Max on YouTube

In case you missed the live session and wanted to watch me paint a Drowned Earth miniature, you can catch the two hour recording over on the Drowned Earth Youtube channel.

In this two hour live-stream I chatted with Drowned Earth creator James and occasionally daubed a bit of paint on one of the studio miniatures. We covered a lot of topics, touching on things like colour theory, painting techniques, brushes, paint brands, paint consistency, making a wet palette, and so on. To be honest I should have been more of a multi-tasker and actually focused more on painting while I talked.

For a first attempt, though, I was pretty happy with the way it came out. I’ve had some great constructive feedback and I can see many ways to improve for my next one. Given the technical difficulties I had to overcome to be ready for the live session, I’m pretty chuffed with what we broadcast in the end, though.

I had various issues such as a major panic on discovering that my video camera was incapable of live digital output, meaning I had to switch to my iPhone and use that as a stopgap webcam (sadly without zoom, exposure, white balance or aperture controls). Also, I discovered that my upstream broadband speeds are just not high enough for steady 720p streaming, which resulted in some unfortunate buffering. Probably means I will be sticking to recorded sessions in the future, until fibre becomes available in my area and I can upgrade to something faster.

It was my first time using Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) to set it all up and I have to say I was impressed with it. A nice and simple way to combine multiple video and audio sources together into one stream – in our case it was video from my webcam iPhone, a second webcam over the palette, audio from my microphone and additional audio from James calling in on a Google Hangout.

So a far from perfect first attempt, but I had fun and the two hours flew by. I could happily have gone on longer – if it wasn’t for an audio glitch in the last few minutes that made James sound like a dalek!

Some things I shall aim to improve for next time:

• More painting while I talk!
• Better depth of focus – webcam proximity and lack of aperture control meant I only had about a centimetre of focal range.
• Keep the mini in shot – I was wary of this and noticed it happening often.
• Bring the mini closer – I think the power of this sort of video is in getting right in close as if the viewer was painting it themselves.
• No buffering/stuttering – probably avoid live-streaming til I have a decent upstream rate.
• Better setup over the palette – need to upgrade that crappy old webcam and maybe make the image a bit smaller.

If you watched it and have any feedback or requests for content you’d like to see me cover then do drop me a note in the comments; I am looking forward to recording more video content in the future and I want it to be great viewing and relevant.

~ by Max Von Deadlock on May 14, 2017.