You can see everything about Penspinning Olympics 2026 in the website
https://pso26.penspinning.world

To tell the truth, I decided to host this just because I want something to announce on Penspinning Day. But since it seem like nothing would happen soon, I had to do it myself.

The prior stage of PSO26 had 11 themes (no joke), but after some discussion and rescheduling, I decided to cut 2 Hands, Unmod, and Counter. Some theme names were changed to match with the current standard and understanding of the communities. And there’re some newly introduced themes in this PSO too.

Freeform; Firstly named Items to emphasized the using of other stuffs than the pens. This was inspired by WC10 Body&Environment theme. But with suggestion from i.suk, I think this should be better to make it more free, letting people do anything that rarely/never seen in penspinning communities before. So it ended up being Freeform, and I really love this.

Performance; This may looks like the revised version of Standup, but for me it’s a new theme with standard and criteria, completely different than other themes we had before. You may compare it to the Standup theme from previous PSO and you will find many differences. Performance focuses more in how to entertain the viewers (which can be non-spinners) in front of you with your penspinning skill, so the criteria like difficulty are removed, adding showmanship which can be found on some other performing competitions. You don’t even need to stand in this theme! This was named Standup too but pd suggested that we should come up with new name to separate with the PSO20-22 Standup.

Spinless; The theme I forced to add to this PSO, ignoring the objection from everyone, so if you didn’t like it that’s my fault. As many of you could guess, this was inspired from WC10 spinless, I want to see that again with modern penspinning skills. I know that every combos in this theme can fit on Freeform (since that one is like “I let you do everything weird here”) but I expected if there’s no Spinless theme, we might not see anyone do it too. So to emphasize the existence of this one and encourage people to do it, I put this theme in the PSO, removing everyone favorite 2 Hands and preparing myself to get burnt by the communities. This one became the theme with least number of participants, and to be honest not much people did something different than WC10 Spinless. Though I hope this can be a nice chance to let the communities know the existence of Spinless and getting more attention in the future, like how Taps&Counters and Multipen was.

Technical; Was named JPM/Modern and got removed before Mumm3y suggested me that we need this theme and renamed it to Technical. I was worry this will be like PSO18 Complexity which was a mini WT, but since current meta in world tournament changed to Multipen, this ended up being very nice theme. And next PSO may remove Multipen instead?

The reasons I chose these 8 themes are

• Power, Multipen, Infinity; Everyone favorite themes that pretty much guarantee it’ll attract people to join/watch. Main themes to carry PSO.
• Technical; The current trend that isn’t Multipen.
• Classic; Something that can attract spinners who might not care about the themes above.
• Performance, Freeform, Spinless; I want PSO to widen the view/perception of everyone. Not just the known themes but something new. Freeform and Spinless is 100% on this and Performance is a hope to make people learn more about showing penspinning in public so we can get more attention from non-spinners.

3 judges vs 1 judge; I actually want 3 judges for each and every themes too, but practically it’s impossible. Imagine having to find 24 (or 33 if we go with 11 themes lol) currently active, contactable, and skilled judges. Keeping them in contact and hope everyone finish results in time. That’s too much for me to do that. Even we have some that can take 2+ themes, it’ll end up around 18-22 judges too (every judges do 2 themes is nearly impossible practically). To be honest I contacted A LOT of people, getting countless rejects because they would join, thought their knowledge are not enough for current standard, or simply did not have time to do. Finding judges is the hardest part of PSO.

I really want Multipen to have 3 judges since it’s the hottest stuffs in PS right now with the every finalists of WT25 did that in the final rounds. But most nominatee participated instead. Ended up only Criswea!! being the lone judge scoring the monstrous combos from people like i.suk, Mumm3y, DBM while he’s in hospital, damn thank you for hard work.

There’s also some complaints about Infinity judges being more on technical parts than well-known as Wiper-Infinity spinners. I understand this too, but the judges were chosen because PSO26 Infinity focusing more in the technical stuff than the usual Infinity combos, and it’s very hard to find judges who specialize in Infinity and have enough knowledge on current technical stuffs. It’s understandable if people didn’t agree with me anyway and I cannot say which should be better too.

Also, I tried to make 1 judge taking care of 2 themes the most. This is to make sure judges can focus on judging and not overwhelmed by too many videos, as well as make sure each judge does not have enough power to control the result on too many themes. To be honest letting judges participate in other theme should be questioned. While I didn’t think there’s any problem in this PSO, the situation “A judge B in theme 1 and B judge A in theme 2 is possible and both agree to give each other higher score than usual” can happen. Though for the current situation of penspinning community, I feel like our community is pretty small so it’s hard to find judges. Not letting them participate can end up recruiting judge harder since most people will join but not judge. Also with small community, one bad action can easily destroy the reputation. So I decided to let judges participate this time. But I support the host to question this for future events.

I’d like to thank everyone in this events including the organization team helping me tuning PSO26 into a fine shape in short time. Judges who accepted my invitation, writing the criteria, scoring and commenting every combos. Participants who brought the wonderful combos making this event being so hot, as well as every viewers to paid attention to this event. If no one care to watch, the event couldn’t happen. As a guy who started PSO18 and got a chance to do it again 8 years later, I’m glad to see PSO becoming a big part of penspinning communities.

Special thanks to tilt, he did pretty much everything on the back-end, taking care of the website and donation, finishing the works so fast. His popularity on YouTube/Discord also helped attract people to the events too. To be honest penspinning communities is blessed with his existence. Everything will be a lot harder without him.

Trivia; I was preparing myself to be the reserved judge on Freeform during I couldn’t contact the last judge. I also finished my judging too and, while it couldn’t change the 1st place, other places were completely different than the current result. Though the last judge came before the deadline I set (48 hours after judging deadline) so it wasn’t used and became the imaginary result. If any Freeform finalists want to see it, feel free to ask me and I’ll show you the score, comment, and ranking I gave to you.

Stats

Length : 24.0 cm
Weight : 25.0 g

Material

• Factis BM2 body x2
• Rushon body (or other body with similar diameter) x1
• Stalogy (pen ver.) clicking mechanical parts and backplug ring x2
• Dr.Grip Fullblack outer grip x2
• Supergrip grip x2
• Anyball grip x2
• Signo grip x2
• Thin grip (prefer HGG or anything thinner) x2

Tutorial

Prepare BM2 body by remove everything, no body cutting, we’ll use the full length.

Cut half of the Fullblack grip (~2.5cm), and ~2.0cm from the backside

Cut 3 blocks of Supergrip grip from the front, then the thickest point of the smooth part (~1.0cm from the backside), keep the middle part.

Cut Anyball grip as shown, keep parts with block 1, 6-7, 8-9-10

Cut Signo grip into 1.0cm x3
Cut thin grip to ~2.5cm x2

Dissemble the clicking mechanical part. You can cut the smaller part if you find it’s too hard to pull them out, we won’t use it anyway.
Cut 1.0cm of the bigger plastic part, keep this 1.0cm part.

Attach the 1.0cm of the plastic part to the metal clicking part, adjust it to align with the line on the metal part.
Put the backplug ring on the metal clicking part.
Put the thin grip on this combined part, you may need a bit of tape for HGG grip.
Put 1.0cm of Signo grip on the thin grip as the image shown.

Put Anyball grip block 1, followed by 2.0cm Fullblack grip on front side of BM2 body.
Put the combined part into the BM2 body, the Signo grip should align with BM2 body. This step can be very hard (but not impossible) with HGG grip being a bit too thick so the thinner grip is preferred, the pic above used Quantum Geloplus grip which is a bit too thin so I need small tape to make it fit in BM2 body.
Put Supergrip grip on the body and Signo grip, leave small open on the Signo grip.
(pic from my 1st Versa Cappucino so the color of Signo grip is different)

Attach Anyball grip block 8-9-10 on Signo grip, make it align with the metal ring.
Push Fullblack grip next to the Supergrip grip.
Put Anyball grip block 6-7 on Supergrip grip, followed by Fullblack front grip

Make this on both BM2 bodies.

Cut ~4.0cm of Rushon body.
Add the last 1.0cm Signo grip on Rushon body.
Connect 2 BM2 body together with it.

Summary of the tip-grip package from my 1st Versa Cappucino

Video tutorial in Thai

About this pen

My concept on this mod is to make a bigger and heavier Charcoal Latte. The rubber texture all-over the whole mod except on a small hole that let you see the tip, and the silhouette similar to Opt/Nextage grip on both ends, this 2 are my first priority on the design. Though I changed from the Ivan-type body structure to center-connected to make it fit with the big-heavy stick.

You may already noticed that the grip pattern is very similar to Vore-Tex’s VEM Hybrid. I pretty much copied and changed only some few small details on this pen. So I decided to name this mod starting with V to give the credit to Vore-Tex on inventing this gripping pattern.

The word Versa came from Versatile since I invented this mod to make it fit with various kind of modern penspinning, including Powertricks, 2-Hand, Multipen, Technical. Not sure if it’s very good on any of these but since I’m not used to these kind of long-heavy stick, it’s more than enough for me to practice these kind of stuffs. If anyone make this mod and found it’s good or bad on anything, feel free to give me the feedback.

Firstly, if you didn’t watch the CV, here it is. We can talk about this after you finish watching it.

Filtering

About half of the participants in coffeelucky 8th are guests I invited, and another half are the combos I opened for public submission. The amount I received this time is less than coffeelucky 7th in total but a lot that are so good and gave me hard time on filtering process.

Certainly, the popular criteria like difficulty, originality, or execution are used in the filtering process. But another major criteria I used in coffeelucky 8th is uniqueness. It’s not only about the trick choices or linkages used in the combo, but also include the spinning speed, hand movement, finger positioning, and everything that make the combo be outstanding from others.

And I didn’t just give the score to all videos I received and put the top 15 to CV, I also consider the balance of the CV to not have too many of the same kind of combos. There’s some combos I filtered just because there’s already other similar combos in the CV. Some are filtered just because they aren’t fit with the music or too short/long for the slot.

The reason I put various kinds of combos in the same CV is because I want people to appreciate more kind of spinning. I expect most people won’t love all of the combos of coffeelucky 8th and I saw the comments saying they like A but not B and vice-versa. I won’t say you have to love all of them, but learning more about why there’s people who love the combo you don’t can widen your aspect on penspinning, and that means you can have more fun with it.

If you’re curious how I think about your videos, why I chose or filtered it, or is it those that nearly to make a cut but got filtered from not having enough slots. Feel free to DM me on Twitter or Discord, I won’t give the critique in public since I think some of you may want to avoid that, but feel free to call me about your own combo.

Editing

I suck at intro.

That’s why I didn’t have any intro in this CV. Not only that I’m not good with it, but also it opens more time slots for more combos too. Actually intro is a good thing since it will warm up the viewers before the main part of the video. But I found that it’s not bad to not having intro too, maybe better than having bad edited one.

The CV title ‘coffeelucky 8th’ firstly appeared at 01:57 in the video, which is already in the second half. This is not common for video editing, but not anything new too. Consider that YouTube already shows the title to everyone before clicking the video, as well as the thumbnail said it clearly too, so I don’t think many people will have trouble about this. At least for me it looks good and pretty funny too.

Concept

Not really a concrete concept, but I have the image of Expensive Chocolate Packaging for the editing (surprisingly not coffee). This actually came to my mind when I saw my old coffeelucky 8th April’s Fool joke and decided to use it in the real one. With some more research for the color scheme and other elements.

Brown color is chosen easily from that image, and mint green coming from the chocolate mint to make the CV being not too monotone. Red (from berries like strawberry or raspberry) and orange (from, yes, orange) were the choices too, but consider the balance of the color, mint green works the best here to contrast with brown.

Text & Font

I used 5 font styles in my CV and they are in the 1 screen, can you spot all of them?

Spinner name (Goudy Old Style) is easy to spot on, as well as the long script I wrote for each spinner (High Summit). The third one is the roman number (Perpetua Titling MT) counting the spinner order. Last 2 are pretty hard since they’re like the usual decorations than text. One is the fancy background pattern (Gothic Flourish) that I use the first letter of each spinner name, this one is the same as I did in my coffeelucky 6th. And the last one is the 8 rectangles puzzle (Franklin Gothic Heavy) which actually is the 2 rows of 4 dots, adjusting the tracking and line spacing, give them the boarder, and fill or remove the color inside, this one is actually the same as I did in my coffeelucky 7th.

The 8 Rectangles Puzzle

So what are the meaning of these rectangles? It looks like it’s not the same as coffeelucky 7th which telling people about which coffeelucky CV these spinners participated before.

Actually, it is similar to coffeelucky 7th. These rectangles pointing which coffeelucky CV each spinner joined before. From the top left is coffeelucky 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th on the upper line, 5th, 6th, and 7th from the left of the lower line, and 0th for the last one on bottom right. If this spinner appeared in which CV, the spots are filled in that places.

But it’s not only that, I added another factor to it too. And it is the order the spinner appeared in coffeelucky 8th, the same as the big roman number. From left to right the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th spinner on the upper line, and 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th spinner on the lower line. After this it returns to the first spot again, so 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th spinner on the top line, and 13th, 14th, 15th on the lower line. 16th spinner will take place in the last rectangle (same as 8th spinner) if there’s. The spot is filled depending on the spinner order.

e.g. on pd’s combo, he participated in coffeelucky 6th, 7th, and 0th before, plus he’s the 2nd spinners. So the 2nd, 6th, 7th, and 8th spots are filled and other are left empty. TUv4 is the first timer of coffeelucky series so all of his spots are left empty except the 4th spot because he’s the 12th spinner.

There’re some special cases too, specifically Herenz’s and mine, which the spot of the spinner order in coffeelucky 8th is already filled from the appearance in previous coffeelucky series. For these cases I just did it vice-versa, by removing the fill and leaving that spots empty instead. So that’s why I have 1 empty spot for mine and non of Herenz’s are filled.

I didn’t plan to make it complex at first, but since I have many first timers in the series here and it may look boring if all of them have the same all empty spots, adding a few factors to make them different results with nice variety of the pattern. They’re just decorations anyway so having some puzzle on it is something I love.

Shane’s Helping

Before I finish the CV, Shane lent me his hand to help furnishing in the last phase. The comments from other people is always big helps since they can see what editors do not. And Shane also has some nice works with his editing too so his comments direct to the point. Various small details as well as some weird timing that only found when uploading to YouTube were fix thanks to him.

Though, I didn’t fix everything he told me. Shane give me the rewording of ‘description’ of every spinners so it can be more natural but I decided to not use his wording. I want those description for each spinner to come from me myself as the owner of this CV, it’s something I want them, as well as other spinners, to know that they’re good, at least from my POV. To be honest I didn’t expect him to do this since it’s not a small task at all, really appreciate his help and feel bad a bit to not use it.

Post Script of the Post Script

This may be weird to say after the long article, but I’m not proud of this work that much. The combos are good and I like them all, but the editing isn’t what I expected it to be.

To make it clear, I like it, definitely not bad for me. It reach my ‘acceptable’ level that I can release the CV, but not the ‘expected’ level I wanted it to be. I found myself struggle on editing various times and couldn’t make it like what I have in my mind, end up using many old elements I used in my previous works.

I have my own standard about coffeelucky series that I want each of them to be better than the previous one (except 0th which can be considered ‘spinoff’). From 2nd to 7th they archive that in my POV. But I didn’t find 8th editing surpass 7th, just something more refined but less creative if you ask me. And this feel like I’ve reached my limit about editing.

But that doesn’t mean I regret making this CV. I still like it and many people told me it’s a good CV, that’s more than enough to say I’m happy with the CV. Some people told me that my CV motivated them to spin and film more, which is probably the words I want to hear from making CV. Nothing better than knowing my work can help the community growing.

coffeelucky 9th?

I need to rethink many things before I start making new coffeelucky or any CV. Learning some new techniques is a choice but if I cannot apply to my editing it won’t do anything. Asking the help from other people is also another good choice, maybe not the whole video but I may ask someone to do the CG or helping me on some other details. I learnt from Shane a lot on this CV anyway. Still nothing decided yet, and I won’t start making coffeelucky 9th soon anyway. Until I have motivation to make the coffeelucky again, I’ll make some more CV like express ones and something else to see what I can use and what to do with 9th.

Until then,

After these 16 years of being coffeelucky in penspinning community, I decide to change my name to Coffy. It’s like shorten coffeelucky to Coffee but still keep the y as the last letter, isn’t it nice?

I surely like the name coffeelucky, or else I wouldn’t stick with it for more than a decade. But this name has some few problems that has been bugging me for years.

1. It’s too long, which isn’t good for editing especially in CV. I always have the problem about where to place my name in the CV I edit and pretty sure the editors of most CV I was in too. Also too long name results in easier to misspell. Even I said I don’t really mind about that, misspelling is still bugging me, and surely many people too.
2. It doesn’t sound like a name. Because it’s too long so many people came up about how to make my name shorter so it’s easier to call/type. The first choice is always coffee which isn’t bad, but there’s more than 2-3 times that people confuse with the black bitter drink. CL isn’t a bad choice too but I found that people don’t think it’s the abbreviation of coffeelucky that much, so it’s not really functional in general.

Coffy solves pretty much those problem above, while still keep the vibe of my name. It also looks cute too, at least that’s what I think.

You can still call me coffeelucky

Well yes, I’m still the same guy that had been coffeelucky for 16 years. But also I don’t mind if some people still want to call me coffeelucky. If you think the word coffeelucky looks better in your CV, you can use that as my name too. So basically I still am coffeelucky, and will keep that for my @ in various social media platform (like Twitter, Discord, etc). But from now I’ll go with Coffy as a main name.

coffeelucky series is still coffeelucky

Like the ongoing coffeelucky 8th, I won’t change the name to Coffy 8th or Coffy 1st or anything. As well as the future CV of this series, I’ll go with coffeelucky 9th, 10th, and so on, if I still can make them.

I’m still the same guy, with a shorter and easier to write name. ☕

2 years after 7th and I think it’s a good time for 8th. Like my previous CV in this series, I’ll put a lot of effort to make sure it’s one of my best CV I can make. There’ll be some number of the guests and I accept wildcard spots from registration too.

Requirements

• Clean setup, fixed camera is preferred.
• Horizontal video, it can be 4:3 or 16:9 or other ratio, but it needs to be able to crop into 4:3 without off-cam. And feel free to send me the original size without cropping since I may use it like that or may crop it to the size of my choice to fit with the editing.
• 360p or better resolution, 1080p+ is preferred.
• 30fps with 1/30s shutter speed for the best spinning effect.
• Any length is fine, prefer 9-13 sec the most, too long videos may be cut.

Filtering

Heavy filtering will be applied, the first step will be the execution and presentation that need to be not so bad. After that I’ll consider see the combo in overall. The combo can be very hard and creative with mediocre execution, or contain only easy tricks but all of them are executed wonderfully. I expect to see everyone doing their best on their strength or what they are good at.

*The combos that were already public will be filtered with no exception, as well as if you share or upload it to public after sending, even if it’s in the middle of the editing I’ll filter it. Please submit the combo that has never been released before, and upload it after the CV is released.

Sending

• Upload your video onto a file sharing service like Dropbox or Google Drive and send the download link to me via Discord (@coffeelucky), Twitter (@coffeelucky_ps), or any methods you can contact me and tell me the name you want to use in the CV (your PS/handle name). Don’t forget to let me access it with the link you share too. I don’t accept the YouTube link, or
• Name your submission as your PS/handle name and upload it to this file requests Dropbox

Deadline

2023-11-11
Extended to 2023-11-19 (SUN)

Same as my other Subject series, this will be the experimental CV. This time I’ll do the full After Effect editing with 16:9 ratio, Dashpio was my first work with full AE editing but Subject 3rd will be the first with 16:9 style.

And also the same as other Subject CVs, Subject 3rd won’t have any guests. It’ll be 100% submissions from the signing up. And if you’re interested in joining, please read the detail below

Requirements

• clean setup, fixed camera is preferred
• can be 4:3 or 16:9 or other ratio, send me your original size/ratio and I’ll crop it to make it fits into the CV
• 360p or better resolution, 720p+ is preferred
• 30fps with 1/30s shutter speed for the best spinning effect
• any length is fine, prefer 9-13 sec the most, too long videos may be cut

Filtering

I’ll do 2 steps of filtering this time

1 – The minimum I can accept. I’ll focus on the camera setup and environment the most here with some execution level. For the camera and environment, as long as you get the clean setup with good lighting that allow me to watch your combo easily, it’ll be fine. Surely the strong camera shaking will be filtered here. For execution it’ll be very mediocre, I won’t ask for anything outstanding like eban or iroziro kind, as long as it looks good at some level and no major mistakes, you’re good. Difficulty, originality, creativity, or anything like these won’t be considered at this step. If you’re worry you can ask me at the moment you send the combo about passing this step or not, I’ll reply back as soon as I can.

2 – This is the regular filtering. With every combos passing the 1st step I’ll choose some of the best fitting into the music. This step will focus on combo structure, uniqueness, execution, and originality the most, difficulty and creativity will be minor factors, and camera setup will be the least important, but still coming into the account. There’s some more factors like how it fits in the music or the similarity with other combos too. So I cannot tell you if you’re gonna pass this step or not since I need to wait for every submissions and take time thinking while editing. You’ll know the result when the CV released.

Sending

Upload your video to Dropbox, Google Drive, or any file sharing service, and give the download link to me with your name. Don’t forget to set the privacy so I can download it with the link.

• Discord coffeelucky#5177
• Twitter @coffeelucky_ps

Or upload your video to this Dropbox file request folder. Make sure the video name is your name before uploading.
https://www.dropbox.com/request/NkDKhRuuAYIQhbF4ToFq

Deadline : OCT 23rd 16th, 2022 (SUN)

I will skip the What is #PSUpFes, if you never heard about it feel free to read the guideline. Not only English but fellow penspinners from around the world helped me translate into various languages including Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, Vietnamese, etc.

So let’s talk about my POV about this event.

Why #PSUpFes?

Probably burning out from the competitions, as well as there’s some people asking for the non-competition events too. SpinFest is a wonderful non-competition event but I decided to not host it this time, it’s not a season of SpinFest anyway, as well as the format is already stable, so when the time comes someone will host it anyway.

Also SpinFest has some weaknesses, it is undoubtedly a good non-competition BIG event. But since the main objective of it is to make CVs, so that means the participants need to collaborate with other people, as well as some more complex process like organizing and editing. But what I was looking for is a chill event that anyone can join. UpFes seems to fit with my requirement perfectly.

UpFes, a.k.a Upload Festival, is a completely relaxing event. Anyone can join even you cannot make CV or don’t want to join the tournament. It has less impact than SpinFest and you cannot gain any awards or title from its. But that also means it’ll be more beginner friendly than the big events. Surely oldies can join too!

In the past there’re some UpFes events like JEB UpFes and Up[sb]Fes before. But since nowadays many people are in the social network like Twitter or Instagram more than old-fashioned forum, I think it’ll be nice that anyone can participate by just upload their videos to their own accounts. Plus no need to stick with the community name, so I decided to go with the hashtag+PS+UpFes, #PSUpFes.

Isn’t 1 month for each theme too long?

To tell the truth, it is.

For the regular penspinners, filming a freestyle, which probably is the majority of the submissions in #PSUpFes, can be done in less than 30 minute. Well it’s not like I can just announce the theme and give people 30 minute to film, still consider that different people live in different time zones and many need the weekend to film, 1 week per theme should be enough. And this number was what I came up in the first place.

But that’s only about the regular spinners filming the regular freestyles. Beginners may need more time and I want them to join this too, as well as some people who want to experiment something about the theme. And if someone want to create a surprisingly amazing combo, 1 month is gonna be a good time for them, not sure if there will be anyone who do this though.

Another reason will be my own convenience. Since coming up a new theme every week will be pretty hard for me, and I may end up forget the schedule in some weeks. Even I want to make this a theme a week, my irl schedule won’t allow me to do that anyway.

Well if you’re a regular penspinner what to submit a regular freestyle to the event, and feel like it’s too long, I always welcome 2nd submissions from everyone, even 3rd, 4th, or more too. I actually have a plan for something like mini-theme or challenge in each theme, like for this month theme Thumb Around, something more challenge for experience spinners like PD Double TA or some fun mini-challenge like Doing Thumb Around at least 5 times in a combo can be added in the middle of the month. But these kind of things won’t be in the first few months, just an idea that I may or may not use in the future.

What kind of theme you will bring it to #PSUpFes?

Since I want #PSUpFes to be beginner friendly, you won’t see many hard themes in this event. I’ll focus on the trick theme (like doing the trick or its variation at least 1 time) the most, it’ll be switched between the basic tricks that anyone can do and the easy not-much-used interesting tricks.

The pen-specific theme like Using RSVP MX or etc. will be hard since it means people who don’t own that pen won’t be able to join that theme, but for the bigger kind (like instead of RSVP MX it may be Asymmetrical Mod) I think we can expect this sometimes.

For the concept theme like Wiper&Infinity or 2Hands, they’re actually interesting, but in the same time can be hard for beginners. I myself love this kind of theme the most but I’ll need to think much more before I use some, maybe I’ll try with some easy one like Wiper&Infinity first. But please don’t expect the hard ones like 2P1H, at least until I run out of ideas.

What is your plan in the future about #PSUpFes?

Firstly, making the cover picture for the official Twitter account. I’ve left it empty since I have no idea what to do with it. Will update it as soon as I can!

There’s also the sub-theme or mini-challenge I talked in the 1 month topic which I think it can be fun to do, but currently I want it to be as simple as it can be, so everyone can join it without unnecessary problem. After I get some feedbacks I’ll see what to apply to #PSUpFes.

Another one I think it can be nice is to invite a famous spinner to do an example combo for each theme. It’ll be the best if I can upload it at the same time as the theme announced, but that means I need to come up with the theme very early so the invitees will have enough time to film their combos, which I don’t know if my schedule will allow me to do that or not. So like the sub-theme idea, let’s keep it to the future.

That’s all for now, I may come up with something new to add in the future but let’s leave it to my-future-self. And if you have any ideas about the theme or anything else, feel free to tell me in this form, I may or may not use it but ideas and feedbacks are always welcome.

Also please follow @PSUpFes on Twitter, and join it sometimes when you can 😉

Inspired by JapEn 17th, one of the best 4:3 CV with modern and classic styles of editing mixing together, now I want to throw myself back to the good old 4:3 day and see how my current editing skill can do with it. So yes, coffeelucky 0th will be the classic 4:3 full-frame editing style.

I’ve invited various spinners who appeared in the coffeelucky series from the past (1st-7th), it’ll only have a few empty spots open for the signing up but I always welcome everyone who wants to submit.

Requirements

• clean setup, fixed camera is preferred
• can be 4:3 or 16:9 or other ratio, but it needs to be able to crop into 4:3 without offcam
• 240p or better resolution, 480p+ is preferred
• 30fps with 1/30s shutter speed for the best spinning effect
• any length is fine, prefer 9-13 sec the most, too long videos may be cut

Filtering

Medium to hard, execution and presentation will be the top priority with the uniqueness and impact being in the consideration.

Already published combos will be automatically filtered, as well as if you publish the video before the CV is released.

Sending

Upload your video to Dropbox, Google Drive, or any file sharing service, and give the download link to me with your name. Don’t forget to set the privacy so I can download it with the link.

• Discord coffeelucky#5177
• Twitter @coffeelucky_ps

Or upload your video to this Dropbox file request folder. Make sure the video name is your name before uploading.
https://www.dropbox.com/request/lrxDwi2ed8vHdQt7nwDR

Deadline : FEB 27th MAR 13th, 2022 (SUN)

Why camera setup is so important?

Technically the setup cannot change your real skill in pen spinning. But keep in mind that while we’re on the internet, people can only see you through your videos, and camera setup affects that a lot. With bad camera setup it does nothing but to conceal your real skill and people may ignore how good you really are. So it’s always good to learn about this.

Also this is only the recommendation, it’s usually good in general for pen spinning combo but you can adjust to make it suit with your own spinning or for the requirement of some CV, solo, tag, etc

Setup recommendation

• Framerate : 30fps
• Shutter speed : 1/30s
• Horizontal video, 4:3 ratio
• Resolution : 720p or 1080p
• Turn off the auto-focus
• Adjust ISO to fit with your lighting setup

–

Framerate : 30fps

is the most recommended for pen spinning combo, you can try something higher like 50, 60, 120 but they usually don’t give you the best spinning effect so the default should be 30.

For the lower, 24-25fps is fine but not really recommended since it’s not the most used and your videos may look weird with this if it get edited in the same CVs/tags with 30fps. Anything lower than this gonna make your combo look shit.

–

Shutter speed : 1/30s

gonna create the best spinning effect. You many need to adjust this for the higher fps but for 30fps, 1/30 is the most recommended.

–

Horizontal video, 4:3 ratio

4:3 usually is the best ratio for pen spinning combo since it’s fit with how most people spinning area is. 16:9 can be used but you may need to be careful with your environment setup more.

Horizontal video is the must unless you want to upload it to Instagram Stories or TikTok, or making some specific kind of pen spinning video.

–

Resolution : 720p or 1080p

Pen spinning community is still accept 360p, or sometimes even 240p, because we’re used to the internet culture from 15 years ago. But you don’t have to be a boomer like us. It’s now very easy to film in 720p or 1080p nowadays, or at least 480p if you feel like your combo looks bad at high res.

In the same time something with better resolution won’t work well with the pen spinning too, technically it’s not hurt to film in a better resolution but practically you may need to film A LOT and the high res videos gonna fill your capacity of your phone fast and furious, as well as it may not work well if the editor doesn’t have a proper hardware. So if it’s already clear enough, keep it like that is a good idea too. Well if you plan to make anything special with the 4K resolution and have a proper tool, you can go with that too.

–

Turn off the auto-focus

If auto-focus is turning on, it’s highly possible that it’ll adjust the focus while you film the combo since your hand will move a lot, and that gonna be the awkward moment in your combo, so turn it off. If you use mobile phone sometimes there is no option to turn off but you can prevent it by long tap on the screen and it’ll keep the focus on that place.

–

Adjust ISO to fit with your lighting setup

With the above setup, your video may end up being too bright or too dark. You can adjust the ISO to make it back to the proper lighting. But if it’s too much ISO, it may create a lot of noise/grain on your video. If that happens you better bring more lamp or find more light source irl.

For Mobile Phone

Find the application that allows you to do the manual setup, especially the shutter speed adjustment which is very important. Usually, default camera app doesn’t allow you to do it so you may need to download the new one, I recommend Open Camera for Android users since I’m using it too. I also heard that Yamera is good for iOS users but don’t quote me with that since I’ve never tried it.

You may use some software on your PC to connect the phone camera to your desktop so it’ll be easier to watch your spinning while you’re filming. scrcpy works well on this job since it just bring your camera screen to your PC, though the fps may be lower on the PC screen than what it really is on the phone screen, the recorded videos are still be the original fps anyway so no need to worry about that.

Note: If you have the problem about framerate drops, you may try turning off the sound recording while filming. I may help your videos being smoother.

–

For Web Camera

Usually you cannot adjust the shutter speed directly, you gonna do something with the Exposure instead which gonna affect your shutter speed and framerate. My recommendation is adjust the Exposure to the highest first (it’ll be 0 or -1) then decrease it 1 by 1 until it looks smooth (reaching 25-30fps), that usually be the point where the framerate and shutter speed being in the good shape.

For the software, there are a lot you can use. I myself prefer OBS the most but you may want to try something different like Amcap or something else. Your webcam may work well with something else so make sure to try a lot and find the best.

As I said in the beginning, this is just a recommendation. This should help with your setup if you don’t know where to start, but after that you better adjust it to fit your spinning more. Some tournaments or CVs may require you to film in some specific setup too so feel free to play around and find what’s the best for you.

Some more related links and videos you may be interested
How to manage webcam settings by Tchus
How to film with your smartphone and make it looks good by Kay (Japanese)
The importance component of penspinning ‘environment’ by Wabi (Japanese with English subtitle)
Tips on filming with the wide screen by Drowsy (Japanese)