Delayed Input 103 Post-Show Assessment

This was a weird episode. It was spawned from a Kotaku article headlined: "Now Every Single Activision Studio Works on Call of Duty" (I actually talked about this article for a bit but cut it out because the front half of this episode is so heavy) It's an interesting thing to hear after the last couple of sweet years Activision has had as a publisher. So then I started reading more articles and the dumb earnings report and eventually landed on the idea of the Call of Duty makeovers. My main self criticism is that the setup for this simple premise doesn't happen until around the four minute mark, and it was even six or seven in my first edit. I trimmed and trimmed but really the flow of the argument to get to my point necessitated two long quotes and extra background, all of it with no real humor attached.
I had a moment of clarity when I was typing my YouTube description: "Activision only has eyes for Call of Duty, so Kyle has tips for their neglected franchises to get some attention." I was like, "Dang it Kyle. I could have started this episode in 30 seconds if I wanted to." So a goal going forward is to think of a YouTube description earlier in the writing process.

- A good writer writes for their presenter. Another lesson I'm taking away this week is that writer Kyle needs to respect the certain dumbness of presenter Kyle. There's a line in the script:
"Give them names that seem like human’s names. Non-copyrighted word play like AfterShark09."
Performer Kyle could not remember the phrase "non-copyrighted," so you can actually watch me forget that word, realize I forgot that word, and then get thrown off from that and forget "AfterShark09" and then struggle to improvise something else. Incidentally I think SharkWave09 is just as good, but a good reminder I need to write more at the level of presenter Kyle, who doesn't typically say phrases like non-copyrighted off the cuff.

QUESTIONS FROM YOU!

Besides the content, I think the funniest thing about this show are the hard cuts. It's like a hard punctuation. Do you write those into the script or is that just found in post?
This is a really nice comment because I believe most of the hard cuts are there to cover for the lack of a punch line, or I made a gross noise with my nose, or I forgot what to say next. That said I definitely plan on some hard cuts, like "You know who sucks? Activision" doesn't work any other way.

I was wondering about the drawings, are they coloured digitally? Do you draw by hand then convert to lines on your PC?
I need to say firstly my drawing process is non-professional. I don't really decide on what is getting doodles until after the first edit of the show. Something like the Crash Bandicoot bit worked better without drawings, but also I saw a need to illustrate the OP knife to make the Sekiro's grandmother secret bit slightly funnier.
Almost everything is done with pencil on paper first, then I do the lines with clickable Bic pens. I know there are a lot of nicer pens for art out there, I just really like these. Then I scan these pages and trace over my own drawings with a wacom tablet in Photoshop. Reiterating again this is not the recommended method but just the one I've become comfortable with. Then I color in everything in a layer beneath the new lines, and this is usually just scribbling in because the auto-fill kinda sucks in Photoshop. Lastly, the true secret to my aesthetic--I lower the opacity on the layer of colors 40-60% to give it a low-key desaturated look.

This week, I'm wondering if you could talk a little about your approach to the thumbnails. There's a definite choice being made and I'm curious how you got there.
This is easy to answer: I'm just copying John Oliver. This Week Tonight's YouTube thumbs are just a person with a little picture in the upper left corner, no extra words or anything, and I really admire that.

- As for goals for next week--keep it simple, keep it weird. I feel like you gotta do something a little extra weird on your fourth episode, I'm going to try to do that. Also I would like to try writing one good joke.