Neo Blythe Collection video/YouTube musings.

I spent the majority of my time last week working on this YouTube video, which is about my collection of Neo Blythes -- or, rather, a "review" of each of them.

This had been suggested/requested a few times. But it took me a long time to figure out how I wanted to tackle this video, format-wise, and how to do it in a way that would be pleasing to me. I knew I needed some kind of backdrop to keep the dolls front and center, so I made these two poster boards covered in fabric. And I knew I needed to film it in a place with natural lighting, at least as much as possible. Days are short right now, so it's hard to find that happy medium between direct sunlight and not enough light. I spent a chunk of four or five hours filming each doll last Saturday, then another couple of hours in the middle of the week to capture the eye mech changing bits as well as film my small introduction. I'm pretty bad off the cuff so my intro is very... "Please, Jesus, let me get through this."

Between transcoding the HQ footage into something that's actually workable, rendering time, and exporting (factoring in any unfortunate mishaps or program errors), a lot of time spent creating videos is just waiting for things to finish so you can keep going. The actual editing -- choosing clips and where to lay them, slicing and splicing, flow, color correction, messing around with music or audio -- takes a lot less time than everything else takes and is what I enjoy. I love the editing process of making videos and I loved filming my Blythes in their stock... especially Aury!! I was transported back in time to when I first got her and felt these crazy love pangs.

So if you want a 20-minute intro to my dolls (there are 13, and they each get about a minute and half of commentary, so it adds up...) feel free to watch my magnum opus. I broke Mallow's pull string at one point.

Awesomely, I've also hit 200 subscribers on my YouTube channel. Really cool since I never meant to have a channel.

It's sort of interesting to be putting myself in front of the camera a bit. Whenever I put anything creative out into the public, whether it's writing, something I've done in Photoshop, or a video, I have to fight off this immediate kickback of self-loathing and tendency to feel bad about myself in some way -- or several ways. After a video goes live, if I'm not thinking I'm dumb as rocks, ineloquent/unable to speak clearly, ugly, old... it hasn't been something I've put effort into, I guess! So I can't help cringing.

I value Blythe both as a creative hobby and a source of comfort, and I sort of feel like if my sense of comfort is eroded by doing YouTube videos -- even if I enjoy the editing aspect -- I'll probably just shut it down again.