S1E24 - LibRary

You have so much like corporate music on that service where it's like we're a multinational corporation that are trying to redeem our image after having done something awful. It's like that exact tone, really. Well, God, we care about the pelicans.

Like, stop. Stop.

No. Okay, cool. Well, then. Hello, audience, and welcome to behind the Locked Doors. I don't know. Actually, I was gonna say not Progress Addiction, but that's only me, so. But anyway, I am Scott Paladin.

I'm Sam Stark.

I'm Jack Skellington. It feels weird not to say a last name. I think I'm just gonna say a different goofy last name every week.

You can always make up a last name, you know, like just.

I thought you were going to say jacksepticeye. Like, I was ready for that.

Maybe I will next time. You don't know.

Okay, so let's talk about progress. I have basically done nothing since the last two weeks in terms of my projects for this because I've been deep underwater on the Breathing Space finale. Finale. So that. Which is going. I finished the rough cut of episode of the finale, parts one and two. Because it's a four fucking part finale. Yes.

Surprise, everyone. It's going to be a four part finale. Which is.

Or not surprise.

Twice as many parts as we thought there were going to be.

Yeah. Yeah. So I finished that rock up last night and then. Good job. In order to keep. My goal over the last two weeks has been just to keep my project at like the. In my mind. So I wasn't just like forgetting about it. And in an effort to do that, I've been rereading the stuff that I wrote previously and just like living in it a little bit. And then also, you might. People on the Discord will have seen I made a little thread of weird little guys just like making up weird little guys to put in the story.

I love your little guys.

It's one of those things where it's like. That's the kind of thing where sometimes you just like, oh, I just need a. I need a thing. I need like a person to happen before we go to this next thing or a guy to talk to. And it's nice to have just like a list of like, of ideas that have been floating around and stuff. So that's where I'm at. How are y'all doing?

How are we doing, Sam?

I have not done. I've not done anything in regarding Salmon West.

As.

And West.

Salmon West. I did it again. Salmon West, Sam.

And West. Por que no los Dos.

Just talking to myself. No, as in West. Um, I. Full disclosure, I've been having some pretty serious health problems.

I hate that for you.

Yeah, I have been in a lot of pain, like, a lot, a lot of pain. And I still have to do all of the, you know, actual job things that I have to do. So I have an audiobook that I'm doing.

Yeah, yeah. You got a triage.

Yeah, the audiobook that I'm doing is. Is so good. And it is such a wonderful, like, piece of. I mean, it's a piece of art and it has a wonderful non binary neurodivergent main character. So the whole. It's not first person, but the whole thing is very, very much through their perspective. And so a lot of the way that it's written is it trips my mouth up. Like, I'll read passages where I'm like, wait, wait, no, no, no. That made sense. Why can't my mouth say that? And there are massive amounts of science words that I know how they're supposed to sound, but I have to say them like 10 times.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that's been taking up most of my brain matter, I guess, but the rest of it has been going to the clinic and getting ready for surgery and all that kind of stuff. So I just basically am trying to survive.

That's completely fair.

Sometimes that's the way it be.

Yeah.

I'm so sorry about your medical troubles, but on my end, I had this giant art fair that I was tabling at last weekend, and so the last two weeks have been frantically preparing for that and then this week recovering from that. So that's what I real.

Yeah, there's. Yeah. So we don't really have anything to talk about with the projects then, but there is some more general podcast back matter kind of stuff that we could talk about, which it's one of those hard lessons, lessons I learned the hard way that I would love to impart upon anybody else who's thinking about starting something like a podcast or really any kind.

Just having domains collected all in one place.

Yeah, well, it's like. Well, just. And really, this is something I wish I'd done a long time ago in regards to just like generalized online content creation and stuff. Because I've got. I've dabbled in a bunch of different things, but, like, I wish that I had created Library of Cursed Knowledge, like probably in 2014. Basically, if I could have had that name and the ability, like set up a website for it and buy domains and stuff. Instead, I was like, oh, well, when I want to make a podcast, I was like, I'll just buy a domain for my podcast and it'll be under this. And that's the domain that we used in every outro for all, whatever 100 episodes or whatever we did for Monster Mechanics. And now I'm looking at it and I'm like, I am never going to touch this domain again. I don't want to mess with it. It costs me money. There is a really good argument for, oh yeah, if that had been MonsterPod Library Horse, our main domain, then it's essentially free because I'm going to pay for that for the foreseeable future. So if you are thinking about going into creating online stuff, having a brand you can use for that, that you want to use as an envelope is maybe a really good first step. It's one of those things that like, it would be. I wish I'd done it that way where I had created the network first and I could have been using it for YouTube and stuff. My YouTube account, like, I've got, I don't know, I've got less than 200 followers, so it's not like a big account, but it's got content on it. And it's my, it's my personal YouTube account. Like, it's the one that I use to like watch shit. It's like not like a brand account at all, which is so stupid.

Oh my God, if I ever like. But like, how are you to know you were going to need like a brand specific YouTube.

Exactly. So. But it's like, it's one of those things. Like just creating those accounts, it takes a little bit of time and like the ability to commit to something. Although, that being said, committing to a name for your shit is a good idea. It might be a good idea to pick something you can properly pronounce under your normal accent. Library is one of those words that in my accent I recognize that I have a, like a Sun Belt City accent, which is not a very hard Texan accent, but it's. There's there and it's library with me. Library with like library. Yeah. There's only one R in there. If I say it quickly, which is like, I want to do it right. So like, I got to stop. Every time I want to say the name of Library of curse knowledge, I got to add. I got to consciously add that R back in there.

That's so funny. Yeah, yeah.

Pro tip, actually have my best friends.

I mean, it's not uncommon and it's fine. It slips under the radar if it's a casual thing. But whenever I'm doing the announcements at the end, it's like, this is a library of cursed knowledge production. It's like, oh, crap.

To really think hard about saying library.

I do like the library branding though, because it means that in the discord, everything's like librarians and stuff. I can like, I don't know. It's fun. It's a good.

That's easy to brand around too.

Yeah, it's a good one. I need to like. I think I probably. I'm just gonna. I've made a new logo for the. For this podcast a while back. I think I'm just gonna.

Yeah, it looks nice.

And I have been one. I ended up with one for the network too. I need to like, put those on more things. Although here's a quick opinion on the one for the new one. Is it too green? The color scheme too green?

Let me look at it.

There we go.

Here we go.

Library Horse.

This is great radio.

Yeah. Everybody looking at stuff with their eye.

Where if you go to Library Horse www. Library Horse. Okay, so on this monitor, it doesn't look nearly so green to me. Maybe it's a monitor.

It doesn't look green on here either. It looks kind of like a warm amber color.

I think it's the one the monitor I have at work is maybe just the color, but every time I see it I'm like, oh, that looks like green now. And it's supposed to be sort of just a. Like a warm tone.

Yeah, no, it looks like a warm tone to me. I think maybe it's the monitor that's the issue and not the actual perfect radio content.

Guys.

I can describe what I'm looking at if you would like.

Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a. It's a logo for behind the Locked Doors that has like a stylized padlock on it and a nice font that says behind the locked Doors. And it's on this like sort of warm amber colored background. And apparently on some monitors that warm amber background is green. For some reason, it's not on my screen.

Mine is. Mine's got the green effect.

Oh, it does.

Oh, I think if I just shift that shadow color because there's like it's a kind of a classic three tone thing where you've got one light, one shadow, one middle. And I think there's some green in that shadow color. I think it could be fixed.

Yeah.

Relatively easy.

It looks good though, even though it's got green.

Yeah, no, it's really sharp looking.

You can almost. Not always. You can, you can pretty quickly just see when Scott designed a logo because it's how much fucked up, how much dirt and grime did I throw over the top of it? Because I always actually. This is a, this is a good tip for people who are out there, like making a logo for your. For your website.

Yes.

You want something, especially with podcast logos. They need to be fucking bold. Detail is your enemy with a podcast logo.

Yeah, you can't see shit at a small size.

Yeah, you open up your podcatcher and you see like all of the various icons for everything. And each one of those icons is going to be like 42 by 42 pixels. It's going to be just the teeniest.

So tiny, tiniest little thing.

So you want something that can be identified. But occasionally, like when somebody is playing your podcast, it will be larger. Or if they like open up your website and they see the logo really big. So you want to add textures into it rather than details into the design. So a big simple design and then you put a paper texture over the top of it, or you put some grunge or you put like little like, you know, basically that's what you want to work with. It is like textures and like flaws. Little things like that paper things make it look like it's made out of something, like substances or whatever, because that will all disappear when it gets shrunk down and it won't interfere with the overall design. But. But then when you make it big, it looks like you're looking at an object instead of just like flat color. And it works really well.

Yeah, like a JPEG made large.

I won't call out anybody else's podcasts particularly, but I see a bunch of audio drama podcasts and they seem like they're worse about it than everybody else. Where they're like, oh, we're gonna pay an artist a lot of money or we're gonna spend a lot of time and effort into making this beautiful podcast logo with like a handwritten font and all this stuff going on. And I see tons of detail, tons of detail. It looks beautiful. And then I know that when it gets shrunk down, it's just like a little bit of mud, basically. I'm like, I feel so badly.

A little square of mud.

Yeah, just please just cut it down to the least amount of information possible and then you can claw that back some other way or whatever if you.

Want, if you want to do like the beautiful artwork, blah, blah, blah for your website or whatever. You should get a logo that has a bigger picture type of a thing, and then your teeny, tiny little logo that goes on your Spotify or whatever can be a piece of that beautiful artwork. Cause then it's like you click on the thing and it opens up to this bigger, more context type of a thing. Cause I see a couple people that have been doing podcasts for a long time, they do that.

Well, there's also a version of it that I really like, which I'm not good enough to pull off, but which is like, you make a logo out of smaller objects or drawings or whatever. So from a far distance, it just looks like a symbol or whatever, and then you zoom in and then all of the details of what is made up out of. So I think I saw one. It was like, it looked like a skull, but when you look into it, it's like plants and leaves and stuff like that. And it's like, okay, that looks fucking rad when it's big. And then when it's small, it's still readable. Because like anything else on the Internet, like, you need. You need an image that is pop. Like, it needs to pop whenever anybody sees it. Like a tiny little thing on their. As they scroll by on their Twitter or whatever. Yeah.

It has to be almost like an iconographic tiny little image so that it can be read at a quick speed at a small size.

Yeah, yeah. And like, simple color schemes, I think, also work really well for, like, icon and logo and stuff. And, like. Yeah, it's. There's a whole. We could talk at nauseum about this stuff, but yeah, yeah, you just want, like. Honestly, I think my unspeakable distance logo, which is on that same page, if you want to see it, is probably not good by my own standards.

Wait, I haven't seen this one in a minute. Let me look at it.

It's the astronaut one, where it's all, oh, right, right.

Which I think is rad at a big size.

Yeah, it is. And that's how I designed it. And I got to the end of it, and I was like, oh, this doesn't read when it's small. I'll just put the text real big on there and see if we can get away with it.

I mean, that works. It does. When I'm clicking on it on whatever podcast thing I'm on, you can read the unspeakable distance words. And then when you click on it, then you're like, oh, it's a picture. So that's. I mean, I think it Kind of works.

I would have put a symbol on it if I'd had more time. But, you know, that's the kind of thing where it was like, that project lived and died by how much investment we each had to put into it. Like, if anybody had to do anything too much, it was not going to happen. So I was like, I'm just going to do it.

Yes. Like, I'm going to slap this up on the Internet. And we're doing it live. We're doing it right now.

That logo was really fun because part of it was, like, literally opening up that JPEG in a hex editor and, like, fucking around with it and, like, taking parts out and, like, rearranging it to, like, make it more fucked up. I love that so much.

I love that. I love that.

I got to do that with. Well, we talked the other day about using PDF file or using various files as audio format. And I got to do that for the Breathing Space finale. And one of them I included. Literally, it's. Do you remember the image of the challenge coin that, like, the. After long way home from series, that blender file? I was like, I wonder what this sounds like if I open it up. And I open it up. And it was like all this beautiful electronic glitching noises, and I'm like, oh, my God. A rich feast for me. So all of that audio from that you'll hear in the finale, all of the glitches and stuff you'll hear over at one part for one scene is all just that one file being like, ooh, here's a little part of it where it's all like.

And I'm like, it's a tasty little snack.

I love that so much. It makes me happy.

It's so good.

Yeah, I should come up with a project.

I'm so delighted. Yeah, I'm so delighted that it worked out that we could give you one last little snack to do for that in the finale. Because it was sick the first time you did it in the show. And it's extremely cool to see it one more time before the show is over.

Yeah. Yeah, we definitely did a lot of, like, let's bring back stuff that we can, you know, where we can bring back concepts and ideas, which is, like.

You know, the time to do it. If you're gonna, like, bring back. Do a bunch of callbacks and also.

Reveal the giant webbed headcanon that we have behind the scenes for how all of the stories were connected. Cause, like, I think 30%, maybe more, maybe up to half of the scenes involve some sort of. Oh, these two characters from two completely separate things know each other now. That's, like, the whole thing of the finale.

But I love that because it is like, we told a bunch of stories ranging very far over the whole system, and then seeing the threads, like, come together at the end be like, oh, well, it is just sort of like, you know, this has become a community in a real way. Like, even though the system is large, these people have all found each other and become a family.

And like, we probably should. That's one of those things where, like, the creativity of the. Of the writers and, like, the enthusiasm people have behind the scenes is like, where, like, that's when it gets. That's. That's the kind of thing that feeds that. Like, oh, let's figure this out. Like, and then both people get excited and they're like, oh, yeah. Like, well, what if this person was this person's nephew? Like, what if this. And then, like, right, you have the. We have a. We have a monster file. We should probably render that out. The giant connections web at some point.

I know. I want to be. I want fans to be able to look at that with their eyeballs because it's bonkers. Like, it's so big. It's so big that, like, it's impossible to read.

Yeah. Like, you can't. I haven't been able to, like, take a screenshot of it and put that anywhere where you could actually read it. You have, like, it only exists in whatever. I always forget what program we used for it, but it's this huge mind map of just, like, every character as of season three. Maybe some of season four.

Yeah. I don't think season four is fully on there, but it is huge. It is like, you have to zoom so far in to read it.

Yeah. Well, that's fun. Yeah, it'll be. Man. I will say I will. Once I'm done with editing. I might just have to take a break. Like, fully off.

Yeah. You will reserve one.

So you all might get a chance to do a podcast without me very soon, if that's how it goes.

But, yeah, Scott's like, I can't be near a microphone right now. I gotta go.

Yeah, it's just like. I don't know. Yeah, I haven't even, like, been.

It's a lot.

Yeah, it's a lot. There's just a lot going on.

We'll just do. We'll do a couple episodes with guests.

We'll figure it out.

We'll get Mike on the phone.

For this stuff. Yeah. So. Well, on that note, do we want to set any goals for the next two weeks or is it just keep our heads above water?

I think for the month of September, let's say we've got our other shit we're working on. We're not going to stress. At least think for me and Sam, we're not going to stress about Azenuest right now. We will dig back into it when Sam is feeling well and when the breathing space stuff is done.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yes, that's.

That sounds great.

On my tone, I'm going to keep my goal from the previous thing, which is just not to let. It takes Wolf.

Like, not forget about it.

Yeah. Like I have to do something to keep it in mind. I don't have to be like, do. I don't have to produce anything. I just have to be like, not forgetting about it. That's my only goal. Which I think is a pretty meager like. No, that. Think about it. Make some random people do some stuff. It's all good. Yeah. Okay. Well, in that case, we will. Yeah, we'll catch you all in a couple of weeks and have a good one. Bye. Thank you for joining us for behind the Locked Doors, a library of cursed knowledge production podcast thing. I don't know if you are interested in any of these projects. You can head over to Library Horse, which will eventually redirect to a webpage once I make it. You know, if you want to support the podcast, we do have a Patreon. It's patreon.com cursedknowledge. See y'all next week. No, wait. See y'all in two weeks.

Sa.