In which I’m responsive – Monarch butterflies

29 Tuesday May 2012

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1up Muschroom, allhailskippy, army men, Bob-omb, california raisins, challenge, dftba, Luke Spinelli, Monarch Butterflies, Pacman, Pacman ghosts, Paul and Shawn, reddit, Shawn and Paul, Singing, starting a vlog, That's Pauls Show, That's PS!, thatsps, Venture Bros, Video Response, Vlog Brothers, Wait to click, Where did all the monarchs go

In an effort to test my new skills in the real wild, I decided that our next challenge should be to create a video response to a video on YouTube. I figured given Shawn’s dwindling free time, it would be a video that could be put together fairly quickly, and didn’t require any materials to purchase, so it would fit right in the budget.

Unfortunately, I believe this was the last time that Shawn actually created one of his own videos. He has been in a few of mine since then, but this was really the beginning of the end of “That’s Paul and Shawn’s Show” and the start of “That’s Paul’s Show”. Fortunately for me the acronym works out pretty well regardless of whether or not Shawn’s a direct participant.

Shawn chose to respond to a video he found on Reddit in which the protagonist (who has downs syndrome) demonstrates how to make a and cheese sandwich for dinner. Since he’s clever like that, you might also notice that the video length is 42 seconds. Life, the universe and everything indeed.

Being a huge vlog brothers fan, I decided that for my video response I’d reply to one of their videos for my part of the challenge. They had recently done a video that had a bunch of monarchs in it. So I decided that my video would ask the question “where did all the monarchs go”. I sang this. There’s a reason why I don’t typically sing. It’s short, I promise. They never did accept it as an official video response. What a bummer. Continue reading »

Nintendo Controller Business Card Holder

22 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by allhailskippy in Nerdcrafting

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allhailskippy, Business Card, Business card holder, cards, controller, craft, crafts, dftba, DIY, holder, How to make a card holder, how-to, HowTo, iron, Ironing beads, Mario Bros, melting beads, Nerd crafting, Nerd Crafts, nerdcrafting, NES, NES Craft, Nintendo, Nintendo Controller, Nintendo Craft, Paul and Shawn, Pauls show, Perler Beads, Plastic Beads, reddit, Sean and Paul, Shawn and Paul, SNES craft, Super Mario, That's Pauls Show, That's PS!, That's PS! thatsps, tutorial

Back in the 90s someone I knew made me a decorative black mage from Final Fantasy using perler beads. I’ve always thought it was cool, and have kept it around somewhere handy.

When my girlfriend suggested I make a Nintendo controller business card for my next video, I immediately went in search of how I could get my hands on some of these beads. It turns out they’re pretty cheap, and easy to get.

Although I borrowed the idea from an etsy post, I tweaked the pattern just a bit to look more like an actual NES controller. Of course it’s probably simpler to get one from the original etsy listing. But it’s my intention to eventually complete the Final Fantasy set of characters with beads.

Norman Rockwell Coke Puzzle

10 Thursday May 2012

Posted by allhailskippy in Challenges

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allhailskippy, Barefoot, challenge, Coca-Cola, Coke, Jig-Saw Puzzle, Jigsaw Puzzle, juggling, Norman Rockwell, Paul and Shawn, puzzle, puzzles, That's Pauls Show, That's PS!, thatsps, toy shelf, vlog

I was out of ideas when I did this video, so I spent some time looking around my place for something I could film. As it turned out, I hadn’t done a puzzle in a REALLY long time, and happened to have a 500 piece one I like in my closet. I decided to give it a whirl.

It only took me about 3 hours to complete the whole thing, which means I got approximately 1 piece in place every 20 seconds or so. It felt pretty quick (although my butt would disagree as it was quite sore from sitting on hardwood for that long) Videos that I’ve done since then where I had to sit on the ground have included my bean bag chair for comfort.

When putting a puzzle together (and I’ve done more than a few in my time), I almost always start with the outside pieces first. I find them fairly easy to locate in the box, and it gives me a pretty good idea where everything is going to go. The best part of this step is getting a hold of the corner pieces. There are so few of them, it feels like finding a treasure each time.

Once I’ve got the outside complete, or nearly complete, I sort by colour. Typically different areas have common colours. And while I’m doing that, I separate any easily distinguishable pieces, like faces, hands or words. This is only possible on smaller puzzles. Once you pass the 1000 piece mark, you just have to take some colours at a time, and work with what you’ve got instead of pulling them all out of the box.

Playing with lego

01 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by allhailskippy in Challenges

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allhailskippy, Cars, challenge, Honkey Tonk, Lego, Paul and Sean, Paul and Shawn, Playing, Playing with Lego, Race, Racing, Record Player, Soap box derby, That's PS!, Turntable

Every now and then Shawn gets an idea to make some money that ends up with him having cool stuff at his house. This time around it was cherry picking Value Villages for their cool stuff, and flipping it on Ebay and running a flea market booth. This is how we ended up with a 20lb bag of lego to play with.

You get to see my daughter and Nadine (Shawn’s wife) for the first time in this video, although not for a lot of it. They had a fun time building race cars with us too. I don’t remember who built the house (I think it was Nadine) but it performed WAY better than I expected it to. I figured it’d just tip over. Although it didn’t win any land speed records, it did make it all the way to the bottom of our makeshift ramp.

Once all our cars were built, we decided to show them off, but didn’t have anything really suitable. So we stuck them on the record player. I think that it turned out pretty darn well all things considered. I was quite pleased with the way the music turned out this episode. I really think it added to the feel of the video. Particularly the change at 1:24.

This wasn’t so much a “challenge” as us having fun with lego. It was supposed to be a group challenge, but that idea went out the window pretty quickly. The original thought was that we’d each take the same footage from filming, and then cut it up our own ways, coming up with 2 different versions of the same event. Which seems like a neat idea in theory, but in practice we would have ended up with basically the same video each time. It’s probably for the best that we didn’t do that in the long run.

I’m not sure who said it but “I need a big doo-hickey on the front” got us all a big laugh while we made our cars.

I definitely started to get the hang of cutting my talking bits better than previous videos, but hadn’t figured out how to prevent the “popping” every now and then in the audio yet. Also, the camera’s still tilty. Took me a long while to fix all the things I didn’t like, but I’m definitely glad I did.

In which I’m a witch doctor

30 Monday Apr 2012

Posted by allhailskippy in Challenges, Nerdcrafting

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allhailskippy, Bowser, challenge, craft, crafting, crafts, felt, grass skirts, Mario, Mario Bros, mask, Paul and Shawn, plush, plushie, plushy, Sean and Paul, sew, sewing, Shawn and Paul, stuffed animal, That's PS!, thatsps, voodoo, witch doctor

This is really the start of what I’d call my “nerd crafting”. It took me a night (might have been 2, I can’t remember for sure) to cut out the felt, and another night of stitching to put it all together. I eyeballed pretty much the entire doll, so there’s no hope of getting pattern out of this one later. Not that it turned out quite the way I wanted anyways (Face turned out way derpier than I hoped for).

The mask I was wearing was made out of a cardboard sheet that I cut out, and added a couple of grass skirts from a dollar store and stapled a string to the back to hold it onto my head. I wasn’t wearing a shirt under it, so it would look “authentic”. I think I managed to hide my unsightly bits pretty well.

I actually have a LOT more footage of me shaking my proverbial bon-bon, but fortunately (for all involved) I only needed to use a few minutes of it once the crafting section of the video had been sliced and put together.

As for things that I think I’ve improved since then, there’s a few. I try to make the screen a whole lot less tilty, the audio doesn’t pop (this video was “better”, but still had some popping on the left hand side) and the cutting for talking tends to be a great deal tighter.

That's PS!

~ Nerdcrafting and more

Tag Archives: Paul and Shawn

In which I’m responsive – Monarch butterflies

Nintendo Controller Business Card Holder

Norman Rockwell Coke Puzzle

Playing with lego

In which I’m a witch doctor