Hello everyone nice of you guys to join me today on this second gfx live stream I'm just gonna turn down the audio This actually you know what Let me know guys If you can hear the background music cuz I know last time I wasn't playing it loud enough So just let me know if it's too loud they're not loud enough and And Might have actually just heard me in the background again right there for a split second Say did not turn off the sound on the stream. So Yeah, it's actually go to the correct pre-show screen Wasn't on the right screen So if you're watching this and it's not live and you're like hey, what the heck's going on? This isn't live You can click on the button. It's a little white box. It says not watching this live click here to skip to the show and that's if If once again, you are not watching this live if you are watching this live jeez. I can't English I could ever English whenever I'm live streaming. Yeah Coolio, I'm just gonna turn down the volume on my end. It shouldn't affect things on your end. Hopefully just because you know, I'm hearing music in my ears and It's a little distracting to be quite frank, but I'm Welcome to the second GFX live stream. Hopefully we can get some people in this chat right now to ask me to Do some graphics for you guys I'm also gonna be covering some lessons on how to improve your branding. I'm also gonna be doing some reviews and Yeah, that has as rug 46 asks this is before it gets too bad. Can you review my channel? Yeah, I'm just gonna bookmark your channel because I know that you were there during my twitch stream So yeah for those who did not know you guys should be paying attention to the YouTube stream at all times I was doing some live streaming over at twitch.tv Which was pretty sweet I'm just gonna let you guys know that there should not be any internet problems on my end But if ever it does happen because I mean live streaming. It's it's very unpredictable Just don't panic Just stick around for a few minutes and the stream should go back Come back live. Just let people know in the chat those who are freaking out that it is perfectly normal It happens. That's that's what live streaming is all about As a gg gamer says winter winter chicken dinner. That's actually a reference to the twitch stream, you know again You guys should be watching out for these things Cool. Yeah rapid-fire gaming. You're also another person and pulsar networks. I'm just gonna bookmark your channels and Just hit pause on your trailer videos ASAP Coolio So I'm actually just gonna check OBS to make sure that whenever I manipulate the volume on my blue Yeti It doesn't affect the music on your end and it doesn't seem to which is perfectly awesome sauce Roke 46 says is it possible? Can I have an intro? I'm not offering visual effects Unfortunately because intros take a very long time to do I'm only really interested in doing anything that I can do during the stream or just kind of you know In an hour after the stream intros take several hours because you're conceptualizing an animation from scratch and then you have to animate that And it needs to look pristine. It's just it's it's just a lot more involved what's great about Graphics is that it's it's usually one image, you know gfx is it's you're concentrating on a singular image As soon as you get into video. Well, then you're concentrating on hundreds of images in a sequence That that takes a lot more time. I actually have a huge project that I need to do for this Monday, so For those who did not know impulse is being modified as of this Monday So in two days got so much work on my plate. It's actually kind of scary to be honest So the changes are being made are we're not we're not removing the 100k sponsorship It's still gonna be there, but it's not gonna be featured in every single episode It's gonna be featured in its own live stream every Sunday night, so What that means is every single day of the week. We'll just have the main topic video and You might be asking yourselves what's gonna happen to Tiffany because Tiffany was there as you know It's a segue between segments and also to introduce Rick who would talk about the 100k sponsorship winners and whatnot. Well Tiffany is gone. No, she's not gone. She is actually she's gonna have her own show On impulse which is really sweet because not many people know this, but Tiffany does cosplay She's really into costume making. She likes anime. She's a video gamer And so this is gonna be the opportunity for her to kind of shine and to do her own geeky thing directly on Impulse so she's gonna be I believe it's Because I know that the schedules changed around a bit. She's gonna be on every Sunday originally She was gonna be on every Wednesday, but we've kind of Rotated things so the new schedule is gonna be on Mondays It's gonna be Zack as always reviewing games This Monday is gonna be talking about his top five anticipated games of this year and just kind of giving shout-outs to other games And on Tuesday, it's gonna be zesty Mike So originally we had Alex Adams doing his YouTube news every Tuesday.  It's gonna be Alex Adams with his YouTube news then on Thursday. It's gonna be Brittany with a real talk It's gonna be covering a pretty cool topic this week and then on Fridays It's gonna be yes, it's Anthony Smith with his tech reviews.  I need to shower. Let's it's going on right now The show is right now. Let me reload the page To make sure that we're actually live Yeah, we are actually live good for a second there. I was kind of scared. It was like, are we actually genuinely live? But you guys are actually commenting about the things I'm talking about so obviously Famebound asks am I on the show? I'm not on the show. I'm the guy who's behind the scenes I'm the guy who edits the show who does all the graphics So I mean I'm more of a person who's made for behind the scenes I'm the cave troll the one who stays in his basement and is behind the computer all the time and making all the fancy graphics and such So so yeah, maybe one day I'm I am planning on making some freedom central videos on branding So, I mean the live shows are great for talking about graphics but the thing is that most people's attention spans are between five and seven minutes and so You know if the live streams two hours long well a lot of people are gonna be missing out some critical information So That that's why I'm probably gonna be making some Main channel videos that are between five and seven minutes long that really go in depth Into the topics that I'll be covering today We also have some games that I'm gonna be giving away. So of course, you know, it's a live stream We're gonna be giving away some games these games are Paid for by myself. So it's not it's not freedom offering these games It's not impulse offering this game these games It's me offering these games with the exception of a few titles Which were generously donated by the five-star network the five-star network is a network powered by Powered by freedom is gonna say powered by YouTube. Well, I guess technically it is but it's a network powered by freedom You could check out them at youtube.com Slash join five-star they were gracious enough to give loads of codes And we'll be giving out those games throughout all of our live streams. So just kind of a recap of the changes for impulse as a Monday we have our contents could be more focused on just the subjects Not really diving into the 100k sponsorship Why because we we've been taking a look at our analytics at our Statistics and notice that our audience retention drop down dramatically as soon as we segwayed into our runners-up segments so that way we want to keep our audience retention high throughout the entire episode and On Sundays right after Tiffany's episode or later on in the evening We're gonna be doing a live show Q&A with you guys. We're gonna have some fun We're gonna respond to your comments Questions and we're gonna be not only just giving away a bunch of stuff But we're also gonna be announcing all the winners to the one-herry case sponsorship throughout the entire week and probably also doing some live Shout-outs to those channels and just kind of talking about, you know, how well they did throughout the week Why they were chosen specifically it's kind of go more into in-depth into their channels So I know that we're our audience is slowly building up Be sure to hit that thumbs up button if you hit that thumbs down button I mean no problem with that. I don't know why we have three thumbs down Wait, I wish these these haters would actually just kind of explain Why they thumbs down stuff?  So I thumbs you down. Okay, just to let you guys know a thumbs down is actually not bad Not only that it's actually good So if you're thumbing if you're thumbsing down someone's video in the attempt to somehow Do something negative to their channel. It actually does something positive Because YouTube ranks videos partially based on controversy. It's like what the comments like usually the top comment Isn't just based on thumbs up. It's also based on thumbs down because it's controversial It's something that's being discussed and talked about so Yeah Sorry if I can't get to everyone today because I Mean right now right now you guys are 28 people watching right now that number is going to go up We've looked at all the analytics for past live shows Typically when we get into the second half of the show, that's when it really starts ramping up So I'm expecting in about half an hour or so that you know those those views are Gonna ramp up and then And then I always get like a hundred people who are like check my channel check my channel And then I only have the time for like five channel reviews and then they're super sad Like Chris why you know check my channel me like cuz there are a hundred of you There are hundreds of people asking for my attention. Oh, yeah, also another thing Whenever you guys win games, I asked you guys to message me on my personal account with your email address I mean that was just for winners But after the live stream, I got like 20 messages from people to be like hey, can you do me graphics? like no because The offer was just for the live stream. I'm offering free graphics during the live stream to those who I select And not not outside of it. Why unfortunately, I'd love to do free graphics for everyone It's just that I'm unfortunately a very busy man Well, I guess unfortunately and fortunately because it means I have a job Which means I get to pay the bills Which is a pretty good thing Definitely not an overrated or underrated thing. It's a great thing But it's just I'm so busy, especially with the changes to impulse. I have to come up with a bunch of new graphics And I'm actually diving into 3ds max for the first time And so and I'm also re-learning Adobe Illustrator That's just and I'm also learning premiere So it's just like so much so much stuff So um Yeah, if I can't get to you today, please please don't spam my message box. It's nice to talk to you guys. I'll respond It's just I'm not really available Soda What would I do without soda? The bolster says you got a job? Yeah, this little thing I do called impulse It's pretty cool. It helps me pay the bills DK gaming says does he just talk the whole time or what? Um, I mean if you want two minutes of silence, we could do two minutes of silence Is that good enough for you DK? We can do some more silence. I Don't mind. I'm here to please you guys Okay, we're coming on about two minutes before we get into the meat and potatoes of this I'm just doing a pre-show. Just kind of build up the hoi for people to slowly trickle on in So I don't have to repeat things two three times a Lot of people have been wondering Why oh rapid-fire says is this your website Chris Lou at weebly.com Sounds about right because I do have a weebly site, but I haven't I haven't been posting to that for a very long time What I'm actually thinking of doing one of my news resolutions is to slowly build my way towards starting my own business so I'm a graphic designer right now but I Mean this is this is basically the path I want to go on for the rest of my life I'm really comfortable on this path and something of starting my own business Eventually down the line. I'm not kind of like right now, but eventually it's something of starting up my own website Actually buying a professional, you know buying a domain and getting a hosting service and designing an actual proper website So the weebly thing that's just kind of temporary Anyways, we're at noon right now. So people are a be like Hey, Chris just oh infinity you guys can see things until infinity infinity window Okay, so you guys can say hi to yourselves and see how bad the strain delays Yeah So you guys will notice at the bottom We have three awesome sponsors who help sponsor this live show or these live shows We got a game on snacks beef jerky Come on guys bacon and beef jerky, which is freaking awesome If you go to their website Actually, if you go to any of the websites I'm about to talk about you get 10% off all of your orders by entering the coupon code Freedom at discount. So you've got beef jerky from game on snacks. You have G fuel They actually just appeared on screen. That was just a coincidence. I wasn't even looking at my screen But G fuel it's energy drink in powder form. You just mix in it with some water H2O. It's available everywhere guys And you can get your game on It's really awesome stuff really delicious lots of cool flavors Once again, you could enter the coupon code freedom at checkout online whenever you do any kind of order And I'll give you 10% off. It's really sweet and it lets them know that you know that we care And finally we have control Freak If you guys do a lot of console gaming and you want some better Thumbstick pads will control freak. That's what they offer. So they offer controller mods to your thumbsticks And I believe other such devices you'd have to check them out on their website control freak calm and all of these mods are all Approved to use in pro tournaments.  Cool. So I'm just gonna be choosing and let's do some some review e-views because I know let's go in order here, so Just gonna modify This so you guys can See this I know this is obscure too much. No, it's perfectly fine. Okay, so a rug 46 you wanted a channel review Right off the bat, so it's It's all right, it could definitely be improved the pond But it's it's all right I like the fact that you already have kind of like a pre-established color scheme that is all As always really good So whenever you think about a specific product or brand Specific colors should come to mind. You shouldn't really diversify your color palette too much So I like the fact that you have orange yellow.  Maybe doing something else. That's just a bit more dynamic It's it's really hard to tap into the Minecraft market because I mean Minecraft is covered on YouTube by hundreds of thousands of people. So When it comes to channel content, I Tend to ask people not to cover Minecraft because it's already been done to death That being said if you have to do Minecraft, I'd say maybe get some more models in here Your logo at least your text clear of visible The thing is is that you're putting orange on orange in this case You could still clearly read rug 46, but for your icon note that with icons. It's gonna be shrunken down. So People There they might not be able to read the are because shrunken down again It's orange on orange. So you might want to choose a color that pops more You might want to go either with a white and gray or maybe with I was gonna say yellow, but you have yellow directly behind it. Just play around with colors. I Mean with your Minecraft character, you have orange and blue orange and blue or complementary colors So keep this in mind make some adjustments not bad can definitely be improved upon you go to your videos and just check out your thumbnails Okay, this is when we start getting into the problem areas There's no real Consistency to your thumbnails and this is something that I should have elaborated a bit more on last year fx stream As there needs to be consistency with all of your thumbnails not to the point where they all look the same But to the point where someone can go on your channel and Understand that all of this content is made by the same person So Also things like this you should not do where see you have a bunch of white space on the sides So that's kind of a no-no a lot of people what they tend to do is they tend to stretch images So it takes up a full frame. That's even worse So I appreciate the fact that you kept the image in the same aspect ratio except the the the image itself isn't a really low resolution So try to get higher the highest resolution images you can because you want to make your images 1920 by 1080 in resolution I'm also make sure that like the graphics in your thumbnails that they're nice and classy and Legible and that they correlate directly to what you're doing You're kind of doing this with some of your thumbnails the problem with this. Okay, you have quest to rug rugopia Your text is really small and the problem is is that your thumbnails typically when you see them on YouTube They're a lot smaller than this I might actually be I'm at a hundred and Yeah, I'm at 150 zoom right now This is where is it right now? It's right here. So this is what the typical size You'll see it on YouTube. Maybe even smaller than this The quest to build I can barely read it You want your text to be as large as possible without obscuring the subject and You want it to really pop So I would have put quest to build in white Rugtopia I would have maybe put a bit more of a drop shadow, but it's still kind of gray on gray So in that case what I'd do is either put something behind it like a dark colored box for it to really pop Or even introduce some color into the background you could put a layer of blue and just put it like a semi Transparency so that you can still see the detail of the world behind it But that blue really helps create a contrast between your text and the background So play around with it I mean not bad definitely be really improved on Rapid fire gaming. I know that you wanted me to check out your channel for sure So Your banner is just a generic picture What is like Hong Kong?  You're selling yourself Okay, think of the biggest youtubers hoodie pie Markiplier the Yogs cast The reason why people watch their content isn't necessarily because of the videos they make But because it stars hoodie pie Markiplier Markiplier can make a video about you know Destructing a Cardboard for and I'll watch it because it's Markiplier You know so you want you want to build your channel to a point where? You're the reason why people come to you and the first step is brand so I don't know make something that relates to the kind of content you make Rapid fire gaming your icon is all right. The problem is and I keep saying this These things these graphics get shrunken down So I Believe it was George who made who gave this tip when it comes to writing video descriptions Typically the first whenever you do a search People will only see the first like two to three lines of your video description They won't see the whole thing. They'll only see two three lines so what you want to do to optimize your search is To basically say everything you need to say To hook people to watch your content in the first two to three lines, okay? Because it the description gets shrunken down basically, but that's the only thing that's visible with your icons It gets shrunken down in size People are probably only gonna see it when it's at a quarter of this size I'm just gonna check OBS to make sure that they can actually see it They can they can kind of see it here You can see it better now. Let's what what if I zoom This in again, sorry guys. I'm like, there we go. That's better so I Mean people are gonna see this at like a quarter of its size and so what I would do is I would just reserve it to frg or I'd like you to conceptualize a logo a symbol that relates to gaming that you can I that you can Identify as your own don't just copy someone else's logo design But come up with a symbol That communicates that you're a gaming channel and then just use that as the icon have no text Just that um so Let's check out your thumbnails. You only have a few videos I Might have talked about your channel in the past I kind of feel like I might have brushed over your channel in the last gfx stream But this is alright, but your text doesn't stand out as much as it could The images themselves are alright, but See when I talk about Creating fancy graphics that communicates what your videos are about It's like look you have a video here. That's called Minecraft slime block dropper parkour You want your thumbnail to communicate that it's a slime block dropper parkour course so what I would do is I would either come up with some sort of an image that communicates that it's a dropper Level or that it's a slime block level So maybe I would make my thumbnail green and I'd have a slime block You know just kind of take up most of the thumbnail and then just have Slime block dropper parkour written in large text next to it Or I guess with missile it's a puzzle map So maybe just have a slightly better image There's not really much you can do for I guess this kind of a map to be quite frank, but you want your episode number Now okay, so the text placements alright one one technique I tell people to do is if they can actually kind of rotate Their text to be at a slight angle like a one to two degree angle that actually helps Make things look a little bit more dynamic. It could help you guys out slightly overall not bad Take those things into consideration Pulsar Network, so you wanted me to check out your network banner Already you can see a problem. I like to watch I like to view my YouTube Pages videos at one hundred and fifty percent magnification within my browser and you could see that Your logo is being obscured by your icon. That's why whenever you download a Photoshop template for channel art There is a safety region so that if ever someone decides to magnify Their web browser by 500% that the logo is still visible in its entirety. That's not obscured So I would have shrunken this down so that it doesn't go farther than these points You also have this weird graphic which seems to serve no purpose I would put this at the bottom invert it and then put maybe your social media Here, but it's like at the top and it serves no purpose You also have YouTube comm slash pulsar network This is irrelevant remove this because if people are seeing this it's because they're on your channel so what's the point of Marketing your channel to people who are already on your channel, you know So Yeah, just I would say remove that put your social media there instead. Sorry about that had to get a drink of something because Probably talking for so long gets your throat dry Also icon going back to the icon your branding Should feel united meaning it should feel like it comes from one person obviously And so the fact that the color scheme that the lettering will see the text here The font is a completely different font than this The color is green the color here is blue They don't match up they feel as if they come from two completely different people or that they represent two completely different channels You don't want that you want everything to kind of flow together So choose one color or choose two if you want to go green and blue together Awesome, but you want these to kind of reflect each other But I do like the fact that you kept it simple Keep the simple which is great So once again, you're another Minecraft channel, this is why I tell people don't do Minecraft This is like the third channel we've reviewed is like the third channel in a row Well, I'm pretty sure it rug 46. Yeah, okay. So this is the third channel in a row that does Minecraft content. I don't three channels Three of them do Minecraft like and a lot of people that are like, why do I not get any views on my channel? It's because everyone's doing Minecraft. You need to do something that no one else is doing. That's how you succeed in business See this this is actually A good ish thumbnail. I mean the the symbol isn't centered But it's a video about the Illuminati and you have a prominent Illuminati symbol in the middle That is interesting. I don't know why there's black here. I guess it's just because you Got an image That maybe ended off here and you didn't know how to blend it in Actually, that's something I should maybe even cover Yeah, I'll cover that today how to Fill in blank spots in Photoshop I mean once again your thumbnails they just kind of look like they're being produced by 50 different people Which isn't a good thing You want to make sure that you want it you want it to come across that they all come from the same person Also your text too small see right here most disturbing game. Oh, yeah another tip And the bottom right hand corner. There's there always these little graphics Either a timestamp or whenever you go over it watch later. You want to make sure that you have no text That's here, which is another reason why I always put my text on the left Because there are no symbols here, and I'll put my subject on the right Pardon me. Oh, I just burped But buddy, but that's not that's not proper But you know if you have a button in front of them, it's not the worst case scenario unless your subject is this big You want to make your subject as big as possible? So guys stop it with these Tiny graphics and tiny text because your thumbnails They're shrunken down. So you want your elements to take up as much space as possible So Yeah Coolio Let's see what the chat saying. Oh People are reviewing each other's channels, which is pretty sweet coolio Okay, guys. I think I am going to do the first giveaway So let's put up the giveaway screen Okay, so for those who have never ever been here during a giveaway The read the way that we do it is typically We either do the giveaway on Twitter or on YouTube if it's on Twitter you tweet out at impulse This is awesome when it's on YouTube you type hashtag who is George?  So whatever it's giveaway time You just need to write hashtag who is George and we're gonna select one random winner Every single time so it's completely random. That means everyone has a chance to win So I'm just gonna wait for everyone to write hashtag who is George. We're gonna be giving away a game and This game which game should it be? Let's give away a copy of Vulgar the Viking so now We have the trailer that's actually playing now because I realized that The last time I gave away games a lot of you guys didn't know what the games were like I'd say the name of the game and you'd be like, what is this game? Well vulgar the Viking is a 2d action platformer. It got lots of amazing reviews. I mean don't be Put away by the fact that it's a 2d Retro-looking old-school platformer. It got a bunch of awards For its amazing soundtrack for its amazing gameplay. This is a really great game I'm gonna be giving away a lot of indie titles today and The reason why I really like to push indie is first of all. Well indie developers are people that we should be supporting Because they come up with these amazing new concepts. They're very creative. They take a lots of they take lots of risks but as well It's also really awesome because Most of you guys don't have gaming PCs and a lot of indie games tend to be very friendly when it comes to You know when it when it comes to being able to be played quickly on PC So If ever you would like to cover any of these games most of you guys can play them whether you have a gaming PC or not Cool. Yeah, so I'm about to choose a random winner here The winner of a vulgar the Viking. Oh, and by the way, the code is gonna be a steam code When I did my giveaway last So, um, oh This is actually the wrong giveaway instruction specifically Okay, when it comes to me my giveaways during my live streams You can contact me on my personal channel, which is acromat A C H R O M A T If you guys in the chat can write that out So snapshot edits just send me a message a private message with your email address And I'm gonna email you the steam key to the game. So it's gonna write it down Because I need to make sure That no one tries to claim a prize, but they have not won Snapshot edits awesome sauce that's been taken care of cool So back to Photoshop, this is actually snapshot edits YouTube channel you can see their branding is actually pretty cool. I dig it Um, I like the fact that you have your social media on either side really cool. I Mean it is kind of redundant again that you have your YouTube channel Here when people have to be on your YouTube channel to see this But I do like your logo your logo is sweet and also I mean with the color scheme your color scheme is black white and red That's throughout the entire branding your primary colors black white red are related to the Philadelphia Flyers See he put some thought into it and it's great So awesome, and he almost has 500 subscribers, which is sweet So I'm telling you guys it works Whenever I choose winners I go off the screen off the main live show so Infinity so if you guys would like some channel reviews you can post in the chat and I'll do a few more channel reviews, and then I'll go into some Photoshop tips Okay, so why you camp? It's like Can you give me a review? Cool. Yo, so done Why you can't first of all I I like the diagonal stripes It adds some dimension the only problem is is that you have these black bars at the top and bottom And so it shows that basically all you did was you took a high quality picture in Minecraft And then you slapped your diagonal thing on top of it Even though there are already black bars I Do really find it interesting that you've got a nice panoramic Image did you how did you do that? Did you just take a really wide-angle image and put black bars? Or did you take several images and then stitch them together in Photoshop? That's actually pretty interesting The problem with the diagonal lines is that it makes everything hard to read so I don't know what blending mode you put maybe I'd put an overlay blending mode instead of the one that you have also You're why you camp I would put a fill or Maybe a transparent fill because if you want some transparency that's cool, but maybe put a color in and that will help Your your YouTube name just kind of pop out a bit more Also your social media for some reason is all the way at the bottom here I wouldn't move that up to around here and put a drop shadow because again like with your diagonal effect You can barely read what your Twitter is and what your twitch is So I put that in the middle I'd remove these black bars try to get rid of them It seems like your image is vertically squished anyways, so you could probably just scale it up vertically just remove those black bars If you want you can maybe put a vignette effect But you don't have to for your icon Again this goes back to the what I was mentioning before Your icon doesn't feel anything like your channel art these two need to work together actually all of your art needs to work together your YouTube intro See even your YouTube intro Feels completely different than these two. You're using purple here. There's no purple here except maybe in your enderman eyes Maybe I'd inch if you like purple maybe introduce more purple here. There's no purple in your logo see it's like so it's like These feel like three completely different pieces of artwork. They need to feel like one Everything needs to fit together If I go to your videos Again your thumbnails just all over the place. Look at this Chromecast size PC and Then you have an image But it's tiny and you've got all this blank space Come on man Come on. What is this and you can even see the lines Around the Chromecast image, so it's like you didn't even cut out the image or there's a random box here what you want to do is Let's say I go. Oh, I'm just kind of teasing as to what I'm gonna be doing afterwards this text Chromecast I Just kind of doing this off the cuff Sized PC Then I would scale this up or actually maybe not that ma maybe Put that here make it all one size Just kind of scale this up You know just kind of play around with this They all put it back on its own line again. Yeah, I know there's a lot of back-and-forth in design You're erasing just as much as you're creating but the reason why I just did that is because I want to leave this bear so if I go into Google and I search Chromecast Into the images and get a nice image of the Chrome thingy Let's go with this and put this you know behind the text Boom You know just like look this isn't I didn't do much but already it's like a lot better I mean you could definitely fix this up even more if you absolutely wanted the purple background Let's say you wanted to you know stick with purple. Let's go the purple Let's make this a gradient. So I'm just gonna choose two colors Gradient That's not what I wanted This one also another thing if you choose a gradient and you choose two colors make sure that the lighter one is on top Okay, so now the problem with the Chromecast is that originally the image is You got this white box. So right now. I just took the magic wand tool I've selected the white So how if you never used Photoshop or if you've never used the magic wand tool basically it selects a color so You can tell Photoshop Let's say you got a background of like a bunch of greens you can tell Photoshop, okay Well, you can increase the range The color range that you select but you need to fiddle around with it because sometimes it'll select the color that you don't want to Remove but the great thing about this image is that it's pure white It's a solid white and then you've got this black contrast So it's like it's really not difficult for Photoshop To select usually and then as soon as I choose the white I invert the selection Go into my selection tool click refine edge And you can play around with your settings Sometimes Good okay, and sometimes you have these little artifacts on the side. So what I'll typically do Is I'll just make I'll just select the item again Copy paste on to its own layer just kind of delete These original layers and then go in here and then just you know add my drop shadow Or you know you can either add a drop shadow or sometimes you want to have a glow So you can have your glow here a glow actually looks pretty nice because it you know it makes the things pop out I actually want to I Don't know increase the the size of the item you know you just play around with these things and We change my text so that it's actually White Now I'm just gonna add a drop shadow to the text. I Notice that this was So you had a shadow and then You know typically what I like to do it just kind of add some yellow to The the words that are super important as I was saying before you can put this on a slight angle The one to two degree angle just makes things a bit more dynamic. I'll leave it, you know, these are aesthetic Changes that you can make might actually just look better at a 90 degree angle But see like already this just this is so much better because The chrome cast is Huge also, if ever you're doing this in Photoshop And during the live stream if every you know, you see that I'm editing like this It's because I like to zoom out. Look I Can still make out. It's tiny right now the thumbnails tiny I can still read the text and I still know I could still identify the product And that's really the test to see if your thumbnail is good or not ultimately Because their thumbnails are gonna be shrunken down If ever I go like super silent for a few seconds, it's pretty much because I'm drinking something So going back to the YouTubes people are saying that they can't see how did you guys not see anything? Okay Okay guys This is why I Need to computer monitors. I Only have one computer monitor and I have no idea How it switched to the pre-show graphic That is my bad guys Wow Wowie wow wow that's embarrassing see cuz that's what happens is I can't check the chat Every five minutes and so That was a fail hopefully you guys will forgive me but you guys can see the final result I'll go over this once again Right now. So how about we do another channel review. I'll try to find a Thumbnail that someone made that has a similar problem and I'll try tackling this again But as you can see and here I have OBS open just to make sure that this doesn't happen again We have Chromecast which is in yellow because that's pretty much the primary focus. We got our text Pardon me. I keep burping. It's a soda Really not proper. It's very rude. Sorry about that guys But the text is large The subject is large I Have an outer glow going because the emphasis is on the product. You don't have to have an outer glow You can have a shadow Depends on your background color if because I have a dark background color The glow really helps it pop out if I had a light colored Background I would have gone with a drop shadow because there's no point putting a glow over a bright color I Make sure to have a drop shadow behind my text so that the text is actually legible I just minimize OBS nice zoom out You might not be able to see this on your screens. I can still read the text. I can still see the subject relatively well and That's the test Okay, so people are saying can you review my channel, please review my channel review my channel review my channel Ash smashing. Let's check out your stuff. Okay Again, I keep going to the same thing guys All of you guys are like why am I not getting any subscribers? It's cuz of this look This is this is the very first thing that someone sees when they get to your channel And whoops Daisy Your trailer your intro blue and red Your banner green yellow purple gray your icon blue white They're completely different color schemes. Look your font here Not the same font Not the same font Even worse is you can tell that your intro is a template which isn't good people pick up on that So it's like guys. There's neat. There needs to be consistency in your branding There needs to be consistency Whenever you you know a new flavor of Lays come, you know potato chip comes out Doritos like their bags pretty much stay the same It's the same format. It's just the colors change Even when the colors changes to indicate, you know what flavors coming up But for the most part the branding is consistent and there's a reason why that is The these these business techniques are not just random. They're based upon Hundreds of years of research and so you guys need to apply these tips as well. So Ash mash you need to rash smashing And you need to settle on whether you like this this or this I actually prefer this Although the spacing in between your letters is a little awkward because like there's a larger gap here than here So I'd fix that But I mean I dig this the most pardon me and I mean when you choose if you prefer this the most well then just make sure that your banner is consistent with that So I would put just a solid blue with ash in the center Same thing with your intro your intro should just be a blue background with an animation with those three letters It shouldn't be anything more complicated than that We're gonna do your videos Once again another minecraft channel guys, I keep saying stop it with the minecraft Minecraft This isn't that bad for a thumbnail the problem is that I Think the egg isn't as large as it should be If I were making this thumbnail I'd probably actually what I'd do is I'd have a few eggs and then actually have one that's hatched that's cracked open and a chicken coming out Here you have Minecraft minigames modify you have it hand drawn and I dig hand drawn It's just that again all these little details in the back. They're gonna be shrunken so much You can't you can't tell what they are so I'd focus on one or two elements Minecraft one in the quiver, okay, this isn't that bad. I mean I think you're you're on the way You're on the way to making decent minecraft thumbnails It just once again You have two swords But it's one in the quiver so it should just be arrow related stuff So I would have put you know a bow and arrow Or a bow sorry Minecraft minigames turf wars Well here here you say turf war and in your thumbnails a turf wars. This needs to be consistent as well But again, you have a tiny little arrow You can barely see and then you've got a background which makes even the bows hard to see So work on that. I mean you need to you need to come up with consistent branding. Oh Now we're really getting into the meat and potatoes of the chat when the the chat's grown See, what was I saying pre-show I said I said about 30 minutes in that's when the the views are gonna come in And oh, yeah, okay, so this is gaming This is gaming. Yes. I didn't notice you before this is gaming I've been noticing you since the pre-show. Don't worry. I'm not ignoring you I'll prove it in just a second because I actually have your gfx requests Saved I have my messages page on a new tab right here. We're gonna be reviewing the request live So this is gaming Branding wise It's all right You can be touched, you know touched up, but it's honestly compared to the other channels We've seen today. I would say it's one of the stronger ones Your logo here with the game controller. I would simplify that so I think it's it's going in a good direction But I can actually we can work on that today and simplify that you have a Christmas hat. It's no longer Christmas, buddy So I want to remove that But we'll work on this today. The problem is that you have you have a city background I'm assuming this is from day Z or is this from GTA at first I thought this was day Z, but This is actually really interesting. You need to get back to me on this Well with the logo I'm assuming it's I'm assuming it's day Z See the fact that I'm confused isn't a good thing But anyways the background here Because there's so many fine details and once once again this gets shrunken down it It doesn't really stand out so Here's what we'll do what I envision is cuz you cuz you got some yellow How about we go with a dark background and Then we do the controller button white and we have yellow as an accent color. I Think that that will remain consistent with the rest of your branding and would look better So if you go to your videos I Mean again, we're going with the same problem that all of these thumbnails they look like they were made by different people So let's say oh This is actually see the proof the proof Let's say I just log on to YouTube and I mean, I don't want to use Freedom as the example. Let's just let's just go with MGN's channel Okay, so I make most of the thumbnails for MGN Okay, now I always try to keep the same consistent pattern Which is text on the left-hand side Subject on the right if ever it's a numbered You know series well, then I have the number in the corner and if it's a specific show I'll have the title of the show on top You don't have to do that But and you know for special videos if the game's important I'll put the game on top as well But I tend to keep text on the left Subject on the right and it's basically the same thing with text on the left Subject on the right text on the left subject on the right I actually didn't make the thumbnail, but they were replicating my look so that's fit in with the rest Text on the left subject on the right See this video right here up link solo tactics how to dominate It's a video about uplink and call of duty So I have the up the uplink like node symbol Here it's a video about the em1 laser rifle the em1 laser rifle is enlarge right next to it so for the most part all these kind of fit the same format and That's that brings everything together There are some exceptions like the CS go that someone else who produced the thumbnails again, you know minecraft was clash of plans You got a huge clan clash of clans image right here, so No, you want to make sure that all of your thumbnails feel as if they fit in the same universe if you will Going back to branding like our branding for MGM our primary colors are black white green So for logo here for a symbol it's a green star on a black background For our Here got the blue background White green if you've ever gone to our website. It's MGM.tm You'll see as soon as it loads up if it loads up You can see here again our website branding blue green white. Oh, they've actually Updated it with team solo mid if you haven't checked up on that MGM and freedom have are now sponsoring team solo mid which is freaking sweet But yeah, so branding consistency is extremely important Major snow says can you message me on Skype? No, I don't give my my Skype to people um So yeah going back to this is gaming So this was this request that he sent to me Sorry, hopefully he don't mind Reading this, but I do want to go over how to request the graphics. So Acrimatic huge fan of your work. Awesome. Wondering if it would be possible to make my channel or avatar banner Yeah, we'll be working on that today Ideally I'd love so that's a bit fun and exciting bursting with life Obviously, that's that's something that everyone wants. They want lots of energy coming through their branding I put together a funny moments videos Okay, a funny funny moments is something I Don't really encourage people to do in terms of content because it's another thing that's kind of overdone And a lot of people unfortunately They make funny moments videos thinking about their funny moments are actually funny and a lot of them actually aren't funny So I kind of discredits them I mean not to put you down. I'm just saying in general I'm also a big fan of Daisy. Okay, cool. So zombie-based game, which is really nice I like the fact that you know you put in case I did not know what Daisy was a description of the game So something like that could be involved in the banner though. It'd be awesome. It's a difficult mix. Yeah So the problem is is it's really hard to communicate that you do funny moments in a game that's normally I Mean yes, there are funny moments in Daisy, but if you just limit it to images It's really hard to communicate that because Daisy's a zombie survival game and To be quite frank, it's gonna be impossible to do what you want to do unless I spent 20 to 30 hours on it and that would charge you for it So if this is absolute something you absolutely want a funny moments Daisy Let me know in the chat and we could sit down and discuss pricing If you just want something to be done on the free GFX live stream, then maybe just a Daisy focused Banner will do the job So yeah, then we're talking about payment blah blah blah blah. That's not about how we might do it on stream Okay, so okay, I understand blah blah blah, so you're giving me more details, which is good before we start Go look at the gaming lemon lemon on YouTube. This banner is very ideal to what I'm looking for Okay, so let's check that out Let's check out the gaming lemon look at this 2 million subscribers crazy sauce Uh Why does he have the gaming lemon in tiny he doesn't need to he just needs to lemon But then again another point that I touched upon during our last live stream is That once you make it big Branding doesn't really become as important anymore. I mean it's still important But it doesn't become as important because as I was saying in the top of the stream Your content is what's gonna get people to your channel your content and branding is what's gonna get people on your channel But then what's gonna sell them what's gonna make them subscribe is you so obviously people stick around for the gaming lemon because The gaming lemon is a good personality on YouTube So I'm still trying to understand what you want because you say that you want something like the gaming lemon But the gaming lemon it's just a drawing of a lemon I don't know how that relates to Daisy I Love to have my logo smack bang in the middle. Okay, I just under it. My name highlighted that we have That we play gaming or that we play gaming In the background, I love to make a picture kind of effect like what he has produced with certain games we play Daisy GTA 5 Assassin's Creed Unity payday 2 Let me start by explaining what Daisy is. Okay yes banner made a logo logo that I would like to revamp using the same Game controller that I have on there now underneath the logo. There's a nice decent font something. I can't Yeah, okay, so I am slightly confused because In your request, you're saying that Daisy is really important and that you want to push Daisy But you also want me to emphasize all these other brands so Because the problem is that Daisy the style of Daisy doesn't fit in with GTA 5 and You know Assassin's Creed Because in GTA 5 it's very much like a funny game, but Daisy. It's very dark So what I'm gonna try to do I'll try to do like what I did with um See with proud row proud row is kind of like my template background So if you have not seen this in the last episode this is something I did on a GFX stream a long time ago for another user And so we I just put in images From some of the characters for the from the games that he plays have a social media have his logo Nice and simple. Maybe we can use this as a template to go off of Okay, so we can do that we can start with that Before we do that though Let's do another giveaway so um Guys if you want to win a game Just write hashtag who is George and actually what let's do two giveaways Back-to-back so the first game That I'm going to give away. Let's say Let's make it a Game called gang beasts So I know that you have like the PlayStation logo there ignore that it's a game for PC as well I just use the PlayStation trailer because that was the nicest one I could find So this is a game called gang beasts as you can see it's one of those weird physics games where you can have lots of funny moments Because you sit just like you know fighting in this really weird physics world This is a game that is courtesy of the five-star network You can see there on the bottom left-hand side So be sure to check them out. They were gracious enough to grant me some keys for some games You can check them out at youtube.com Slash join five-star. They are a network powered by freedom So I mean if you if you're not with the freedom network Which I mean why wouldn't you be because the freedom network is frickin awesome But if you're not and you're just kind of shopping around for networks be sure to check them out They are really cool. Once again ps4 logo, but this is the PC version so If you want to win this just keep submitting Just keep typing who is George Okay, and the second game Go write this down on this lovely piece of paper in front of me So gang beast goes to E-man. I do a giveaway The person who wins tends to be someone with really strong branding. Look at this. Look at how nice this is I mean their logo on their icon is really small but It's consistent with the background this banner is really killer by the way Really simple a nice contrast between the background and I mean it even says weekly gaming videos So, you know what this channel is about you have his Twitter right here Just nice and sweet nice and simple and sweet. It's awesome. I dig it. I dig it, bro so the next game that we're gonna be giving away is going to be a Game called Oddworld So Oddworld is a remake of a PlayStation 1 game A really really really cool PlayStation 1 game as you can see from the trailer really interesting different something that Hasn't really, you know, you don't really see anywhere else It's one of those 2d platformers or how should I say it's like 2d 3d Where it's a 2d platformer, but Sometimes shifts the 3d. So if you want to win this game Just do hashtag. Who is George? That will be giving away a copy of one of these of this game So, yeah, this is all on Steam So if you don't have steam Unfortunately, it's a little too bad for you guys because you need a steam account Coolio and the winner of Oddworld is The winner of Oddworld is slow gamers Dot see Is it slow gamers see slow gamers dot si? But the winner is slow gamers. So What's what's going on slow gamers? I recognize the name, but you have won a copy of Oddworld So you can just message me on my personal youtube account acromat a-c-h-r-o-m-a-t send me a p.m. With your email address, and I will email you the steam code It's um guys. It's really important Peggy 12 whenever the livestreams over over to not like freak out and start like bugging me Yesterday or sorry yesterday last week. That's what happened people were constantly bugging me like where's my code? Where's my code? Where's my code? Usually whatever I do in the patient if it takes a few hours So this is a slow gamers channel here Just a kind of why am I on the channel? Well, that's basically because What I typically like to do is whenever I choose someone randomly. I'll just click on The name of the winner and so that way if the chat is going like crazy Well, then it's it's it's fair. So 105 viewers right now. That is crazy Infinity People are saying we can't Hear you That's really weird. I thought I disabled Okay guys, sorry about that that is really interesting because I disabled Sound for all these trailers and I must have missed it For Oddworld Okay, so um Whatever the trailer for the game replays it blasts the sound Trailer music was way too loud Okay guys, uh Sorry about that. I'm gonna have to adjust that for next time Yeah, sorry rip headphone users I I was a hundred percent sure that I had muted the sound for everything Guys, let me know in the chat for all the trailers. Have you been hearing sound because I've set OBS to mute the sound for all of the Things so for those who didn't hear who won Oddworld it's slow gamers so slow gamers You have one that you can contact me Okay So you can contact me and Yeah, I will send you that as I was saying for those who have one be sure to Contact me on my personal channel acramat a chr. Oh a chr. Oh mat And Sorry if it takes a while to get you the codes. I try to send them as soon as possible. So don't freak out Okay, so people are saying yes after it replays, okay Okey-dokey So just give me a second. I'm just gonna Tempt something real quick. Okay I just wanted to disable that just to make sure that whenever I switched back I'll keep that in mind. So It's only gonna I'm only gonna make sure that the trailer plays once What is up mr. Eight? We'll we'll sure Is that how you say your name is I love freedom? I love freedom, too Just the audio starts out music starts out muted, but when it replays it gets super loud Sorry about that. Okay, so I'll be sure to fix that I guess that's a That's a problem with the plug-in because the the the plug-in that plays the video for on OBS is A fan-made one. It's like it's not actually made by OBS. So Sorry about that Okay, so this is gaming. We wanted to get to your branding and what not I'm just going to Because someone is messaging me on This Skype. Yeah guys, I think what's gonna happen is for the next time I do a live stream I'm gonna get my hands on the second monitor. I Think if that needs to happen, so just so I could be monitoring the chat at all times This is gaming let's See if we can get your Icon here new 800 by 800 so Already this shows me that your icon wasn't at a high enough resolution I'll check in with the chat Once in a while just so that people You know can confirm that everything is okay OBS, okay, everything's good. Awesome. So there should be no nasty surprises So I'm just gonna go with the pen tool Too much and I wish I had a version without this the Senehat here Um Where's where to begin? So I just want to make sure turn on back that music at least Because when you said like turn off the sound was like oh geez what sound is? Freaking out good to know that that should Resolved Hopefully just letting you guys know that in the future whenever I do a live stream What I'll try to do is I'll try to stream in advance So let's say there's a pre-show 15 minutes beforehand. We'll try to do a pre-show to the pre-show on Twitch So typically you can just check me out my twitch account. We're playing some video games live That way you guys won't have to wait a billion gazillion years Like you typically do so what I'm doing right now is I'm just tracing out This controller very roughly as this is basically you want to he wants to maintain the same kind of symbols, so We'll try to we'll try to improve upon Logo this is where it's gonna kind of become a little challenging So I've got nothing to go off of make a selection Guessing I'm trying to imagine The controller looks like Behind that sand head. So hopefully I got something that you know, it's decent So some of the edges aren't perfect was before Okay, so now let's start constructing some of the elements within the controller so Bear with me guys sometimes you might not understand what I'm doing because When you when you're self-taught You have very unconventional methods to doing certain things So sometimes it might be a little confusing Okay, this shows that my pen selection behind the Santa hat Was far from perfect You just adapt make the necessary changes is instead of having black lines I'm just gonna have gaps between where the black lines used to be so you kind of Understand Hopefully you guys can see that So it's just kind of like a gap try to do the same thing Okay, so this is what I have thus far we can I can add more details later on but hopefully you guys can kind of see What direction I'm going with this Because you want to keep things as minimalistic as possible. I should have done so I can do a cut out the exact same dimensions Sorry if I'm a bit silent just I've taken advantage of this moment to just kind of recuperate some of my voice It's talking for too much time is Very straining on the voice So this is this is starting to come together Yeah, let's drink the chat people are saying Yeah drink some water for your voice definitely I might do some reviews towards the end But a BDTV I actually already reviewed you in the pre-show So if you were not there Guess you're a loss Yes, I did indeed Trying to keep things as organized as possible. What do we need to do now? We have before I even do that. I feel a sneeze that coming I might spontaneously sneeze I'm trying to hold the sneeze in The sneeze is a coming Sorry about that I told you the sneeze was a coming effort to do is doing ethics people the less exciting Point you know aspect of Graphic design I'm slowly losing my mind Eman Z80 As I was saying before to claim your prize You just need to PM me. So just go to my personal channel, which is Akramat ACHROMAT And then just send me a Just send me a PM With your email address and I'll email you the steam code whenever I can some guessing going on right now Hopefully and we'll see if this looks good. We'll just take that Space in between where the paths cross and not remove that Um That kind of looks clumsy So I mean look, we'll we'll just we'll keep it like this for the moment. Okay, so for the background I tend to always prefer ingredients so Wanted this to be like white with some yellow accents So how about after this we're gonna be doing some more giveaways a few back-to-back realize that I Still have a bunch of giveaways to do. I know this looks beautiful, huh? That's more what I meant to do and then what I'm actually thinking of doing Is maybe just kind of getting some arrows on here, so that's not perfect Triangles are a little funky. You'll see man. My triangles are really funky for some reason Guys after this I don't think I'm gonna be doing any more gfx for this Or meaning I probably won't have the time to make a full-on logo for Someone else. I'm probably just gonna be doing the giveaways just talking about some last minute, you know some last tricks Improving their branding in the know probably be it for today As I did say more towards the top of the show, I'll be doing proper videos on freedom central eventually Just on all the major topics I've covered during this live stream, so just about branding how important it is It's a basic trips trips tricks on how to improve your thumbnails how to improve your channel art I'll just do a video series. So it just won't it won't just be one video. It'll be a series of videos Please this looks better what I should have done if I had known that I was gonna put arrows in is I Would have put them directly on the d-pad This looks all right. I'm just gonna try one last I don't know. It's it's not really a detail that you'll notice. So hopefully Hopefully it's all right Unless what we could do like this It's it's just nice and simple because you don't want to be you don't want it to be too complicated You want like when your icon is this big on the side of YouTube You want people to be able to understand what it is and like you can tell it's a game controller, so As long as it passes that test I don't know maybe something like this if I if I um If I spent a lot more time on it, obviously it could be improved more so Dude, let me know if you like this and you want this just message me on YouTube I could send you this If you'd like me to spend more time on it, then I could It's just I would have to work on it for several hours and because I'm a busy guy It could take me weeks before I get back to you. Just let me know So, uh, yeah cool. Yo, the dissector says potato.  I I'm just like I don't know I don't know so this is for this is gaming So obviously I'm gonna be working with him throughout the next little while to you know to work on his banner and whatnot. Um If you guys want me to Create stuff for you guys you'll have to unfortunately wait Until I do another gfx stream Even though I mean I know a lot of people want me to help them out with Banners and icons and thumbnails. I'm only offering that for free during the streams If you absolutely want me to help you out, you can always contact me on my channel, but I that would probably be Commission work so Holka chance says why do people hate Minecraft people don't hate Minecraft. I love Minecraft I'm just I just tell people don't do Minecraft because there are so many people who do Minecraft That it just doesn't sell on YouTube It's it's like you need to think of Your YouTube content as like a product that's being sold in stores And you need to think if like let's say, you know your videos are potato chips Well, if there are hundreds of thousands of other potato chip companies Well, then you're not gonna sell that many potato chips because there's so much competition So people are just really being inappropriate in the chat right now. So Come on guys be appropriate. We're the freedom family so So yeah, so Just going back to what I was saying before if you'd like me to help out with your graphics You could always start contacting me But I'm unfortunately gonna have to charge you because my time is very limited I do a lot with impulse that being said though. There are 15 minutes left to this live stream And and so yeah, so without further ado, let's go into the giveaways I'm gonna be showcasing the trailers, but But but but What I'm gonna do just to kind of make sure that there are no problems I'm just gonna mute my system audio so you can only hear me now That way even if the if the trailer sound did come on it shouldn't come on and Just as a precautionary thing I'm not going to let the trailer play twice. So um Yeah, we're gonna be doing a few giveaways now. So just write Hashtag who is George and I'm gonna be selecting people to win This time it's going to be for a copy of escape goat So Yeah, you can win a copy of escape goat, which is a 2d puzzle platformer It's a really really really cool game. You guys definitely need to check it out As you can see right now, it's it's pretty sweet. I really really like this game a lot It's another indie title You don't have to have played the first one to understand the story So just check it out really really really cool game And I'm gonna be selecting one lucky viewer To win this amazing game And the winner of escape goat 2 is going to be just clicking on a random channel The winner of escape goat 2 is Trojactus so Trojactus If you would like to claim your prize all you need to do is Contact me on my personal channel, which is Akramat A-C-H-R-O-M-A-T if people in the chat can Can write that down that'd be awesome, but we're gonna do another giveaway right away So I'm just gonna write down your name so you guys can start writing hashtag who is George And this time it's going to be for What's the what's it going to be for this time this time it's going to be Apparently I got an error on my own gfx stream. I can't even view my own stream. What is this madness? For this time it's gonna be a cop for a copy of a game called Chante so this is this is not necessarily a title for everyone. This is a bit more of an obscure title But this is a game that was on the DS and On mobile devices and was ported to the PC and I know that a lot of you guy gamers might be like What is this game if you guys don't want this game? I'll totally take this game. It's a 2d retro style platforming game And the reason why this was chosen this is actually purchased as part of the HDQ humble bundle This is a game that a lot of people have been speed running So if you guys want this title, I'll be giving it out to one of you guys Also, I mean I like to give this as a tip for those who win games and they don't necessarily want them You could always give them away on your own personal channels or give them to a friend, you know, so cool and the winner of Chante is Ryan Mindcraft 3 3 3 So Ryan mind craft not minecraft mind craft you have won the copy of Chante And now for the next giveaway because the giveaways though, they just keep on coming We're gonna be giving away a copy of another game supplied By the five-star network. This is a copy of trying So the five-star network was gracious enough to give three copies of Trying to us to give away, so I'm gonna be giving away three copies of trying to you guys I know a lot of you guys are like, oh, I thought I won I Just keep doing hashtag who is George. I'll be giving away three copies of trying courtesy of the five-star network be sure to check them out on Join five-star. This is obviously a really amazing Indie title and the first winner of trying. Well, you don't need to write who I love George because I'm not George but And the first winner is Mega quartz ninja, so I'm just gonna put down your name here mega Quartz ninja Send me a p.m. With your email address and I will send you the steam key as soon as I have time the second winner of trying is going to be Xerxes ice binder so Xerxes ice binder You have won a copy of a trine on steam So just send me a private message to my personal channel Akramat with your email address and I will send you the code as soon as possible once again These games are being brought to you or at least these copies of trying are being brought to you by the five-star network And the third winner of trying is sleepy creepy. So sleepy creepy you have won a copy of a trine Now guys We're getting towards the end of the giveaways and the live show, but we do have two more big ticket items for you guys I Amen a.m. Asks Twitter giveaway. No, they're just gonna they're all gonna be on YouTube today We have two big ticket items now That I'm going to give away and the first of which is going to be one month of twitch turbo so What you guys can do once again? For this giveaway for the final two giveaways are gonna be a little different So instead of writing hashtag. Who is George? I want you guys to write hashtag Hashtag twitch So that's gonna be for the twitch giveaway and then after for the next giveaway. There's gonna be a little bit of a different Rural set as well. So for the twitch turbo giveaway for the one month of twitch turbo right hashtag twitch There we go, I see some hashtag twitch Hashtag twitch It's all coming in Okay, and the winner of one month of twitch turbo is I'm just gonna I Just want to make sure it's fair because like there's a bunch of people who are just typing all at once and The winner of one month of twitch turbo is and YouTube is taking forever to load up their page The winner of one month of twitch turbo is Infinitive so infinitive you have won a one month of twitch turbo So once again to claim your prize Just message me On my youtube channel my personal youtube channel, which is youtube Dot-com Slash actually, you know why it's a long complicated name which have changed just search on youtube acromat a ch Romat send me a message with your email address, and I will get back to you ASAP and actually by the way dude your branding is wicked awesome infinitive. It's really sweet. I Dig it a lot Okay, so for the final giveaway, it's going to be for three months of Explicit premium so if ever you've wanted to do some live streaming Well, you can have three months of explet premium It means the whole shebang the whole deal everything You can have that for three months. It's now hashtag X split I Like how people are still running like hashtag twitch. Come on man. We just give away twitch twitch has been given away Now we're getting away X split I'm just gonna wait until I see all hashtag X splits and no more hashtag twitch okay, so people seem to have Gotten the message now Okay, so I'm just gonna wait about 30 seconds to make it fair for everyone Now I swear to God this selection is completely random My mouse is just in the same spot and whenever I go go I'm just gonna click on the first name. That's under the cursor It could be that someone who's already won will win again Could be that someone who is new to the chat will win And the person who has won three months of X split premium is I Just said it could have been someone who just won recently so the winner of three months of Of X split premium is Ryan Minecraft again, so Ryan Minecraft you have won three months of X split premium Okay, cool, so guys that is basically it for this live stream Yeah, I've basically given away everything that I've had to give away, but that is not all Guys, yeah, people are like well, what are the chances and someone's Ryan rigged. No guys. It's not it's not rigged I swear to you 100% I don't even know who Ryan Minecraft is I have no idea who Ryan Minecraft is they just got super lucky But guys that's not the end of the giveaways for ever We'll be back next week with more giveaways for the people who are not here at the top of The stream this is really important. This is actually really important that everyone knows about this is We're gonna be doing live streams every single Sunday Not including tomorrow tomorrow. We're not doing a live show, but every single Sunday We're going to be giving away beef jerky G fuel control freak mods and We're also gonna be giving away from time to time some games neon bros dude Please play fair a lot of people are just kind of like really Upset that they didn't win and some people are swearing in the chat guys. It's an automatic filter So if ever you swear or are inappropriate I mean YouTube just filters that out. So please Please be appropriate and also if you didn't win that doesn't mean that you'll never ever win We're gonna be doing some more giveaways So every single Sunday starting next week We'll be doing a live show. We'll keep you up to date with that new episodes of impulse start on Monday with a brand new format Tiffany is having her new own a show on Sundays on Cosplay and then right after her show a few hours later. What are good? We're gonna be doing The live stream So yeah Yeah, so guys I will see you later I'm actually pretending to be gone, but I'm not gone Da da da Actually, you know what guys? Know what guys I'm gonna do a secret bonus giveaway because you guys are too awesome and For the people who just left Well, then they'll know that the next time it's good to stay. You know what I mean?  This is gonna be another game that's supplied By the five star network This actually looks pretty darn interesting. Okay, cool. So This giveaway is going to be for a copy of Let me just switch moods here infinity This is gonna be for a copy of a game called autocraft So you can kind of see the The trailer here. It looks pretty pretty darn awesome So bonus giveaway.  So I'm gonna be giving away a copy of autocraft To all y'all as a bonus So let's see how many people cool. So just do hashtag autocraft and I'll choose I'll choose the bonus see guys. This is this is what I'm going to be doing from now on where it's like I'll be like, okay the show's over. Bye and then for those who stick around there might be a little bonus surprise or two so Hashtag autocraft See cuz funny enough it really sucks, but a lot of people come here only for the prizes And I mean I kind of understand because it's free stuff But it's like our numbers went from like a hundred viewers to 76 meaning we lost a quarter of our audience The second I went, okay, it's the end of the stream no more giveaways and so Sometimes more often than not I'll actually kind of lie to you guys just to kind of reward the people who are actually here for the right reasons or You know who are actually dedicated so So the copy of autocraft Goes to I Gotta make sure that I choose someone who's actually writing hashtag autocraft so many people Okay, I've chosen my winner the winner of autocraft is call me bruh Call me bruh So call me bruh you have won a copy of autocraft So yeah, uh, call me bro. Just message me on my personal channel acro mats and I will send you a copy a Steam code so a lot of people just want to emphasize that it's a steam code Like I'm proud we're turning up hashtag on attack autocraft to call me bro come a bro Neon you never know come on Actually, it's funny because I think call me bro was just writing like I don't think I'm ever gonna win so Okay, guys, that is it for today It's like I want to give away more games, but it's past two o'clock So it's it's past the time that I've been allotted to do the stream So I will see you guys very soon. I'll see you guys next week And as I said, I'm gonna be making some proper videos on branding so I'm just gonna cool beans. I will see you guys later Take care. I did the booty pie thing. Bye. Bye. Don't copy people. That's actually not a legit strategy.


Okay. The words Tom Yamachika mean anything to you? They mean a lot to a lot of people.  Most of them will say, that's the President of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii. That's what they'll say. And then this is ThinkTech. They'll say that too. And I'm Jay Fidel. Today we're going to talk about the 2019 Legislature here on Talking Tax with Tom. And we're going to talk about, you know, the tax sheet goes on in the 2019 Legislature. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Jay. And the beat does go on. We have a full dance card here today. So let's talk about the REIT bill, the real estate investment trust bill, and those who would like to tax REITs here at the local level. Okay. Let me just kind of give you some background. REITs are federally authorized vehicles. They're regular corporations, but they file a form with IRS to have special tax treatment. And what that is, is they have to get income from the passive use of real estate, so rents basically. And the deal is that if they distribute more than 95, I think 90 or 95% of their income to their shareholders, then they don't get taxed. They get something called the dividends pay deduction, which basically allows them to zero out their income and not get taxed at that level. The shareholders love that, right? The shareholders love that. They like the disgorgement. Well, I don't know about that, but like any other corporation, the shareholders are taxed the dividends they receive. So I mean, that doesn't change. And in the federal scenario, it's okay because presumably most of these shareholders are citizens of the United States, and if the feds don't get it from one place, they'll get it from the other. Right? So they'll at least get one level of tax. For us, we have a problem. And the problem is that when you distribute, when you use a corporation, distribute dividends to a shareholder, the shareholder is taxed only in the place of the shareholders' residence. That's been a long-standing rule from centuries gone by. So what that happens is if you have a REIT, which does all this federal stuff and pays out dividends to shareholders, there's no tax here because the REIT's not taxable. And at the shareholder level, the shareholder attacks someplace else, if at all. If at all. Because a lot of the shareholders are exempt. Exempt entities like pension funds, for example, or tax-exempt orgs, stuff like that. They don't pay tax on dividends. What about an overseas shareholder? I don't think we'll be able to tax them either. And he may not pay tax in Hong Kong, for example. Yeah. In the federal system, there's a way to get that income because dividend is withheld when it's paid overseas. But we don't have something similar here. And I don't think we can. Okay. So it's unfair to the state of Hawaii. That's the point. At least a lot of people feel that way. And there's been a couple of champions of this issue for about six, seven years now, I think, trying to tax REITs here locally, establish a tax at this tier at the place of doing business. Yeah. So what the bills would do would be to tax the REITs like any other corporation so that you would pay state tax here. And whatever dividends are paid out, shareholders getting REIT dividends would pay tax on those dividends. The dividends would be less though because the corporation would have to pay tax here and then it would deduct the tax it pays at a business expense, right? Right. So like any other corporation? Like any other corporation. Yeah. So that's, you know, that would benefit Hawaii. And there are a lot of REITs who own a lot of property. And you know, that's the way our foreign real estate investment has worked largely through REITs from far away on the East Coast, the West Coast. Yeah. And it turns out that in Hawaii, there is a lot of REIT investment. Almona, a lot of hotels, many of the shopping centers, Commonwealth, which owns Puna Puna and also most of Campbell. So that's a lot of investment. It's billions of dollars of investment and it's millions and millions of income every year through rent. So the question is, you know, is this bill have any chance because those guys are going to oppose this. They're going to bring all their forces to bear and try to stop this bill as they have in the past. Yeah. And this year is no different. The national REIT organizations involved, they got, you know, the, you know, the nation's foremost professor of state tax guiding Walter Hellerstein way in and submit testimony. Yeah. How does it look? We don't know. At least it's still moving. Still moving. Yeah. The Senate bill definitely crossed over to the House, I think. There's a House bill that will cross over to the Senate. So both companion bills. Yes. Essentially the same. Well, this would be very interesting to, you know, to see. I'll tell you why. Because it's, you know, it's an example of our democracy in action. You have lobby groups, you have well-funded lobbyists who are in there every day walking the halls. This involves tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions to collectively to these REITs. They're determined to stop it. Query, who's on the other side of that? Are the people on the other side of that as powerful, as influential, as well-funded in their efforts to push it forward? Well, the proponents of the bill are local real estate developers. So, I mean, they're obviously not REITs. So, if they form a corporation to do the same thing, they get double taxed like any other corporation. That's the thing. The guys who oppose it, to them, it's real dollars. Dollars out of their pockets, so to speak, at a local level. For the guys who are pushing the bill, it has only an indirect effect on them. And they're looking for the greater good, I think, for the state of Hawaii. Right. Not the same motivations. And therefore, it's not the same level of advocacy either. Well, I don't know. I mean, for the local people, they have to compete with the REITs. So, it is hurting them personally. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, wish them well. But we'll have to check back with you on that. Now, the crossover is happening right now, and it's going to go into the switch committee, so to speak, right after the crossover is over. That's right. So, right now, at the legislature, the House bills are being finished up and sent to the Senate. Senate bills are being finished up and sent to the House for consideration by the other, what we call the non-originating House. Okay. Well, there'll be more committee hearings probably. Yep. So, that'll start probably next week or the week after, and then it'll be madness again. And then we'll check back with you on that. Okay. The next one is a TAT bill where the counties are asking for state statutes that permits them to add a surcharge on the TAT in all the counties. Why are they doing that? Yeah. So, here's the background on that. For the last four or five years, the counties and the state have feuded over how much of the TAT they will get because part of the TAT is shared with the counties. Okay. For the earlier part of this century, it was a percentage. So, like for example, Maui got 10% of the take, and I think Honolulu got 15% or so on. But in 2013, okay, in the same statute that raised the TAT from seven and a quarter to nine and a quarter, it's seven and a quarter now, by the way. Okay. Okay. It never goes down, you know. Yeah, it started off at five percent. It never goes down. And it was supposed to be temporary. Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah. That said that what the counties get is going to be a fixed number.  Well, that's what they got. A fixed number is stable and predictable. Which is now? Which is now what they say inadequate. It's, I think, 103 million to be shared amongst all the counties. Okay. So it's inadequate. The states go to the legislature. The states are, I mean, the counties go to the legislature. The counties are advocating for this change. What does this change permit? And so what this change is going to do is it basically resolves the question of, you know, how much the economy is going to get. Basically what the bill will do is knock out the county sharing. Okay. But the county will be allowed to add a surcharge on the TAT just like how they are allowed to add a surcharge to the GET now. So right now, the counties get a part of the TAT. Right. Under this bill, they wouldn't get any part of it. They'd have to make a surcharge and they'd get all of that. That's right. Wow. And they wouldn't have the same amount of surcharge county to county. They'd do each county would do it something. Yeah. So that's kind of one of the beauties of it. So like if Maui, for example, but oh geez, we got too many tourists, it's ruining our natural beauty and stuff so they can jack up the TAT really high. Whereas another county may be more willing to accommodate tourists and they would set their bar lower. They can compete. They can compete. They can compete. They can go, I guess they go to the people who package tours and the like, people who fill the hotels and say we're a little cheaper on the TAT than the next county. Right. That'd be interesting to watch and see how that works. Yeah. So it's a very interesting idea. But how much, let me ask again, how much were they getting? Have they been getting under the existing law? And would this TAT be more or less than that? Well, it's hard to determine right now because there's so many blanks in the bill, which is typical for this stage of the process. They leave the amount blank. They give the county authority to enact a TAT surcharge up to blank. So it's hard to... You can't. And we'll only know after conference committee, right? Right, right. So... It's just likely to pass. Who knows? Well, let's see, who would be pushing back? The hotels would be pushing back, wouldn't they? Maybe. Again, it just kind of is a speculation as to who's going to come out better. You know, Tom, this is the part of the show where my head begins to explode. And whenever my head begins to explode, I'm sure you have the same experience. I take a break. Watch this. Aloha. I'm Wendy Lo and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at two o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about, whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means. Let's take healthy back. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that's just going to scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on thinktechawaii.com 1 p.m. on Friday afternoons. And then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up. And please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keepin' you safe. Aloha. It was an article in the paper about people who are fascinated with exploding grapes in the microwave. I doubt you would have seen that, but there it was.  Exactly. Geez. It's feeling better now. That's good. So anyway, let's go to the next bill. And that's the carbon tax bill. We talked about that. A lot of discussion about it. And certainly, that would be involved in the Green New Deal federally, I guess, something like that, in order to tax carbon to de-incentivize use of fossil fuels, whatnot. They disallow airplanes. It's a hard one, though. It's so new. It's so disruptive to everything that people are people are not going to really warm to it, right? Yeah. Warm is warm is a chosen term. They're not going to do climate warming over that one. Good one, Jay. Thank you very much. So question is, how's it doing? It's going to make it over the crossover? Yes, it's crossing over definitely. What that bill does, in its current form, is revenue neutral. So what it would do is it would take away the multiplicity of taxes that we now have on fuel. So right now we have the state fuel tax, the county fuel tax. We have the barrel tax. State and county fuel taxes, as you know, are imposed on gasoline and similar types of fuels. You pay at the pump. The barrel tax is a little bit different because it's imposed on fossil fuel whenever it's imported. And that one is more environmentally focused as opposed to fuel tax, which is supposed to be the pay for wear and tear on the highways. So you can see some big winners and losers because right now there are some big users of fuel that are exempt from the fuel tax, such as the power companies. That's how they generate electricity. And the reason why they're exempt from the fuel tax is because they don't use the road. Fair enough. Fair enough, right? And also farmers. They have off-road vehicles, like the tractors and the plows and whatever else they're using. It's not on a road. And the fuel tax is supposed to be one of the primary feeders of the highway fund. So rather than both of those, all of the county fuel tax would remain intact, but what the state wants to do or that bill is considering is replacing the state fuel tax and the barrel tax with a carbon tax. And the carbon tax would be based on you import or use fuel that when burned is going to put carbon into the atmosphere, then you pay for the carbon that is thereby produced. So coal, for example, is taxed at a higher rate because it produces the most carbon per energy production. And then I think natural gas is further down the list. Is this a bill that comes from a uniform bill from somewhere else or do we write this bill right here at home? We're right here at home. I mean, no other state in the US statewide has a carbon tax. There are some cities who have adopted it on the mainland, but there is no state carbon tax here. I must say that I don't think people know about this very much. They don't know the details of it. And if they don't know, I don't think the legislators know either. And I'm sure there's going to be resistance to this because it is such a big change. And you don't know the effect of it. I think it needs to be what's socialized among the public, socialized among the legislators for it to work. But on the other side of that, it seems to me that Hawaii is doing, aside from clean energy, which it could do more, it could do more. Aside from that, it seems to me that Hawaii is not putting a whole lot of money into climate change. It simply isn't. Can you tell me of anything where the state is making a real monetary American dollar commitment on climate change? I can't. I don't think it's doing anything.  On the other hand, we're not ready. And many organizations are talking about climate change, and it's up to them, I think, socialize this idea and get people to understand it and want it and demand it and bang the table for it. But so far, I don't think that's happened. Yeah. So where we are right now is the bill's revenue neutral. But there have been some calls for, you know, DBET or somebody to do a study on what would it take in terms of the level of the carbon tax to coax enough social change so we can meet our renewable energy goals in the timeframe that we've set for it. And I can tell you right now, to do that, you would need a carbon tax with a much greater number than we have. Okay. So it would be revenue positive. And I think, you know, people in the government probably wouldn't mind that. You know, more money to go around. We as consumers would get hit in a number of places. We'd get hit at the pump. We'd get hit in our electric bills. We'd get hit in the cost of farm produce. Yeah. But don't we have, you know, I'm reminded of the recent London economics reports that cost a million dollars for DBET on the question of what kind of utility model is appropriate going forward. And I'm not sure that was worth a million dollars. I told them I would do it for a million. But you know, don't we have talent here that could do this kind of study instead of going wide like I know this will happen. And it will take years to make a study like this. And the study will be inconclusive. And then even if it is conclusive, there's a big question about whether anybody will listen or put it on the back to shelf. Well, I mean, we would have the state energy office do something because the state already found that they are not. They've been defunded, haven't they, the state energy office. Maybe we can get that something for them to do. But, you know, when, while that reminds you of, you know, the London study, I'm kind of reminded of what's happened in France with the yellow, you know, the yellow jackets. Right. Yeah. Writing in the streets because among one of the things that made people so unhappy was carbon tax. Right. That was the central part of yellow jackets, wasn't it? Yeah. So you can see what might happen here. And I don't know what the intensity of the lobbying is right now in that bill, but I imagine there's not a whole lot of active support for it. Well, I think there's a not a whole lot of at least frontline activity on either side, because I mean, the hearings haven't been, you know, attended with, you know, acts of people. Yeah. Yeah. Pushing in either direction. Yeah. So what's your expectation on this? I think a lot of action is taking place behind the scenes. Yeah. We have to work on that. And that one, we'll have to come back next year, I think, and talk about it some more. Okay. Meta vehicle tax. This one's very interesting because it relates to a larger issue. Can you talk about that? Sure. There's right now a bill is moving and it's just crossed over to deal with the rental vehicle tax, which is what we pay for rental cars. And whenever we rent a car for a day, if you like fly to Maui or Kauai to do business and you're out of rent a car, then you pay this tax among other things. Now, we enacted an amendment to this tax last year that says, okay, we're going to charge locals with a Hawaii driver's license $3 a day, but we're going to charge people without a local driver's license $5 a day. Okay. Probably you can't do that. As a state, you can't do that. It feels good if you're, if you're local Hawaii. Yeah. That feels good. But then when you look at the Constitution, it doesn't feel good. Yeah. I mean, there's part of the US Constitution says we're supposed to, you know, we're supposed to treat people from other states as our Ohana. The Commerce Clause. It's called the Commerce Clause. So, so, so we can't basically, basically, we can't do that. Okay. So, so there's a, there's a, the way they're going to fix it. And this is, I think, after at least one of the big car companies is a modern challenge to the laws it currently has. And, and basically the AG and the Department of Tax have basically fallen on the sordid admittance constitutionalist as it now reads. And says, okay, we're going to, we're going to do a fix. We're going to charge $5 to everyone. In fact, from July 1st. That's a real fix, isn't it?  Everybody gets fixed.  Yep. Somebody gets burned. Everybody. Okay. So now that issue, that issue also comes up in the context of agricultural products. Can you talk about that? Yeah, there's a, there's a bill to, to award a GT exemption for, you know, food that's raised, grown or caught in Hawaii. We raise, we raise beef cattle. We, we raise crops. We sell coffee, you know, GTs and for all of that other, other food we bring in, nada. Okay. No, no exemption. We already ruled on that. We already have a Hawaii Supreme Court case a number of years ago called Hawaiian flour mills. That said, you can't do this. That also violates the Commerce Clause because it discriminates against other state stuff. And so the same thing, the same thing. That's against the Constitution under the Commerce Clause the same way. So it's too bad because it feels good. You know, we do want to incentivize local agriculture. Yeah. Everybody else does too. Yeah. But, but that would lead to what the Supreme Court called economic balkanization. And they thought that was a bad thing for the nation. So that's why, you know, the rule is like the way it is. Just, just in the hypothetical, suppose I, I'm the legislation, I really, really, really want to incentivize local agriculture. How can I do it in a way that is legal? That is un, that is constitutional. Don't use the tax system. You know, use a subsidy of some kind. Everybody does. Subsidies are subject to different rules. In the end of the day, it costs the government money just like a tax creditor. Yeah. So you can do that. I mean, so that's not unconstitutional. Yeah. I think within reason you can. We have to do something about local agriculture. It's not growing at a rate that's nearly fast enough, not as nearly as much as we had anticipated and wanted.  And now, and now we're faced with all this land and being isolated and not having enough food here, except McDonald's, to deal with extreme weather, for example, or some other kind of crisis. And we really better do this, but we haven't done it yet. If you want to make the state resilient, you know, you have to put money into dealing with climate change and also dealing with, you know, this kind of resilience on agriculture. Right. And you have to make it worthwhile for people to do farming. Yeah. So I mean, if the legislature or the people who introduced this bill had been a little more thoughtful about the Constitution, they might have come up with something else. Maybe they'll come up with something else next time. Maybe, yeah. Yeah. What about, actually, could you, you couldn't do this in the form of exempting any tax. It's only a matter of giving some subsidy instead. Just before we close, though, you know, Sylvia Luke at the outset had a new way of looking at budgets this year. What was it, zero-based budget or some words like that? Right. What was that? And is that something that's still in play? How has it been expressed? It's very much in play. What they're doing is they're basically looking at, I think, a previous year's baseline budget.  And so one subject matter committee has already found some excess funds squirreled away in DCCA. Another one has found excess funds, I think, in the Department of Labor. The state auditor has found excess funds in the Department of Transportation. So all this stuff is not coming to light, which is a good thing. So we can at least see what's there and figure out where our priorities are and where we can use them.  It's a substantial amount of money. If that's the case, then we're likely to balance the budget this year with a surplus.  I mean, if you say there's a surplus, which is what the administration has been doing, then you're going to kind of lick their chops and go, OK, we want raises now. Everybody wants the surplus immediately. Yeah. And then they have to go to the unions and say, oh, by the way, we spent the money last month. So there's no surplus anymore, which is what they did. Yeah. It's a delicate, fragile balance for all the powers that be. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Tom Yamachika. Tax Foundation of Hawaii. Thanks a lot.


Now, the Court of Appeal in Abu-Jer today shifted hearing in an application filed by Nandikano Sikin to be joined in the appeal, challenging the prescription of the group by the federal government on March 7, 2023. Kanu had on September 5, found joined the application as an interested party in the January 1828 in judgment that prescribed iPob. Although the hearing of the application was shattered for Wednesday, the applied court did not sit and the matter was shifted to next year. It canceled till Kanu Chukuma Machukume, who father processes said his client, was appealing to judgment of the trial court, which was rendered without hearing from him. Kanu, who expressed dissatisfaction with the judgment, proposed to challenge it on appeal.