ThirdChild ZKI

My work has been largely ill received within the r/ffxiv reddit community; half because of their open bias against PvP (my work primarily showcasing PvP), and half just personal dislike of me. It’s downvoted and ignored at best, picked apart and belittled at worst. I’ve been told my editing is “amateurish and awkward”, and called pretentious for trying to brand my work and stand out while establishing myself. My favorite one recently was being told that I’m “basically just carried by the healer”. . .

And so comes “Unsupported”, my technical 11th highlight reel. But I clearly note at the start, this is not a highlight reel; this is a statement. A statement to the critics and haters. I don’t mind if people dislike my work; not everyone will like it, naturally. But I hold issue with my skill being put into question, and my editing being downplayed, especially knowing how much I’ve literally bricked myself up from scratch. This video is a challenge to those critics, and a challenge to myself to go bigger, and while the footage is largely not new (there is some previously unseen), the clips were personally chosen by me to show that I’m no less capable when “unsupported” by a healer.

Anyone who’s played beside me knows I tend to be quite passionate in battle. I’m tenacious, a little reckless, and willing to take risks if there’s even a chance of success. But I’m aware not everyone thinks that way, and back when the MOBA-like Rival Wings was still new (and active), many times I dealt with matches where people were so quickly and easily ready to give up, especially if on the blue team, where the felt the slight map imbalance put them at an immediate disadvantage.

I’m the type to go down fighting if I must, but more importantly, the type to KEEP fighting if there’s still a chance. And in this video, I simply wanted to teach others that you don’t win by trying to rely on false guarantees, and that you only definitely lose when you give up. While the match itself slowly tipped in our favor, it was the early declarations that we’d lost that pushed me to fight hard enough to prove it wrong. And thankfully that time, the rest of my team had the same amount of passion and heart to do the same.

My third funny short, “Content”.

A while back, on my YouTube channel, I launched a series of shorter, “branded” clips I called “Lace Trims”. They weren’t all entirely highlights, some were funny moments, some were just weird happenings, some were even guides. But all in all they were VERY poorly received (mostly by the generally PvP-hating reddit community of XIV). They didn’t just hate the videos, they hated the name “Lace Trim” (and largely didn’t get the pun of it; my name is Lace, the videos were Trims of longer clips. . . I even made a Lace Trim to explain what they were, and that too was hated, lol)

Anyways, I felt kinda down after that, but wanting to keep building up my channel and subscriber base (considering many hated them, but subs were increasing anyways), I came up with the idea to create a video ABOUT coming up with ideas. And in the end, with wise words and support from some friends of mine, I found the answer I needed, and continue simply doing what I love. Lighthearted, funny, and with a nice message overall, please enjoy my “Content”. :)

“Heat” marks the 9th highlight reel I’ve made from FFXIV’s PvP, and the first of Stormblood’s revamped PvP system.

In all honesty, I’m not a huge fan of the changes, and it was difficult to make this, as I feel the new system makes it tougher to showcase skilled plays, especially with stripped down skillsets. Still, I rose to the challenge, tried some new effects and visual techniques, and delivered what I feel was yet another benchmark work of mine. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it!

I have to really apologize to anyone reading this now! I’m notoriously bad at updating my blog, and that’s so not okay.

So I’ve been playing Closers lately and I’ve really gotten into it! (Can’t really play FFXIV til I replace my controller that won’t hold a charge, plus it’s pretty late into this catch up patch, and we’re all ready for 4.2 to arrive next month) It reminds me a lot of the old 2D action games I grew up with on Sega Genesis, but with MMO elements.

“Flashpoint” makes the tenth “full length” highlight reel I’ve made, but the second one showcasing Stormblood/4.0 PvP. It’s made entirely of footage from the new MOBA-style mode, Rival Wings, but I don’t ever pilot one of the mechs players can pilot in it. I feel I’m far more useful to my team on foot, doing what I do best :)

This one was quite a challenge to make! I tried some new ideas, taught myself some new techniques on the fly, and spent 3 DAYS alone just trying to name the video, lol. I added a special thing after the production logo that I have plans for, but I won’t say. You’ll just have to see it.

I almost forgot to upload Lacedrop Extend! I deeply apologize for that.

Arguably both the biggest success of my full highlight videos, and the most troubled production is number 7, Lacedrop!

The intro, I spent many days and nights shooting in the middle of Ishgard, and early into the production, I lost a large majority of the footage I had planned to use for it. Ultimately, I found an old draft I’d made to see how things were coming together, and would later use that along with some more highlights I recorded as Lacedrop was finishing to make “Lacedrop Extend”, the 7.5th highlight of mine :D

The really cool goggle effect was done by another fellow PvPer and content creator, Nega Sonic, and my friend Chizuri gave me a lot of behind the scenes advice and motivation to keep going when I’d lost my work. This truly wouldn’t have been possible without them.

After the success (?) of Lacerage, any time I told my friends I was making a new video, one would always excitedly ask, “Lacerage 2?” I never had any plans for a second one, but at one point I thought “why not?” and decided to just do it.

I personally feel it lacks a bit of the polish the others had, but the Lacerage videos were never really about the highlights, and more about the imperfections of being skilled. Like, people see when you’re doing well, but it’s easily overlooked that we all have to take our lumps to get there, and even when there, we’re still quite imperfect.

Alright, fancy talk aside. Enjoy your favorite White Hot Machinist doing what she does best :)

I’m WAY behind in sharing my videos (I’m making it a point to do them in order, I apologize for the slow updating, but you know why <_<)

“No Brakes” was my 5th “full” highlight video, and one of the tougher ones, admittedly. I had such a backlog of footage at this point that it was hard to find specific clips or highlights at times. Between you and me, I even accidentally reused one clip in the next video after this one, lol. One of my favorite parts, and surprisingly easiest part was the very quick KO clips, synced to the 2nd note of the part of the song that repeats. I particularly like the guy that tried to jump off the bridge and I was like, “Nope!”, lol. Shout out to @icephoenix, for that near takedown too. Almost had me! :D

In making Jump Potion, I came to realize that the title sequence (a newer version, but only really just the image used) and the effects used are very processing intensive and greatly slows down final rendering, so I’ve been working at making a new one, but artistically am my own worst critic right now.

The concept is simple: As part of my “ThirdChild Visual System” I play a lot off of TV/video technology themes. For these, I opted to use the classic “Indian Head” test pattern from TV’s black & white era (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian-head_test_pattern), but in an attempt to give it my own touch, I tried both an amber monochrome style, and an electric blue monochrome style. Lastly I used the great artwork made for me by @pettankoprincess to replace the image from the original test pattern, but then had to offset the image a bit to make it all visible.

The White Hot Machinist’s eastern adventures are proving to be quite heated :D