Welcome to the official studiomaster's blog from Clint Robertson of C2Kstudios! More creative space for you including artwork, writing, videos, and more. Please enjoy, and don't forget to visit www.C2Kstudios.com!
So once the new site was up and running it was right on to Phase Two of the new marketing strategy... expanding into the global marketplace. I've been dabbling here and there with different things but now is the time to implement an actual plan. So the plan is to release a series of very simple website templates for sale on fiverr.com. If you've never heard of it, it's a site where you can offer or solicit goods and services for $5. The idea is to drive traffic to the main site where I will offer the more elaborate templates for licence or purchase.
My hope is to attract programmers who may not be as good at design....there are a lot of "needs improvement" type sites out there. I've always described myself as a designer who can do basic programming. It's the programmers who can do basic design that I'm trying to target.
The Spring 2013 update is online at C2Kstudios.com! About a month behind schedule, but with two kids and four jobs, "schedule" for me is really a state of mind... technically I should have started a month earlier?...
So as I was updating the main site it came to the point where I had to think about my videos...not just doing the new template demos, but because I had used website services to create my ads and video intros, I knew I'd need to secure commercial usage rights before I made a real push beyond just local advertising.
So I went to Xtranormal and Animoto and not only are the prices they are asking completely ridonkulous, but some of the wording in the TOS was pretty sketch...so I had to find another solution.
What I found was a plug-in for Windows Movie Maker, of all things...$15 and I got a sh*tload of extra effects and transitions right off the bat, and access to loads more when I want to go through the list...and, if you're comfortable with XML (which, eahhhhhh....) you can make changes to add colors and photo backgrounds and things like that. Anyway, if you use WMM 6 it's worth a look: www.rehanfx.org/shader.htm.
I was running my videos through 3 different programs because I wanted different things for the titles, the effects, and the overlays...they're all nice programs, but alas, not the fancy (expensive) all-in-one suite that I wish I had...well, I do have one, but it's like, 10 years old, and cannot do 16:9; but now that I have this plug-in, she's dead to me.
So, problem one: solved. But that still left me with my second obstacle—music. I needed some cheap (free) commercial-use audio tracks...and I found some of those, too. Partners In Rhyme has a small collection of royalty-free, completely free, music loops that I was able to parlay into soundtracks for my first run of videos. They also have a deal where if you give them a shout-out on your website or blog (like this one!) they will send you a link to to a more extensive sound library...so check out www.partnersinrhyme.com and tell them C2Kstudios sent you...ha ha! Anyway, they'll be going on the new Links page for sure. Oh, and a special thanks to Mark Lyford, who seems to have written at least some of the tracks that I used.
So after all of that, here's the first (again!) promo video from C2Kstudios:
