I spent some time yesterday looking over CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) programs for the Mac. My thoughts on that ended up looking like a good MT rant, so i’ve opted to post those thoughts on Megatokyo on monday. That’s one of the troubles with having basically two blog spaces on the net - Fredart and Megatokyo. Sometimes i feel like i should just mesh the two together and have the MT site show whatever it is i’m blogging here and visa versa. Yet, maybe the idea of having two different spaces to rant is a good thing. My thoughts here are supposed to be more random and more everyday, a true blog, whereas the entries on the Megatokyo page are supposed to be more like a column or an op/ed piece. The integrity and balance between the two has to come from my own personal discipline in writing them than any set structure they have. Beah, who cares. It’s hard to apply any sort of structure to the randomness that comes from my oddly broken brain. Leave it to me to knock out a quick fredart blog that makes for a better MT rant. 
My writing efforts this weekend have gone pretty well, i have a much better sense of the balance of things for the tail end of the chapter than i had, and hopeful tonight i can nail down the last little tweaks i have to the Circuity story. I’ve spent more time on the MT writing than the Circuity rewrite so far, but both need attention.
Actually, i always seem to have this kind of duality that forms up in my life. The MT site vs this one, trying to decide which of two stories i want to work on (MT and Warmth, MT and Circuity, etc) I don’t know why i do this, but when i try to focus on just one thing i barely get anything done on it. Having the pressure of something else that needs doing seems to be a necessary component of what makes me actually work on things.
Broken indeed 
- pirotunes: Free Sound Collective - Tidepool -
I know what you mean. I think that, if there’s only one thing to focus on, there’s a feeling that you’ll always have lots of time to do it and, thereby, putting it off. However, if there are other things to get done, there is a feeling of urgency and time constraint as well as the whole “what if something else comes up then I won’t have the time” kind of feeling.
Yay for “oddly broken brains”!(?)
yah i know how it feels to get one thing done but you are in a struggle to get the other done lol i too feel like i have broken my brain in two just to get stuff done… ^^
still that doll is wierd…
Oh well, we all need something to keep us pushing to get stuff done. I wish I had something to do that for me so I could get my Trig done!
You’ve blogged that you use Adobe Illustrator to assemble your strips. Have you ever looked at Manga Studio?
I don’t know anything about it other than what’s on their website but it looks real interesting. Its a port of a Japanese program, and apparently a lot of Manga artists in Japan use this software. According to their website, it supports scanning art and direct drawing and inking with a full library of zipatone like effects. There is a Window’s version now and a Mac version is supposed to be on the way.
I’ve used Comic Life, on my Mac, and its pretty nice. It has a number of limitations, the greatest being that you can’t draw directly in in the program, only import art already created. It does allow you to compose the art within the panel and add the dialog, balloons, and sfx.
If you’ve got more than one task in front of you, you can decide which one you’d like to put off the most and do the other one. With only one task, avoidance means you don’t accomplish anything.
Isn’t procrastination fun?
I pretty much decided to keep my blogs seperate between personal music thoughts and business type stuff for Pure Shift. It does really work better that way. As time goes on, I’m slowly starting to adopt my work routine, although, it is kind of rough. I have a lot of respect for you having such success taking a hobby and turning it into the way you make a living. I have faith that I’ll find my way over time.
oops …. missed remarking on the Ruri doll and her companions…. have to echo Kremer “creepy” yet the quality is fascinating. Japanese robotics is going to get sooo interesting in about 20 years o.O
Nice tempo on the story pace … yeah, I can see a bit of the awkwardness but if I back up and read 10 or 15 strips the pace doesn’t stumble much. I shouldn’t be surprised Megumi remembers him… not too many blonde guys in the neighborhood.
Sooooo, having DC in on Warmth means you have dragons on your butt to do something this year, eh?
apologies for the double post.. but the Ruri doll gave me an “uncanny valley” flash. Humanoid robotics may end up doing “the anime schtick” to avoid the problems with looking real enough that the micro-differences freak people out. Look out for the big eyed housemaid robots….
What do you need a OS X CAD program for?
vexx: You don’t have to wait 20 years, the prototypes already exist.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0610_050610_robot.html