Does that statement really need further explanation? I don’t think anyone would, at the very least, have a hard time understanding why somebody would think that.
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I understand that the thumbnails are simple, or “bland”, but I didn’t have time to make personalized thumbnails for each project that would look anywhere near as good as MK404’s.
Would it be ideal if they had graphics from the project? Yes. I do think it would be difficult to find someone willing to make 70+ thumbnail images of a similar quality and look/feel, however.
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I would do it.
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Quoting this for next year. Thanks for offering to help. We’ll see what happens for 2021.
Will include some ideas in the post-mortem thread. Stay tuned.
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Although of course it didn’t happen, i don’t think it would be too hard. Especially if you have a good template for this years stuff, maybe have a color change on it for each individual day. A text band over it or something, and then of course say a zoomed in image of the video itself. Which could get mass produced easily enough.
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I think “hard” isn’t the issue, more so “time consuming” and “tedious”.
There are definite ways to mass produce it, but I also didn’t have any assets to work with, so had to get scrappy.
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I don’t even think it would require graphics on par with the MK404 thumbnails, if you were to simply have a screenshot of the project in the background instead of a black screen, it could help. You may have to change the text colors around here and there if you don’t have a black border around the text, but I think that is a perfectly acceptable sacrifice to make. One of the most common things to hear people tell new project creators is to post screenshots of their hack to make it look more enticing and draw more attention, which I think is 100% valid. The same general principle applies to something like this, you want to draw people into the video
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I think “hard” isn’t the issue, more so “time consuming” and “tedious”.
There are definite ways to mass produce it, but I also didn’t have any assets to work with, so had to get scrappy.
I get ya, just make sure to keep in mind that this is a community wide event and so if something like not having time to do this comes up then ask around if somebody would be willing. This is FEE3 and there will always be people with stakes in it to help.
For example I would not mind helping with the editing of the videos if say the days were all combined into one for a spectacle and needed to stay concise or something to that degree, but I guess that’s simply my offer on the table.
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For sure. These are all learnings for next year. I appreciate the feedback and will include some ideas for discussion after the event ends.
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Would you be willing to consider changing the thumbnails for this year’s projects? It’s doubtful that the vast majority of the viewership is going to be watching these live for the upcoming 18 days in a row. People will probably come back to it later.
I could probably help whip out half of these in a couple days, if you need manpower.
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Perhaps we could require users to include a screenshot (say of 800x600 dimensions) from their game to be the youtube thumbnail for next year? Then we just have a template setup in gimp2 to change the overlayed text for each project title.
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i better see all of y’all in the organizing committee next year
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Doesn’t Youtube have this thing where you can pick a still from the video to use as thumbnail? Maybe use that?
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I appreciate the offer, but I don’t want to ask you to commit to that. I think we’re fine as is. Stay tuned for post-mortem thread.
It does, but that doesn’t include any info about the project other than a screen that’s randomly picked. It wouldn’t include the name of the project.
Personally, I think the thumbnails are fine for this year given the circumstances.
To be fair, a great number of people joined the discord for this, but some things were just done behind the scenes for us. I really appreciate the work that everyone put in, but I don’t recall seeing a call to arms to figure out project thumbnails, at least. I’m sure there were many other things that were also sorted out to my blissful ignorance.
That said, I don’t really mind the thumbnails and I don’t think it’s a huge deal. I just don’t want to discredit the community that might be willing to help with things when given the chance.
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Actually just thinking on it regarding the thumbnails, it is by no means too late to get those done even if a couple videos would need replacements. As whoever has the all the videos on their pc would simply get the person making them a screenshot from the footage of each project. Could get that done in a couple days
And also on that I have a bit of a worry, and that’s I always felt the main purpose of FEE3 was to essentially show people who don’t hang around here what this community is up to. And having that go through MK404 was somewhat major to that I think. What I’m basically saying is what range would a newly created channel for this have? Granted ill probably get some advertising that it is going on out there, but its still something to think about.
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MK404 declined when we asked. Sorry!
Up to you. I’m waiting on a job offer atm, and whipping out 35 decent thumbnails in the space of a day or two shouldn’t be an issue for me, once the template is done.
Feel free to DM me here or on Discord if you change your mind, but it really wouldn’t be a problem. 
Edit Re: below post: Reason I’m offering now is because I may not have the free time, weeks from now. If you want to delay editing the thumbnails until later and sit on them until the event is over, it doesn’t change anything for me.
WRT thumbnails:
I hear your concerns, and agree with some of them. That said, we aren’t making any wide-sweeping changes while the event is mid-flight. I may entertain requests to retroactively edit the thumbnails after Day 18 is complete.
I’m aware, its more having the uploads not go through a standing audience.