Yello's YouTube Corner

I'm way too obsessed with making videos.

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My YouTube channel is called Yello's Island, of course. It's gone through quite a few phases since its inception, but one consistency has always been my personal thoughts and stories within every video.

As of right now, my channel is focused on personal anecdotes around the games and systems I've owned over the years. Each of them have interesting stories behind them, so I wanted to share that in a very chill, low stakes environment, without unnecessary edits and effects tacked on.

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History of my channel

YouTube Addict (Pre-2017)

Ever since I discovered YouTube around 2008, this platform basically became my entire entertainment hub. I watched less TV and movies and more YouTube videos throughout my day. This was before even having an account, so instead of subscribing to channels to have them automatically pop up in my feed, I would look them up using the search bar from memory, which feels like a bygone era. I've had so many YouTube creators that I would obsess over, watching every single one of their videos for hours.

There are way too many channels to list and honestly, their individual names don't matter (cuz a couple of them are questionable nowadays). I was in love with the concept of a YouTube video itself; how it felt more personal and raw than traditional media. I was able to attach myself to the personality of the creator (almost parasocially oops) and become invested in whatever they had to say. There really was nothing like it. I would literally watch so many videos every day, it probably affected my brain development permanently. But my god was it so entertaining and comforting for teenage Yello.

Editing on a potato (2017 - 2019)

I became so immersed in the YouTube culture that like lots of viewers, I eventually wanted to make my own videos. Fortunately, I didn't have the guts to use my parents account and post embarrassing videos as a child, so I had a least a little more sense of what I could make, but I was still in the dark of where to even start.

So I decided to harness my fanatic energy and make a fan compilation of a YouTuber I loved watching back in 2017. Except, the most capable computer I had at the time was a MacBook Air that I barely used. But I got to work, downloading all the necessary clips to iMovie, learning the basics of splicing, placing text, and rendering, and put together a respectable series of clips of my favorite moments from that YouTuber's famous series.

I posted that video to a brand new channel and surprisingly, the views started slowly climbing...like continuously. It was probably because that YouTuber was popular at the time, but I was already blown away by the number of views it gained over the span of a week. I started getting real comments under that video, directly referencing edits I did in the compilation, which blew my mind. I got a surprisingly large amount of positive feedback, which was my first instance of validation from the internet. It was extremely gratifying. At its peak, the video had around 100,000 views in less than 6 months, which was WILD.

That is now privated because a. copyright and b. it's definitely cringy to watch back. But I wouldn't say that I regret it. Making that fan video helped me get my feet wet in making my own videos, which I soon learned would become a new obsession for me. Though, even at the time, I knew that I wanted to make something that truly my own, instead of taking other people's content. At the time, my channel was called "Yelloyoshi" because that was my screen name for other accounts I had, but my one video had nothing to do with it. So I decided to lean into my persona and make this channel all about me.

Since I grew up watching YouTube, I thought it would be a great first video to introduce myself through my YouTube viewing history and how it led me to make my that very video. Quite meta of me. Which meant making my first ever YouTube script, recording audio on a microphone, and compiling it altogether in a more advanced (and afforable) editing program, which was Sony Vegas Pro. Keep in mind, Vegas Pro was Windows only, so I couldn't edit on my MacBook anymore, which meant I had to edit on my ancient potato laptop from 2011. I have no idea how I was able to put up with that amount of lag for 10 minute video with a good amount of editing in there, but I persevered. A first real attempt is always rough in hindsight, but I'm glad I put in legitimate effort into something I was proud of at the time.

After that, it was off to the races. I still had no clear direction but I was so excited to post more. Even though the process to upload felt arduous and slow, the final product made it all worth it. At the time, I liked YouTubers that showcased who they are through storytelling or confessional-type videos. So I made videos like thoughts before entering college, social anxiety, and the one that felt the most natural: video game memories. I knew that I didn't wanna do let's plays or reviews, but talking about my own experience with games was right up my alley. So I slowly leaned more into gaming specific videos like a tribute to my favorite game of all time and a sketch around Daisy from the Mario games.

Around mid-2019, I was able to semi-upgrade to a less potato-y Windows 8 laptop, which was a godsend for my standards, which helped me create videos a little faster than I could before. With each video I made, I learned that I really love talking about myself, which sounds narcissistic. But it was truly theraputic being able to express myself in a visual way. Even though, I was still learning the ropes of basic keyframing, sound effects, and audio mixing, I was so excited to keep improving with each video that I could never stop thinking about the next script.

I'll just make whatever (2019 - 2022)

By the end of 2019, I got into the groove of making videos, but the problem was that they always took a few months to make. My perfectionist tendencies were always in the forefront. So I wanted to spice things up at bit with a bigger project. I was super inspired by dodie at the time, and one series she was known for was her daily videos for a particular month (VEDIF, VEDA, VEDIM, etc.), where you had to come up with 1 video for every day of the month. It didn't matter how big or small the scope was, you just had to get a video out once a day. So I figured that I'd take a crack at it for my own channel, in an attempt to pump out videos a little faster...well, a LOT faster.

I started planning around December 2019 and chose February as the month to execute my month-long challenge, which would be known as "VEDIF 2020". Usually these videos were supposed to be super casual and on-the fly, but I wanted to go all out. I had a master plan of every single video idea I wanted to do and even a secret message hidden in every video. Even though I probably had a few hundred subscribers at the time, I wanted this to be the most mind-blowing thing in the world. The problem was...I was just one person. With my still-beginner video making skills, I signed myself up to an unimaginable amount of extra work that I was simply not prepared for, even with the few extra months of buffer.

But I committed. I may have stayed a few hours past my bedtime on a school night to get the next VEDIF video posted in the morning to maybe 30 active viewers, but the persistence to not miss a day kept me going. And against all odds, I successfully posted every single day in February and fully executed my master plan. Each video had a purpose because they each held a secret word and when all put together, it would reveal a secret message. I remember feeling so proud of that project, despite some videos flopping cuz of their wildly different subject matters. But the low views didn't matter as much as the principal of sticking to a long-term project, which proved to be a valuable lesson in persistence.

After that huge VEDIF project, I saw that the best performing videos were focused on Nintendo, which was no surprise. My character was a Yoshi, after all. So I figured that I'd hone in on what a typical Nintendo content creator would do, since I still felt like I was learning the ropes. I made my first ever review of Super Paper Mario, a video essay about Wuhu Island, and even a slightly-disguised Top 10 video of my favorite games of 2020. I was hitting all the basic marks of a gaming channel, but that was okay with me. I honestly just wanted to know what it felt like to make those kinds of videos I grew up watching. And I'm happy to say that I'm still proud of those videos cuz even though they would take months to make yet again, each one felt like a big drop because I put in so much care and attention into them.

Then on one fateful day in 2021, I made a seemingly random video that would forever change the trajectory of my channel's philosophy...I made a tutorial video. No, it wasn't to get easy views. It wasn't because I found some groundbreaking discovery. It was because I was fed up with my own problem and wanted to create my own solution. Put simply, I wanted to make a video compiling the proper way to fix the time mechanic in the Pokémon Gen 3 games whenever the battery ran dry. Surprisingly, there was a lack of thorough information about this topic, aside from bits of tools and info scattered around the Internet. So I decided to compile the guide myself. Even though it was nothing like my previous videos, I still felt compelled to make this, if nothing else for future reference. The video initally came out to little reception, which was no surprise to me. But don't worry, we'll check back to this video later on...

I wanna be a Nintendo YouTuber! (2022 - 2024)

While I kept inching closer to the Nintendo niche that I wanted to be in, I felt compelled to do something I had never done before; a video that would have no choice but to stand out. I was gonna make an hour long video. Not just a random podcast or a rambly rant. No, a fully featured video with my usual editing style that someone could legitimately binge. Those gargantuan video essays were all the rage during COVID, so I figured I'd throw my hat in the ring to experience the process for myself. Keeping with my Nintendo-focused theme, I decided to rank all Mario Party boards from the GameCube era. This was actually an idea from my college friend ShiftyBadger, who also wanted to collaborate with me. Killing two birds with one stone.

Long story short, we recorded hundreds of hours of footage, wrote out all of our opinions, and I took the responsibility of editing it all together. Everything felt like a blur, but I just remember picking at it every single day, never feeling like I made enough progress. Until eventually, the video finally came out in early 2022, after SEVERAL months of production. I was so thankful that my friend stuck it out with me in the entire process. We played every single board together on very legal software, constantly resetting in order to trigger board-specific events. The sheer load of work we had to tackle was overwhelming, but we still look back at that video with so much pride. And I also learned that I can only handle long videos every once in a while. I was quite alright with sticking to my 10-15 minute formula.

At this point, I was using my Yelloyoshi character for 4 years. And while I'll absolutely love Yoshi for the rest of my life, I began to feel dissatisfied that I was using a copyrighted character to represent myself. I didn't even put my own twist, I was literally a yellow Yoshi. No additional clothes or accessories, a literal palette swap. So I wanted to create a new original persona closer to who I actually am.

Luckily, a couple years prior, I just so happened to create a new character that embodied me for a character design class in college. Borrowing from my Yoshi persona, I decided to name him "Yello" since yellow being my favorite color was another defining trait of mine. I was honestly surprised with what I could conjure up because I've never designed an original character before until I had to for an assignment. Don't underestimate the power of deadlines.

But while I fell in love with my new character, I wasn't sure how to introduce him to my YouTube channel. I couldn't just randomly swap characters in the next video because it would've felt too random of a change. If I was gonna update my design, but I might as well create a whole video about it. And I did! I created brand new assets, including new stills, profile picture, and background. I put in a ton of hours to differentiate myself from my previous persona while still feeling like myself. In the video, I told a mini-version of my YouTube history and why I was rebranding. What's funny is that I actually lost a chunk of subscribers who preferred when I was a Yoshi. Oh well, changing isn't gonna please everyone.

Ironically, as I was shedding my Nintendo "OC", I decided to hone in on Nintendo content....again. This was different from my flailing attempt back in 2020 because I had a lot more editing experience from putting in the reps and watching a LOT of YouTube advice videos. At this point, my upload schedule was still inconsistent, so I sat down with a plan to post one fully-edited video a month. I know that sounds like table scraps to an average YouTube viewer, but this kind of deadline was what I needed to finally make consistent videos with my very extra editing.

I went all in with polished thumbnails, editing, SEO; all the YouTube benchmarks I felt like I had to hit. I only had 1k subs and was barely making any ad revenue, but I wanted to act like I was one of the big YouTubers with consistent output. I began to cover more general Nintendo discussion topics like nostalgic games, complaining about Pokémon, and even a beefy Animal Crossing video essay (apparently the algorithm loves those).

Despite the deadline pressure and overwhelming editing that I willingly put myself through, I was so proud of the end result. To this day, I'm still very proud of videos during this time because I was able to accomplish quality and consistency at the same time.

After a consistent streak of highly edited 10 minute videos, I began to feel inadequate about my videos again. Sure, my popular topics have gotten more views than usual, but was I really happy to blend myself into the crowd? I didn't think so. Ending my monthly upload streak, I implemented a tried and true method of setting myself up to fail. Influenced by the YouTube landscape of doing too much, I figured I'd give this formula a try. Since I felt like I was blending in too much, what better way than to overwork myself into a gargantuan video that no one else could dare to replicate?

To be fair, I posted two complete videos and was already on my way to make two more. I set up a fairly robust system, but ultimately I ended up not enjoying it. I'm not one to power through new games because it feels like I can never fully appreciate them in the moment. And the low audience engagement didn't help either. I really thought that this carefully curated gigaplan was gonna impress everyone but that just wasn't the verdict. It turns out just talking about a video game playthrough wasn't good enough.

Because of the unsustainable amount of work and the relatively small interest, I did something I never usually do. I gave up early. I'm usually stubborn when it comes to my own creations, but even I could tell that this series was going nowhere fast. And that's okay. I still gave it an honest attempt and I learned my limitations because of it.

One final push to "make it"

I just wanna be myself (2024 - Now)

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My inspirations

Pengicitis

Daryl Talks Games

Tama Hero