I just wanted to take a moment and air what has transpired with my YouTube channel for this blog, along with recapping my last few weeks...
The whole ordeal has been discussed in length on this blog's Discord channel, so to make a long story short, on June 7, 2018, I received not one but FOUR messages all at once that my account has been disabled. Then my Google+ account (which I don't even fucking use BTW...) looks like this, yet I can't access nor do anything with my old videos.
So, I'm like whatever, I'll just appeal since I haven't done anything wrong. I don't even profit off anything on my channel and the few things that I have been warned about have that "This is just a heads up. Don't worry. You're not in trouble and your account standing is not affected by this." message attached to it. The last one of those emails I received was back at the start of March, so if that was a problem it should have been mentioned back then. I'm racking my brain on what in the world that I could have done wrong and simply filled out a repeal.
I go into my usual routine of web browsing and notice that Shoryuken and Eventhubs were reporting that Level Up | Series had their channel taken down in the same fashion. I think "Cool, so I'm not the only one with this BS going on..."
A few hours later and Level Up gets their account back to normal while I'm looking at a juicy fat rejection notice as the response to my repeal on my account. Well, FML...
So yeah... 500+ videos down the drain of roughly 5 years of work streaming and recording content. I'm just at a loss of words. I still am to be quite honest. I guess I should be fortunate that my laptop has been archiving SOME of my older streams (back when I was still using my Roxio Game Capture) in folder tucked away hidden into my Windows directory, so there's something to shuffle through to see if that content is worth keeping or not.
Every time I think about this situation, it frustrates me on a lot of levels. It was my personal collection of fun times that I've had in games as of late, others that I shared with friends, such as my co-op Borderlands and various fighting game streams that were archived. Stuff that I've broadcasted directly from PlayStation 4, such as the bulk of the Horizon Zero Dawn playthrough (outside of the Frozen Wilds DLC that I just happened to save as a highlight on my channel), Batman Arkham Knight, Shovel Knight, No More Heroes, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and more recently, the bulk of my Monster Hunter World streams (which I've devoted a lot of time into), all down the drain for nothing.
It's hard to get motivated to stream again... I'll be honest about that. What's more frustrating about this situation that I literally just bought an El Gato H60S just for streaming more games along with HDMI converters for both my Wii and PlayStation 2, only to have this mess throw me completely off the race track. It's hard to get back into the drivers' seat and start back again at this from what feels like from scratch at Day One.
Friends have encouraged me to try some alternatives to YouTube, such as Vimeo or Mixlr, but I just can't even find the positive energy to even get the ball rolling again. Hell, I keep thinking about this situation. I'm a general nobody on YouTube, Twitch, and social media (despite 800+ followers/Likes on both the Let's Talk Wrestling Blog Facebook and Twitter accounts that I'm sure is mostly bots/spam accounts anyway...) and this devastated what little momentum and drive I had. I can't imagine what this would do to a full-time podcaster/streamer that have been burning at both ends on this for as long as the Level Up crew have been at this. With that realization, I felt that it's time to just focus and channel my energies into something else for a while.
I was going to cover/talk about E3 but nothing this year honestly stuck out to me as something I have to get immediately at launch. I guess I should count that as a blessing. That means I have a few months of actually having time to catch up on things in my gaming backlog from the past few years. Plus, E3 brings out the worst in terms of gaming culture it seems, especially from the journalists end of it and the ass-hats who argue over the "best" gaming platforms like this is the racial draft from Chappelle's Show or something. Get the fuck over yourselves and realize that the console doesn't matter, just support great games no matter what platform they are on.
I spent the better part of the last two weeks, exporting, editing, proofreading, and re-reading some of my old stories and content on FictionPress. Saved the stories (notably Fighting Power, Rebel Unit VVG, and Bullets, Blades, and Blood) on my Google Drive and set out to divide them up into chapters in one singular document, along with unused/unreleased content that I had saved in inboxes from old/dead Yahoo! email accounts. I even took the time to even FINALLY update and configure my Deviantart account that I've had for the better part of a decade and never did anything with. Yeah, I follow a TON of artists on there, but never post anything of my own. I changed that by archiving some of my old sketchbook scans from my personal Facebook account on there. (Shrugs) It's a start.
After taking notes and re-reading through the entirety of my original run of my Bullets, Blades, and Blood story, I finally got off my ass and typed up the Teaser #2 for the pending reboot/revamp that I have been sitting on for about a year and half and released it yesterday morning. The original teaser was about 3+ years ago, so this was long overdue to say that I have had the bulk of this handwritten already. I'm already working on a "cheat sheet" of sorts where I'm listing all of the characters I plan on including in this story along with a short description/bullet points on their powers and what-not. Y'know, something to keep my mind buzzing and focused on this project that I've been sitting on for long enough.
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| First attempt at a render in IRay. Damn laptop froze while rendering when I left it on while I was asleep so only got this partial file. Outside of the odd shading on the face, I thought it wasn't bad for a first attempt. My main focus was seeing how the costume looked in output. I swear I HATE how there's little options for male models in terms of hairstyles but you can find hundreds of ones for females. (Shrug) Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. |
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| First "complete" render. Just was combining a few parts around and simply seeing how my laptop could handle rendering with a few basic settings. Not crazy about this one, but it's a learning process y'know? |
As you can see above, I have been trying my hand at Daz3D/Daz Studio. I've started with mostly Genesis 3 Male/Female models, along with Michael 7 and Victoria 7 for what that you will see here. I've had it for the better part for over a year, but recently really trying to break into it, especially after what transpired. I could name a lot of Deviantart artists who create stuff on this program, which ranges from SFW to definitely NSFW content, that I simply adore and I would love to create some content in this if possible.
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| Attempt at a black female model, while simultaneously messing around with the body morphing settings. Looks good right? Okay, look at the output image below... |
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| IRay did some freaky shit there on the output and I have no idea what I did wrong there. Pretty much a LOT of trial and error with this thing. (Sighs) At least the hair looks nice... Either way, back to the drawing board. |
Here's my most recent attempt below.
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| Pre-render screenshot, top got distorted after loading the pose for this scene. Ended up attempting like 6 other tops to the same effect. (Sighs) More likely going to have to go with a different pose in a future update anyway. |
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| Output render. I'm pleased with this for the most part, but the more I look at it there's stuff I can touch up. i.e. The hands can be tightened more around the hilts of the katanas, I could adjust her feet a bit in the back from how she's sitting, relayer/rearrange the corset top to layer below the rest of the armor, and so on. I swear, it's driving me nuts that I can't find a simple ninja mask separate from all of these older Daz3D packs that would auto-fit to my models properly. |
I get it. I'm not great at this yet, but I'm trying, dammit. Just doing something to keep the ball rolling. I just need to keep reading on this program and watching YouTube tutorials.
Watch Testing Out El Gato Capture Card from xionzeros on www.twitch.tv
Monday night (June 18), I tested out my El Gato H60S for the first time with Monster Hunter World since one of my friends informed me the Arch Tempered Elder Dragon Kirin event was ending on the 21st, so I wanted to try my hand at it. I have to iron out the broadcast settings (of course...) but I thought it wasn't a bad first attempt. I dunno, maybe I can ease back into the swing of things. It's just that I doubt I'm going to bother exporting everything to another site, only to go through this heartbreak, or rather headache again. I'll just simply save every other broadcast down as a highlight for my few viewers on Twitch can have something to check out when I'm not streaming.
As for the huge gap in new articles/content, this ordeal should explain where my head has been at. I have a few articles on the past weekend's worth of WWE programming, including NXT TakeOver: Chicago II and WWE Money in the Bank 2018 pending in my drafts, so look for those in the next few days. I just have to keep committing myself to work on something else and quit focusing on the negativity.
God, I need a weekend away from everything and just to myself to hit the reset button... So yeah, gimme a bit to get back into the swing of things. I'm just completely not in the zone currently.
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