It's that time of the year, it’s time for a BladeAxe blog post.

I have spent over a year toiling away perhaps unnecessarily (and not fully) on my latest video, Shadercraft. Now Shadercraft (it’s technical behind the scenes name) was recorded and initially planned to be a quick 2-week production to get the ball rolling on video making after the abysmal performance of Year 5 (grand total of 2 videos produced). I recorded it on the 15/06/25, and finally it was pushed out the door today on the 27/06/2026, so what went wrong, and what have I learned, and what’s the plan going forward.

What went wrong

After recording, things went well initially, I spent a full 2 weeks doing nothing but cutting the video down and after having a bizarre but entertaining idea blast into my mind, I produced “bit 1” the TV-Studio. This was the beginning and the first end, I poured immense effort into this first bit, and ultimately, I produced something good, but the constant effort burnt me out, and I didn’t touch YouTube for another 6 months. There were then the creeping scope creep and constant changing of requirements and additions to the video, culminating in some 10 different unique bits, and hundreds of tiny edits.

What I learned

Finishing the video took great effort, planning, script writing, the learning of new skills, mainly After Effects, deep Premiere Pro knowledge, the creation of tons of custom assets, and the development of my film techniques knowledge. Arguably I would say that Shadercraft represents the best of my abilities so far but using what I have learned I know I can create something far better. This was my first full video where I fully focused on ever part, from sound design to graphic design, and how every part linked to each other. To me, it’s my best work, but I know that it could always be improved and be made better, which was the final thing I learned.

Perfection is the enemy of good enough.

I would never have released Shadercraft had I not learned that simple fact. Sometimes you have to just say, enough is enough, there is nothing more to add.

The plan going forward

No more endless revisions, no more infinite development on a video, set out a plan and a goal. Yeah, sure these types of heavily edited mega videos will occasionally come around, I would argue that Miserable 4 was the first of these and was the great big leap forward in video production and knowledge on the channel, Shadercraft is the next generation of BladeAxe video production, we are not going back, but we are learning from the mistakes of this. It feels weird its done and released, I don’t really know what to do now, I have ideas for more videos, possible BladeAxe vs Professional Speed runner, BladeAxe manhunt, RELEASE ASKEW (the final clog in the unreleased backlog), but for now, we are done.

SHADERCRAFT IS DONE.

Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrZKXdxAXK0