A Melee creator recaps their 2021 projects: launching Blippi.gg community hub, setting world records in speedrunning unlock categories, releasing HD assets for Melee, premiering a documentary on the game's development, and making five concept trailers imagining alternate fighters like James Bond and Sonic.
Hello everyone! I hope you've enjoyed this month of Melee videos for Melee's 20th anniversary. Fun fact: in this section of the tribute video from last week, what you're seeing are the very first matches that my brother and I ever played of the game, which we recorded on VHS back in 2002. To finish this month off, I want to give you a rundown of what I've been working on within the Melee scene for the last 12 months or so. About a year ago, I launched Blippi.gg, the go-to place for Melee players and creators and I've enjoyed getting feedback about the site. It's a featured link on the Melee subreddit page, has made an appearance in Leffen's "How to Get into Melee" video, and came up as a point of discussion on the Scar and Toph Show. I plan on continuing to update the site for as long as there is interest. Shoutout to the speedrun.com community for adapting my "Unlock All Characters" and "Unlock All Characters and Stages" categories, for which I held both world records for a while, and currently maintain my first place standing for the latter category. They're in the Category Extensions section for now, but I'm hoping as more people show interest and participate, they'll be moved into the Melee proper category. I also began releasing assets for my Melee HD project, which includes seamlessly looping backgrounds and other assets for Melee content creators. My team also put together an HD texture pack for Dolphin, and I'm pleased to announce that as of today, The Reddit thread has been updated with a download link to the actual Blender scene files, so you can render in any pose you'd like with any custom costumes you could conjure up. Although this project has been completed, I hope the community continues to make high-quality assets for use in your content. To help with this, I released a video a couple weeks ago sharing how you can get your own high-quality stage or background Melee b-roll. This year also marks the debut of my first documentary, Elevated: The Development Story of Super Smash Bros. Melee. I have been blown away by the enthusiasm and support surrounding it from people both inside and outside the community. Sincere thank you to Ludwig for watching it in its entirety on his stream and rating my Twitch channel afterward. That was really exciting. Also, thank you to Samox, who played it just before his Melee documentary marathon weekend and considered it the unofficial prequel to his work, The Smash Brothers. After Elevated, I released 5 concept trailers in a "what if" series looking at what James Bond, Sonic, Ridley, Slippy, and Lucas may have looked like if they were included as fighters in Melee. For this, I used a variety of Melee and Brawl mods to bring the idea to life, including Smash 2. Thank you to AJR and the other Smash modders involved to help make this possible. And most recently, on my birthday, I shared a concept for a version of the Melee opening I illustrated with all of the unlockable characters incorporated into it. It's comprised of about 500 different drawings, and it's my first rotoscoping and drawn animation video, so I hope you enjoy it. I seriously appreciate the Melee community for being so supportive of my work. In particular, I'd like to pay special attention to my patrons on Patreon. Each of you are a key reason I'm able to put out this content. To the 25 of you who have contributed throughout the year, you have my sincere gratitude. A list of my current patrons are here. To finish this video off, I have another Melee video in the works that I hope you'll enjoy. Patrons will get an early viewing of it, of course. Thank you for watching this video, and again, happy 20th anniversary to Melee. Thank you.
