EPT
From time to time, I see posts made by people for whom TeamLiquid has become a burden, an inescapable timesink. These people, posting about how they're leaving or how they’d like to be banned, often express the need to be doing new things, something they've found themselves unable to do for one reason or another.
The only reason I’m telling you this now is because I think I’ve come to feel the polar opposite. I first registered a little over two years ago; I’d spend my time watching Brood War and reading the Blogs section. I didn’t do much of anything, if I’m entirely honest. I worked and studied, blogged and Brood Warred and slept.
I guess it all started when I noticed some ridiculous things in SC2 and wanted to question why they were the way they were. From the ridiculous roads on Metalopolis and the strange plant-life we see throughout Starcraft to the standings of different players on the TeamLiquid Blog Ladder, I’d write about it and see what people thought. It eventually got to the point where, whenever I’d find myself with an evening free and nothing else to do, I’d try to think up a blog post.
From time to time, I’d find myself in a position where I lack the expertise to make a new blog post. For reasons I don’t fully remember, I resolved to try to learn whatever I have to learn if I wanted to make a joke work. Sometimes, that meant I’d end up spending longer than I should have learning to do something really trivial, like making a mockup of the webpage I sometimes visit when my clumsy fingers take me to TramLiquid.net.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/n1F6J.jpg)
This was to be the beginning of a love affair with projects that took far longer than initially anticipated.
To make that image, I decided it would be wise to just sit down and "learn photoshop." As it happens, that's a terrible idea, and one should never assume anything is that easy, but it was that blog post that prompted me to start playing with photoshop at all, something I've since come to genuinely enjoy.
It also led to the cheap and cheerful Starcraft 2 Assistant Application, which is probably the blog post I’ve enjoyed the most since I started posting here.
As you might have guessed from the above, I'm not really cut out for photoshop; it takes a level of skill and talent that, frankly, I'm not 100% able to provide. There's a requirement for dedication that I just can't match. Being the man I am, the only solution I could see to this problem was to decide to leave the image editing to those who could handle it (artists and suchlike) and move on with my life.
Soon afterward, I was struck by another idea, an ambitious idea, an idea that so dramatically dwarfed my abilities that I couldn’t help but try it out. I had a vision. I would take as much documentary footage of riot scenes as I could find and compile it all into a single video. Then, I'd block out the sound and replace it with a series of voice clips from David Attenborough as he described the lives of insects in some sort of hive (initially I had considered bees as they chose a new queen and rebelled against one another, but couldn't find anything relevant).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR4kPOGR_6M
This took longer than you'd expect
This took longer than you'd expect
Having found nowhere near enough usable voice or video clips, I grew dejected and decided not to bother. Weeks later, I found a clip of Col.Minigun playing a PvZ and decided that it was time to revive the project. Sure, I’d failed the first time, but was there any reason I couldn’t succeed this time? I could probably assemble a whole bunch of Attenborough voice samples to match the situations in the game... it would also help that the video's sound would mask the awkwardness in the clips that I failed to edit.
All I'd need to do would be to learn how to use some some audio editing software to cut up all of the voice clips and gate out the background noise, then soften out the transitions and try to add artificial fuzz to some clips so that they’d match. Then all I’d need to do would be to learn to edit videos so I could make it all work. How hard could it possibly be?
Having done that, I felt like I'd sort of peaked; I felt like I was fast running out of new skills I could easily acquire, and the only way to improve on what I’d learned would be to spend a ridiculous amount of time on one project and really make the effort to construct something genuinely special and unique.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZI8ab42Doc
I can't remember a lot of the process of making this.
I don't know if I blocked it out or if I made a deal with the devil to forget.
I can't remember a lot of the process of making this.
I don't know if I blocked it out or if I made a deal with the devil to forget.
Eventually I got bored of doing nothing and decided to actually dedicate some time to just plain figuring out how difficult it would be to use the same technique to revive an old Brood War commentator. I’m not sure why the idea occurred to me, but once it was wedged in my mind I just had to make it happen. It was partially the challenge; I wanted to see if it would be possible to make a believable commentary of a StarCraft 2 match. In the end, I settled on the man who had introduced me to BW, Klazart.
It took hours upon hours of cutting and recutting voice samples [a little over 200 in all], searching for an SC2 match that featured two players who had played BW to see if I could find games of theirs that Klazart had commentated and then actually editing it all together... but when it was done it felt good, I had made something. That was a fine thing to have done.
It took longer than I had wanted, and I had that feeling again of having reached as far as I could with my meagre skills. There wasn't much I could think of to do, but for the time being I was happy with where I was. I was happy with what I'd learned.
I don’t know when it began, but I ended up talking to some other TLers about heading to DreamHack Winter. Despite my not being the type of person who goes out on adventures (I'm sort of a shy, retiring guy) I decided it'd be a great plan to fly to Sweden with a few friends and see where the tournament took us.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/KuQ8X.jpg)
Here's a photo from Dreamhack, all so happy that Hero had won.
Somewhere along the line, high out of my mind on the esports and WaxAngel, we decided it'd be a fine idea to just start interviewing players left and right. Who was there to stop us? We'd just try to look confident and wave around microphones and cameras; we'd be indistinguishable from people who had any idea what they were doing. Hey, it fooled + Show Spoiler [Sheth...] +
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/IUDHU.jpg)
I'm guess all I'm trying to say in this post is that, every time I see that post where someone is saying, "I guess I need to leave TL for a while so I can get some stuff done," I can't help but think, "TL is one of the things that forces me to keep trying new things, to get stuff done."
There's a lot be said for that.
This place has contributed a lot to what I do, what I like and who I am today. So I guess this is just a really simple message to say,
Thanks all,
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Cl9To.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/o3AKf.png)
Thanks to Fishuu for the cartoon SirJolt
P.S. I'm sorry, this has turned out a lot longer than I'd expected. To those of you who managed to make it this far, thanks :D
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Qc3TS.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/42425448/SirJolt-1874.jpg)
