Hard Slog (Patreon)

So Studying Dustforce's Animation was a big undertaking, and I'm incredibly pleased with it.  It was tweeted by Game Maker's Tool Kit's Mark Brown, a big YouTuber who discusses game design, and it's got good feedback through comments etc.

The video was only 7 minutes, consisting of mostly game footage with a few sequences of my animated character and some animated overlays to enhance a particular point.  I'd started it in earnest perhaps a month ago, working on it between work, family and friends and other hobbies, in the evenings into the early hours.  

In its first day it's got nearly 1,000 views, more than the previous video from over a month ago which still sits at 800 views.  My most successful video about the Death Egg in Sonic 1 from March is nearly at 100k views, and I got my first cheque from YouTube last month from a year of the revenue building up.

Since making my first proper video in January, How Super Metroid Gets It Right, I've gone from 200 subscribers up to 6,200, which I'm very proud of. I'd say that's a decent increase in the space of 10 months.

There are many, many videos I'd like to make, and looking at how well the videos do versus the amount of effort and time put into them is slowly forcing me to eventually make a decision; is it worth it?

I'm not expecting to be able to live solely off of my video-making career, at least not as quickly as within a year, but I am wondering if the Internet audience will stay patient enough to see a video perhaps once every other month?

Big YouTubers have the time to work on a video all of the day, and get the funding needed to make it worth while and stable, but unfortunately this isn't the case for me right now.

I really want to continue the Animation Study videos, I'm just weary that YouTube culture is fast paced, and things date quickly.

Having said that, I think I've built up an incredibly caring and enthusiastic fan base, and I get some really good discussions and suggestions from Commentators, which makes it all the worth while seeing how much they enjoy the videos.

I think I'll see where I'm at in January 2018, and make a decision then.

Does it help I'm listening to a bunch of Bread songs right now? Probably not...