Articles Written By: Ben

Remember Pinwheel? Check out this week’s Billy Badass!

Minecraft and Chill 4.

Today’s project was to make some art to splatter on my various online profiles. Spent the morning looking for templates for social media art. Apparently it’s very hard to find something that has all the current sizes in one psd file. There were plenty of “cheat sheets” that listed measurements, downloadable offerings if you signed up for a mailing list, an extension for Photoshop I figured wouldn’t work on my version, some paid templates, and some people offered templates of the final reduced sizes which I guess is alright for mocking stuff up but not for actually producing anything.

Following that I decided to try caricaturing myself for a profile picture. I had a reference file of various head shots I put together for a self portrait awhile back. If I stuck to the ref too much I came out looking like Ray Stantz. I like what I have so far but I want to ideate on it a bit and try various styles. I’ve come to rely on the version of myself I drew in Townies, which is nice and all but it’s not the only way I can draw. I took an extended nap and just finished dinner. Going to spend the evening working on a background piece that hopefully encompasses my interests.

Daily Doodles should return in January. I’m going to give myself December to ramp up my daily drawing practice.

Happy Thanksgiving from this week’s Billy Badass!

Minecraft and Chill 4.

Slept in until dad called for lunch. Did some thinking about how I want the stream setup to go and started writing out what I wanted to do. I grabbed some of the sales on Steam and spent entirely too much time reading about alert tools. Then Frank wanted to craft some mines for awhile so I rebooted the server.

I’m the kind of person who likes to have a lot of stuff figured out ahead of time. I research details and weigh the options probably long before I need to. The thing is, I want to tie things in with the streams to make them engaging. The stuff I want to tie in is either not supported or I keep seeing how it’s vulnerable. In the end I should probably just scale back and think of minimum viable product. All the bells and whistles are secondary.

Happy Thanksgiving from this week’s Billy Badass!

Minecraft and Chill 4.

Recorded this week’s M&C, chatted with the folks online for a bit after, and stayed up late last night. Woke up a couple times today. Went to get dog food and a few things with my dad. Spent most of today trying to relax and catch up on sleep. Had an idea for a video project and looked up inspiration/reference for it. Not sure when I’ll get to it in the schedule of stuff I’ve got lined up. I want to get the next couple comics pages done before I work on anything bigger.

I’m glad I figured out my storage situation, I’m just waiting for it to get here so I can set it up. Whenever I order something online I always have the nagging worry in the back of my head, “It’s gonna show up at my door and it’ll be a brick in a box, and I’m gonna be like, ‘Oooo! They got me!’ And I’m gonna deserve it!” The few times I’ve had problems with stuff getting lost in shipping or arriving damaged the sellers have been plenty accommodating. It’s just the fear that I’m gonna get that one person that sends you a picture of something and disappears.

Happy Thanksgiving from this week’s Billy Badass!

Minecraft and Chill 3.

Went to bed at 6:45, woke up at 2 in the morning, got up an hour and a half later. Finally ordered a NAS solution. Narrowed it down to the biggest one at the best price. Hope it fits my needs when it gets here. Looked through some links I saved and added some new ones. Took a nap until dinner and grocery shopping. Gonna record another M&C tonight. Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving though we’re going to celebrate it on an off day so the restaurants aren’t crowded when we go out. Might sleep in and see what cyber sales are up. May get into some crowdfunding that’s going on.

Happy Thanksgiving from this week’s Billy Badass!

Minecraft and Chill 3.

Went to bed about 7 last night. Woke up four hours later. Decided to come downstairs and read, ended up watching a friend’s livestream. Went back to bed from 3:30 until around 10 when dad called. He wanted to set up a hunting blind, check his trail cams, and get some lunch. We’ve seen deer while we’ve been out there before but this time he saw a buck so he’s pretty excited. Helped him get groceries and hauled them in.

I’ve been looking over the different things you can do with Twitch, such as alerts and chatbots. I like the potential though I know I need to work on building an audience of people who would attend. Video archives are one thing but live stuff is more like an event. I’m thinking I’d like to tie that into a Patreon campaign. I’m just weighing my options right now. I want to record my drawing/animating process and archive it on the channel. I’ll cut my teeth on that over private streams. Once I upgrade my storage setup I’ll probably do that locally. Then I can focus on live events and engaging with people.

I should get back to work and save this researching for later. It’s just tempting with the holiday crunch closing in. You can read articles and collect links, feeling like you’ve got something done when making some art first would have been more productive. I’m going to try to keep my sleep schedule from going off the rails.

Happy Thanksgiving from this week’s Billy Badass!

Minecraft and Chill 3.

Today was spent slowing down and depressurizing. There’s been a lot of holiday tension floating around lately and I took some time to get it out of my system. Made a template to sort out on screen graphics for streams. Did some more comparison shopping for a storage solution and started looking into audio interfaces. Then dad wanted to get lunch. I fixed his install of Spotify for him and helped him text somebody on Craigslist.

I feel like getting in bed early after a few late nights. As November wraps up and December rolls in I’m going to give myself as much rest as possible.

Read the funnies with somebody you love in this week’s Billy Badass!

Minecraft and Chill 3.

Spent today looking over tutorials for OBS Multiplatform. Still need to run tests to figure out how to make it run smooth. I may just use Hangouts or a lower screen resolution or something if it comes down to it. I might be trying to capture too high for my system or doing too much with overlays. I think my animation software is the most intensive thing I’ll be running while I stream but I don’t want it to be on the edge of crapping out while I work. Frank and Ian wanted to record this week’s podcast tonight so I’ve been doing that this evening.

Read the funnies with somebody you love in this week’s Billy Badass!

Minecraft and Chill 3.

Recorded another M&C then ended up talking with Ian until 1:30 in the morning. Slept in until around 9, spent time looking into livestreaming options. I’m thinking I’d like to try streaming while I work in the studio since my last WIP video seemed to do well. I’d archive the long vids on my channel and do a time lapse version. The problem is it’s not all a perfect system.

Streaming Service

The obvious answer is YouTube since they support both events and stream now as well as automatically archive to your channel. I’m not a fan of needing to download the whole stream once it done to make a sped up version. A key reason to stream, aside from inviting people to watch, is not having to store the files on my machine. They’re also the most militant on copyright, which I’ll mention later.

Twitch Creative is an alternative, though it’s archives aren’t permanent and putting them on my YouTube channel later means fiddling. I’ve heard it’s currently more profitable to stream the creation of an animation on Twitch than it is to post the final cartoon on YouTube, but when you look at the requirements for being a partner that’s kind of a moot point at this juncture.

There’s also Picarto, which is geared towards streaming for artists. It features things like paid subscription services for viewers, posting commission info, and flagging adult content. Recording requires a paid account, however.

Encoder

Hangouts doesn’t require an encoder but YouTube streaming and the other sites do. Today I looked over the free version of Wirecast Play and OBS Multiplatform. WP had a lot of things greyed out unless you buy a fuller version. My software started to chug a bit so I need to optimize whichever one I use. (I should also probably upgrade my RAM to replace the original bits that went bad this year) It could have been from having too many things running or from trying to isolate my art app window.

Audio

This is something I’m still trying to figure out. I listen to music while I work. Twitch and Picarto have a similar “as long as it’s not the main focus of your stream” policy while YouTube is notorious for their copyright flagging system. Personally I think it’s safer to just not input what I’m listening to. I’m not crazy about the idea of leaving the streams mute but piping in royalty free audio sounds like a resource hit if I’m not listening to it and I work better when I’m free to listen to what I want.

Video

As I mentioned I’ve been trying to isolate my art app window and maybe overlay it on top of a proper HD graphic. That way I can look at my other screen and windows while only showing my work space. I also need to sort out what to display when I take a break. Maybe a looping gif with a timer? I don’t know yet.

Final Thoughts

Typing this out has helped me decide a few things. I’ll run some tests and see what’s the least intensive setup. I haven’t had much success with streaming in the past, feeling like I need to be “on” while broadcasting. I’d like to treat this differently. I might not even make them public while I’m recording, just to keep the pressure off.

Read the funnies with somebody you love in this week’s Billy Badass!

Minecraft and Chill 2.

Went to bed at 7:30 last night, woke up about 3 hours later with stuff on my mind. Came downstairs to do some research and look for browser plugins that will make organizing things better. Went back to bed around 5, got up at noon when dad called. Did some running with him, came home and played Minecraft with Frank for a bit. Went for groceries. Think tonight we’re going to record another Minecraft and Chill which is apparently becoming a thing.