SORRY SORRY SORRY // update

     Hi again! Too long, too little see, I know I know. SORRY! I wanted to throw together a new little blog post to kind of catch everyone up on the happenings at mellohyelloh currently, because it's already JUNE and I have BARELY uploaded!!! And that kinda blows!!! I think I have been struggling with motivation recently kind of just due to how long it's been, and I'm really trying to nip that in the bud and get back to work soon!
     Episode 9 is still on it's way, I've been picking and editing at it when I can, but a BIG issue I've been running into is that my computer wants to explode every time I open Premiere, which is a bit ANNOYING! Nevertheless, we continue forward. Pretty much all of the episode is filmed and voice acted at this point (minus a few shots I need to redo), thank you to those who helped me with some body acting recently I am getting BETTER at asking! And a big part that's been waiting for Episode 9 are a few very small ANIMATED segments that I finally was able to get everything together for and have Spylens be SUPER COOL AND NICE and make for us!

     Above you'll see some of the very messy sketches I had put together to give Spy an idea of what I was imagining for the parts he'll be working on. I think it'll probably end up changing a lot in the final product, because honestly I had a hard time translating a like 3D shot to 2D images in my head with these for some reason. I think animation in Halo Machinima is super cool, and I'm really excited to have these little brief segments in Episode 9! I was planning to keep it a secret for longer, but then the episode kept taking longer to make (my fault) so this is a little tease for it. It's nothing huge, no big fight scenes, but just little parts I felt like I couldn't really pull off in a way I'd like in machinima.
     I think Flying By Wire will always lean more towards machinima rather than incorporating more animation just because I think the challenge of figuring out how to pull certain things off in game is so much fun, (and also as someone who doesn't know/computer PROBABY couldn't handle animating, I'd feel bad giving a like full episode of animation to someone else), and I think janky machinima segments have a certain charm to them. It's always fun to me to have to suspend disbelief a bit and accept the spartan pointing a gun at a blank monitor is actually typing on a keyboard.
    That being said, animation is VERY VERY COOL!!!! I'm very grateful to have made friends in the community who can give me the opportunity to get some in my little show. Spy just finished up the 3rd episode of his animated series, L.E.N.S, so now I can feel a lot better about asking him to do this and know I'm not stealing his time, haha.

     Sooooo, what's next? I dunno! I'm gonna try and get Episode 9 out relatively soon, while Spy cooks on the animation, I'll try and get everything else all edited and put together so hopefully it'll be an easy sort of drag and drop (it won't be I will overcomplicate it), and then onto the next episode. I think I've had a bit of a struggle with balancing the show's kind of random beginnings with the plot that has been building, and have been a bit worried that the show won't feel the same as the older episodes. I think Episode 9 is the biggest departure from the usual feel of the show, so I think Episode 10 will definitely be a lot smaller in scale (also just to help the production schedule). That being said, I know all of this is just stuff only I worry about, so once I get out of my own head that'll be less of an issue. The channel doesn't matter, after all.
     I want to be uploading more in general, and interacting with both the mellohyelloh community and wider Halo/machinima communities, so while Flying By Wire may be taking a bit longer to produce each episode, I'm trying to stockpile on some side videos to fill the time. We have a few in the pipeline right now, which I'll show some previews of below!

     First up is a really silly one that was very inspired by my excitement for Halo Campaign Evolved, which will most likely be the next video on the channel! Have a lot of cool friends voicing parts in this, and have been compiling all the footage this week so it'll hopefully be a quick edit once I have everyone's parts! I won't spoil too much, but I think you can get the general gist of it from the above photos. 
     I'll be honest, the excitement I have for Campaign Evolved has been a HUGE motivator lately (which is crazy because I was SO against a CE Remake back when it was just a rumor floating around). I'm really riding that wave though, and it only felt appropriate to make a video dedicated to the next exciting installment of our favorite franchise. We were dabbling in shorts recently, but this will be a normal horizontal video so no doom scrolling this time. 

     Not to say we won't have more shorts, of course, here's a very cryptic image that's from a short we're working on right now. If anything, this might beat the other video as the next thing we upload, depends on which I get all the voice lines for first! I also want to throw together some more of the How To shorts like the ones we uploaded earlier this year, but I have to WRITE them first and isn't that just the hardest job in the world? 

     And finally, this little preview of another layover, this one is VERY early on, all that exists is a script, me asking 1 person to voice in it, and this screenshot I took so I knew what this character would look like. This specific video will need a lot of background body actors, so if you keep an eye out and want to help there might be something soon! Writing these little side videos has been a lot of fun recently, and I think I'll probably try and throw more of these up more often. Whether or not they're Flying By Wire related! These I've mentioned I might not even label "Layover" but I digress, that's all stuff that actually doesn't matter and are more so just organizational things that I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who'd notice.
    SO hopefully this helped qualm any worries about if mellohyelloh was dead (we're not and I know you weren't worried), and hopefully you all can be excited about the little summer of mellohyelloh we're cooking up! I'm hoping to also start to STREAM more regularly again, I really fell out of the habit (and have honestly just had a lot less time), but I miss talking to everyone live on the internet. I'll probably start to throw in some other games to stream, and maybe try out some game nights or something. BY THE WAY if anyone has tips on how to run a discord server, please let me know!!! I'm real bad at it and would love to start using the mellohyelloh discord more often and get it a bit more active. But my brain is really not formatted for that sort of thing, so advice would be appreciated! Any complaints can go to Excelled.

     OK COOL! That's about all I have for today update wise, but I wanted to do another little mellohyelloh spotlight section like I did last time! I've really enjoyed getting to feature some cool videos on this little blog, so this will most likely end up being a recurring segment. Do they still do Halo Spotlight on the website nowadays? This is kind of like that, but specifically machinima focused.

MELLOHYELLOH SPOTLIGHT

THE SALESMAN EPISODE 1 by ZEROGLITCHES   
    Starting off with the first episode of Zero's new series, The Salesman! What a strong first episode, introducing us to the titular salesman, who is being hunted by police for his illegal weapon selling business. This really felt unique compared to other any other machinima shows I've seen, and the chase sequence closer to the end of this video is TOP NOTCH, some of the coolest stuff I've seen done in Infinite!

WELCOME TO THE FAMILY by HOWLINGPLAYZ     
     Next up we see Howling have to deal with Runic's new pet. Love these sorts of set ups for videos, and was reminded a lot of the first episode of Flying By Wire! Cobalt showing up to just insult Howling was great and also it's just fun to see the Flood armor pieces be used in machinima like this. It's surprising but I feel like I don't see it too often (but maybe I'm just not looking hard enough!)

THE DUEL by CERTAINPOINT     
     CertainPoint always has some of the most fun and creative editing I see in machinima. This little western stand off really nails the vibe and aesthetic of the old western movies, and it's so cool how Infinite allows creators to really make their videos set anywhere they could think of. The sound, lighting, and set in this one are all great and really tie the Western theme together!

THE SEARCH FOR COBALT by SPARTANFN6     
     SpartanFN6 brings us into a conspiracy regarding THAT Cobalt Spartan, and his recent... disappearance. This was connected to Cobalt's "Us but Evil" videos he had done, and I just think it's so cool to have this little story arc spinning out between different YouTube channels. SpartanFN6 really nails the perfect tone of unraveling this big conspiracy, and I LOVE the shot of Tux changing colors as he walks through the doorway. A Texas switch? In my machinima!? Also Cobalt really gets around this is the 2nd video here that he's related to!

DEMOLITION SQUAD EPISODE 6 ​by GAMESAW PRODUCTIONS     
I recently finally sat down and watched through all of Demolition Squad, and it's such a fun series! From the get go, these characters and their dynamics are SOLID and so much fun to watch. Episode 6 came out somewhat recently, and is a big longer so pop some popcorn and sit down and enjoy! The whole fight against the elite was great and so creative, loved all the different set pieces we go through with it. Also I love when people give in universe explanations for different Halo things existing, which they do with the Rocket Hog in this one! So fun!

VIPER EPISODE 1 ​by SERPENT STUDIOS
VIPER!!! TOMORROW!!! TODAY!!! YESTERDAY!!?? Ok ok all honesty, Viper is finally out and has been great so far! The Serpent Studios team has really knocked it out the park with the first 2 episodes, and the story is really ramping up already after the 2nd episode! No spoilers here, go watch for yourself! And get caught up quick, I hear episode 3 is tomorrow!

     ALLLLRRRIIIIIGHT ENOUGH ALREADY!!! That's all I got for today, I've been typing this up instead of doing my job since like 6 AM, so I THINK I've rambled about everything I could think of. I miss uploading and streaming so HOPEFULLY you'll be seeing my dumb yellow helmet around more SOON! Until then, eat your school and stay in vegetables, don't talk to strangers, and look both ways before crossing the street. Sound good?

EDIT: ALSO HAPPY PRIDE!!!!!
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- YELLOH // LOGAN