.
Not really looking forwards to the first book because I'm not changing too much and I think writing it will be a little boring, but I think it'll be fun to rework and expand Redwood Run. I'd like Howie to have a bigger role and I'd like to explore the downsides of being a Mundie in this setting a bit more thoroughly.
I'm also planning to do some in-person book signings after the book is available in stores. Probably one in LA and one in Dallas/Fort Worth so I can have Dani and Kyle be there with me. No idea when or even if those'll happen, but I'll announce them here for sure.
TOP 100 ANIME OPENINGS PROJECT
Weirdly, this is the thing that's currently brainworming in my head nonstop.
If you're a weeb and/or squeeb you may have seen videos on YouTube where people upload their "Top 50 Anime Openings" or "Best 100 Anime OPs of All Time" or "My Favorite 800 Openings". Yes that last one is real and yes we watched all of it.
It's exactly what it sounds like. People post a list of all their favorite openings in order, and then they always put Brave Shine at #1 for some reason.
But nobody's ever done it right.
See, the problem with these lists is that 99% of the time, people are really just listing what they think the Best 100 Anime OP Songs are. But this is an OPENING. These people neglect to consider all the elements. The visuals. The editing. The credits. The symbology. The themes and story that the Opening is trying to convey.
Amy and I have decided to correct this.
For the past... Jesus, maybe 8 months, we have watched 1000+ anime openings, many of them dozens of times. We obviously haven't watched 1000 anime ourselves, so to widen our net we went through every Top 100 list we could find to find candidates. We asked everyone we knew for suggestions. We dug in places nobody on earth has thought to look for decades just to find weird one-off great openings from shows lost to time.
I sat down and watched all 58 fucking Detective Conan openings with Vixen and not ONE OF THEM is good. I have SUFFERED for this project.
Our goal is to make an academic list of the best Openings of all time, ranking all their components holistically. A banger of a song is not enough. Incredible fight animation is not enough. Everything must be considered.
For instance, the first Fire Force opening song absolutely fucks and the animation is cool as hell. And then they slapped ugly, bold, white credits on top of it that break all the lines of action and ruin the whole thing because clearly nobody considered where the credits would go when they storyboarded their OP. Whoops.
"Hey dude, where should we drop our song credit?"
"How about right in the middle of the line of action on top of a character's face."
"Bro you are a genius."
And our favorite shot, from the Otherwise Really Good second Hyouka opening. Check out how they credited the animators who worked on the OP.
Looks good guys! No notes! Not covering anything important at all!
Oh, wait. It's actually covering both focal characters and completely obscuring the main visual of the girl reaching through the reflection to grab the guy, which is the emotional climax of the entire opening and the whole point of the visual storytelling.
I'm sure those OP animators are super happy you credited them by RUINING THEIR HARD WORK.
Amy and I have been having so much fun with this. WAY too much fun with this. We've spent hours debating the effectiveness of openings, how all their elements tie together, etc. etc. And to make it clear how seriously we are taking this academic endeavor and how impartial we're trying to be, the Bomberman Jetters opening does not make the list. That's right. I'm taking one for the team. For art.
It is currently sitting at like #115 though. That song is a fucking bop.
We're planning to release two videos going over our list. One will be a smaller, more digestible YouTube video on the main channel. It'll have a little introduction with some of the credentials we're looking for alongside examples. Then, the openings will be stratified in groups of twenty: 100-81, 80-61, etc. Those openings will all be in the same tier as each other, because even with all the rules Amy and I have come up with, it's basically impossible to """objectively""" compare something like the dark experimental Serial Experiments Lain opening to the well animated bop-filled-with-tits Dragon Maid S opening and decide which one is a better piece of art. It's more about the general level of goodness rather than "This one is specifically #48 and this one is specifically #47."
That being said, Amy and I do have our actual definitive list of 100 openings. And we're planning to sit down and go over what we like and dislike about every single one on call, then edit a video with the explanations together and put it up as a Patreon exclusive for the highest tier of backers. It's probably going to be like... 5 hours long. Haha! Uh oh!
Amy also wanted to see if we could do it live somehow so people could react to our choices and our orders. We'll see??? I dunno! But anyways, we've been VERY excited about this project and most of our dates in the last few months have been long, nerdy discussions about which openings are good and which ones are bad and why.
Anyways that'll go up. Eventually! We'll see. This isn't an important project, but it is a fun one and it's definitely the one I'm most into at the moment.
AREN'T THERE SOME EPITHET SONGS YOU STILL NEED TO DO?
Yeah there's a Giovanni Villain Song, a Giovanni Lullaby, and the extended version of Deadline.
I've poked Plaster and Sapphire about the latter several times. I was hoping to get that done in December but Plaster's been intermittently busy and/or incapacitated for a long time. So. That's not great!
I've got a composer lined up for the Gio Villain song and that might get in the works in March or so, we'll see. No promises though, these have been really difficult to get the ball rolling on through no fault of my own.
THAT BOMBERMAN JETTERS VIDEO JELLO WON'T SHUT UP ABOUT
My main excuse to work on the Dokapon video was so that I had a test essay I could make on a subject I didn't care about that much before a video I care a lot about. This Jetters video has been in some level of production for over a year. Believe it or not I actually had to contact local newspapers for some scans of articles from 15 years ago for it. I did RESEARCH on this bitch. And getting the footage was Not Easy.
Amy and I are planning to go on a road trip and move in together some time in late Summer. My goal is to have everything on this list done before then.
I really want this video to be good. The script makes me cry twice.
Anyways that's pretty much all The Stuff. You can expect The Stuff eventually.
Comments
Luna Celeste Anderson
nichijou eatssss
WaywardWasp
As sad as I am to hear about maybe no PoR/RD video (those streams are my favorites and I desperately want to show everyone I know the bits in a more accessible form), I cannot imagine the strength of will the Dogs In Love video editing took.
Nefaerieous Tangent
Oh dang, a book signing in the Dallas area? I might need to buy the book JUST for that (I already bought the audiobook). I hope I have the vacation days for it.
Rebecca Bieth
Nice, we take those! For Gintama fans, "didn't quite make it" is the highest of honors!
JelloApocalypse
The MS Paint one gets an honorable mention and 16 came close to top 100 but didn't quite make it.
JelloApocalypse
That Fire Emblem Game video is a long way away because I want the script of the game finished before I make the video.
mike
Congrats on moving it together, and I will gladly pay extra for the 5 hour long review on anime OP’s. Like hearing you guys talk.
ver.
Second this! I feel like the problem with making a PoR/RD video would be the same as making an In Stars and Time video - even though the bits were great, half of the charm of watching Jello & friends play those games was hearing them breathe life into immaculately written stories. It’s not the same as, say, the Dogs in Love or AA: Investigations videos where the bits are quite literally salvaging the games. I feel like I’d be more interested in a Jello Fire Emblem video essay instead.
Trey Nix
I apologize if this has been a question you’ve answered elsewhere, but I wanted to know if you have any aspirations on when you want to make your “Let’s Make a Fire Emblem Game” video. If you still feel it’s too far out to make any predictions on when you want to make it, that’s perfectly fine, I’m just excited to watch you pitch your ideas, and am curious as to if you have a loose timeframe.
Azelhi
Another example of openings absolutely ruined by their credit placement are the goddamn Soul Eater OP's, it arguably has it even worse then Fire Force.
Azelhi
I've also unfortunately been cultivating an openings list for the past.... oh god 3 years now? I almost certainly don't have as much of a backlog of older shows in my spreadsheet (and half of the links are dead nowadays so I still need to fix that) but it'll be interesting to see how your (wrong if it diverges from mine at all) list compares to my (totally non-subjective divine opinion) one.
Zo
I’m not sure if these are the best but anime ops that I always remember are: Cop Craft Persona 5 anime, 2nd Op Gatchaman crowds (both ops) Sakamoto desu ga! Drifters GTO (both ops) Hellsing (old one) Megalobox 2nd op Dorohedoro Nichijou
Candaru Driemor
Are you moving to Canada? Or Yam to LA?
Madeline Stringer
As someone who is genuinely a lunatic who does things like watch and rate every barbie animated movie and make a MAL account specifically to watch and rate every magical girl anime I can (both for fun as I create thousands of characters), I'm very excited for five hours of content! :) Don't burn yourself out, good luck!
Bran Garbaj
That is fair
Fauve
Holy shit Flip Flappers and Oniisama e are on there. Banger quiz my day has been greatly enriched
Count Nero
I think you may have addressed this before (maybe even in the vods themselves) but are you okay with people making edits of your FE9/10 streams? Theyre my favorite streams you guys have done and I know there were a lot of good bits you wanted to use so I'd be sad if someone didn't do something with them. If it is okay to use them, is there anywhere I can easily grab all of then from?
JelloApocalypse
My rule of thumb is that anything that takes more than 5 extra hours of work needs to go on the highest tier and this took thousands of hours of work so I kind of don't have a choice
JelloApocalypse
Neither Utena nor Moriarty made the list, sorry. And no, we don't count movie openings TV shows only. Also, no offense, but judging by your suggestions it kind of seems like your interest in anime directly corresponds to how gay it is, and if so may I recommend this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkR-OU0uqXQ
Bran Garbaj
Very intrigued by the OPs video although it's a shame the full explanations version will be highest tier only (totally agree with Fire Force OP tho)
Fauve
If Utena doesn't make the list I'll eat my hat. Also it'd be very cool if Moriarty the Patriot gets squeezed in somewhere bc I need more people to watch the "Irene Adler is trans and changes his name to James Bond" show. Also do anime movies count? Because when it comes to Madoka I strongly believe Rebellion's OP is better than the show's purely for the scene where all the girls are dancing but Homura is having an existential crisis dead center. It's extremely funny and very accurate.
Beckett’s Bricks and Broadway
Will there also be pictures?
Beckett’s Bricks and Broadway
Same man, I have re-dubbed it to the “Phoenica philosophy”
Rebecca Bieth
I'm gonna cry ONE THOUSAND tears if no Gintama OP makes the cut, lol.
dollqueen
Congrats on moving in with Yam!
Kelzini
super fair, i think they're all really bad. i wish more openings did the cool thing some of the jojo and the welcome to the nhk ops do and actually integrate the credits into the animation so they're not lazily slapped on. it's so hard to find an upload of the nhk op with credits bc ppl have been brainwashed to think "creditless = good" no matter the context bc so many anime just lazily slap them onto the intro. it's very annoying when trying to find ones that actually use them in clever ways!
BreadBunny
the dodapon video essay really did CRASH into this timeline. Overtaken by the hater spirit lmao
JelloApocalypse
Black Clover OP10 is the best one by like an ENORMOUS margin. It also has an elf man going "Aa~aaAA-ah!" in time with the music and it cracks me up every time. The other Black Clover openings did not even come close to making the list lmao.
JelloApocalypse
I intend to have audiobooks for the first two Epithet books, but I won't be editing these ones myself.
Aqua Allison
Oh man, that is a LOT in the pipeline for down the road. I’m super excited for the 100 OPs idea, not to mention just everything else you have planned. But also OH MY GOSH YOU AND AMY ARE MOVING IN TOGETHER AAAAHHHH!!!💙💙💙 I have sorta stolen your view on romance in that, “I love love and I love to love love,” so seeing this just made me grin so much!!! So happy for the two of you, you two interacting on stream is always the cutest and I’m happy to hear you two are doing well in that regard.
Daniel
"writing is easy and fast" man i envy you. Still, lots of fun stuff, excited for all of it, especially the jetters video. Ive been waiting for this own since you off handedly mentioned loving it in an audio post like 5-7 years ago
Ryan Skellenger
I know you've said you wont be finalizing the Epithet TTRPG until you finish books 1&2, but when the time comes will you need play-testers? You could release what you have to your patrons and make a survey or a place to report conerns or balancing issues
The Ferret
Heck yeah stuff. but also, holy shit so much. Don't burn out and ruin your hands again dude.
Kelzini
very excited for the bomberman jetters video and im personally, *especially* excited for the anime openings list. ive also seen the top 800 openings list, its awful! (shout outs to my girlfriend who i force on a consistent basis to watch these god awful videos with me when i find a new one. also sorry to her.) so many of these videos are so so so bad. soooo bad. if i have to watch another one and see, the same 3 black clover openings again (with OP 10 being the highest rated, because people fucking love that opening for some godforsaken reason) im going to eat a house out of frustration. very excited to see what you two have for your own list, also congrats on moving in together (:
The_Weird_Thingyyy
Take your time, this all sounds great! So happy for you and Amy:3
Ignis Astrorum
5 + hour talk about anime openings, sign me the fuck up.
Zo
I’d love to hear more about those secret projects, what’s the ETA on those if you don’t mind me asking?
Nick Cantin
WOW! That's a lot of projects! Fingers crossed that they all go smoothly, they all sound like a blast. Is there a plan to release an audiobook/pdf of Epithet Books 1+2 before the physical release? If I remember correctly things have gone back and forth on that and I wasn't sure where they ended up (or is that not even a blip on the radar yet since the books aren't written and you've got a lot else going on).
