As many of the people who subscribe to my YouTube channel will be aware, I have recently changed track in the content that I produce. For years I have made royalty free music and free stock music and that’s just not really worked out very well for me. It’s not that I don’t like making music anymore, it’s just I feel the futility is a little overwhelming at times.
I’ll give an example: I can spend hours, days or weeks working on a single musical track. This ends up being watched by between 20 and 50 people on average for around 20-30 seconds per view. This means that whilst some people find my content useful it is not seen as valuable or useful enough to listen to in its entirety.
A while back I asked my subscribers if they were ok with me trying out some new content. I did a few video essays, some reviews on things that I really enjoy and after that, I tried uploading some of my old Space Station 13 content to my channel in the hopes that it might do well, and it did! As I started looking through all my old videos, my fondness for the game came back and before I knew it, I was making a tonne of content! What’s more, for the first time in a long time I was enjoying making content for my channel and uploading it.
This sudden turnaround has galvanised me into action for making more and more content that I enjoy making and that people actually want to watch and engage with. Though in some ways this will be an issue for my current subscribers, after 11 years of failure, I am pretty burned out.
I am going to keep making content that I enjoy making and occasionally I will upload songs or add pieces of music to my database for everyone to use, but for now, I’m going to keep doing what makes me happy.
Survival started off as a Doctor Who fan film project by my friend Daniel Pederson, which was ultimately hijacked and warped down a dark path by myself and my friend Will. Set more so in the classic Doctor Who universe than the modern Whoniverse that everyone knows and loathes, two doctors, but not the definitive article, you might say, discuss the impending doom of their race.
They are all terminally ill due to a pandemic on their world, and the only way to survive the contagion on their homeworld is by placing the squishy brains of their fellow people into the metallic and robust bodies of androids who may or may not dream of electric sheep. It seemed that we were building a Cybermen origin story at least according to Daniel’s script.
Daniel Pederson who wrote the short project was doing it, for a university project. I and fellow Doctor Who fan Will Grantham, (known for the Absorbaloff, which he created and I became) assisted in its filming and creation. I and Will adapted the project slightly and made it a little more horrifying than Daniel had really wanted.
Dan was persuaded against his better judgment and to my glee to make the film as gory as possible, which I think really sold the narrative. The story was actually a violent one by Doctor Who’s standards, which was Dan’s fault as he actually wrote it, and featured the death of one of the characters at the hands of a killer android. In the Colin Baker episode, Attack of the Cybermen, Lytton has both of his hands crushed by Cybermen, falling to the floor and leaving a smear of blood. Naturally I pounced on this excuse to bring in one of the secret experiments I’d been working on!
I had crafted some awesome fake blood, a combination of food dye, milk and saliva, and with this in hand and over everything in the scene, we started work on making the project as horrifying as possible. All of us wanted the story to be a dark one, with the audience questioning which character was ultimately in the right.
I think overall the film worked quite well. Will is no stranger to acting and did a great job of bringing across his character’s conflict with mine. He wasn’t hurt during the making of this film, and I emphasise the word: this.
Overall, I was so happy with the project that I begged Daniel to have the right to upload it and put it on YouTube. Considering it’s violent and graphic nature, it’s probably one of the darker things I have worked on, and I am very happy to be able to bring it to you!
For years and years I have tried unsuccessfully for the most part to write, produce and in general get music out there to people for free. That was the initial purpose of both my YouTube channel and this website. Recently things have been a little different! I asked my friends and followers recently if they were ok with me branching out and putting up stuff that is closer to the stuff I really enjoy doing, so I began work on creating content closer to what I like and moved away somewhat from music.
For those of you who don’t know, I have been a front line worker during this pandemic, working in a care home and I have been really busy with covering shifts and trying to run my business which the UK Government has effectively destroyed. Thanks Bozza Jozza. I decided to focus a bit on YouTube and the things I enjoy in life which are pretty few to be honest.
Before we begin I would like to thank everyone who has recently subscribed to my channel! I really appreciate it and I hope you will be ok with me occasionally uploading content that differs from what I have been creating.
I’d like to talk about Space Station 13. SS13 is without doubt one of the craziest games ever. You can do just about anything imaginable in the game with anything you can find. The mission of the game is simple: You are a worker on a space station and all you have to do is your job. You occasionally get bizarre mission objectives but mostly you’re just there to have fun.
How much fun can you have in a somewhat laggy 2d space game that uses pixel art and you can’t even see people’s legs move when they slide around like drunk penguins? Lots.
The problem with SS13 is you can have more fun than almost any other game I’ve played. You will never get two rounds the same and you are playing with other people, many who have played the game for years and years who all have their own personalities and quirks.
My first experience of the game was bad. I was beaten to death by someone with a toolbox and that was it. The next round was equally awful and I was killed horribly by security. I had a load of awful experiences on Facepunch station, one of the servers at the time – before I finally played as a lawyer, got a mass murderer off with a warning. He thanked me by shooting me in the head.
As time progressed, I ended up moving to Goonstation Morty. Goonstation was a little different as it was an RP server, and I had to roleplay as a character. I love to spam, probably more than anything else so it was an ideal place to be an annoying question asking staff assistant. I botched surgeries, I accidentally killed people. I learned how to be a doctor. (I’m Dr. Rollins in 40% of my games!) I saved people’s lives, I ‘accidentally’ killed people. It was a good time. I made some great friends.
I took some time off over the past two years so I could focus on my company and my job and fighting to see my son. Now I’m back and making videos and my YouTube has exploded. On a bad month I could get 40 to 60 hours of watch time. This month I scraped 230! All with videos I made from a game I absolutely love! I was ecstatic!
Long story short, I’m playing SS13 again on Goonstation Morty, and if you end up downloading Byond and playing, you may just find after a few games that you love the game as much as I do!
Hi, my name is Alex, though most people don’t know me by that name. Most people know me by the name of Chan Walrus. My friends despair, my mother hates it, and my family mostly think I am an idiot. I have on the other hand got more jobs and work for having a bizarre name than pretty much anything else.
So who am I? Well I have written music for over 150 movies, computer games and short films, run my own marketing company, work as a care assistant and I have been a mission writer for the online game Star Sonata. I work for a fluctuating number of between 8 and 20 people at any given point and I am without doubt absolutely crazy.
My name got me most of that work. It’s stupid but it’s memorable. In most of my opening video chats with people, they are often shocked to find out I am not Asian. The company I run is called Fantasoft. This was an odd name for an advertising and marketing company, but I have to date had over 50 clients in the two years I have run my business, despite marketing mainly for takeaways and restaurants.
I’ll start with Fantasoft…
Fantasoft was a games company made long, long ago. It broke apart long ago and the founders went their separate ways. I loved their games so much that I wanted to name my company Fantasoft in memory of the people who had built my childhood.
With years and years of history, trying to appear on Google was a daunting task, almost completely impossible. Luckily I’m good at SEO. I finally managed to get strong with Fantasoft and now appear competitively on Google for many search terms.
As you can imagine, it’s very weird trying to explain to people who contact you about marketing for their restaurants why your company is named after a games company. I think though that for some strange reason it works. I do, after all, use unique software specially developed for me to give people an edge over their competition. So technically I’m doing things differently from everyone else’s competition. It’s the edge you need in the restaurant marketing business that’s as cutthroat as Sweeney Todd. I have since closed the company, but I am keeping the website around for now…
What Kind of Name is Chan Walrus?
Chan Walrus emerged late one night in a game my dad and I used to play. The aim was to say a really silly first name and a horrible unfitting second name. We had names like Gwendolyn Splatt, Marco Shapeshifter and Silas Cucumber. My dad liked Chan Walrus, so he became a character in a science fiction series I wanted to work on.
I ended up working on some music for a guy called Chris Seaver and used the name as a composer. Strangely there was a surge of people who wanted the divine music of the Walrus. Despite being a thoroughly lousy composer at the time, I lapped up the work.
I don’t know how or why it happened but I really started to enjoy being Chan Walrus. I was a zeta list celebrity, invited to no parties, shunned by friends and family and I had one person come up to me in the street having recognised me in an interview to take a picture with me. He hated my music! But it was so cool!
Now I know that Chan Walrus is never going to be a famous name, not when there are amazingly brilliant names out there like Lil Poopy, Rip Torn and John Smith, however it does fit into the random bizarro niche I have ended up in. Independent horror trash exploitation films.
Multiple Mes!
When it comes to business at Fantasoft, I am dedicated, hard working and reliable, or I try to be, as much as possible. I use the name Alex. This is because in this circle, I have to be as professional as possible. When working in Care, I am Alex, Alec, Tom, Bill, Joe, Mum, Dad or Oi. Whatever works for the situation. When working on my own wacky stuff or with music I am Chan. It’s a little hard to keep track of, but it doesn’t matter. I enjoy it!
Professionals HATE Chan Walrus!
It’s a tragedy the amount of people who only know my name because I am Chan Walrus who do not like the name. I have been credited for god knows how many fil,s as Alex O’Neil, Alex Oneal, Alexander O’Niell and many more in that vein. It is annoying as all hell. When one signs the release form, one signs as the Walrus so one should be credited as The Walrus. One should thusly be credited as Walrus, not as Alex. It greatly annoys me!
Rebecca Gold is here in FULL! Featuring the fantastic Katie Sheridan, Alison Collinge, Keith Eyles and Paul Coster, Rebecca Gold tells the story of a geeky assassin going rogue when she meets an old crush.
Written and directed by Ian David Diaz, the series features scenes of mild peril, some fantastic action and a great story filled with geeky quips and references to just about everything. Rebecca Gold is one of the projects I’ve been really happy working on, with an amazing cast and crew and it’s something I’m really happy to show to just about everyone I can! Rebecca Gold was originally released as a series, and has been fused together into a beautiful short film that everyone can enjoy. I got shot twice during the film, firstly by a camera and then by a gun. It was an amazing experience and I’d recommend working with any of the team to anyone! It’s hard to say a lot about the series without giving too much away, but I highly recommend it!
If there is one man I owe a huge debt of gratitude to, it’s Chris Seaver. The man is a sheer genius and poet of the highest order. Charismatic, heroic and an awesome leader and friend, Chris has made some of the craziest films I’ve ever seen. From Low Budget Pictures to Warlock Home Video, Chris has created a beautiful universe of wackiness and weirdness the likes of which are seldom seen in film. His boldness as a director and eclectic cast and crew shine through in everything he works on.
Finding out about his work all started with my dad dying, probably the worst incident of my life. I fell into absolute hell and started drinking and binge watching films to deal with it. One day, I came across a film called Terror at Blood Fart Lake. I looked at it with such disdain, the name said it all, it was going to be a trash flick to make fun of. Still it’d be good for a laugh, and I tried to watch it. Without alcohol to guide me, I didn’t really get what was going on and gave up after a minute or so. Later on, I started watching it with a bottle of ginger wine.
Before I knew what was happening, the sheer disgusting absurdity of that movie was making me laugh. Josh Suire as Caspian was an incredible sight to behold, witty, disturbing and just plain wrong, he was the first thing that made me laugh since my dad’s death, and now, a third of a lifetime later, I have come very far because of what happened after I finished watching. That one film in its essence changed my life. It’s funny the difference just one incident can make, because without it, I’d never have become a composer…
I hunted down the director, Chris, and asked if he was making another movie. He was making a sequel, so I helped fund it. Before I knew it, I was watching a lot of his flicks, and I begged him to use my music in his film. The music was awful but Chris was too insane to care. He used the music and made it work. Return to Blood Fart Lake was a disturbing success, and blessed me with some amazing friends, Jason McCall, Whitney VanHorn and later Noël Williams who helped me through some of the tougher times in my life.
After Return to Blood Fart Lake, Chris signed me on to write scores for the upcoming flicks he was making under a new label, Warlock Home Video. He gave some rough guidelines and pointed me in the direction of Fright Night and similar movies. I wrote two Warlock scores, which ultimately got used in several insane films. Chris was kind enough to give me a mention in Fangoria Magazine!
After that, I was picked up by Max Hey to work on The Green Goo, and Jeremy Garner to work on All Hell Breaks loose. Now, all these years later, I look back fondly on Chris. He is the guy that made me, his friends looked after me through some of the most challenging times of my life, and he saved me from my life of doing nothing of value.
