Thank YOU for 10,000 Subscribers!
CoderNunk just hit 10,000 subscribers on YouTube! Let's celebrate!
Earlier this month, my YouTube channel hit 10,000 subscribers! That’s a huge milestone for this channel, and I couldn’t have done it without all of you. Let’s take a little time to reflect on the journey, and see what’s next in store.
Kaila’s Summer Outfit
For those of you that joined my channel during the 3D modeling project, you have gotten to know Kaila pretty well. Kaila is one of the co-protagonists of the RPG I’m making called Arra World. She’s half human and half angel, hence the feathers on the back of her head. While she’s rather timid and soft in appearance, she has a wide variety of personal demons she has to fight through. With the help of Nunko (the other co-protagonist) and his friends, she is able to find a dream worth living for.
This drawing was made to commemorate 10K subscribers, as I promised in one of my community updates, but also the summer as well (since we hit the milestone in July). It was a nice way for me to dust off the drawing tablet and open Krita again, so I can’t complain. Hope you enjoy this little piece of art for the channel!
3D Character Modeling Resources
Earlier in the year, I promised some additional assets to accompany the complete 3D character creation guide - a cheat sheet and an unedited video. I have finally completed these, and they are now yours to use!
The cheat sheet was just a way to help summarize the steps, as well as highlight some key techniques. Feel free to use it as a reference as you model. It’s in a print format, so you may also be able to print it out and put it on your desk.
You can download the cheat sheet here!
Or here’s the PNG version:
The uncut video is a four hour long video that simply strings together the raw footage from the modeling process. I sped it up 2x so it wouldn’t make such a big file size, but you can use YouTube’s speed controls to slow it down further as needed. I narrate over it to add additional contenxt, but you can just mute me if you prefer. Juse this tool if something wasn’t clear in the complete (edited) guide.
I hope you find these additional tools useful, and I apologize for the long wait!
The Journey to 10K
When I started YouTube for the first time back in 2014, it was completely as a hobby. At the time, the YouTube landscape was much less… well… edited. A lot of YouTubers just uploaded pretty much anything they wanted, and it was not uncommon to see channels that had several different niches in one. For me, I uploaded Adobe Flash tutorials alongside speedcubing tutorials. Funny enough, these videos still exist on my channel today, but I privated them. Trust me, they’re kinda cringe and not worth watching.
I continued making videos for about a year until I ran into a issue with one of my viewers. At the time, I wanted to help anyone and everyone, but this was an example of it going too far. Long story short, I somehow got roped in to completing the viewer’s college project due to intense communication problems, and I didn’t have the heart to abandon him at the time. As ridiculous as the incident was, it was enough to put my channel on hiatus for what would be eight years.
During this time, I would go on to complete my Bachelor’s degree at Penn State and then get a full-time job at a large investment company. I would continue to work there for seven years. While I was successful at my job and I had (mostly) a great team to work with, I felt like working a job like this was wasting my life away, and I wanted to turn back on the old hobbies of mine that made me happy. As my mental health declined in 2022, I decided to take the plunge and quit my job.
That’s when I found myself turning back to YouTube. I missed working on videos, so I was excited to return.
To mark my return, I covered how to make sprite sheets in Blender, which was one of the coolest things I learned how to do when working on Flick! This video was modest and shows its age, but it has gotten a decent amount of views over time. I also shared this video on a few subreddits and it was able to give me a little bit of initial traction to the channel.
NOTE: I also made a written version of this guide here.
At the time, I was still doing work for Flick, and I wanted to cover a couple more features. I covered the flick mechanic itself, as well as the level select mechanism. These were also modest but had a role to play in my channel’s discovery in search results.
It wasn’t until September of 2023 where I’d get some real traction on my channel. It was around this time that Unity was under intense scrutiny for a pricing change. I saw a lot of videos in my feed regarding Unity vs Godot, so I thought I’d throw my hat in the ring with my take. To my surprise, the video took off (relative speaking), and got around 15K views in the first month. It also helped to garner a lot of excitement around my channel.
I wanted to put my work on Flick to a close so I could move over to work on Arra World, which was the game I was truly passionate about. As part of this decison, I wanted to also talk about things I learned while working on that game. However, this would be a major undertaking. During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I spent a lot of time learning Blender and Godot, and it was then I learned how to make 3D models. There were a lot of compatiblity issues I had to work through with Blender and Godot (most of it having to do with rigs), so that’s why I wanted to make a thorough, complete 3D character guide. The project would take me over six months to put together the full hour-and-a-half long video, but I would say the effort paid off.
I also have a written guide for this one here.
While working on the 3D guide, I wanted to make sure I continued to upload content since the full video wasn’t close to being finished anytime soon. That’s when I decided to make Shorts on the various topics within the 3D modeling space. This is what really helped my channel grow - I didn’t think it was much at first, but as I uploaded more Shorts, they started to get recognized. I remember being on a dopamine rush reading comments on the T-Pose vs A-Pose Short while at PAX East. I uploaded a total of 41 shorts for the 3D character modeling guide alone. Here’s my two best performing ones!
Lastly, we are nearing the present day. To cap off the 3D modeling process, I made a tutorial on jiggle physics and how to implement them in Godot as of currently. The man of culture I am (I’m joking), I spent a bit more time on this than I should have, but it was important that a guide for this was out there. I did not see a whole lot of detailed guides on the topic in my travels, so I wanted to make one. As of now, this is my best performing regular video, and it’s no surprise as to why.
I have to make a shout-out to Xenoblade Chronicles 3, as it was one of the best RPG experiences I’ve had in a long time. The whole series is a gem, and a pinnacle of engineering from MonolithSoft.
A Note on Nunkware Digital
Some of you may be aware that I am starting a company called Nunkware Digital. Nunkware Digital is going to be the umbrella that will release games I make in the future. However, to start off, I’m running it as an IT consultancy business. A major reason for this is because after leaving my job almost two years ago, I thought long and hard about what kind of work I wanted to do, and I gravitated toward running my own business. Flexible hours, don’t have to sell my soul to a corporation, I get to work on what I want - it sounds pretty great.
However, a few weeks ago, I made this post on my YouTube community tab:
You can pretty much disregard this. Shortly after giving up, I found a way to move forward, and that was by looking for a business coach. I discovered a coach by making a post on LinkedIn, and I also found two other candidates through a service called SCORE. I realized the biggest challenge I had with the business was that I lacked direction in the setup process, and once I realized a coach was possible to find, I should be able to move forward.
Today, I’m working with two clients currently. Not for a high amount of money, but I can’t thank them enough for giving me an opportunity to show my work. The work currently entails making web sites for their game studios using SvelteKit, a JavaScript framework. Websites are amongst one of the services I plan to offer.
Where does this put me here? I want to stay true to my word to keep advertising out of my YouTube channel, but I would like to make one exception for any call-to-actions regarding Nunkware Digital, if it’s okay with you all. I believe that some of the work I do for Nunkware Digital can potentially help you, as most of us are game developers. I can help with websites or setting up infrastructure for your game studios. Like everything I’ve said before, support is not necessary though, and watching my content is support enough. IF you do choose Nunkware to help with your IT needs for your game, it would mean the world to me though. I promise though, I will make sure any call to actions are brief and won’t detract from the future videos.
What’s Next?
In the short term, I’m putting together a video on my experience from quitting my job almost two years ago. It should be up soon, sometime this weekend I hope. As I will say in the video, do not take the decision to quit your job lightly, but also don’t feel pressured by others to make the decision one way or another. If you want to quit and you have the means to do so, it can change your life - for the better.
I’ll also have to manage my workload carefully as most of my time will have to go toward my Nunkware business ventures. However, I’m actually feeling quite alive lately and have been moving forward. I think I’ll be able to move along with this channel as scheduled.
As far as the next set of topics for videos, expect to see a video on this bow and arrow attack animation, as well as a video on concept art coming up. I’m also considering partnering with some YouTubers in the future, but I’ll have to see how that goes.
As we round the end of 2024, I’ll be also starting on the next big project, which will cover animation in detail. Like usual, I’m not an expert, but I can share the knowledge I’ve picked up over the years. We’ll cover how to make animations manually, use tools such as mocap and AI animation tools, and then we will talk about animation workflows in Godot. My male protagonist, Nunko, will be the star of this show. I hope you look forward to it!
What a Journey so far!
Once again, I’d like to thank all of you for the overwhelming support in this relatively short time. Channel growth was slow at first, but it was consistent, and regardless of the ups and downs, I got to learn a ton and meet a lot of new faces. It really is a life-changing experience doing YouTube, and it’s my honor to continue serving you the best content I can. Cheers for years to come!
