I decided to not label this a WIP Wednesday because I really want to keep those posts art-centric and image or video heavy. I’ve spent the last week or so writing the guide I’m going to include free to those who join my newsletter. Yesterday I was out of the house most of the day and, aside from getting the podcast posted, didn’t have time for much of anything studio related. Today I woke up about 1 in the morning and spent some time inking some comics. I’ve been thinking about my production schedule and how it’s frustrated me trying to get things to regularly post on the site. I’ve felt conflicted that I haven’t been posting enough to this blog. It seems every week I’m buried in some other aspect of a project that I can’t really share yet and I don’t want to be busying myself with work just to get it on the site.
Writing for a week straight has reminded me how much work it is to just shovel words around. I realize I’m running into the same problem I had with the Daily Doodles. I need to get a considerable way ahead in my work and then start sharing it when there’s a pile of material to pick from. I also need to get the hours in my day back. I’ve cut out some habits recently that used to eat up my time and I need to make it productive again. So basically I need to do a hard reset on my scheduling. I’ll keep posting the podcast, though even that might get retooled. I know Ian and I both want to keep a better handle on the length with it this year. Other content on the site will return when I feel it’s ready to start posting it again.
Hope you’re all having a good day. No video or screencaps this week as the things I’ve been working on have either been web stuff or writing. I would, however, like to take some time to give you a rundown on what I’ve been up to.
Site Cleanup
I bought the premium version of the theme I’ve been running the site on for awhile. You’ll notice the podcast page properly links to the archive now with a player button for the audio. If you mouse over “blog” in the menu you’ll see I’ve added links for WIP Wednesday and Daily Doodle posts. When there’s a video I’ve used the thumbnail as the featured image on the archive page. I’d like to add a few more categories and featured images but it’s a start. The featured items on the homepage are going to get changed up soon, too, to reflect current projects and ones on hiatus. There’ll also be a signup button for the newsletter.
NoRights Newsletter
I’m putting together an email newsletter that I’ll make available soon. I’ll be offering a free gift for those who join and I’m writing things now so there’ll be plenty of quality content when it launches. Expect behind the scenes looks into my studio, tips and tools I use, as well as exclusive peeks at projects before they’re mentioned anywhere else. I’m also going to encourage subscribers to tell me what they’d like to see more of so the articles are tailor-made.
Thanks for dropping in today. I plan talk about the newsletter on Monday’s show so remember to tune in for that. I’ll see you all on the other side.
My computer’s been crashing randomly and I’ve spent the last few days narrowing down the culprit. None of the scans I’ve run have identified anything so I’m just going to be pulling hardware until I find the problem. No thumbnails or video this week and no WIP Wednesday next week as that’s New Year’s Eve. December always turns into a bit of a mess schedule-wise, which is why I’m glad we planned the ending of Season 3 of the podcast early.
In personal news, I turned 32 yesterday so yay me. 😀
Hope you all have a good end to 2014, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, kickin’ Kwanzaa, fabulous Festivus, and whatever other holidays you may celebrate between now and when you hear from us again in 2015.
The thing I’ve been working on most lately is myself (my art, my business, my sanity) so I’m sharing some of that today.
Artist Hat vs. Manager Hat
The thing about pursuing a career as a professional artist is making art and sharing it with the world are both their own distinct job. As an artist, I think most of us are compelled to create. For some people that compulsion manifests itself as a hobby. Others strive to make it their life’s work. During our interview with Kevin MacLeod and Ryan Camarda, Kevin brought up the idea that art serves no purpose if nobody sees it. It’s an excellent point that art is made to be seen and not doing everything to get it in front of as many eyes as possible is a disservice to that purpose. My problem is that view eschews art therapy and people who make art for themselves like Outsider art. (Henry Darger is a fascinating example and the subject of the documentary In the Realms of the Unreal)
Putting all that aside, as a professional part of the job is getting your art seen. For a number of us this is where intentions clash. I saw it in college when professors would give students a project and they’d ignore all guidelines and direction. It’s baffling to pay thousands of dollars to attend a school, take a class, and then disregard instructions. Yet it happened regularly and at times I had to keep myself from doing it. Why? Well, artists make art to express themselves. When somebody tells you what to make you can feel like a circus animal, trained to do your trick the way they want you to. If there’s not enough room to be creative and make your project your own you can lose motivation. (As illustrated in Technical Dave 5 – Chocolate Rebellion)
Trying to manage yourself at times can feel like you’re of two minds. You make plans, you set goals, then you sit down to work and find you don’t feel passionate about it. If you chase down what you are passionate about it can be something fun but with little to no financial rewards. Professionals can’t afford the luxury of only fulfilling creative desires. We need to find that little part of the venn diagram where our interests intersect with what people will pay for. Sometimes this means reassessing and learning to appreciate other things, sometimes it means reassessing who you approach with your work and how.
Hangups
Creative Paralysis and Guilt
I started doing the Daily Doodle exercise for two reasons:
To get myself to draw every day
To allow myself to have fun drawing
I love drawing. I want to draw all day every day. But the reality of life is, when you’re in charge of your own schedule, things can get in the way. Building a site, promoting your work, having some form of a social life, it’s a lot to have on your plate. There’s just so much to do and there’s so many options now. It can become overwhelming and lead to analysis paralysis. You spend so much time trying to make your mind up on which action to take you fail to take action. Also, as much as artists struggle with guidelines, we usually need some semblance of them to make a project work. When somebody tells me to do, “whatever,” on a project I freak out. I have to figure out what it is, how I’m going to come at it, and then there’s trying to deliver my best while second guessing myself the entire time.
The second reason might sound odd considering I just said I love drawing. Why do I have to allow myself to have fun doing it then? It’s because of guilt. To get into the routine of producing things regularly you can’t often afford the time to enjoy and experiment. You have to get it done and move on to the next one. I remember hearing on Webcomics Weekly how occasionally they’re asked to show layout sketches and then they realize layouts don’t really factor into their workflow. I started realizing I don’t really draw for fun anymore because I’ve trained myself to see having fun with a drawing as I’m not getting things done. Like a person who can’t savor a meal because they’re afraid they’ll eat too much if they enjoy it.
Self Doubt
The main thing I want to focus on in 2015 is animation. I have lots of ideas and ambitions for things I want to make. When I’m in the thick of it I’m elated. My problem is I have limited experience. So when I come to something I haven’t done yet I have to work at it. I know I’ll lose days to learning the ropes. It’s just difficult to keep focus that you’re going the right way with something when you fall on your face. Some days I’ll be on fire and knocking things off my to do list. Other days I have to redo something because one link in the chain caused it to not come out right. Ask any artist how disheartening it is when a program crashes and you failed to save or your entire file got corrupted. These things creep up along with the insecurity most artists (heck, most people) feel in general.
Going Forward
You Oughta Be in Pictures
I’m planning to roll out my animations through several sites. Each has their own communities I need to get more involved in if I want to take better advantage of the opportunities they present.
Newgrounds
Newgrounds is a site that’s been around a long time. It’s known for hosting flash animations and games as well as other arts. There’s plenty of animators on the forums and I hope I can make some friends there. As I experiment with making games I’m sure it’ll prove useful.
YouTube
YouTube has been my go-to for video, for posting on these WIP Wednesday blogs, live podcasts, and just sharing internet videos in general. There’s the potential to share my work with the most viewers possible. But by the same token there’s also a lot of noise. And, as we’ve discussed on the podcast, their viewing algorithm is weighted against animators by rewarding longer, more frequently-uploaded content. Considering I have plans in the works for both a Lets Play and video review series we’ll see how things fair.
Vimeo
Vimeo is a video hosting site that also offers On Demand sales and rentals. They offer free, Plus, and Pro accounts. Their focus seems to be more on short films and telling stories. I know fairly little about their community but they do tend to have a more professional look.
Reopening Shop
When I start doing the Daily Doodle again I want it to be about being the most productive I can be. That means I need to be doing the drawings in bulk when I’m brainstorming and then sharing them here. Those doodles will then get refined and polished into finished pieces I’ll be putting on the Lil’ Reaper Books store. I’ve been studying which places to do the printing through, how to promote and market them, and thinking more critically about who I market them to.
Hello, everybody. To all my fellow Americans I hope you have a nice Thanksgiving tomorrow and a safe Black Friday if you’re getting in on that.
It’s been awhile since I’ve written a proper blog post so I thought I’d put one together before things get too hectic this holiday season. The end of the year is always kind of a smear as stuff starts happening. Here’s a quick rundown of things going on.
The NoRights Podcast
Ian and I are planning to do episodes until about the 15th of December. Season 4 will pick back up in January. Also, Ian and friend of the show Nate are going to be starting up their own geeky tech show in the near future. I’ll be sure to share the info on that once I know the details.
The Daily Doodle
I really liked this practice because it kept me drawing every day and posting content on the site regularly. My problem is I started focusing on having one finished drawing every day rather than doing a lot of drawings and posting the highlights on the site, as I should have done. Travel also disrupted things and I’m currently taking a break from it until after New Year’s. I want to strike a balance where I’m doodling daily while also working on a main project. Previously the doodles started taking priority when they really shouldn’t be.
WIP Wednesday
This helps keeps me accountable for making progress on things. I like making videos and posting pics as I work. Right now my main project I want to work on is a short film. I want to do something that’s at least a minute long. Probably not much longer than that so I don’t overcomplicate it or make it too ambitious. Once I’m done with that I’ll move on to the ~7 minute shorts and whatnot I’ve been planning. I’m just trying to nail down the concept so I can write it, storyboard it, make an animatic, and flesh it out. I’m looking into folklore to see if I can find something to adapt. Or I might just take some things I want to draw and build them into a story. I haven’t exactly figured it out yet. Once I do I’ll share drawings and other things on the blog.
Full disclosure: I’m submitting this review for a free license key. However I feel comfortable reviewing and recommending these programs because I use them pretty regularly and the free versions meet most people’s needs.
4K Video Downloader is a tool for downloading video and audio from YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Flickr, Facebook, DailyMotion, and various other sites. You can set the type of file you want to save, the quality, (all the way up to 4K) the save location, and other things in the settings. Enabling Smart Mode lets you save your settings as well as the save location so all you have to do is copy the URL and press one button. You can even download entire YouTube playlists at once. (You’ll need a license key to download more than 25 videos in a playlist at a time, however.) I like using it as a download manager because you can set a list and come back to it later. If there was any trouble downloading it displays an error message for that specific file and you can right-click on it to copy the URL.
You can currently download a version for free on Windows, OS X, and Linux.
4K YouTube to MP3 is a variant of 4K Video Downloader specifically for saving audio as MP3, M4A, or OGG in whatever quality you choose. I use it every week to make the audio version of our podcast I post on the site. It behaves almost identically to the video counterpart and is nice to have when you’re downloading audio and video at the same time.
I suggest you look over the specifics of what these programs can do as there’s plenty of boxes to tick for things like generating .m3u playlists from downloads and automatically adding files to iTunes.
My Issues
No program is perfect however these are actively being developed so when bugs do come up they tend to get fixed. There was a version this summer that kept crashing on launch for me that got really annoying. Also if you’re downloading from a site other than from the list above the titling format gets screwed up and can result in names like “http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fvids%2FName%2FNAME%2520-%252021%2520-%2520Name%2520-%2520Name%2520Name.mp4” making a file renamer worth it’s weight in gold.
My biggest problem, other than the occasional video just refusing to work, is junk files from failed downloads.
That top file was the video I was downloading. The other two are temp files as the top one comes in that are supposed to get deleted once it’s complete. Sometimes a download will fail and leave those junk files in your folder, sometimes it’ll even leave the failed download there and you have to look for it when you retry the download. A lot of this has been fixed in later versions though I still run into it once in awhile. I still recommend both products highly because they make it easy to save things in the format, size, and quality I prefer. They’re also great for bulk downloads making it easy to manage grabbing lots of files.
Archer is a show about spies. Except when it became about cocaine dealing. Aisha Tyler, voice of Lana Kane, describes it’s humor as “smilthy,” a mix of smutty and filthy. It’s a pretty apt description. It’s one of those shows where extreme personalities bounce off each other and get put in crazy situations. I knew when I put this drawing on my list it was going to be very reference-heavy. The characters have very specific looks and are more realistically drawn than most. That, coupled with how crazy yesterday’s doodle was and how tired I’ve been this weekend means this one is staying in doodle form until I can come back to it.
I’d like to take this time to announce I’m taking a break from the Daily Doodle. It’s been a fun exercise in putting stuff up regularly but I’m also starting to burn out. I think I’ve been approaching it wrong. I’ve been trying to make each day’s entry a finished piece rather than a chance to practice and experiment. I’ll come back to it when I figure out what I want to do with it and after the crazy holiday season.
Over the Garden Wall is a miniseries that ran on Cartoon Network recently. It’s about two boys trying to find their way home through strange woods while avoiding the Beast. It takes many winding twists and turns through it’s story but it all comes together elegantly.
ParaNorman is a beautiful stop motion film. You can just feel that the people making it are pouring themselves into every frame. It’s fun, the designs are unique, and as tumblr would say hits you right in the feels.
Don’t Starve has become one of my favorite games. It’s pretty harsh survival done in a cartoony Tim Burton/Edward Gorey style. It can be hard but that only makes it all the more rewarding when you progress and last longer.
