This M’sian has over 1 million subscribers on YouTube… by making Among Us videos in 3D

It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been living under a rock or have been spending the past month hibernating in a cave – there’s simply no way that you haven’t heard of the game that’s pretty much taken the world by a storm, Among Us.

Among Us is so popular that it’s become the inspiration of many creators out there, such as memes or illustrations, but they’re mostly in 2D. So riding on the game’s popularity, there’s a Malaysian college student who wanted to do something different from the others, and his name is Afiq Aiman, the 21-year-old founder of YouTube Channel AAC Dream.

How so, you may ask. Well, if the title of the article hasn’t already given you a hint…

 

He makes Among Us content…in 3D! O.O

Just in case you really don’t know what it is, Among Us is basically an online multiplayer game where you take up two roles: Crewmate or Impostor. If you’re an Impostor, you basically get to play Ted Bundy and murder everyone else…without getting detected. But if you’re a Crewmate, you gotta do tasks and figure out who’s the Imposter in the meantime. Think of it as Alien vs Predator, but much cuter.

So now that you know how Among Us works, here’s how the game normally looks like:

Okay, that looks pretty standard for a game. But this is what AAC’s been doing in his adaptations:

Okay, before you get the wrong idea, we’d like to clarify that Afiq is not remaking the game in 3D.  No, no, he’s actually making Among Us short films…only in 3D.

Fortunately, we managed to reach out to Afiq to tell us more about AAC Dream and his short films. In his own words, Afiq describes himself as a Malaysian YouTuber, filmmaker, video effects (VFX) artist, and animator. Now we’re not really video experts here, but it does seem like his videos are up to par.

One of the reasons that Afiq decided to do Among Us short films is because, well, it’s a very fun game. Just like a lot of us, he’d only heard about Among Us just a couple of months ago and started playing it, and when he realized its potential, he couldn’t help but wield his own creativity to make his own content based on it – and it’s all done with his own PC in his own home.

“Remaking these videos is part of my learning process. It’s all done at home with my own PC.” – Afiq, in an interview with Cilisos

However, Afiq told us that he didn’t do all the work by himself, and that he has a team to help him along the way, and they are…

• Putera Syafiq (Animator)
• Azhar Masli (Marketing Manager)
• Aiman Nasrullah (Web Developer)

More often than not, the work will be split between him and the other animator to make things easier, because even if it’s just a video that’s 1 minute long, the process could take easily up to one week to finish! Afiq told us that the most difficult part is editing the character animation to ensure they’re as smooth as possible.

And that’s even when he doesn’t have to come up with plots on his own. See, at this point in time, AAC Dream has been remaking Among Us clips from other creators into 3D. As in, the original clips are in 2D, and Afiq and his team will incorporate those clips and remake them into 3D short films.

“For the technical part, I come up with my own style and design. The stories are mostly inspired by others.” – Afiq

But in the near future, he told us that he and his team will start venturing into coming up with their own stories for their Among Us videos. And now, you may think for someone to create videos like Among Us in 3D, they’d have a pretty extensive background. But that’s not the case with Afiq.

 

He learned everything from YouTube tutorials

According to Afiq, AAC Dream came about in 2016, when he found it a lot of fun to create videos with his high school friends and such. But before that, he was already really into things like VFX, CGI, and animations.

“I watched a lot of short films that focused on visual effects back in the day. It was a Harry Potter short film that made me decide one of my own.” – Afiq

However, just because he was into the stuff didn’t mean he would know how to execute them. So what did he do? Some of us would sign up for online courses; some of us might even go for really expensive classes; Afiq, on the other hand, went to YouTube.

As we all know, YouTube’s practically a treasure trove of tutorials – be it cooking or Photoshop or video editing. But if you wanna make egg fried rice, we wouldn’t advise you to follow Hersha Patel’s tutorial.

So anyway, yeah, Afiq just trawled through YouTube, watching tutorials, and learned video editing and special effects by himself in the comfort of his own home. He told us that he learned the most from YouTuber Video Copilot, who’s known for his online tutorials. In the end, it took Afiq four years of experimenting and watching YouTube tutorials to really have a grasp on how video editing works, alongside inputting VFX and CGI to make them pop.

“It can be difficult to create visual effects with potato PC, but my passion gave me strength to make it happen. I have also invested a lot of money to buy a PC with better specs to do these videos.” – Afiq

It was only when he was finally confident with his skills that he began uploading videos on YouTube. But for a long time, AAC Dream didn’t get much traction, until…

 

He did a Temple Run simulation that got him femes

Afiq’s first few videos are just simple videos of Street Fighter and Fruit Saber simulations, like below. He eventually moved on to animations like Ejen Ali and Upin & Ipin, except they all have square heads, because they have all been Minecraft-ified.

“My target audience are mostly gamers who wanna watch their favorite characters in real life or be animated in short animations.” – Afiq

However, as we’ve mentioned above, these videos didn’t really give the team much traction, though they didn’t give up. It was only until he uploaded a real-life simulation of the Temple Run game that he finally saw some results from his efforts with approximately 168million views. Wait, you guys do remember Temple Run, right?

From there, Afiq started to grow his team to four people and created more of these simulations and Minecraft-style videos for a few more years, including other materials like Marvel, DC, and King Kong, which you can all watch on the AAC Dream YouTube channel. Until this year, when Among Us came on and took over everyone’s life like an Impostor, and Afiq and his team joined the trend.

But of course, with success comes some complications, such as copyright issues. Due to the fact that AAC Dream tended to remake his Among Us in 3D videos based on other works, they encountered two copyright strikes, prompting him to the videos down.

“That was a mistake on my part. Crediting them isn’t enough. We need to ask the original creators for permission before using them.” – Afiq

So, after four years of making VFX videos, and really cool ones at that…

 

AAC Dream is now a Youtube Gold Creator

In case you didn’t know, YouTube often awards YouTubers whenever they reach a certain number of subscribers, and these are called the YouTube Creator Awards. And in August 2020, Afiq and his team managed to reach 1million subscribers, resulting in AAC Dream becoming a recipient of the YouTube Gold Award. At the time of writing, AAC Dream has managed to increase their subscribers to 1.31million.

“I felt so excited that I can’t even really put it into words.” – Afiq

He told us that previously, most of their audience are Malaysian. But after they started making Among Us videos, they saw that their audience has grown internationally as well.

Currently, to expand on his skills, Afiq has taken up a degree in video editing and animation at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM). According to him, he would like to make filmmaking a lifetime career. But that doesn’t mean he’s ditching AAC Dream, as he still plans on making his own short films in the meantime, especially the Among Us in 3D short films.

“We hope to keep making content and grow bigger to make Malaysians proud of our work.” – Afiq

To make it to where he is today takes a lot of hard work, and Afiq believes that his success today is due to his AAC Dream Crewmates and his overall patience. According to him, there’s no one-hit wonder to achieve an overnight success, even if it’s on YouTube. After all, he started out as a YouTuber in 2016, and only managed to achieve 1million subscribers four years later.

“All I can say is that when you’re doing something you love, you have to take a risk and improve yourself day by day. Be patient, and your dreams will be reachable. Hard work will pay off one day.” – Afiq

So if you’re in any way an Among Us fan or just interested in everything that Afiq’s doing, let us start you off this little gem, which is one of Afiq’s works that he told us took a little more than a week to complete. Remember to check him out on YouTube at AAC Dream – or just click play on the video below!