Luftwaffe storytime corner

[PoppySquidJr]

so I found an old crusty laptop buried under a bunch of my stuff in my room, and decided to check it out. Turns out, it contains a large chunk of my solo works that were accidentally deleted due to confusion involving google accounts and youtube. Videos I thought were permanently gone. I've reuploaded all of these on to my youtube account and figured this would be a fun opportunity to go look through my history with the game and the community, for anyone who remembers me or cares. (WARNING: EVERY VIDEO YOU SEE HERE IS FROM BEFORE I HAD A COMPUTER GOOD ENOUGH TO RUN EDITING SOFTWARE, AND WAS EDITED SLOPPILY IN WINDOWS MOVIE MAKER. I'M SORRY, IT'S ALL I HAD)

Starting off is what I like to call the "Fucking Embarrassing" era, the stuff from when I was really new to filming, the community, and everything. Horrible angles, horrible tricks, just bad. They went largely ignored, with a bit of positive reinforcement from the community encouraging me to keep going. It was nice, although looking back it was definitely undeserved. This is from before I discovered my love for pool skating in 3, and instead did really bad street stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_22A...ature=youtu.be
The oldest video I was able to recover was "Uptown Promenade," technically my second upload. Horrible trick selection, horrible filming, just awful. Didn't even have the bowler hat yet, a sad sight. No regrets on the song choice, however.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN8i...ature=youtu.be
The second video I recovered was a short video based on a CAP named "SkateCity" by generaljack. Not much to say, pretty simple but a lot better than my previous video. Sadly that was the only other calliope song I had on my computer, and it was too troublesome to find any more that weren't generic circus songs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WrK...ature=youtu.be
The last of the era is "Luftwaffe's Eastborough Tour," my earliest project of any real ambition and my only one for quite some time. ohmidineffect's "Eastborough" series of CAPs was really cool to me, I loved the whole concept of multiple CAPs built as part of the same imaginary city, so with his permission I went on to make an edit featuring all of the involved parks. The music choice is regrettable, the pacing of the song is really bad when you can't edit proper, but compared to the previous videos I'm not too upset with this one. A few sloppy trick selections and some awful filming all around, but the improvement is noticeable.

After this point, however, I hit a brick wall. I felt like I wasn't really improving much and wasn't finding myself happy with any of my clips, especially for edits. I wanted something a little more punk rock adrenaline-fueled but I couldn't make things look legit while hitting things fast and hard. Believe it or not, me trying out pool skating was simply one of a few attempts at finding a way to have something a bit more fitting for "hardcore" music and atmosphere. After trying it, though I fell in love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rO4...ature=youtu.be
"Luftwaffe's Pool Sesh." The video I was happiest to see on that laptop, this video is by and large the only reason anybody here might even remember me. I don't know how, I don't know why, but compared to my other videos this one got insane reception and I was hyped as hell. It was the first time I really felt like I was a part of the community, and not some guy trying to impress the cool kids at the park. I had guys who intimidated me in the past contacting me and I started seshing online with guys that I looked up to. It was amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr4PrEMZ2n4
Not a reupload or even my upload, but the "Monterey | Other Worlds" series was an upstart series based on a "clothing company" involving the graphic creator started up by Robley, picking up a few notable figures in the scene at the time. Somehow my Pool Sesh video got his attention and he messaged me an offer, which I happily accepted. I still love the editing work on this video to this day, and honestly am fairly happy with how it turned out, despite some of those clips being more or less first-try tricks for me a few years later down the line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCL0...ature=youtu.be
"Some Shit by Luftwaffe" was a short, basic edit that I threw together just because I hadn't put out anything in a while after that. I felt like messing around with some non-pool stuff and wasn't too obsessed with putting out anything mindblowing. I find it a fun little video, but not the first video I'd show somebody who asked to see my stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEnX...ature=youtu.be
"Luftwaffe's Pool Sesh II" is an attempted sequel to the successful original. Not really as good in my opinion, I tried a bit too hard this time around and some of the clips, while difficult for me at the time, simply don't look great and don't work well for the game. I was able to get a guest appearance from PoppinSuds, though, so that was really fun.

After this, comes a large chunk of community collaborations that I was a part of. I found this significantly more enjoyable than solo work, and jumped on most chances I had. In no particular order, I don't have the time or energy to look at all the dates for this stuff.

"Fungus Woods Promo" - Wiltzuh https://vimeo.com/45828569
"The DIY collab" - Ayreon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59mIrsWY8to&hd=1
"Barrier Kult Ritual vol. 1" - Fecal Face https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZixCTpMA1Q4 (It's really no secret who I was in this video, despite the effort to maintain anonymity in the spirit of Barrier Kult)
"Barrier Kult Ritual vol. 2" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eilT1_kTmO8 (This one was all me, not really a collab at this point but I kept it here due to being a direct sequel to the other one)
"Carvatron" - Ayreon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56gsStoM-b8
"Project Hill Bomb" - Ayreon https://vimeo.com/51584770 (I didn't exactly have a strong showing here, but figured I'd list it for consistency)

The tail end of my time was involved with Fecal Face, andreas, and JakeSkate (and later InsideManager and Baphom3th) with NOIR. I'll always miss those times. Some of the previous collab videos were during this era.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=LT1CZW26P6o
Basic introduction of the 3 starting skaters on the team at the time (andreas, JakeSkate, and me). Nothing too fancy.


The big drop, the last real project before the reel went down and our team was done for good. It was a good run, and I still rewatch this video from time to time.

After the NOIR video dropped, I was about done filming. Didn't have enough time for any new ambitious projects before the reel went down, but I did do some weird stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw2hnDmubHw
Ayreon's "One Trick Pony" series, a video based on a person making an entire short edit with variations of only one trick. Seeing as how bodyjars were my only claim to fame, I found it fitting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrjTATZuPDs
This one was just silly fun.

THE LOST VIDEOS
The only two videos that I could not find, and presume to be lost forever:
1)My very first edit, although I'm probably glad that one's gone to be honest.
2)An experimental video I did that had generally positive reception, I liked the idea a lot and am sad that I can't find the video. It involved me skating a bowl in the college area suburbs, but filmed like a local kid just holding a camera, with some music that was faded and echoed in audacity to make it sound like it was just playing in the background at the pool. If anyone saw and remembers that, I'd be surprised.

[MikeC003]

i REALLY like that pool sesh video. I'm new so this is all new to me, but pool skating is something I really like trying to work on in edits, partly because it's one of my favorite types of "real" skating, but also because it's kinda hard to make look good in S3. I try to get at least 1 or 2 pool clips in my stuff but now i'm pumped to try some new ideas...Thanks!

[PoppySquidJr]

Glad you liked it! Yea, learning how to skate pools proper in S3 was a complete game changer for me. Keep at it, it gets extremely fun, and if you have people to sesh with, grouping up for a pool party is some of the best fun I've ever had in the game. Just be careful, if you learn how to do bodyjars... then fingerflip body jars... then airwalk bodyjars... you'll fall into my trap of just doing bodyjars all the time :^)

[CA|Renegade]

Aye thanks for helping me kill some time at work with these! I definitely feel you on watching your old videos and seeing how much you've improved over time while also feeling like your first stuff is garbage. I've got a whole video about that actually lmao. Those park sessions reminded me of some dope parks that I had completely forgot about at this point. I definitely second digging the pool skating, especially in the Monterrey video. And speaking of PoppinSuds being in one of your videos... do you remember being in this park promo I made?:



Definitely not Robley quality editing, that's for sure. I do really really wish I had this park still tho!

[PoppySquidJr]

Oh man that throws me back, I completely forgot about that one! Had a great time filming it, that park was fun as hell.

[CA|Renegade]

Hell yeah bro glad you thought so and glad you were in the promo! There was even a trippy glitch on your part lmao! I made that park based off of a loading dock I saw and thought would be cool to skate at a Carl's Jr. in North County San Diego. I was super stoked that I had actually managed to make the Carl's Jr. logo with rail pieces. Then I just built around it with stuff that I thought would be fun to skate. That downhill sidewalk gap is based off of a gap at was at a park near my high school back in San Marcos. It was a sidewalk going downhill with a few stairs at the bottom, more sidewalk, and you would have landed into a culdesac. The rest of it is just random stuff that I came up with. That electric box was especially dope. I forgot who figured out how to do that, but whoever that was was a genius. It really shows the creativity in the people playing this game. There's no way the devs intended for that to be possible. I would love to try to make another park, but there's not as much motivation to do it when nobody can skate the park except for you and maybe the few people who actually sesh with you occasionally these days. If it was like the old days still I would try to make a park with a bunch of spots I've seen around Flagstaff. On NAU campus and a few other places. Would be really dope, but with the amount of time and effort it takes to make a quality park you'd like for the whole community to be able to skate it.

[PoppySquidJr]

Yea, back in the day I made a park based on a spot at Clemson University I saw. Never made it public, but would hit it up from time to time. One of these days I need to get a new disc and dust off my x360...