fredart : blogbits

its 2am, and once again, i’m not going to have a comic done tonight. I am so fsking frustrated by this. i was doing so well earlier, i had half the drawings done in plenty of time, then i had one fucking frame, ONE FRAME, that took 2 and a half hours. And after all that work, it really doesn’t look that good. subsequent frames dont look that good either. I still have one frame to do! I have good days, and i have bad days, thats fine, but days where you are in a groove then suddenly fall out of it and go skidding across the gravel on your face just… sucks.

I can’t for the life of me figure out how I can go from doing really well for several hours, then for no reason whatsoever things stop working. I dont know if it’s subconscious, a sad reality of my total lack of professionalism and any real training… i don’t know. Even with everything else i did today, this comic should have been on time, but its not. There is no goddamn excuse, and i dont make any, it’s just not done and readers aren’t the only ones disappointed.

pardon my rant, but im tired, and i’m upset. This happens a lot, really. i always feel this way when i dont have a comic done by 1am, and you know how many comics i’ve finished by 1am in the past few months. Not many. Kinda sad that almost every comic i do is accompanied by some level of upsetment and stress because of my own incompetence. Maybe its better if people don’t know that. Might explain why im so sensitive to criticism. ^^;;

(i shoudn’t post this, but i will. blogs should be what they are. For the MT site i filter out this kind of stuff, because its been made very clear to me that people do not wanna hear it anymore. Lotta people dont want to hear what i’m really like, just some kinda filtered nirvana version that doesn’t make them want to smack me. The realities of what a person is can be less impressive than the reality, as we all know. No one reads this site so i should be fairly safe to post it here.)

Nothing more interesting that scripting this morning. Whatever this cold is that i had much of the week, it seems to come in waves. i was fine tuesday, but yesterday i felt like hell (i was really wobbly last night, and some benadryl was enough to really put me down to totally useless ^^;;) Today i feel a lot better, in fact i had enough energy this morning to clean up around the apartment. Today is gonna be way too busy. Not only do i have to do a comic today, but i have to help Sarah with end of year stuff, inventory, and some final tweaks on the new Megagear website. Ugh, the list just keeps getting longer. Anyways, it wont get done if i dont get to work. Tomorrows comic should be fun

- pirotunes: Pete Namlook & Richie Hawtin - Do Bassdrums Have Feelings -

I can’t believe i actually managed to do a comic in a more normal time frame yesterday, even to finish it an hour early. I haven’t done that in a while. I hope that means that i’m finding my groove again, i really do. It kinda feel like it. I was in a rut of not being able to finish comics on time and having to rush to finish them the next day. That, of course, just pushed things behind with everything else including the next comic, and it is a cycle that’s really hard to break. Throw in a few holidays, a busy online retail store, a smattering of disasters and forest fires, and frankly, i think i’m doing pretty good, considering

The blogging stuff here on fredart has worked out pretty good. I feel comfortable with it, and I think it helps give a little more of the connectivity that has been missing with my inability to rant on the MT site as often as i would like. I can take 10 min and do a blog entry, but a MT rant takes a lot longer, i think people expect them to be more (hell, i expect them to be more) and the fewer i do, the more people expect out of the ones i do do and… as you can see, its a pretty bad cycle.

lots of stuff to talk about, i’m gonna turn over and see what i can do about putting a rant together for MT. I have lots of things that i want to do and get better at doing for the new year. One of them is to start free sketching more - this site needs more sketches. It is also my goal to work on coloring. I am not really happy with the kimiko poster. it doesn’t really feel like my own style, not yet. Anyways, i think i’ll talk about some of this stuff over on MT.

- pirotunes: Ken Ikeda — Borderland — tzuki [Moon] (2000) -

This is a little random, but its probably more interesting than “i feel a little better this morning, and hopefully i can manage to have a productive day but im behind already because i have been sick for the past two days”… i have a problem, and it really effects my productivity when i am here at home.

i can’t get the damn cats to stay off my lap.

If you are familiar with the 12″ apple powerbook, you will know that it is NOT a very large laptop. try typing on one with a 10 lb cat on your lap. It doesn’t matter how much i try to toss them off or push them away, these cats feel they have some god given RIGHT to my lap. The damn cat will nudge her way into my lap between me and the laptop and then curl up and push the laptop away to make more room for herself. She has literally pushed my laptop back with enough force sometimes to toss it to the floor (i think thats how my screen got bent recently :(. And what’s worse is that even when i can manage to type and hold my computer and have her there at the same time, she gets pissed off at me for moving around and irritating her! gyaaahh!!

(she’s doing it right now, actually. She’s starting to get irritated at me for typing so much.) and if i get rid of her, another cat will move in and start the whole process over. Anyways, i love my cats, but they can make working at home a real struggle, they REALLY don’t know when to quit and they never give up. I thought cats were supposed to be quiet, sleepy and aloof. yeah, right. not my cats.

- pirotunes: The Crüxshadows - Seraphs [Revox Lost Souls Mix] -

I think i have to face the fact that i’m sick. It’s nothing massively incapacitating, but… it’s enough to really make me feel like crap and make me work at a snails pace. On sunday i almost fell asleep while drawing. i couldn’t keep my damn eyes open. I can’t believe that it took me till 4pm to finish it today. (sigh)

i’d write more, but honestly my head is just way too foggy. I’m gonna curl up here and hopefully the throbbing in my head will go away.

- pirotunes: Mc 900 Ft Jesus - Buried At Sea -

Hi all. It’s been a scramble, right up to the end here, to get things done. Yesterday’s comic took forever to finish, but i think it turned out ok. I was worried about how ping’s outfit would come off, but it is (i think) right in the zone i wanted it to be in.

we need to go in and wrap presents and stuff, plus there is some traveling involved. yay. Anyways, hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday. I’m not taking a break over christmas - there will be a comic monday (having christmas on saturday is just about perfect for my schedule)

I still have one more gift i want to get for sarah… i wonder if i’ll have time.

yes, of course, you know i’m pretty happy about the whole snow thing I love snow (yeah, like no one has figured that out yet). We got quite a bit last night, i was surprised. I wish i hadn’t been so tired, i would have gone out and trudged around in it a little, late at night. Nothing is more lonely, forlorn, peaceful and sombre than a heavy snow outside in your apartment complex late late at night when no one else is around. We live near a highway, too, so the resulting quiet can be… almost unnerving. Snow absorbs sound and noise, and even blizzards can be quiet things, once the wind dies down.

Anyways, working on tomorrows comic. Scripting is easier now that i’ve got some momentum. We might have some company this afternoon (not sure yet, they might not head to a2 because of the snow) which of course will take a chunk out of comic production time, but with some luck i can get a chunk done before they come.

- pirotunes: Toroidh - Never Again Part 6 - Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it -

Today was a day spent running around doing all sorts of little things i’ve been avoiding for weeks. Christmas rush at the store seems to be winding down, the book is finished, chapter 6 is rolling along… we’re busy, but at least sarah and i have a little time to breathe.

Of course, then there is the small problem of christmas gifts. As of this morning, i had taken care of only ONE person’s gifts (that being sarah). Yes, these are the most challenging, and i am quite pleased with how… resourceful i was this year. ^^;; Then i realized i really should get stuff for other people too. I have a very small little world i live in, i admit.

That’s where sarah show’s how amazingly fsking brilliant she is. I can rack my head for weeks on end trying to think of gifts for people. Talk with her for a bit, and suddenly she has these amazing ideas that are just perfect. With her help (and her resourcefulness) i was able to take care of most of my gift dilemmas today, all while running other biz errands.

anyways, lots of inbetween stuff today. I’m using ecto, a sweet little program hawk encouraged me to use to make blogging here easier… and he was right, it’s a perfect little program for this activity. So much so, i wish it worked with Megatokyo… and with that thought in mind this morning, i twiddled with some things, and i actually CAN use it to write my MT rants. Not directly, of course (there’s no way to integrate something like this with the way MT handles rants) but it’s just right for what i want to do. With that in mind, i really need to put up a new MT rant… i’ll work on that tonight.

oh, and other wants. I really think i should get this for my 12″ powerbook. The damn thing gets pretty hot, and it isn’t as comfortable as you might think to have it on your lap for extended periods of time. This is pretty cool. Ah well, next christmas

- pirotunes: Peter Benisch - Waiting For Snow- Part II -

Well, at least i feel a little more alive today than i have since finishing the stuff for book 3. I can’t even bear to look at all the things i have dropped during the book scramble and the things i need to do. Today should be a fairly decent day to pull the comic together - the concept and idea for wednesday’s comic and the following arcs is pretty clear, i just need to write the actual dialogue (something that isn’t that hard when the concept is clear, you just let the characters talk).

I still have christmas shopping to do, but i don’t know if i’ll get to it. I’m a horrible person when it comes to holidays, i forget people and things, i don’t pay attention to friends (i have few friends because i really am a horrible person when it comes to maintaining relationships … the only one i’m even remotely good at maintaining is between me and sarah I think people think i must have tons of friends and stuff… not really, i’m actually chronically introverted.

I suppose i’m feeling guilty, as i always do around any holiday, about the fact that im terrible at maintaining the connections between myself and other people. Sometimes it will be weeks before i check my voice mail (i have a good friend who was up here with his wife for a week, and i didn’t find out till i checked my voice mail after they left -_- I’m kinda scared to call him ^^;;) Family, friends, i swear they all start to wonder what happened to me, and most of them are only really able to keep tabs on me via the websites.

There’s something kinda sad about that, but i just can’t put my finger on it… anyways, time to head to the factory and stare at my proverbial wall.

- pirotunes: Col De Vence - Une Topographie Sonore -

Gah. What a mess yesterday was. I mean, a MESS. That’ll teach Seraphim and i to take a day off from MT stuff.

I dove into story development early sunday morning, and things were moving along pretty good. I’m still working on writing out the details and ironing out the problems for chaper 6. (oh, and i have been using a new version (a PRO version no less!) of my favorite writing tool - Omni Outliner. The new version is in beta but it has all the features i’ve been dyin for since i started using this thing. I love this program The hard part when looking at overall story stuff is to zoom in on a single script after looking at the whole thing. It takes a while, sometimes, to get the script to come out right, esp when it’s important points in the story. Todays comic was kinda hard because there was no real humor to it, nor was it really serious per se… i get nervous about those, i guess i shouldn’t anymore, people seem to react to story movement as much as humor.

What sucked yesterday was just how friggin COLD it was. Here at the factory, it was cold enough, and you could just feel the heat getting sucked out of the windows. We had a little graduation party for sarah (she just got her Masters degree. yay!) and then went back to work. I struggled with the art quite a bit, mainly because what i was trying to get across, in thier expressions, was so hard to quantify. I was not happy with things when we left for home.

Of course, i was even less happy when we got home. In all this lovely frigid cold, one of the coldest days in a while, and the damn furnace was out… AGAIN. it’s the third time in the past few months. I’m sort of getting frustrated with it. Hopefully when i get home maintenance will have stopped by and fixed it.

Really thinking Sarah and i should just cut and go see A Series of Unfortunate Events. I’ve even been hearing that it’s not a massive disappointment (like every recent Harry Potter film, those horrible LoTR, the abysmal Shrek 2… and every other ‘big’ movie i’ve heard of the past few year… )

and people wonder why i stay here and work rather than watch tv or go see a movie. Gee, i wonder.

- pirotunes: Exodus - Tempo Of The Damned