Tag: dimension bros

YouTubers

Video-making tips for Poptropica Month 2021 🎥✨

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans, this is a guest post by Theo’s Ghost. Enjoy!

Hello again PHB readers! Whether you’re still enjoying summer break, going back to school, or don’t have a school to go back to, I hope you’re having a great August!

This August at the Dimension Bros YouTube channel, Isaac and I are taking a short break from making videos. Fear not, because we’re returning next month, and this time we want you to join us!

Next month, for Poptropica’s birthday in September, fans are celebrating is Poptropica Month. The video above explains it all, but the gist is that during September, Poptropica fans are invited to upload their own Poptropica YouTube videos for our Pop Month 2021 playlist!

Now the point of this guest blog isn’t just to advertise the project (we already did that last year). Most people’s Pop Month videos last year were their first time uploading to YouTube, so I thought I’d give some video-making advice to the next generation of Pop Month participants. Hopefully, it might give you a bit of confidence!

Note: This event is typically for ages 13+, but you are younger than 13, you can have an older sibling or parent/guardian submit your video for you.

1. 🤔 Coming Up With Ideas

You might know everything there is to know about filming, editing, and uploading, but all of that knowledge is useless if you can’t come up with an idea for what to make! Coming up with a good video idea can be tricky, but luckily you have all the inspiration you need with the Poptropica Month 2020 playlist. 

There’s a lot more possibility than a Thinknoodles-esque walkthrough — anything can be a Poptropica video! If you make digital art, you can do a speedpaint! If you have a clubhouse, you can give us a video tour! If you just like playing the game, you can make a gaming video! And if you still can’t think of a good idea, maybe try asking others for ideas. Some of our favorite Dimension Bros videos were ideas we got from other people’s suggestions, so it doesn’t hurt to ask.

A Poptropica speedpaint fan video

2. 🎬 Recording Your Video

The most exciting part of making a video is filming it! And believe it or not, this is probably the easiest step once you have your video plan thought-out and ready to go.

The tricky part can be determining what hardware and software to use for your video, but we’ve got you covered here:

For IRL videos, just use your phone/tablet/computer camera. Most cameras built into devices are pretty good quality. You don’t need to go get a new special video camera.

For gameplay videos, OBS Studio is a great screen recording software (that can also be used for streaming). It’s completely free and there are plenty of tutorials online on getting it set up.

For videos with voiceover, a good software to use is Audacity, as it lets you really edit your audio to where you’re happiest with it. And if you have a Mac, QuickTime Player (which is already on your system) does audio recordings as well.

A Poptropica fan video with voiceover

3. 🎥 Editing Your Video

This is the part of the process that can make or break your video.  Editing is not as simple as the previous two steps, but it’s just as important.  Unless you filmed your entire video in one perfect take, some editing will be required for your video.

Our officially endorsed editing software at Dimension Bros is iMovie for Apple devices. Every single DB video was edited with iMovie, and it hasn’t steered us wrong yet! If you have an iPhone, iPad, or any type of Mac computer, iMovie is completely free and might even already be installed.  It’s fairly easy to learn, and it can help you make some great videos! 

If you don’t have a device that can use iMovie, a bit of internet research can point you to some free video editing software.

Final Cut: Edit or forget it.

4. ⬆️ Uploading Your Video

The home stretch! Uploading your video can be an excruciating task, as you just want it to be out in the world already!!! 

As for giving your video a title and a thumbnail, that’s totally your call on what you think is best for the video. But there are a couple parts the uploading process worth noting if you’re participating in Pop Month.

First, when uploading to YouTube, do not set your video as “made for kids,” even if your video is kid-friendly. Videos that are marked “made for kids” can’t be added to playlists, so if you want to officially be a part of the Pop Month collab, your video cannot be set as “made for kids.”

Second, don’t forget to set the category of the video as “Gaming > Poptropica”!  Even if your video isn’t of you playing Poptropica, it’s still a video about the game, and using the right category helps make your video easier for other Poptropicans to find.

Other than these two things, everything else is your choice, like the title, the thumbnail image, or whether or not you allow comments. It’s your video after all!

Now if all of that seems daunting, worry not. There is another way to participate in Poptropica Month besides making a full YouTube video, and that’s Instagram! Throughout September, we’ll be compiling all your different Poptropica Instagram posts, so that at the end of the month we can make a slideshow of all your works to put on YouTube. 

To join, just post something to Instagram about Poptropica this September, tag the DB Instagram account (@dimension_bros), and use #PoptropicaMonth. Simple as that! We’ll be sharing every Pop Month post to our Instagram story, and saving all of them in a highlight reel, so follow us if you want to keep track of Poptropica Month posts.

So that’s about it! Poptropica Month 2021 is less than two weeks away, and we’re looking forward to seeing what videos/posts come out this year! 

We have some exciting stuff planned for Dimension Bros videos, but we’re sure some of you have exciting stuff of your own planned too. And to those not participating, enjoy all of the Poptropica content coming your way this September!

Sound Affects: It affects us all very deeply.

Hope you enjoyed this guest post by Theo’s Ghost. If you did, you might also enjoy another post of his: the Poppies-winning Gamer Clubhouse Tour.

The Poptropica Help Blog welcomes interesting Poptropica insights from anyone in the Poptropica community with thoughts to share. Interested in writing for the PHB? We’d love to hear from you! 📰✨

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Popular Poptropicans

Popular Poptropicans: Dimension Bros

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans, welcome to another Popular Poptropican interview! ⭐️ We have two guests today, Isaac and Theo, who together form the Dimension Bros. They’ve been making Poptropica (and other) fan videos (some of which are for ages 13+) on YouTube for over a year now, and are also known for heading up the Poptropica Month fan video event.

Welcome, Dimension Bros! Let’s pop into it.

Isaac (Zippy Stomper)
Theo (Perfect Ghost) and Frank the goat

What inspires you to create Poptropica videos?

Before we started, the only Poptropica YouTube videos you could even find were all just playthroughs and walkthroughs, nothing but gameplay. So we felt like there was just a huge hole for content in that area. Being one of the only channels making Poptropica videos that aren’t just playthroughs is pretty inspiring just due to the fact that it’s our job to fill that void that no one else seems to be filling.

The Earth Poptropica Help Blog is pleased to share this Dimension Bros video of Theo reacting to players’ Poptropicans.

What advice would you give to aspiring Poptropica YouTubers?

Solid advice for any YouTuber is just to focus on making content you want to make, and whatever is fun for you. But if you’re interested in Poptropica videos specifically, you could consider taking part in our Poptropica Month 2021 collab this September. All you need to do is make your Poptropica video, let us know about it, and we’ll add it to our playlist! Last year’s playlist has over 1,000 views, so taking part in Poptropica Month is a great way to give your channel a little extra boost from the Pop fandom! There’s a video on our channel about how to join.

Shameless self promo aside, as long as you’re enjoying the video-making process, people should enjoy watching them! It’s not hard to tell when a lot of love went into a video, and that’s all that really matters.

What do you enjoy about the Poptropica community? 

Theo: I enjoy everyone’s dedication to keeping the memory of Poptropica alive. You’d think for a game that had a majority of its content removed, fans would’ve left, and a lot did, but some fans have stuck around and are keeping the fandom chugging along! Like the PHB continuing to write posts and hold events, and fan artists continuing to draw their favorite characters, it’s nice to see a small but dedicated fandom still be so active for what little is left of the game.

Isaac: Having been a part of a lot of fandoms throughout my time on the internet, I’ve always found it interesting how close all the Poptropica fandom is. For better or worse, everyone in the fandom has had at least one interaction with pretty much everyone else. I feel like this creates a really good sense of unity. Every time the creators do something dumb (like forgetting the name of one of their own characters) the entire fandom unites to complain about it. And in a weird way, that’s kinda nice.

Publick House: This place on Cryptids Island could use some customers. Come right in!

What do you hope for the future of Poptropica and its fandom? 

Isaac: My main hope for the future of the Poptropica fandom is that everyone on the Poptropica Help Chat will change their nickname to “#ISAAC4MOD” in an attempt to “vote” me into office as the next PHC moderator 😉

Theo: In an ideal world, Poptropica would port all of the old islands and the game would be fully restored, but it looks like that’ll never happen. All I can hope for now is that more people take part in the Poptropica Rewritten project as an attempt to save Poptropica. (You can learn more about that project in another DB video we have on our channel.)

World Warriors: Welcome back to the stage of history.

What is your favorite feature (still here or gone) from the many years of Poptropica? 

Theo: Obviously the feature everyone misses most is THE ISLANDS, but another feature I really miss are the minigames you got from the store. I’m pretty sure I spent more time playing Shrink Shot than I did playing any actual islands as a kid. Another feature I miss dearly are all of the personality questions you could answer on your friends page, as well as that whole page in general.

Isaac: While it may have made little impact on gameplay, I really liked when you had to go to Early Poptropica during the events of Counterfeit Island. This along with details such as Zeus destroying a bunch of the other islands during the events of Super Villain really made Poptropica feel like one big cohesive game rather than a bunch of small separate ones. (And if you know me, you know I love theorizing on the connections of all the islands.)

What is your favorite Easter egg/reference in Poptropica?

Isaac: The entirety of Survival Island is a huge reference to one of my favorite short stories, “The Most Dangerous Game,” so playing through that is always enjoyable. I’m also a big fan of all the Marvel references in PoptropiCon, especially the Mighty Action Force card game, seeing as I’m a huge board/card game nerd. (Also, creators, if you’re reading this, you should make the MAF card game into a real thing!)

Theo: I really enjoy all of the references to Alcatraz in Escape from Pelican Rock. It’s no surprise that the island contains references to Alcatraz since the whole premise is based off the Alcatraz prison break, but having guards recite certain dialogue said in the prison, and having your Poptropican escape in almost an identical way to real escapees is cool. Also the PHB nod in that island is a fun easter egg too.

How do you feel about the Pop Creators fearing you?

Powerful. 

On a Dimension Bros post on Instagram about the upcoming Pop Month being funeral themed, the Poptropica Creators jokingly called the duo “Dimension Foes.”

🌟 Would you like to be the next Popular Poptropican? 🌟

To nominate yourself or someone you know, contact the PHB with the following:

  • the name of your nominee (a Poptropica name or other screen name)
  • a reason why your nominee should be the next Popular Poptropican

Thank you for reading, and stay awesome, Poptropicans!

~🐠

Guest Posts, Social Media

Join us for a month of Poptropica videos! 📽

Slanted Fish

The following event is not run by the PHB. Hear it from Isaac, one half of the YouTube channel Dimension Bros, which makes videos about Poptropica and other fandoms.

Hey everyone! I’m Isaac, and along with my best friend Theo, we’re Dimension Bros on YouTube. For the past few weeks, Theo and I have been thinking of what we should do to celebrate Poptropica’s 13th birthday coming up this September. And so Poptropica Month was born! Watch and read more below:

The idea for a Poptropica Month collab came after we started bouncing ideas back and forth about what videos we would make to celebrate Pop’s birthday and decided that our usual 8 videos a month schedule simply would not be enough of a celebration for such a great game. We wanted to make more than 8 videos, but with school coming up for us, that seemed out of the realm of possibility. Enter… the rest of the Poptropica fandom!

We invite all video creators/enthusiasts/YouTubers to join us during the month of September in uploading Poptropica videos. Whether you’re new to sharing on YouTube or you’ve already got a channel with other content, you’re welcome to join this collab! If you’ve been considering starting up a YouTube channel, maybe make a Poptropica Month video as your first video to get off to a good start—after all, there’s a community already here to support you.

Isaac (left) and Theo (right), the Dimension Bros on YouTube.

How can you get started? After watching the video above, take the next step by clicking the link in the video description, which will guide you through joining the Poptropica Month Discord server, sharing the link to your channel with us, and sharing your Pop Month video(s) with us on the Discord server. We’ll include all the Pop Month videos in this master playlist for all to enjoy.

Any kind of video goes, as long as it relates to Poptropica. This could be a simple let’s-play or walkthrough, a top ten list (or a Pop 5, per PHB tradition), a theory about your favorite island, a Poptropica-based song or speedpaint… anything you can imagine! Like to cook? Bake a Poptropica cake! Comedy skits? Maybe you could do a sketch about the Poptropica Creators and their never-ending secrecy of when we’ll be getting the old islands back. Make as few or as many videos as you like—you don’t have to stress about uploading non-stop Pop content like we’ll be doing on Dimension Bros.

Also, you don’t need super fancy equipment to make a decent video! Most Dimension Bros videos are filmed on our phones and edited with iMovie. (There’s free editing software for Windows, too.) It’s more about the creativity than the tools, so don’t be afraid to try with what you’ve got! Just take a look at my setup for videos—yes, my laptop is on a cardboard box.

Behind the scenes of a Dimension Bros video.

Even if you don’t participate in uploading any videos, Poptropica Month is for everyone to enjoy. So when September arrives in just over a week, be sure to go support all the videos posted to the master playlist.

Looking forward to seeing what types of videos you guys will upload for Poptropica Month! Also, NANOBOTS FOR THE WIN!! WHOOOOO!!!

Hope you enjoyed this guest post by Isaac from Dimension Bros. If you did, be sure to check out our feature post for Dimension Bros as well as our other Poptropica YouTuber spotlights for more video ideas!

The Poptropica Help Blog welcomes interesting Poptropica insights from anyone in the Poptropica community with thoughts to share. You can find some tips and guidelines on our page on how to Write for the PHB, and share blog posts on the PHC.

📰 If you have an idea for a PHB post, send it in! ✨

YouTubers

Pop YouTuber Spotlight: Dimension Bros 📺

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans! It’s been a while since we’ve spotlighted YouTubers playing Poptropica, but there’s a new duo on the scene with plenty of Pop (and other fandoms) to share. Meet Dimension Bros, Isaac and Theo!

Rather than show gameplay, these bros sit in front of their cameras and talk about a topic related to the Poptropica universe, sometimes throwing in relevant pictures. Here’s one of their recent videos where they discuss “The Current Poptropica Situation” in regards to loss of islands, whether the Poptropica team are evil capitalists for the membership paywall, and more:

They also raise the question of what will happen to our Flash accounts since they are currently separate from Haxe, a concern that is relevant for all of us nostalgic players with plenty of old items and costumes that may not be converted to Haxe, perhaps due to time, manpower, or both.

Also, hey, there’s a shoutout to the PHB starting around 7:20! It’s in response to our sharing of Theo’s Reddit post showing what Poptropica support said when asked about the membership paywall situation on the old Flash islands. Although the PHB may not warrant as big of a freakout as if we were Poptropica itself, it’s still a fun moment in the video. 😄

The first Dimension Bros video released, only about a month ago, is a masterpiece of research entitled “The Poptropica Timeline.” 🌏

Here, Isaac and Theo consider when in the world’s historical timeline all the islands may have taken place and put them in chronological order while trying to keep with the Poptropica canon. It’s a bit like our PHB post on World Geography with Poptropica Islands, but with history. Check it out:

As of this posting, Dimension Bros have one other Poptropica video entitled “Making Our Own Poptropica Islands.” Here, they share about many of the ideas they have for Poptropica islands, including Rockstar Mystery Island, Quarantine Island, Cryptids Island 2, and more. 🦕 Hear ’em out:

Pretty creative stuff! Looks like there will be more to come from this channel, which has both Poptropica and non-Poptropica content, so keep watching and consider subscribing to Dimension Bros on YouTube.

Stay awesome, Poptropicans! ✨