What I Did Today

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

Minecraft and Chill 5.

Had trouble falling asleep last night. Took some sleep aids but was still up until around 3 this morning. I think the root of the problem is feeling like I’m not in control of my time during the day so I stay up at night to rebel. That’s no good because people expect to interact with me during the day. It makes my sleep time erratic and it doesn’t deal with the actual problems. When I’m tired I get frustrated and my anxiety comes back. So I’m going to be doing what I can to empower myself.

Spent today penciling and inking page 22. My hand’s been cramping so I’ll save the color and the shading for tomorrow.

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

Minecraft and Chill 5.

Finished recording M&C last night and then stayed up until 4 watching Spike’s art stream. Had a headache most of the day after dad woke me up in the morning wanting to go eat. Took a nap when I got home, had some dinner, wondering what borked my sleeping schedule so hard. I’m not going to lie, this has messed me up. I’m going to work on comics and try going to bed about 10, see if I can right this boat.

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

Minecraft and Chill 5.

Went to bed early last night, woke up before midnight. Spent some time collecting music for a thing. Stayed up until 4-something in the morning watching CartoonCyborg stream. Went back to bed for awhile, sorted the music I’d collected into possible sections for the thing. Went to dinner and bought groceries. Came home and recorded M&C with the guys.

I’ve decided to do something of a concentration shift. The comics are important to me and I’m going to keep on top of them the best I can. But I really need to start thinking of myself as an animator first. Whenever I try to build up a buffer it gets eaten away before I can progress on other things. So animating is going to be my primary focus on days when I’m in the studio.

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

Minecraft and Chill 4.

After my nap yesterday I was going to work on that profile background. I got some very bare scribbles started then stayed up until 3:30 watching other artists stream. I was very slow getting up this morning, then dad wanted to grab lunch and visit a friend of his. Then I spent the afternoon watching a stream about Adobe’s rebranding of Flash to Animate. I’m going to try getting a better sleep tonight so I can be up early again.

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.