It all began in May 2020, we were in the middle of our first COVID lockdown and I was looking for a hobby. My initial thinking was I wanted to take up sketching and painting. But all the parents had bought up all the best art supplies from Amazon. Then on the 18th of June 2020 I decided one evening to try streaming a video game I was playing. I just done it directly from the Xbox One Twitch app. I can still recall it vividly – I played Titanfall 2 and did not have a clue what to say into the mic (there was no camera). About three weeks later a friend very kindly gifted me his unused Kinect so I would have a camera. That sat in its box for 10 days as I was too nervous and shy to appear on camera!
Then, on one fateful day in mid-July, I took the plunge and done my first stream with the Kinect camera on me. The game was Gears 5 Versus with my Brother, and I streamed from our kitchen – that was going to be my “streaming room”. 🙂 I still have that footage (I’ll link to it sometime), and it is clear I did not know what I was doing, but I was having fun doing it.
A few days later I decided to move through to the living room for comfort which became the home of my streams for some time. I managed to spill three quarters of a pint of lager live on my second camera stream (I’ll share that footage too). Then in mid-August I decided enough was enough streaming using the Xbox Twitch app, and move onto a more advanced configuration using a laptop and OBS (a picture of my unorthodox setup will appear in the ‘Studio’ page soon). The native Twitch app was okay, but you’re limited to 720p resolution, and there was a known issue with lip sync using a webcam. But it was the point I moved to OBS I really fell in love with streaming. The customisation options, the desire to get creative and try new things, building my scenes, designing my logos/emotes, starting to build my brand as ‘LAIRDforbes’.
Then on the 5th of September, I received the invite from Twitch to become an Affiliate after having finally met all the requirements. I finally had an emote – YAY! lol I continued over the following months experimenting with my creativity, designing some simple logos then launching a merch store where I put my designs on various merchandise.
During October I then hit a bit of a bump in the road and was contemplating giving up streaming. I’m not sure why, but I started to no longer “feel it” if that makes sense. Then something incredible happened. During the run up to Halloween I decided to play a horror game so started a play through of Resident Evil 7. About 40 minutes into my second stream of it I was “raided” by an unknown random streamer who was also playing RE7. When his stream came to an end he had a look through the list of other RE7 streamers looking for a random to raid. He picked me! And brought with him a group of fabulous viewers that had been watching him. The chat was lit, and we had a blast!
The streamer who raided me is called ‘Carnage_Raiser’. And at that point he introduced me to the friendliest, most supportive community on Twitch – Dark Mode Gaming (DMG). Carnage and that community of wonderful people turned me around. Their support and enthusiasm got my head well and truly back in the game and made me stronger. I will never forget the day I was introduced to these wonderful people – this new family – thank you Carnage.
If anyone would like to join our family, you’ll find the link to the DMG Discord at the bottom of this page. 🙂
Towards the end of the year, I felt the draw into another new interest – Video Editing. It seemed like the right time to start a YouTube channel, and I began experimenting with some funny/silly/highlight reels. The free application ‘OpenShot’ was my editor of choice at the time. It was fine for the most part but crashed A LOT!
2021 rolled round and by then I was hooked on the concept of Video Editing. At that point I began taking some online courses, beginning with one on Adobe Premiere Pro. In research that stood out as being one of the best products on the market, so much so it is even heavily used by Hollywood, and is considered about the best for the Windows platform. I then took the plunge and subscribed to Adobe Creative Cloud, opening up the entire suite of Adobe’s creative products to me. Slowly but surely, you will see some YouTube content creep out from me.
By the time we got to April 2021 I was beginning to feel like I was outgrowing my setup in the living room. My Wife had already converted the spare bedroom into a home office for her work, so I started planning on moving into there also. By the end of the month I had my little corner setup with a new desk (desk assembly was streamed – I shall publish a highlights reel), and the parts ordered for my new PC (specs and details on the ‘Equipment’ page. In early May I assembled my new PC (which I also streamed) and officially moved into my new “home”.
There have been one or two small evolutions since then, the latest being the addition of a green screen and more lighting. With the green screen came a growing interest in visual effects. For a recent stream of the classic 90s point and click adventure; ‘Star Trek the Next Generation: A Final Unity’, I cut a short promo where I used the green screen and Adobe After Effects to make me teleport. It was a lot of fun and an awesome learning experience.
I’ve since released two short YouTube videos. One being an Adobe Premiere Pro tutorial covering synchronising audio, and the other is my first unboxing video, where I unboxed the new Elgato Facecam.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this background into me, and that you’ll stick around and join me on the continuing journey ahead.
Much Love!
LAIRDforbes
