State of the Wall: 5-27-13

Well, it's that time again, time to look at the updates on projects, the upcoming episodes, and other such fun!

Click "read more" to check it all out under the cut!


Schedule of Upcoming Episodes
6/3 – Comic Book Quickies #1
6/10 – Kamandi at Earth’s End #4
6/17 – SCI-Spy #3
6/24 – Star Trek: The Next Generation/X-Men #1
7/1 – Mr. T and the T-Force #2
7/8 – Miller Time: All-Star Batman and Robin #6
7/15 – Tandy Computer Whiz Kids: A Deadly Choice
7/22 – Battlestar Galactica: Journey’s End #1
7/29 – Marville #5

The next two months have the unintentional theme of "sequels to previous episodes I've done." I didn't do it deliberately - I actually mostly just wanted to get away from theme months. March of the Titans and 2099 Month were fine, but it gets kind of grating to review the same topic or at least similar material for multiple weeks at a time.

And to clarify what "Comic Book Quickies" is, basically I've collected lots of shorter material that isn't long enough to support a full episode, like the Hostess Fruit Pie Ads, short stories, or other such material. As such we're going to try a kind of hodge-podge of taking a look at as much as time permits. This will be similar to the Comic Book Advertisements episode, except with stuff focused specifically on comics.


Should Lightbringer Be In the Public Domain?
Sooo yeah, a while ago I said I was looking for a new writer for Lightbringer. Needless to say I STILL have not had a chance to look over people's submissions. As such, a thought occurred to me and I wanted to throw this out there: what if I were to officially release Lightbringer into the public domain? That way, anybody who wanted to work on it could do so and have their own version of the product and their own ideas on what to do with it.

Do people think this is a good idea? Bad idea? I'd like to hear feedback on that. I'd probably still answer in private the plans I had for it.


DVD Update
The DVD is coming together pretty well. All three episodes have been filmed, 2 of the 3 storyline segments have been filmed (which may require additional audio work for the same reason I haven't filmed the third segment - it's been very rainy in Minnesota over the last few weeks and the last story segment involves filming outside).

Since I haven't had a chance to gauge how long the DVD is, I still can't say what extras will be on it. The top priorities are a Making Of Atop the Fourth Wall segment as well as talking about the various characters of the show. An additional thing I'd like to include are riffs, but we'll see how much space is left.


History of Power Rangers
So obviously my plan of getting this all done with before the end of the year hasn't been progressing all that well, but I'm still going to try for it. I've been busy the last few weeks on the DVD and the plushie cybermats along with the regular episodes, so I haven't been able to watch any of Overdrive yet.


Plushie Cybermats
Speaking of, this is going along very well. I don't know how popular they'll actually be at conventions when I go to them, but hopefully people will like them enough. And worst case scenario, I intend to sell whatever is left on Etsy either way since the things have proven so popular before. Now because they take time to produce by my own hands, I'm prioritizing getting them done with for conventions, but the good news for some cons is that I'll have an actual table and since I bought a kid's sewing machine that's small and portable, I can bring it along and work on them while actually at the con.


Longbox of the Damned
I'm still hoping to do a Midsummer's Nightmare of Longbox of the Damned in July or August, though August is pushing it. The hardest part of this process is the writing - it takes the longest to do and when I have to fill in almost every day, it's a bit difficult. Even if I do end up having to scrap the Midsummer's Nightmare videos, we're still going to have Longbox of the Damned in October and I PROMISE that.


New T-Shirt Designs!
We have some new t-shirt designs compliments of Masterthecreater, the guy who does the title cards for the show! Some of them have been long-awaited character ones, others are some new catchphrase t-shirts!





To get a closer look at them, why not head over to the Printfection Store and take a look! Or maybe even buy one or two!


The Adblock "Issue"
Sooo obviously there have been a few responses to the video I made about adblockers. I wanted to address a few things, particularly for concerned fans.

First and foremost, a lot of people have been expressed concern about the amount of hate and vitriol they perceive that I have recived over this. To be perfectly honest, it's really not that much. While there ARE plenty of troll posts or just negative comments and responses, they're still overall pretty civil. There have been video responses to it on youtube, but the ultimate irony there is that... well... I don't really care about the youtube stuff. If you've noticed my youtube page, you'll see that it's very rarely used. Sure, I watch videos on youtube, but I don't really care about any video responses people have made over it. Furthermore, while I did respond to a few people in the video's comments section shortly after it was released, I've pretty much decided to ignore it. I've found that youtube comments pages are really not any useful place to discuss anything and the sheer number of hateful posts is not worth my effort. I was actually tempted to disable comments altogether, but I didn't want to deal with the people who would start sending e-mails shouting "YOU'RE SUPPRESSING FREE SPEECH!!!111" even though it was posted on this blog, on tumblr, and on TGWTG, where there has been PLENTY of debate, both positive and negative.

And even then, people are entitled to their opinion. The goal of the "Please Let the Ads Play" video was to explain in a calm and reasonable fashion how ads affect ME and MY videos. Some say this is selfish. I say I'm not attempting to start some grand crusade or preach a higher moral message about the virtues of advertising - I was just pointing out how it affected ME. But if people disagree with that, let them. Do not start flame wars over any reason, particularly not over this. If people are genuinely acting like trolls or just spewing hate over the thing... let them. Those who have legitimate concerns can freely make them and if I have time I will answer to the best of my ability. If they don't, then let them fester and rot in their own space.

I'm not depressed or concerned or worried or feel saddened about any of this - the response has been pretty light, quite frankly. My fans, as always, are the best people out there and I'm extremely proud to call you fans. I didn't ask for any donations, nor do I WANT any donations, but regardless people have been extremely generous when they certainly didn't need to be.

And something else to clarify: I am not currently in danger of anything, not now nor when I made the video - it was supposed to inform the people of the issues and how it COULD affect me in the future. I'm doing just fine and still able to live off of the ad revenue. Better now, in fact, and I'll tell you why.

Another recurring thing that people who didn't like the video had to say was that it was a big mistake to do this, since the video was somehow "patronizing" and "condescending," plus it informed people that adblock existed, and thus for all those reasons the video would just drive people away from watching the ads or to stop watching me entirely. Since that video a week and a half ago, I've been keeping tabs on my numbers and the amount of monetizable views. The number of people watching has not fluctuated. Roughly the same amount of people who watched before the video are watching now. And the monetizable views? Before the video, I was only getting monetizable revnue on 1/3 to 1/2 of my audience. Since then, that number has risen to 3/4 to 9/10 depending on the day. Basically, I've jumped from having less than half of my audience with ads to almost ALL of them watching ads.

While I have no way of predicting the future and this could still result in something bad, at the moment... yeah, making the video wasn't a mistake. At all.


Conventions



Storylines
Storylines in videos resume July 1st. Well, it was nice having that free time to work on other projects. XD