Hi.
Welcome to my blog. I document my adventures in travel, style, and food. Hope you have a nice stay!
Welcome to my blog. I document my adventures in travel, style, and food. Hope you have a nice stay!
GOAL: We want our Blog and YouTube thumbnails to look nice, engaging and informative. We want viewers to know at a glance what App (or Apps) are being discussed in the video or blog and that it is being played from the Pixel Fondue channel.
•Base thumbnail is 960x540 pixels. No screenshots for Thumbnails, yep - nooooooo screenshots of the MODO screen (or whatever app you're using) for thumbnails. We need nice looking images for thumbnails. You don't have to go crazy. Doing a rendering video? A nice looking teapot is just fine. A screenshot of render settings is not. PF is a nice, bright, colorful (maybe gaudy...I know...) website.
•Icons. Make sure you include an icon of the App used in the thumbnail as well as the Pixel Fondue thumbnail. I think the lower-left corner should be the default, but you can move it if you need to. Please refer to the Thumbnail template PSD file.
•Banner Text. If you want to include text you can use the sample text and banner on the Thumbnail Template linked below - or use your own. It's optional.
•Crediting. If you use a creative commons asset to demonstrate in a tutorial (a model from Sketchfab, for instance) make sure you credit the author, preferably verbally and in the description and PF blog.
• Titling. For both Blog and YouTube videos we are titling and tagging to make our videos easily searched and found - and to make it clear what App or Technique (or both) is covered in the Video. Put the App or technique first then a vertical bar '|' then the short description. Examples below
MODO | Sketch Tool or Substance | Bake by Mesh Name or Rendering | How Monte Carlo works
For the SquareSpace blog you can put an additional 'excerpt' that will be shown below the main thumbnail title. This is optional.
• Tagging. You can include as many custom tags as you want for both the Blog and YouTube video, we do have some required tagging.
SquareSpace Blog:
1. clr-? We have a number of preset Pixel Fondue colors for the title banner (purple in the above image). All you have to do is type 'clr-' in the tag field and you will be given a choice of some colors..yellow, pink, purple...pick one that looks nice with your thumbnail image.
2. App-? This tag will let our search filters find your blog by app. You just have to type 'App-' and you will be presented with some presets. Like App-MODO or App-Houdini.
3. Dis-? This tag will let our search filters find your blog by discipline. You just have to type 'Dis-' and you will be presented with some presets. Like Dis-Rendering or Dis-Modeling.
4. Pick a category. Training is for all training videos. News is for things like Interviews, Announcements, Reviews, Live Streams and things of that nature. It's not necessarily news - but until we find a better name....it's 'News'. Please don't put your blog in both.
YouTube:
1. Your First and Last name. This will allow YouTube to automatically put the video in your personal playlist.
2. App or Discipline. We have a number of playlists that your video will automatically join with the correct tag. If you tag your video MODO, Substance, After FX, Photoshop, zBrush, Houdini or Pipeline then it should auto-add to the correct playlist. If you want to request a new playlist please let us know. PF (probably Greg) will add videos to the 'Featured' playlist. I try to add everybody's videos to the featured playlist, please request if I miss you.
3. Pixel Fondue. Please add the tag 'Pixel Fondue'
4. Video Description. Please add your first and last name to the the video's description (normally at the very end separated by a space. You want people to know who you are. Don't be shy about adding tags, you want people to find your video.
•YouTube End Screens. Use YouTube's End Screen features to add a Subscribe button to the end of your video. I also suggest adding your playlist so people can continue watching your videos. YouTube's 'recommended next video' works well too for multi-part videos. The important part is the Subscribe button so people forwarded links to our videos can easily subscribe. You can adjust how long the End Screen elements stay up. On long videos I usually have them there the last 5 seconds during the wrap up...for super short videos (like Vaughan is 60 seconds) you may want to hold the last frame for a few second giving users time to click on the playlist or subscribe button.
•Add the Pixel Fondue bumper before and after every video. In other words, every video should begin and end with the Pixel Fondue bumper. The bumper is found in the Pixel Fondue branding kit - found here. Yum Yum.
•Verbally introduce yourself at the beginning of your video. 'Greg here from Pixel Fondue'...something simple like that, right off the bat after the bumper. We want to make sure people know who you are and can find more of your videos if they want.
•Lower Third indent. Please use the lower third identity asset in the branding kit with your name at the beginning of the video, right after the bumper. There's 2 animated ones to choose from that go on and off in 5 seconds (AE projects in Branding Kit) or you can use the single png image still. You can either fade that on and off or just keep it on the whole time (it takes up 50 pixels on the bottom).
If you like to keep your name up the whole time you can record your videos at 1920x1030 and use the bottom 50 pixels for the banner. That way it won't cover any of your screen cap. There's a pink and a violet version of the template in the Branding Kit - feel free to use either one.
1. Everything posted on PF's YouTube Channel must also be posted as a blog on the main PF Squarespace site.
2. We shoot for one video or blog post (review, interview, etc) every 2 weeks. That's not set in stone...but if you're every 6 weeks then you're probably not super interested in doing this.
3. Don't reveal any NDA information if you're a Beta tester for any software....and please try and represent PF well on any online forum.
4. Ask any and all questions on the Slack group - you will get answers very quickly there.
