Video has exploded in popularity online, and is rapidly becoming– if it hasn’t already– one of the most popular mediums for people to express themselves, chat, promote, and experiment online. Chances are good if you, the listener, are hanging out online in creative social spaces, you’re already watching video content, whether it be keeping up with a favourite streamer, putting on Youtube movie reviews in the background while you work, watching or interacting with the creative communities on tiktok… there’s a lot!

Video content can be intimidating, but it has the potential to be a very powerful tool for growing your audience online. So how do we unlock this potential? What kinds of content can you post? How can they benefit your webcomic?

Today we are joined by Star of Castoff and together we'll demystify the wonderful world of Video Platforms.

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Episode Release Date: October 2, 2024

Episode Credits:

Ally Rom Colthoff (@varethane) - she/they, chirault.sevensmith.net wychwoodcomic.com

Christina Major (@delphina2k) - she/her, sombulus.com

Star Prichard (@starfishface) - she/her, thestarfishface.com castoff-comic.com

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The Intro "DO IT (feat. Shia LaBeouf)", and the Outro "It's Good To See You Again!!", both by Adrianwave, have been used and modified in good faith under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Licensed. Edits include: Fade IN/OUT, and a repeat added to the beginning of "It's Good To See You Again!!". For more information on this creative commons use, please reference https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.

Transcription

This transcript is auto generated by our recording software.

00:00.92

thane

Here we go. um Hello and welcome to ScreenTones, where we talk anything and everything webcomics. Today, we're going to be talking about video platforms and how we can use them as webcomic creators. I'm Verithain. My pronouns are she, they, and I make the webcomics, Witchwood and Chiralt.

00:20.51

Delphina

And I'm Delphina. I use she-her pronouns and I make the webcomic Sombulus.

00:27.04

Star

And I'm Star, my pronouns are she, her, and I make the comic cast off.

00:31.77

thane

So video. um Video has been exploding in popularity online and has pretty rapidly become one of the most popular mediums for people to express themselves, chat, promote, and generally experiment. um Chances are pretty good if you, the listener, are hanging out online in creative social spaces. You're already watching lots of video content, whether it be keeping up with a favorite streamer, putting on YouTube movie reviews in the background while you work, watching or interacting with any of the ah creative communities on TikTok or Twitch. There's so much going on. um Speaking personally, I've always been a bit intimidated by video content, but I know it can be a huge and powerful tool for growing an audience online, so I'd love to find out more about it.

01:15.54

Delphina

Yeah, I've just jumped into short form video this year with TikTok and YouTube shorts and Instagram, because I was just getting so curious. And I was tired of being a little old lady screaming about these new fangled contraptions that I didn't understand. So I really want to know more about the possibilities. And I'm really happy that we have Star on today because she does so much with all the video stuff and I'm here to learn.

01:44.16

Star

Yay, I will teach you video stuff.

01:46.45

Delphina

Yeah.

01:47.91

thane

Senpai! All right. Well, we'll start just getting right into it, beginning with question one. What kind of video platform experience do you have? What sort of things do you post? How do you approach it? The creation process and the making-it-live-in-front-of-an-audience thing.

02:10.42

Star

Do I go first here?

02:11.91

thane

Yeah.

02:11.99

Delphina

Go for it.

02:13.12

Star

All right. ah So my video experience has been um interesting. I am just the type of person who I see a new platform and I want to see what I can do with it a lot of the times. For video stuff specifically, um I've actually had a YouTube channel for a while. um I started making animatics on YouTube when I was in, like, seventh grade or eighth grade. um They were very bad, but I loved them, and that channel is dead. You cannot find it. Don't go looking for it.

02:48.18

thane

Ah, rats, closing my Google tab.

02:49.25

Star

I also used to make AMVs, that's how I taught myself video editing, is making anime music videos, very much.

02:56.40

Delphina

Yes!

02:59.67

Star

um And then I didn't do that for a really long time, and then I got back into doing video stuff when TikTok got really popular. This was right around the start of the Panini or whatever. And so i was like I was bored and there was this newfangled thing called TikTok and I had just quit my job to start a small business and then everything shut down and there were no conventions to go to. And I'm like, okay, I guess I have to market myself on the internet. What's TikTok? And so...

03:31.37

Star

I started making like little how to make stickers videos and like recording footage of my silhouette going and just like showing off the art that I did by like holding my stickers up to the camera to cute trending music. And then eventually I figured I figured out, hey, I could promote my webcomic with this. And so then I started using it for like, If you're on TikTok at all, you're familiar with how people will like have a funny little audio skit. It's just like, here's a sound clip, make a funny little skit to this. So I would do that by using the funny little sound clip and then showing panels from my webcomic that corresponded to it.

04:15.48

Star

And I did a bunch of those for many, many years in addition to other various marketing stuff. TikTok was just like, I need to scream about the things I'm making so I can afford to live in this house I just bought. Look at my stickers and also my web comic and also my book and also all of this stuff. And hey, I'm going to this convention. ah TikTok was just where I went to scream. Um, but eventually I got tired of TikTok for reasons we'll get into. I still technically post there, but I don't give a dang about TikTok anymore. Um, because I, around the start of 2022, I was rapidly growing disillusioned with the, uh, freelance artist lifestyle and that I still liked doing it.

04:57.24

Star

but it was getting harder and harder to like make enough money to make ends meet every month just through sales. And for reasons, I already had a monetized YouTube account and that's like a whole other story we can get into. And but my YouTube account had been monetized for a couple years, but I wasn't using it for anything. It was basically just like storing live stream. Let's play replays um from stuff I did on Twitch. And I was like, you know, I get like 25, 50 bucks of money.

05:31.42

Star

of this like every month through ad revenue, I bet that if I actually started uploading longer videos to YouTube that are not Let's Plays, I could probably earn a little bit more. So I started making my art and story time videos, which is basically I would go online, I would record myself drawing, and I would speed it up. And I would put it underneath audio of me just telling a weird story from my life. And I started making one of those every two weeks. and Now I just do once a month because I'm tired. um But about six months after I started doing that, I had a video go viral. um And it launched my YouTube up like several tens of thousands of subscribers. um I ended up hitting 100k on YouTube in just over a year of using the platform more seriously.

06:21.71

Star

And the result is that a lot, not all, but a lot of my subscribers have also transferred over into people who are reading my web comics, supporting my Patreon, being interested in the other things that I'm making. And so now I'm just this person in this weird mindset of, okay, starting a YouTube channel is the best thing I've ever done for my artistic career. Hey, everybody should start a YouTube channel!

06:50.58

Star

So that's kind of the situation I find myself in now, which is why I was very excited when I was invited to do this, because I have many thoughts about online video and how it can be beneficial to your growth as an artist, webcomic, or otherwise. So thanks for having me.

07:07.54

thane

Yeah, I've always been like part of what's made it a little, so my own like experience with this stuff has been like a long time ago, back in like the mid 2010s or so. I went through a brief phase of trying to stream through Picarto, which was kind of like what Twitch is doing these days

07:30.88

thane

but a lot more kind of obnoxious to get set up. They didn't have, like Twitch has that Twitch studio thing that will kind of do all the fine tuning video encoding stuff for you now. um And Picardo was a lot more kind of under the hood, tweaking with code and things like that. And the finished final resulting video, you'd have to do some work to kind of get that ready to post anywhere else. There were just a lot of like, very technical steps involved at the time.

08:01.05

Star

Hmm. Yeah.

08:01.06

thane

So whenever I kind of took a break from doing those live streams, because I would be streaming myself drawing and stuff like that, whenever I stopped for like two weeks and tried to come back to it, like there would be some software update that would break everything and I'd have to like do all the setup all over again.

08:13.77

Star

Ooh yeah.

08:18.78

thane

Um, and I feel like it, like, I dunno, it made me like really hesitant to kind of get back into it. Cause now I'm like, Oh, I've got have to do so much like technical stuff, but it it seems like tick tock and so on. They make things like there, there's these apps nowadays that make things so much easier. I am curious, like, what do you use to edit your videos these days? Like the story times and stuff.

08:43.84

Star

Yeah, ah so I mostly use Premiere. ah And if I'm being completely honest, the main reason that I use it is because I am mooching off of ah my dad's plan that he has um for his work. And I'm just like, hey, you can be logged into multiple computers at the same time, right? And he said, yeah. And I said, okay, cool. I'm using Premiere. Don't don't look at me. He's not using it.

09:03.86

thane

nice

09:05.63

Star

He's using it for like Photoshop and business things. I'm over here making my silly little videos. He doesn't care.

09:14.99

thane

promoting your brand. It's important.

09:16.44

Star

promoting my brand, exactly.

09:17.50

thane

It's professional.

09:19.05

Star

Yeah. um But yeah, I have used other ah programs in the past. um Like when I'm making TikToks specifically, or when I used to, um I would just make them directly in TikTok because TikTok is nice because you just, if you're touching the screen, it's recording. If you take your finger off, it's not recording anymore. And so I would just do that for a lot of my like sillier, lower effort Mimi type videos. um But nowadays, I do everything in Premiere because I don't really make those anymore, so.

09:49.03

Delphina

Yeah, that was something that really surprised me about TikTok because I didn't understand. I had this crappy computer. I was trying to make things in DaVinci Resolve, um which was free at the time. I'm not sure if it is anymore.

10:03.56

Star

I think it still is like there is a free plan, but a lot of the features are locked behind the paywall.

10:08.15

Delphina

Okay, yeah, I got one. I got a version a while ago. I refuse to upgrade because everything tries to go to subscription nowadays.

10:16.11

Delphina

So, um, so I've kept that install file under locking key. um But it was just too intense for my my computer it like just 50-50 chance it would always shut me down and I just so I but I kept seeing all these people these like very normal looking people around using TikTok and I didn't understand how all these people had better computers than me that they could do this video software stuff so um so finally I put the Dan TikTok app on my phone And I was just like, oh, oh, this is so much easier than my computer video programs. There's there's like audio editing things. it's It's not very hard to learn. I could add little stickers or text. And I didn't even have to have a video file. That was something I didn't realize when I started TikTok. like I thought I had to take video files, but you can just post static pictures and like a little music.

11:09.38

Star

Mm hmm.

11:09.59

Delphina

and and or or just put like I was putting um you know my My pages, when I did pages, I had a textless version, and I just put that up and said, hey, you knows my my comic updated or or whatever. Or you could do like a gallery stack on there. And I just didn't know that until like I actually got into, because all I saw from TikTok was, oh, it's a video place.

11:31.70

Star

Mm hmm.

11:34.27

Delphina

That's that's all I do is just videos.

11:36.29

Star

Yeah, to be fair, um the just uploading pictures thing is a newer feature. um So if you weren't seeing them a lot before, that would probably be why.

11:42.94

Delphina

Oh.

11:46.12

Star

But I've seen a lot of people upload like manga pages and with like they have the annoying sound underneath them, but you can like swipe through and just like read. And so I've been considering like putting cast off pages on there. My only worry is the font would be too small to read.

12:00.06

Delphina

Yeah, it's a little tricky. I mean, you can kind of zoom in and and stuff, but i I don't recommend it. I was just kind of using it to try to drive people to like the actual website or or a lot of people know, hey, this is a thing you could check out if you're curious. So yeah.

12:16.94

Star

Yeah, I mean, honestly, that's ah ah one of my main gripes about TikTok. And I literally I made a whole video about this. um I have a video talking about like how YouTube kind of changed. My perspective on like online creating and stuff of that nature um But one of the biggest things that I will yell about on you like for in praise of YouTube It's like listen YouTube has a billion problems. It is not a perfect platform by any means but the one Biggest thing they have going for them that no other platform seems to want to do Is they let you put hyperlinks in the description?

12:58.17

Delphina

Oh yes, I love that!

12:59.22

thane

Very important.

13:01.68

Star

Because freaking TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, you can do it, but they don't like it when you do. And so you have to kind of do a little song and dance so your tweet doesn't get suppressed by the algorithm. And and I know it's arguable if it actually does that. I've noticed a difference everywhere. No one wants you to be able to post hyperlinks because they don't want you to leave their app. YouTube doesn't care. YouTube will let me post as many hyperlinks as I want and so I posted just like all my social media links I post links to my webcomic I post links to my Patreon I post like every single link I have in the description of every single video.

13:38.11

Star

and i can guarantee you, I will get up on a soapbox and guarantee you that if I had had the success, no, I can guarantee this. I have like twice the following on TikTok that I have on YouTube. You know how many like webcomic readers I've probably gotten from TikTok where you have to do the whole link in bio song and dance. And if you even say the word link in your video, it's not going to get pushed out to as many people and might not even get shown on people's for you page. I have 200,000 subscribers or followers on TikTok. I'm lucky these days if a video hits 10,000 views so I know that this is a problem. I can go on YouTube and I've kind of lost the plot here. Hang on, circling back. I have so many people following me on TikTok. I've gotten maybe

14:26.56

Star

a couple readers from TikTok. I can, I don't know the exact numbers. What I do know is that the number of readers I have obtained just from TikTok pales miserably in comparison to how many people I've gotten from YouTube, a platform where I literally have half the audience.

14:45.56

thane

Yeah, it's definitely like the issue that I've noticed with stuff like Webtoon and so on where like, because you can't put hyperlinks there either, you have to like just insert something into the graphic at like the tail end of your episode.

14:53.43

Star

Nope.

14:59.31

Star

Mm-hmm.

15:00.14

thane

ah Not even counting like that their originals can't even do that, apparently. um But you've got to be like, I'm going to write the easiest to remember URL in a JPEG form and hope that people care enough to like transcribe that into a browser or copy paste it..

15:15.24

Star

And 99% of the time they don't.

15:18.89

thane

Yeah, like and and also like aside from that, you like those completely untrackable like followers, like you will never know how many there are because if somebody like types out your ah URL from something, it's not even counted as a referrer. So unless they say something in a comment, like I found you through TikTok or like I found you through webtoon and I came over here, like you'll never know.

15:34.51

Star

Mm hmm.

15:42.58

thane

They're just a hypothetical numbers.

15:42.87

Star

Yeah. Yeah, I actually a while back, I did a survey like a Google form and I was just like, hey, how'd you hear about the webcomic? And I can actually go back and find ah that form, I'm sure. Yeah. Discovery poll response. Oh, this is a spreadsheet. I need the actual Google Doc. Let me see.

16:08.01

Star

Yeah, 43.7% came from YouTube. TikTok is 4% literally 10 times as many people from YouTube than from TikTok.

16:12.06

Delphina

Wow. Wow.

16:19.90

thane

That's dark. Wow.

16:21.17

Star

And this was and I made this poll a couple years ago. So. I'm willing to bet that that ah YouTube percentage would be even higher now.

16:33.37

thane

Whew.

16:34.03

Delphina

That is pretty cool.

16:35.62

Star

yep so so

16:40.16

Delphina

So it's

16:40.21

thane

Yeah, seriously.

16:43.27

Delphina

Are we tag teaming in the next question? So Star, it sounds like YouTube has helped you quite a bit as a web comic creator. um can like How does that work? What was the process of that? What what do you think people are responding to you um with your content there?

17:00.85

Star

Yep. YouTube thumbs up. ironically, I would say one of the reasons I have had the most success is that I'm not super gung-ho about advertising the comic in like every single video I do. Um, because I found it's a bit like trying to be- this is gonna sound so dumb. It's a bit like trying to befriend a baby deer. If you run up to it, even if you have food in your hand, it's it's like, look, this is the delicious web comic that I have. It's for you. You can have it. If you just run up to it aggressively, they're going to run away.

17:36.67

Star

What I tend to do is I will make a video just about like whatever most of my videos I've been trying to branch out a little bit ah recently, but the bulk of the stuff that I make is what I call art and story time videos which is basically all. spend 15 minutes to 30 minutes like just telling a weird life story. um I usually script it out in advance and I just go off on a spiel, tell a silly weird little life story and I'll have a speed paint playing in the background. And what I started doing was I just record footage of everything that I draw these days, not like doodles or sketches, but any finished piece I'm working on.

18:14.94

Star

I'm recording it because it's free B-roll for my videos. And a lot of times, because I do so much extra artwork for my webcomic, a lot of times my B-roll is, hey, look, it's my characters from my webcomic that I'm drawing. And so what I've started doing... that's worked really well for me is my video will just be about whatever. It'll be like weird life stories or like this thing that happened to me one time, crazy stories from this one point in my life. um But I usually do a little segment right near the beginning

18:47.43

Star

that I've dubbed, Hey Star, whatcha drawing? Where it's just like, I'll take 30 seconds and be like, but before we get into the story real quick, if you guys are curious about the art in the background, this is art from my web comic. And if you guys are intrigued by what I'm drawing, you can learn more about these characters by reading the comic. It's all for free. You can read it all for free online. There's like 800, close to 800 pages of backlog that you can read entirely for free. And the link is in the description. Anyway, on with the story. um And then I just don't talk about it and again until the ending. um And I found that kind of the hands-off approach, let them come to you approach, has worked really, really well.

19:30.27

Star

um Like, I'll give you guys an example. I can cite pretty clearly that a lot of my readers are coming from YouTube because you can look at my Google Analytics graph and see the spikes in viewers and like page views on days that I had videos on YouTube go viral where I talked about the comic. And so it's like, people are, you know, they don't click on the video because it's an advertisement for a webcomic.

19:58.10

Star

They click on the video to hear the silly little story, but like sneaking a pill into a dog's food. I just sneak a little bit of, hey, if you're interested in these characters, here's a free little webcomic you can enjoy after the video, wink. And that works. It works really well. I can point to my Google analytics chart and show you exactly how well it works.

20:17.99

thane

All right, so I'm taking my notes about like video stuff and I'm adding YouTube audiences or baby deer to my super official note sheet.

20:27.14

Star

I mean, because that's the thing, right? It's like, especially in this day and age, people don't want to be advertised to. They don't. People will vary. Like I'm guilty of it, too. If I'm watching a random video essay and they're like, and then today's sponsor, because I just hit the skip 10 seconds button, like, you know, roughly six times, and that's usually enough to get through the sponsorship.

20:51.96

thane

Oh yeah, I know that score too.

20:54.46

thane

I feel like that that kind of is a rule that goes for most social media in general. like Because I guess YouTube is itself kind of a social media site in a way, just very like you know video focused.

21:07.15

thane

um But that general rule, like don't like even on like Twitter or Tumblr or whatever, if you ever want a post to like take off, if you just make your entire tweet be like, I have a new product up, go click on it here. Like that sort of thing it'll never really gain that much of an audience and the trick is always like, you know Slide it in like make it connect directly to like the audience as people um like just like post about the art itself and then like try to sell them something as like a not exactly an afterthought but like work it in a little more subtly like connected to something that's like relatable or interesting in its own right um and it'll be the thing that gets shared on its own merits rather than like just a.

21:54.05

thane

You know, that that whole like, my comic updated today, go click here. it'll It'll get less traction than like, here's a new beautiful piece of art that I drew. There's that whole thing about like Twitter ah burying links so you'd always like have it in the reply post or something like that.

22:09.20

thane

And kind of tricking people into looking at things.

22:13.79

Star

Yeah, absolutely. Um, it's also just like, I've noticed myself, I was doing this earlier today. I was just like taking a 10 minute veg break to just like chill out between work stuff. And I noticed myself as like, if I even detect a single scent of ad on the wind, I will immediately scroll past the TikTok. Like I saw one today that was like this account I follow for like cleaning tips and she said, Hey, everybody, it's to um is like I'm going to show you how I clean my living room today. And today I have this new vacuum name very obviously in the audio of the post. And I looked down at the bottom corner and says creator earns commission, which means that this is a paid advertisement. I don't just like scroll. I don't care. It's an ad. And so like the idea is you want to just make it as subtle as humanly possible. And for me, that is make it

23:10.27

Star

like 30 seconds of a 30 minute long video and you know if people are interested they'll come to you and especially it's like repetition because like if someone sees that in one of my videos they're probably not likely to click on it but if they hear me talking about it repeatedly because I mention it at like the start of almost all of my videos um they'll be like okay now I'm curious now that maybe I will click on this thing Um, and then eventually they do because a lot of my viewers have come from YouTube. So there you go.

23:43.34

Delphina

Yeah, I think that's such a good point about repeating stuff and kind of giving it a fair shake because when I was like first trying TikTok or something like that, I did like two videos and I'm like, well, this isn't working. I'm going to stop now.

23:56.86

Delphina

And like, I think it's so easy to get into that. And especially like it is a little bit of work to get yourself set up so that you can record a time lapse or something. I think it's a little easier with like the Clip Studio automatic thing, but I still have to remember to turn that on and I don't always.

24:14.89

Delphina

um and And just like having that, like getting it together in a in a video editing program, that wasn't something, you know, that's that's something you have to learn. And so it feels like you want an immediate response right away. And you don't always get that. I think There's a bit of a long game for it, especially with YouTube, I feel like.

24:38.20

Star

Yeah, absolutely. Like for me, like I said, I was doing YouTube making a video every two weeks for about six or seven months. And then I got really lucky with a video ah that went bonkers crazy, um hit like 50,000 views in the first couple of days when I was used to getting like a thousand views. um And even that's high compared to someone who is just starting out. um And like I will openly admit that a part of it was luck, but like there's almost part of me that wishes that the virality had come a little later.

25:17.86

Star

um because there is absolutely value in growing a fan base steadily. Because a lot of times if people see one video of yours that just goes viral and they like that one video and they hit subscribe, they're only going to watch videos you make that are like that exact type of video. And if you don't keep making that exact type of video over and over again, they're just not going to engage with your content anymore. um And so there is absolutely value in like not going viral and just continuing to post things and just slowly but surely establishing a fan base that recognizes you for the work you do and not for this one thing you have that went viral, right?

26:02.27

thane

So like if you want to kind of make multiple different types of videos then like the concept of virality is not necessarily the most useful, I guess.

26:11.46

Star

Yeah, I mean, like this is especially true on TikTok, because like I said, most of my audience from TikTok actually came from videos I made where I make, I don't do this so much anymore, but I used to make custom brushes a lot.

26:26.65

Star

and my very first brush haha with internet fame came from one of my brush videos going viral it was like a 10 second video I recorded of hey look at this cool brush I made it draws a bookshelf in like one swipe of the brush it's super easy and then I reposted those yeah

26:41.45

thane

I remember that. And the coins one.

26:45.38

Star

the coins one yeah all of those um because it and see those went viral because it was cool looking people didn't understand what it was but they saw the potential they thought it was cool and they subscribed to me to see future videos like that and then i post you know a speedpaint i post a video talking about like my stream schedule for the week i post these videos where i like talk about this art that i did no one cares None of those people who followed me for that video care. They only want to see more cool brushes. And because I haven't made cool brush videos in several years at this point, I'm willing to bet that those people who follow me, they haven't seen one of my videos in years. And all they're doing is make number go up. But like the subscriber number, not my view number, right?

27:31.84

thane

Ah, yeah, that's a bit of a letdown.

27:36.08

Star

Yeah, and so it's why I try and tell people is like you can't chase virality because it's impossible to replicate repeatedly. what is like you're going to start slow when you it's like a new any new platform you are going to start you are going to have a small audience um you know hopefully you can migrate some people over from like any other social media that you have but you're essentially starting with nothing and it's good to aim to grow an audience for this type of stuff that you will be doing consistently and not aim for like a one-hit wonder this is going to be the one that goes viral um just make stuff that you have fun with and

28:11.71

thane

Yeah.

28:14.76

Star

use footage from you drawing stuff for your webcomic and then talk about it for like 30 seconds at the start of the video after you've gotten done your introduction and hooked people in.

28:23.26

thane

Yeah. I mean, that was basically what I was attempting to do, uh, back in the past, in my, in my past life, what I was previously trying to get into video, I was like trying to live stream kind of my own work.

28:32.98

Star

you

28:35.81

thane

And while it never got exactly huge, the, the, the value that I got from that at the time was just the, the streaming experience of knowing that I had an audience was really good at keeping me like even more focused on my work. than I was at other times.

28:52.07

Star

Hmm.

28:52.30

thane

Cause when I know that there's an audience watching me, I'm much less likely to keep tabbing over and like, you know, looking at social media for like five minutes or something.

28:57.11

Star

hey

29:00.44

thane

I'm like, Oh, There's people looking at me, even if it's only two people. I'm like, I got to keep going. So I was very productive ah during those streams for sure.

29:07.74

Star

Yeah.

29:10.52

thane

Just got to find a way to like improve recording. I know technology has improved, so I've really got to look into that because I was like using like After Effects for it, which is super heavy and crashes my computer.

29:18.58

Star

Yeah.

29:22.62

Star

Ugh! Ugh!

29:25.40

thane

so

29:25.70

Star

You were- Hold on, you were using After Effects for live streaming? Wait, wait, wait, wait, n-

29:29.55

thane

Oh, no, no, no. I was using After Effects to like make sure that the resulting video was like the right kind of codec for YouTube. um But like the the trouble is, After Effects, it can be really fun to kind of get started with. It's a compositing software. So you can do like a bunch of, like oh, I want to have an overlay on it, or I want to like chop it up and make this part shorter and make this part longer.

29:45.12

Star

Yeah, but it's very heavy.

29:53.73

thane

and change the audio, you can do a lot of like customizing stuff with it. But at the end of it, you have to sit down and hit like a little button that says render into like the video encoding format that you want. So you've got to make sure you've picked the right format out of the 200 different kinds of like you know H.2 6.4 versus like MOV versus like all the, there's so many. Um, and, uh, then after you've hit that button, it's going to spend depending on the length of the video and the resolution that you're going for, it can take anywhere between like 20 minutes and two hours to render the thing out.

30:18.11

Star

ah her

30:30.59

thane

And if your computer has kind of a weaker video card or processor or like anything, um, it may just crash.

30:38.60

Star

Uh-huh.

30:38.90

thane

i I overheated my computer in the past and part of the CPU got like so overheated that I actually had to like completely take it apart and do a bunch of computer fixing stuff that was very intense.

30:49.36

Star

Oh no. Oh no.

30:51.53

Delphina

Oh no.

30:53.05

thane

um so It's something to be wary of. it I think Premiere is much lighter, um but like After Effects just was the software that I was familiar with. um because when i was ah so This is another ironic thing. I work professionally in like animation and television, and yet I'm like so nervous about this video stuff.

31:11.40

Star

and no

31:14.44

thane

um in part because After Effects is just the program that I was trained in. and I only touched Premiere as kind of like the very last step to like do some like finishing tweaks and like other encoding things. and I'm less confident in it, but I know it's much lighter and easier to use on the on the hardware.

31:35.59

Star

Yeah.

31:35.74

thane

so

31:38.50

Star

After Effects, though. For for like overlays and stuff?

31:43.37

thane

Yeah, I mean, I feel like it was way overkill, but because it was, you know, when all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

31:47.01

Star

Yeah!

31:51.02

Star

I mean, I guess. But After Effects is more like a sledgehammer.

31:57.58

thane

Yes, when all you've got is a sledgehammer, everything looks sledgeable.

32:00.72

Star

oh good golly because like i've i've used both i used to use after effects for like animation stuff at my old job but like premiere does is a way easier program and it does all that i would argue even better because it doesn't get annoyed at like your video playbacks be this is very technical boring stuff but

32:23.02

thane

I feel like it's important if anyone else out there is like, but After Effects is all I know.

32:28.57

Star

No, if you can use After Effects, you can use Premiere.

32:28.87

thane

I've gotta just learn Premiere already.

32:34.68

Star

It's basically a baby version of the same software.

32:38.78

thane

All right. All right. Time to look up some tutorials. um So this does lead into our third question, which we've, I mean, already been kind of talking about this whole time, but ah just to get like right into anything remaining. What is your advice for web comic creators who may or may not have video making experience and are trying to figure out if video posting is right for them?

33:05.42

Star

Yeah, I would say just start with something you're comfortable. Don't get too ambitious and excited right off the bat. I would say just start by like just recording some speed paints, setting them to music and dropping them on TikTok. Videos on TikTok with voiceover do tend to do better um in my own personal experience. But you can still get, you know, decent mileage from just posting a speed paint and then speeding it up to it's like under a minute or so and then putting some music behind it. um You can still get a decently far away with that. um So you know, start there. What I do recommend is if you're looking into doing voiceover, um something that I have heard mimicked from like every video online maker person that I've like ever heard give advice on this. If you have decided you want to invest in one thing before going into making videos,

34:03.59

Star

spend it on getting your audio good because low quality video is salvageable low quality audio is miserable to sit through and no one will watch it

34:16.22

thane

Well, this is a handy thing to add to my notes sheet considering that we're doing this podcast.

34:23.50

Delphina

Microphones check.

34:24.58

Star

Yeah, there you go.

34:25.02

thane

Woo! so

34:26.33

Star

And I mean, just like your mic doesn't have to be professional quality. Just don't use your like gamer headset with with the microphones like this and then we're going to go over to the Minecraft thing. We're going to we're going to do this. If I have to listen to that, I will die. My ears will begin to bleed and I will perish and I will not watch your video in short. um And like it it like cheap microphones, you can get a decent microphone for like 50 bucks. um that's usable. A lot of good audio quality is just getting your space set up well, um which is rich coming from me because my space is not set up well.

35:02.80

Star

I am in a corner of my living room that has wood floors and high ceilings, um but I just like my i like my desk in this spot because I can see my entire house from here, um and I don't feel like I'm cramped into a corner.

35:09.26

thane

Oh, same.

35:17.11

Star

So i my audio does suffer slightly for it, But it's fine. I don't want to cram myself in a closet every time I go live on stream.

35:26.61

Delphina

Yeah, there's a threshold, right? Like, just good enough, I guess.

35:30.47

Star

Yeah. Like honestly, like, depending on how new your phone is, even your phone microphone would be better than like a Minecraft headset or something. Like I say Minecraft headset, like that's the only that you buy this just for Minecraft.

35:45.99

Delphina

but Maybe you make it in Minecraft.

35:47.67

Star

Oh, yes. my i'm my I've never played Minecraft. I just know that it's what it's i just know it's what the kids like.

35:51.49

Delphina

I haven't either, no.

35:53.28

thane

My 3D printed cube mic made of 3D print material.

35:56.77

Star

Yes. Yes. How's the audio quality on your 3D printed microphone?

36:03.54

thane

terrible

36:04.67

Star

No!

36:08.92

Delphina

Yeah.

36:09.11

Star

um But yeah, so I mean, another thing I would recommend, like I said, um videos with just simple voiceover tend to do better. But I know that a lot of us, we're artists, we can be shy. And if you're nervous about doing voiceover, one thing you can do, this is especially relevant on TikTok because you can just do it in the app. um There's like text to speech ah little bots you can use on TikTok. I think they have a selection of them. And so you'll type like captions on your video and then the little TikTok voice will read it out for you.

36:45.69

Star

And like I don't see those too, too often anymore. But if you're so horrendously shy, you do not want to hear your voice heard or you don't have a good microphone to record audio with like that is also an option. um And

37:00.03

thane

I think some of those are getting pretty advanced because there's like a, I put on a lot of YouTube videos while I'm working in kind of the background and a lot of them are not necessarily like artists, but like people telling spooky stories or things like that.

37:08.14

Star

yeah

37:13.53

Star

Yeah.

37:14.42

thane

And there's several creators who like it took me a couple of it it took me a bit like multiple videos before I realized that I think they were using that like text to speech thing.

37:24.45

Star

I may have been, yeah.

37:25.76

thane

But it was like sophisticated enough that it it took it took a fair amount before I kind of twigged to it.

37:33.04

Star

Yeah. And so like people might figure it out, you know, like if they've heard the same text to speech voice before. But, you know, if you're open about it, it's just like, hey, I'm shy slash I don't have a good microphone. I'm going to use a text to speech voice. It's fine. um It is more personal if you use your own voice. And, you know, a lot of people do appreciate the authenticity. um That's like one a big thing on YouTube is like people appreciate you being open and authentic with them. And so if you're open and you say, hey, it's like this is my actual voice, but I am very shy. So I'm going to use an AI voice or whatever. um People will generally be chill with it, but they will prefer your actual voice.

38:12.27

Star

um

38:12.44

thane

Yeah.

38:14.32

Star

The other problem there, come oh sorry, go ahead.

38:14.56

thane

ah Oh, I was just going to say, uh, what about background music? It's something that like, I feel like it can add a lot.

38:22.28

Star

Hmm.

38:25.50

thane

Um, and I'm always feeling like just, just a voice talking kind of on its own. Like a lot of the stuff that really, uh, I dunno, seems to do better online tends to have like a bit of a backing track to it, even if it's really subtle, but like the legality of sourcing that kind of thing can be a little bit thorny.

38:36.82

Star

Hmm.

38:45.92

Star

Yeah, so there's a lot of, plate there's a surprising amount of places online where you can get like free background music. um All you really, it's like usually on TikTok, they're a little bit more laissez-faire about it. TikTok has like a sourced audio library of like just songs you can use. And when you're making a video, you can say it's like add sound and you can like go in and select it and you can pick from any number of videos or any number of audios that you can use.

39:12.00

thane

Oh yeah. I think I have heard that there's been like trouble sometimes where people will do that with their TikTok videos and then try to repost it onto YouTube and have it be taken down because music that was okay to use on TikTok is not okay on YouTube or like on other places.

39:28.67

Star

Yeah, different licensing and stuff. ah For me, because I don't make videos specifically for TikTok anymore, I basically never use their like ad sound thing. I just now have a collection of free background songs that I just have in my database, just saved to my computer, and then I just go in and use those. Usually all that requires is some sort of credit. um i I could be better about doing it with my shorts but like no one reads the descriptions of the shorts anyway and I play it at such a low volume it's hardly able to be heard but for my longer format videos whenever the song changes I'll usually put it like the name of the song and the composer up in the top left corner of the video so people know it's like hey this is the song um and that's easier than just having a list of songs in the description because then people like it's an actual time code people know what song is playing at exactly what time

40:22.06

thane

Makes sense.

40:22.30

Star

Um, but yeah, there's a lot of free libraries online. Um, Dova syndrome is technically a Japanese website, but there is so much available on there. They have a YouTube channel where they post like all of their music. So you can just search by vibe. Um, in CompTech is, uh, Kevin McCloud's like music library. I have a lot of those saved. you You've almost certainly heard some of his music just out there in the universe because he has this huge library of royalty free free to use ah soundtracks. I also occasionally use like video game remixes. I use Gamechops a lot because they have a thing about it's like, yeah, you can use our videos and stream or you can use our music and streams and videos as long as you credit us and I'm like, cool.

41:06.10

Star

uh downloads all their music and that's just like lo-fi remixes of pokemon and legend of zelda songs made by a variety of different artists but they're all licensed under the same you can use it as long as you credit us and we won't copyright strike you uh contract so

41:21.84

Delphina

Yeah, I definitely have some of those Kevin MacLeod things on my time lapse things.

41:26.45

Star

it

41:29.65

Delphina

I started doing them just like I found one, I'm like, oh, this is really cute. And like, I actually started drawing like ah a cowboy one because I'm like, I really like this honky tonk thing, but I don't have a drawing to go with it. So maybe I'll make a time lapse of like a a wallpaper of of these these people in a Wild West saloon because I really want this little music going on. So I think it's fun.

41:52.52

Star

ah how

41:53.33

Delphina

I think it's really fun to try to match that up and I haven't gotten into like doing voiceovers. Now I want to because you said it's so fun.

41:59.82

Star

No, I was just thinking that because that what you just said would be an amazing voiceover if you did a speed paint like a short one minute or less speed paint of a cowboy piece you could talk like I love hearing artists talk about why they make things and there's like I watch a lot of art and commentary channels, and a lot of times they'll just have random art in the background, and I'll watch the entire video and they'll never explain what they're drawing. Like, even if it's just fan art, I want to know why you're drawing that! I want to know what went into it, I want to know what your thoughts were, and it's just like, okay, thanks for watching my video, and I'm like, now tell me about the art in the background! Um...

42:40.13

Star

I love hearing about why artists chose to draw certain things. And so I would love like watching a TikTok where you just said, hey, the whole reason I drew this is because I found this cute honky tonk music and that I wanted to draw some cowboys. Because that's what a lot of my shorts are these days. um If folks are not familiar,

42:56.96

Delphina

Okay.

42:59.07

Star

ah so if ah familiar I have a Patreon mail club where every month I send out a print and two stickers to people who have joined ah patreon and.com slash castoff, by the way. ah And what I've started doing, which I've been doing for about a year now, is I just use like the Clip Studio Paint auto speed paint recorder. um And I just record the process for all of the art I do for my mail club.

43:20.96

Delphina

Yeah.

43:24.49

Star

And that's three shorts a month that I can just post that's like almost once a week. um And I literally just talked about it's like hey this is art I did for my mail club and this is some of the stuff I was thinking about while drawing it here's what the theme of the month was here some of my thoughts. Here's some stuff that I think turned out cute but what do you guys think leave a comment. and need judge just make Like ah I literally was just editing the batch for this month yesterday. Um, I just recorded very short little voiceovers just talking about like, Hey, yeah, this is the thing that I'm drawing for this month. And these are the subjects. They're characters from my web comic. This character looks pretty funny here. I don't know. I think it looks cute. But what do you guys think? Drop a comment.

44:04.46

Star

Uh, and I can then post that to YouTube, TikTok, Instagram reels, so Pinterest, Twitter, wherever, like Tumblr occasionally, but Tumblr gets for Snickety about uploading videos directly to the platform. That one, like 45 second video I can post everywhere. And I have three of those a month just from the mail club art that I do. And it's advertising because I can say at the end of the video, and by the way, if you want this as a sticker, join my Patreon.

44:26.18

Delphina

Yeah.

44:31.22

Star

Here's a link to it.

44:32.67

Delphina

Yeah, that synergy is important, I think.

44:34.68

Star

Mm-hmm.

44:36.20

thane

That Clip Studio like recording thing absolutely blew my mind when they first released it.

44:42.08

Star

Oh, it's so good.

44:42.53

thane

um And I do want to bring that up specifically in this video, because it's such a great tool for anyone who has Clip Studio that you can just enable it.

44:48.80

Star

Mm-hmm.

44:50.12

thane

And it'll just be tracking all of your brush strokes kind of in the background as you're working. And then when you finish a piece and save it off, so long as you're working with a Clip Studio file, because you can technically do this with a PSD. but you won't be able to export it after you've saved and reopened it. It'll just lose that progress. But with a Clip Studio file, you save that recording, you export it at the end of the piece, and you can export it multiple times.

45:08.71

Star

Yeah, I figured that out.

45:15.63

thane

like if you If you keep going with something and you're like, oh, I wasn't actually done yet, like just keep going and then export it again and delete the original one.

45:22.66

Star

Hmm.

45:23.61

thane

um It'll make the file size a bit bigger, but like it's amazing. It's so cool.

45:27.95

Star

Yeah. I actually started just putting that into my workflow ah for making comic pages. So what I do when I make comic pages is I have a template that has like all of my base layers and stuff set up in it. And what I did was I saved that template as a clip studio file and then where it has everything set up and it already has time lapse enabled in the template. So then, every single comic page I ever make, I don't have to remember to turn on the time lapse feature because it's already turned on, which means that for like for the entirety of the chapter I'm currently working on, recording and exporting time lapses of the work of every single page that I do,

46:13.41

Star

I have it as B-roll because like Clip Studio is automatically recording it. I don't have to remember to do it. It's just doing it. And I've, it was a point where like, I don't know what I'm going to use this video for, but I have it and I can use it for something. And I started using it for Q and&A shorts. Like I took questions from my audience and then I would answer them in the form of like a short video. Uh, and those didn't, those performed okay, but not well enough for me to want to keep doing them. And so what I think I'm going to do now is, uh, once I run out of my backlog of those, I'm going to start doing like little mini tutorials and just use those as.

46:48.12

Star

Brain go brrr, background video.

46:52.50

thane

That's so galaxy brain about the template.

46:52.58

Star

Um, yeah, yeah.

46:55.27

thane

Oh man.

46:56.06

Star

a

46:56.19

thane

I work in PSD format, so whenever I was trying to do it, I would have to do just the sketch and export that, ah that just the links and export that.

46:59.06

Star

Uh,

47:02.31

Star

ah

47:05.54

thane

It took a while.

47:06.66

Star

Yeah, see, I used to have my template as a PSD file. I switched over to do it, like I've used entirely Clip Studio for years, but I use Photoshop for my exporting because it goes a little faster. um And so I eventually just made it so that I do all my work in a Clip Studio file, and then I save as as a Photoshop file so I could open it in Photoshop and do all my exporting really quickly, um just because I wanted access to the speed paints. Like the speedpaint software because it's it's just so handy and it's free real estate. It's free B roll. I don't know what I'm going to use it for, but I'll use it for something. And I'm glad that I have it versus wanting it and not having it. So.

47:47.18

thane

Yeah, the other thing that I like probably the most successful thing that I ever tried to do as like a video was when I did a very brief series of sketchbook tours um because like as a mostly traditional well in the past mostly traditional artist, I have a lot of sketchbooks.

47:59.05

Star

Hmm.

48:05.05

Star

Yeah.

48:05.27

thane

And ah for a while for my Patreon, I was like scanning the whole thing and putting that up as like a PDF for patrons to see. And then I was like, this could be, I saw some other artists doing sketchbook tours and I was like, that's an incredible idea. I'd love to like be able to share these things with like more context and like show a bit of the physicality of like turning the pages. And like that way you can see like when a marker image has kind of bled through to the backside of the page or other fun stuff like that um and also be able to talk about it kind of as I go.

48:25.78

Star

Yeah.

48:35.68

thane

So I was streaming them on Twitch and then saving those recordings to put onto YouTube. um And those were quite fun, although it did take some extra like setup of getting a hold of like a good webcam and finding the right kind of stand to put it on. I ended up with one of the ones that has like a, it's like a cable. It's like a, ah posable opposable wire thing.

48:57.81

Star

Oh yeah, like the flexible ones.

48:58.03

thane

So yeah, the the brand is called Peepy Shell, which is a funny name to say, um but it clamps to my desk and then the webcam just screws into the top of it.

49:08.94

Star

yeah

49:08.97

thane

um And I feel like if I wanted to keep going with that, I should probably just find a spot for it where it can stay permanently set up just so that I don't have that barrier of, oh God, I got to find my camera. I got to find my like stand. I got to find like, I got a clearer workspace. If I was to do this like longer term, I would probably want to get that set up like and just leave it like ready to keep coming back to.

49:30.95

Star

Yeah, yeah.

49:33.92

thane

so

49:35.91

Star

Yeah, I mean, the sketchbook tours are a good idea. If you're an artist that does a lot of traditional work, I've actually just recently, um for various reasons, been getting more onto the traditional art side of YouTube and watching a lot of other people's sketchbook tours. And like I, so I just recently, at the time of recording, it's my most recent video, I did a video about like getting back into doing traditional art. ah because I was sponsored but I at the end of the video did a very short little sketchbook tour with just like the 20 or so pages that I'd filled of that sketchbook and I already have a lot of comments of people saying oh my god I would love to see more sketchbook tours videos this is so cool and I just kind of like put that in my head and I'm like okay good to know sketchbook tour video when I'm done with the sketchbook got it

50:28.75

Delphina

Yeah, I just I think the thing is like you can do sketchbook tours or you could do a lot of different things. And it all kind of depends on your own personal style. And I feel like that's the advice I would give to somebody, you know, trying to get into this for the first time. And this goes for anything. This goes for social media. This goes for what you know video platforms or whatever. But don't be afraid to experiment and like find the things that you have fun doing because I feel like that's going to be the thing that lets you form the habit of doing this time after time to kind of slowly gather that audience that's interested in all the stuff you're doing to Star's point.

51:09.26

Delphina

So I mean, if that if that's traditional drawing, that's fine. If that's time lapses, that's fine. If it's memes, that's fine.

51:16.25

Star

Memes!

51:17.09

Delphina

Yes.

51:19.50

Star

Yeah, I know, um, i I got my start doing this, I don't do it so much anymore, but just, I see so many people on, like, TikTok and YouTube Shorts just making, like, quick little silly, meme-y joke videos, like, little animatics, or even just, like, like I used to do in just recording panels with appropriate expressions on my characters. And those can do so well because like people are, ah people enjoy a joke, even if they don't necessarily have the full context. And if they're curious enough about the context, you can be like, Hey, these are my webcomic characters, go read my webcomic if you want more context, but blam.

51:59.59

thane

The bablam is mandatory.

52:01.30

Star

It is, it is, it really is.

52:02.16

Delphina

Mm-hmm.

52:03.01

Star

You have to add your, listen, if you're gonna be a famous viral YouTuber, you gotta know the cool sound effects.

52:12.87

Star

Like and subscribe and ring that bell so you don't miss a single new video, though I am cringing inwardly at myself just viewing this voice.

52:13.44

Delphina

Pew pew pew!

52:19.55

Star

Yeah, pew, pew, pew.

52:19.90

thane

Note to editors, add sound effects.

52:21.92

Delphina

Oh no, they will too!

52:22.23

Star

Oh Lord. what Please don't add any sound effects that I just made with my mouth.

52:24.78

thane

It's true.

52:27.34

Star

Please add like the most random nonsensical sound effects that do not make sense for the context. Thank you.

52:32.57

thane

Dolphin dot WAV.

52:32.62

Delphina

Beautiful.

52:35.18

Star

Dot WAV. Yes, exactly.

52:37.99

thane

All right. I think we have basically covered a lot of ground in this here episode.

52:44.68

Star

Yes. Yeah.

52:47.49

thane

I'm going to say that this will be a goat cheese and roasted red pepper wrap for today.

52:56.26

thane

Thank you so much for listening. I've been host Varethane and you can check out my work at wychwoodcomic.com or chirault.sevensmith.net.

53:09.22

Delphina

And I've been Delphina. You can check out my comic, Sombulus, at sombulus.com.

53:15.44

Star

And I'm star, you can find my comic at castoff-comic.com, and I'm also on YouTube, TikTok, et cetera, as thestarfishface. wink, subscribe, winky face.

53:26.49

Delphina

All right.

53:28.01

thane

Winky face.

53:31.10

thane

I liked the slide of the Patreon address in there earlier.

53:31.30

Delphina

Subscribe.

53:34.38

thane

That was good.

53:34.95

Star

Yeah, listen.

53:35.02

thane

Well played.

53:36.15

Star

but you