Just a little snippet of a short msg between Hawk and me this morning:
<hawk>: http://www.dlisted.com/files/caption0722.jpg
<piro>: hahaha
<hawk>: that better not be you fred *eyes you*
<piro>: hehe
<piro>: no
<piro>: i never take him outside
Got several PDFs from the Kodansha BOX team this morning with the layout for the Faust preview, which is finally going to print soon :) Yay!
Now if Jack would settle down maybe i can get this damn comic finished. Ugh.
The new Last.fm site re-design is pretty nice. I have to say, the old design was a little jarring at times, this is much, much better. It’s always nice to see it when a site gets updated in a POSITIVE way. Not always the case. :P Thankfully, the MT site update was definately an upgrade, even if it didn’t change all that much visually.
My little experiments with YouTube yesterday and the day before came off pretty good. Aside from the need to add some music or commentary to keep viewers from falling asleep as the lines come together, its not bad. Of course, i wish they were better drawings - its hard to go back and record a drawing process AFTER you have drawn something. I’m going to cobble together some background music in Garage Band to run mindlessly in the background of the next one, and try adding some commentary voice over. I’m not sure if i should comment WHILE i draw or do the voice over AFTER. Doing it while i draw might interrupt the brain cells as they are focusing on the drawing, doing it after might not really be as interesting. I can easily do both, its just a question of trying both.
When i first started talking with the guys who re-did the MT site, we started talking about what to do about the FredArt site. I don’t want to simply re-code this site without thinking about how i really want it to WORK. I tried early on to think ahead to what i might or might not do, but in recent months i’ve started twiddling with bosting content online in ways that really do give me some interesting ideas for how this site can really be something different and interesting. I can capture and upload screenshots with very little effort now (using automator), and i am working on ways to make video clips of the process that do not require lots of setup or thinking (that’s pretty important when it comes to me). That kind of content on a regular basis, especialy when tied in with the Fredrin twitter and RSS feeds make for some interesting possibilities.
The only problem with using my youtube account again is that now i’m getting tons of youtube emails ^^;; ah well.
I actually started something writing something earlier that in the end felt made a pretty decent rant for the MT site, so… that’s where that’ll go once i check it over. :P.
Still trying to get my head around what organizational/clipping software will work best for me. Started with looking at Google Notebook, then i looked into Evernote, Yojimbo, and then DevonThink. The whole thing gives me a headache, honestly, because none of them REALLY seem to do what i want (make it really easy to snag bits and pieces of information, images, etc, and store them in a way that makes it easy to find and browse through them later on). I DID find out two things about Evernote that answers one of my ‘wish it did this’ things - you CAN have notebooks that are local to your computer and are NOT sync’d online (and therefore not using your memory allowance (which is pretty paltry if you are like me and mostly collect images) but the only way to actually put anything in those non-sync’d notebooks is to drag it into the program specifically. Not quite right, honestly.
I still worry that the program really won’t be able to handle the large amount of material i want to manage, which keeps me thinking that DevonThink is really going to be the program i’ll end up using. It’s a bit dated compared to the others (interface needs updating, tagging is a little difficult, etc), but there is a new version in the works that should really bring it to the forefront of information management on Macs… or it will be a total dud. Who knows. Of course, it’s the most expensive of the three. Figures
I had to pass on seeing Hellboy 2 with some friends over the weekend, but when Hellboy 1 was on TV earlier this evening… yeah, i couldn’t help but sit and watch it :) Spent most of the day working on Chapter 10 stuff, making sure i have everything ready to go (which i don’t of course, not really :P) but this comic is pretty straight forward, so i just gotta finish it.
It IS fun to be back into the comic again. As much as i look forward to doing little side stories, i always find myself eager to get back to the main story. That’s good, i guess.
Last week was a good week - I actually managed to get three comics done early and posted on time (using the new website back ends feature that allows me to put the comic in que early and have it automatically post at 1am). It felt good, and i am going to do what i can to do this from here on out if and where possible. Friday’s comic wasn’t fully hatched, which was a little bit of a bummer, but it DID get posted on time.
Right now, i’m finishing up the hatching, which shouldn’t take too long, then back to Monday’s comic. Really hope i can post on time tonight.
I know people are not really enjoying this omake very much, it’s not as much fun as some of my previous ones, i know. A lot of it has been more an exercise in loosening up more than providing the best possible entertainment in the world, and im sorry for that. Hopefully when the next chapter starts up next week or sooner (depends on a few things, i’d like to start it THIS week, honestly) things will be a little more enjoyable. The big things that have happened in this omake are not really story related - you might have noticed that i’m doing a lot more full body stuff, and that the art has improved a little over the past year. The other improvement is the posting of FINISHED comics. I am very keenly aware of how the tail end of Chapter 9, while quite readable, does not show the level of finished comics you guys not only should expect but that you deserve while reading Megatokyo. It’s been a high year for me personally, with the birth of my son Jack, but the comic did suffer quite a bit, and my hope is that from here on with a fresh new chapter things can get back on track to being a good online comic that people look forward to reading.
There’s also another big project for MegaGear i’m working on this week which is going to take up a lot of time early in the week, but hopefully it won’t impact the comic schedule. I’m going to try not to let it. The upshot of it will be that i’ll be offering full color character designs on t-shirts in time for back-to-school. THAT will be very cool, if all works out.
Oh, i found a lot of friend requests on last.fm, so i went ahead and took care of those.
The current omake relies so heavily on almost fanboy-like knowledge of not only Full Metal Panic and Clannad but a plethera of other anime and other creative works that i’m going to work with Ray and WK to pull together a little guide to walk you through all of them. This way, if you are not a hard core fanboy of such things you can get a sense of the kind of useless knowledge that runs through our heads.
I am fond of putting in odd little details, for example - there is a peverse logic to the kinds of firearms being fielded in this omake. I’m not sure if anyone has identified the handgun that Piroko is using - it’s a Seburo BoBsonS, which is the only weapon in the omake so far that is not an actual production weapon.
I’m actually getting a headache just thinking about pulling all this randomness together. Wheee. 
Temperature control is not only important for things like computers and other sensitive equipment, it’s also pretty important for the organic components of the working environment (namely me). Now that i am drawing pretty much exclusively on the Cintiq, there is only one little issue i have with it and that is the fact that the area where my hand usually rests has a tendency to get pretty warm. Hot, even.
This issue is pretty easily solved by directing air flow from a desktop fan over the surface of the cintiq (you can see the fan i’m using to do this in this photo of my work area.) It’s not something that needs to be on all the time, in fact i hate to have air blowing on me all the time. It works fine, cools things down, and then i turn it off.
The problem is that this little Honeywell desk fan, as good as it is, is a little TOO good. Even at it’s lowest setting, the air flow is too high to be blowing on my hand like that. So as dumb as it sounds, i’m looking for a solution. Pretty easy, right? There are lots of fans out there to choose from.
Well, not really. What i want is a small fan that makes very little noise, is of high enough quality that it won’t burn out after a month of use, and has variable fan speeds (not the 2 or 3 settings that most fans have). Someone has to make a fan like that, right?
Not that i’ve seen so far. -_-
The closest i’ve come to seeing something that will probably do the job is one of these two Vornado fans, the “Zippi” desk fan or the “Flippi” desk fan (could they have stupider sounding names?). One of these will probably do the trick, but it’s STILL not quite what i was looking for…
The thought struck me that what would be REALLY cool would be a custom fan of some sort that was made using CPU or Computer Case cooling fans and some sort of control with a potentiometer to adjust the fan speed to whatever felt most comfortable… it might be something i could even cobble together myself.
Any thoughts?
(and this kind of thing is exactly what the fredart blog is perfect for, little stuff like this :P)
Yay! it is indeed alive The web guys have managed to migrate all the old movable type stuff to wordpress here, and while it will probably need some tweaks (actually, we’re looking at revamping and rebuilding the entire fredart site) it’s good to have it back up and online.
This is really just a test to make sure it is all working properly, which it does indeed seem to be.
Well, I’d love to say that the start of 2008 got off and running the way I wanted to, but it’s actually been more like what people who’ve had kids before told me - go to 2 comics per week for the next few months. I didn’t want to, but thats where im at, and the past two weeks its been more like one. That’s not good.
A lot of people told me not to discount just how much Jack is going to impact my ability to work. 
Taking this into account, i realized that the biggest thing i needed to do was get myself organized so that i could work more effectively. This was a lot more work than i anticipated. I finally set up my office/studio (i was in kind of a temporary setup here at the house before, where my drawing table and computer were in two different locations), and i’ve been working to clean up a lot of my development and reference material (i’m getting tired of not being able to find things) and work towards a more manageable production sequence.
Most of these efforts have really gone quite well. I feel pretty refreshed about what i’m doing and i’m ready to dive in and write and draw like a ‘professional’ comic artist (AKA ‘madman’)… if only Jack would give his dad more than 20 minutes at a time to do so.
Jack is 2 months old today It’s hard to believe that he joined us little over 8 weeks ago… honestly, it feels like its been more like six or seven months. He’s over 8 lb. now and is doing well. For the past few weeks he’s had some very uncomfortable digestive problems that have made him fussy, irritable, and in need of constant comforting. It was keeping him from sleeping for very long, and for the past few weeks one of us has been up at all times for when he needed attention. Thankfully, with some dietary adjustment, he’s doing much better and is starting to feel more peaceful more often, and now and again IS sharing this peace with his parents. Last night he slept through the night for the first time… and so did his Parents.
I have not been posting big apologies for not being able to get on track with the comic the way i need to and planned for 2008, but I am getting there. I appreciate your patience and have been as frustrated the lack of finished product as much as you all have.
It’s only January 9th, i have the whole year ahead of me. I’ll get there.
I’m not really sure what it is about having Jack around, or the transition into fatherhood, but it seems to have sparked in me a far more serious and orderly approach to writing. This might not be evident from the long delays in getting comics done (much of this is due to JackCare, but not all of it), but for the first time in a years I’ve been able to step back from the nebulous quagmire that is the Megatokyo story and try to knock some order into it - with some actual success for once.
Oh, I’ve attempted this many times before. Sort of like my attempts to use personal organizers and planners I have had nothing but failed attempts to apply order to my brain’s murky and muddy effluent. (The whole issue of how to better organize for “creative” people is not something new. One program I have used in beta and felt like might work for me is Omni Focus, but the two months before Jack was born was not a good time to be testing organizational software :P) I spent some time researching how other people write and organize themselves, and took a far more serious look at how to actually use some of the basic tools Scrivener gives me to organize better. I also fine tuned the script features to better automate script writing so that it helped rather than hindered my thinking process.
I’ve had a lot of real conundrums to consider recently, in regards to the story. There are a things that have been worked out for some time that I am quite happy with, but then there are other things that I am not very happy with. It’s not because they are particularly bad per se, but because they don’t feel as inspired as they should be. Not everything you write will tilt the moon and move the earth, but it should at least advance the growth (or decline) of characters in ways that make it worth drawing (and reading). Some of my writing for this chapter, produced in the midst of a somewhat difficult and worrisome pregnancy, is certainly not up to par. Some of it falls really flat for me, and some of it is just not worked out sufficiently. Some of it is little more than problems getting from point A to point B, where B is pretty awesome - but it diffuse the impact of “B” if the readers mind is numb from the journey there. I can do better than this, I hate it when I’m not able to before the comic goes live.
It’s nice to be making some progress in getting better structure to my writing, over time is is sure to result in a more reliable flow of comics from me, but the killer is dealing with muddling through it while trying to produce comics you are not yet really happy with. What’s really weird is when I find myself just not able to really click with a comic I’m trying to draw. That’s usually a sign that the subconscious writer that lives somewhere in my brain is trying to tell me that I’m getting it all wrong, and that its not part of the “Story” that he has already worked out and so jealously guards. I wish he’d just tell me where he wants things to go sometimes trying to figure out what he wants results in much hair pulling and agony. I usually get it at some point, which makes it worth it in the end, but I’d like to try to start figuring that out before I am in the middle of drawing.
That said, back to work on Friday’s comic. I said I’ll do three comics this week, and I am. Once I get this one posted, I’ll roll onto Mondays. I should be able to post this sometime this afternoon. Stress and hair loss aside, it always feels worth it when things finally, inevitably, click into place.
As most of you are by now aware, a little over a week ago our son Jack Obadiah was born. We knew he would probably be coming early (as indicated in the rant that is at this moment still up). I’ve had a lot of crazy stressed out weeks, but last week topped them all.
No, not just because it was our first week as new parents (in and of itself a life changing event) but because Baby Jack came early and we had to deal with a number of potential problems, one after the other, that thankfully has all come around and not become problems or health issues. After a week, it looked like Baby Jack had cleared entry to the world and really is doing fine. His launch crew is tired, worn out, emotionally drained, but very happy. As i said in the few updates i did to my twitter last week, Mom and Baby are fine and doing well, and now are doing well enough that Dad can relax just a little.
I can honestly say that i didn’t even go near a computer for days last week. I really need to say a big thank you to Dom and the rest of the MT crew for covering the site for me this week. I AM sorry about a whole week of Shirt Guy Dom comics. Thanks for being patient as i get my act together and get back to work, this time as the proud dad of a great little guy named Jack.
Now to work on a MT rant to give a slightly better account of how everything went down
