Artist's events part 5

9. Youtube. I don't like TV. Stephen King says its a noise box and I tend to agree. I can't count how many hours I wasted infront of the boob tube watching rerun after rerun. I wish I had spent my time reading instead but regret is unprofessional, what's important is what you do now. Youtube is a different story. There's plenty of audio books to listen to that people have legally and illegally posted online. There's also my favorite: the documentaries. People make videos of their opinions in a form of video diary. These are facinating to listen to as I'm playing games. I've listened to Clive Barker's Hellbound Heart several times which is always a treat. If there is something I dislike about Youtube is that forty five percent of the income from ads goes to Google which is a rip off. I mentioned how I've made playlists before but this is a different thing. This isn't collecting so much as discovering. There's lots of people my age who talk about the games they played as kids which makes me nostalgic for the old days, there's lofi music which helps me concentrate while writing, and then we have the video game review videos made by people who tend to focus on one or two genre. When I was younger, we had IGN and GameTrailers that made video reviews for the games. Now, there's enough games for the nostalgia factor and people who have the tech to make their own videos and post their own thoughts. It's strange because before gamergate, game reviewer's opinions were thought of as gospel. If a game got a seven or lower, it failed and wasn't worth your money. For me, it's fun to hear other's thoughts because it provides a lot of research for great characters in stories. What's important to me is to find a deep video, one that not a lot of people have watched (is a hundred thousand views now considered small?) and you watch a deep cut on a specific subject. Like the water biomes of the Witcher 3 which seems like a waste of time. I even wrote about how the video about how the developers made the swamps was a waste of time when there are monsters to slay and people to rescue. It's facinating to me that someone would spend their time to make a video on such an unimportant subject. I kid. I enjoyed the video because of it's strangeness. This is but one video in an ecosystem with a world of different ideas. It makes you wonder what other small treasures you can find. Sometimes the videos that don't have the millions of views are the best. And it's not just opinions I'm looking for. There's videos about games I can't play (usually due to price) or games I've never heard of. People post about their favorite books and philosophies with lengthy explanations that keep my brain entertained for hours as I digest their posts. I get a high from learning something new or listening to something for the fifth time and finding something else. I may not be addicted to TV but I am to Youtube.

10. Collecting Artists. When I first started looking on Tumblr, there were dozens of artists who posted their work on their blogs. This lead me to make my own collection I called "Artstylesidliketouse." I had a plan, I was going to become a famous game designer and make these artists famous. I'd spend a few years working on a game and then I would contact the artist and use their style in my art. I had so many ideas running in my head that it I couldn't keep track of them. The plan was to make at least a dozen games and promote these artists. This plan continued further when I visited the local conventions. There, artists would have their business cards in the open where I would shyly grab one while talking up the artists. My dad suggested that I put them all in a folder like a photo album which I wanted to do. But the problem was that I didn't have anything for the artists to work on. At the time, I thought that comics might be my gateway into writing. I remember meeting Dirk Manning, a comic book artist and purchassing his book on writing for comics. I was working as a caller back then and I read the whole book front to back during my breaks. The idea of connecting with different artists was appealing to me and made me think I could build my portfolio using other people's help. But that never came to be. I did write stories but I didn't think they were good enough to be printed. I'd also have to publish and distribute the comic myself which is a lot of time I didn't have and a lot of energy I didn't want to spend. I love comics but I didn't want to put my whole life into it. So that dream kind of died. I still have the buisness cards with me but I don't want to throw them away. I want to see people get the recognition they deserve. And maybe pull me up with them.