fredart : blogbits

An odd thing about writing, at least for me, is that most of my best ideas come when i am working on other things. The past few weeks have been really good from a creative standpoint. Putting it all down in a usable form is not so easy, of course.

I’ve ben working quite a bit with Scrivener to zero in more tightly on better writing methods, a better ability to put in information, ideas, etc. Organize and reorganize them as needed to adjust to changes in story details and/or direction. Not so easy considering how my brain works, but i’ve been making progress. The hardest thing to get used to in Scrivener was to break things down into as many scrivenings as possible. I was doing entire scripts in one scrivening, but the way others seem to do it is give each panel its own scrivening, which makes it easier to move things around, and to use some auto numbering… you get the idea.

A few other things i’ve been playing with include Google Notebook, which seems to be remarkably convenient (we’ll see how well it works for me and if i keep using it). i’ve tried Yojimbo and DevonThink but the clipping aspects of them are still somewhat akward for me - yojimbo would work great if you could drag and drop firefox pages to it and have the title of the item match the title of the webpage instead of just the raw URL (this works in going from Safari to Yojimbo but not Firefox to Yojimbo - can’t really figure out why). I collect a lot of random data and bits that i can never seem to find when i need them, so i’m hoping that some sort of clipping/data and indexing program will help. I am probably going to experiment with Yojimbo more… I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’ve also been using del.icio.us for my bookmarking since the beginning of the year. I wont link to it yet because… i dunno, i hide links or things that i dont want shared, and there’s nothing there i really don’t want people to see, but there is this weird sense that people can build a sense of your thoughts by looking at what you are bookmarking. That’s not a problem, really, but when you are a writer… do you really want people following what you are bookmarking and looking at?

The other thing, the real challenge and the secret to using bookmarking like this well is becoming adept and organized at properly tagging things. The biggest problem with tagging is that you really dont get a sense of what works well until you have been tagging for a while. Revising your tagging schema after the fact is NOT easy, at least not with any of the tools that i’ve seen so far, which is really surprising.

Tagging is talked about a lot as a powerful way of managing data, but there are so few decent tools that seem to focus on how to work with and revise your approach to tagging after you start to get a better sense of what works best for you. You can have all your new tags up to snuff, but the stuff already in there… who has time to go thru and edit every bookmark they have taken in the past year? Where’s the data management tools and rule-based search and change functions to aggregate and combine similar tags? where are the tools that let you look at the structure of your tagging and see where you have redundant tagging and where you are lacking refined tags? Maybe it’s just me.

For now, my data collection and management is more organized than it used to be in the past for me - urls dragged to the desktop and dumped into a ‘websites’ folder. This is much better.

Oh, and if you are newer mac user and are looking for some of the great aps to experiment with, here’s a really great list of what really are some of the best aps for macs. Have fun.

Bweh. Last night i found myself twicking and twicking at the drawings over and over again as i adjusted and erased and modified the expressions, getting hung up on details and discarding frames and redrawing frames on 2nd and 3rd sheets of paper to be merged into the final comic when i scanned… and as it got later and i wondered and worried as i often do about the time it was taking.

The comic has been going well, but i’ve had a lot of trouble getting other things done. I’ve been trying to squeeze things into the day or two worth of time i have between comics - things like new products, a 2008 calendar, a few doujinshi projects i want to get under way, dealing with the Kodansha translations, trying to get to things with the new website, etc. My stubbornness about insisting on doing 3 comics per week is admirable, but looking at it from another point of view i wonder if i’ve been shooting myself in the proverbial foot all this time. Like that FexEx commercial where they wonder why they aren’t more productive. The woman suggests they get rid of the halfpipe, but the boss says no, the halfpipe stays.

There are two things i can do to make the MT comics work - by that i mean, I produce MT comics for free and i need to start working on other projects while MT is still going strong. I can simplify the art, reduce the time it takes to do them, or reduce the number of them that i do per week. I keep trying to simplify, but when i’m producing them i just can’t help but indulge in them - basically nullifying all attempts to reduce the time investment. Very noble, i suppose, but there are a lot of things that suffer. Rants, Blogs, Products, the Megagear store, products that i need to get designs finished for (so i can, like, support a family maybe?), personal life, getting things ready for our new baby… you get the idea.

The thing is, i don’t think that its the actual *production* time that is an issue. When i know exactly where the comic is going, when the script is solid and my vision of it is clear, it goes quickly. A fully developed comic with a finished script and layout can take 6-7 hrs to do, even with full backgrounds. I typically roll a lot of my development into the production, kind of a parallel processing thing. It’s very nice, but im beginning to think its a little indulgent and incredibly inefficient. If i am going to do 3 comics per week, i cant do long story development, short story development, dialoguing, drawing, and finishing all in the same day. That’s my halfpipe, and i think its got to go.

To do that, i think i need to do the one thing i have always considered off the table - go to a 2 comic per week schedule for a while. Each comic is taking a full day and a half to produce right now. thats 5 full days per week. Add all of the stuff we have to do related to the pregnancy, and… there isn’t anything left. No time for the store, no time for freewriting, sketching, story development, product development, ranting - anything. I need that time to add some balance and breathing room to the equation and stop being the indulgent, suffering “artist.”

I haven’t decided if im really going to drop to a 2 per week schedule yet, or for how long. I am this week - i need to regroup, finish the hatch on mondays comic, etc. This comic is mostly done, i have two frames to draw and dialogue to nail down. I’m gonna jump in and try to see if i can make some progress with some other things, things that have been needing attention for weeks.

Maybe it’s called getting realistic, im not sure. But maybe 2 regularly delivered comics with everything else you expect from these websites - rants, updates, etc - including some other projects like maybe ‘warmth’ getting off the ground (and that endgames doujin i want to do)… we’ll see.

I do work pretty hard, it’d just be nice to feel more of a sense of accomplishment more often. It might be more workable than than the way i normally deal with my productivity issues.

And one final test to see if i can get these trackbacks working to communicate with the MT site.

I’m working on a post for MT that talks about some of the differences between the kinds of pencils and erasers you can get in Japan compared to the pathetic selection they sell here in the states. I’ve been using .4mm pencils for my drawings lately, and i really like working with them. Since i can’t buy .4mm lead here in the states, i had Asmodeus pick up a selection of it, as well as some of the nice erasers (which you also can’t get here) and send it to me.

The fact that he sent it with a copy of Little Busters was really nice of him (I begged off getting the new key game because i have to start planning to buy toys for our little one, not toys for daddy :P) Even so, its a pretty nice little game, and oddly enough i was suprised to find myself seeing things in Natsume Rin that really clicked for me (maybe it’s the cats). (Wikipedia entry on Little Busters, and a really nice review of the game on Canned Dogs).

Sad thing is, i’m not even going to load up this game for a while, i just don’t have time to get sucked in Reviews from friends are good though.

Anyways, i took some pictures of them to use as a rant image, but you can go ahead and look at them if you are nice enough to be reading my poor neglected fredart blog. You’ll also note that i’m using a new camera, a Nikon D40x, which I just recently received as a gift (takes much better pictures than my first generation Canon Rebel :P)

Getting used to Quicksilver, and i’m finding one particularly nice thing about it - it’s helping to reduce my distractions. How? because i don’t have all of the programs running looking at me at the bottom of the screen all the time. I go and use programs when i decide to use them, not because i see it sitting there unlooked at for 10 minutes It’s really helpful in ignoring instant msg posts

And… this is the first post i’m trying with the alpha release of Ecto 3. So far so good, we’ll see if things explode when i post this

I’ve mentioned before that i’m a big fan of Literature and Latte’s Scrivner, it’s the most comfortable writing tool i’ve found so far and it’s helped me get as organized as i’ve ever been with my writing (which is a real feat, trust me :P). I’ve been using the stable release up until recently when i opted to try out the beta version to see what new features and tweaks are in the works… and there was one feature that really made my day. Being able to edit how the screenwriting modes work.

I’m sure there are standards for writing comic scripts, but i’ve never been exposed to them. I’ve been using my own various formats for years. I used to work in Microsoft Word, then i started working in plain text files (using a large variety of editors) and even tried a number of writing programs specifically made for the mac, like Ulysses. Prior to using Scrivener, my tool of choice was Omni Outliner, which worked out fairly well for scripting. Being an outlining tool, it wasn’t ideal for *writing*, specially for free writing, which i still did mostly in text based editors, like BBedit.

With Scrivener, not only does it give me some organizational tools, but the writing areas are very comfortable to work with. The full screen mode is wonderful (especially when you are as easily distracted as I am) and screenwriting mode was a feature that had me experimenting with it for writing comics.

It wasn’t ideal, of course, because if you have ever looked at script writing standards they are pretty plain looking - courier text, rigid formatting, etc. Great if you ever want to show your movie script to anyone in the business, but not really pleasant to look at if its just for yourself Also, i found it hard to experiment with dialogue because the way the tab/enter worked in going between Character, Dialogue, Action, etc, was not intuitive to the way i work. Still, it was worth experimenting with, and I learned to work with it.

The nicest feature of the new beta is that i can edit and tweak how the screenwriting formatting works. You can set your own parameters, fonts, even control how you switch between elements. There’s even a ‘comics’ format to start from.

Truth be told, i’m not really sure if you can do this with the stable release of scrivener. I don’t think i ever came across it. Regardless, i’m liking it very much

Other software that i’ve been happy with recently… the new release of Adium is quite nice and very stable (so nice to easily be able to change the menu icon), Ecto 3 is starting to surface (haven’t played with this alpha version yet) and Quicksilver, which i have installed and going to experiment with to see just what the hell it is supposed to do.

I do have an odd problem with QS on my macbook tho… it won’t load any of the plugins. It just stops, never loads them. I can’t figure out what the deal is - i’ve tried from a fresh boot up with no programs or other menu items running at all, i can’t figure out what is buggered. I guess i’ll figure it out eventually.

Upcoming software i’m looking forward to? Omni Focus.

Oh wow, there’s a site here! Imagine that.

Actually, i haven’t forgotten about my poor fredart site. The past few months (FEW?) have been kinda crazy, and i’ve been holding off on bringing this site back to life until i had some breathing room. I feel rather mired in things right now, a feeling that never seems to go away, but i do feel like i have some breathing room for once.

Last week was just a disaster, comic wise. Between returning from Otakon (at which i hurt my back again, and nothing makes creating harder than back pain, i swear) elongated times to draw comics, ridiculous slow downs on my computer (for wednesday’s comic it was taking 18 seconds for illustrator to react to clicks. Try doing something when it takes 18 seconds between each move) and then the final straw being the power outage for over 20 hrs… It was time to regroup.

I finished “friday’s” comic early saturday and decided that i would post it Monday, giving myself a one comic buffer. This has failed to really help me much over the years, but im working hard this time around to see if i can make this buffer last. I’m not traveling again for a while, so hopefully things can settle down for me and let me focus on that comicking thing i’m supposed to be doing. I also did some sketching last night and posted a new sketch to this site in… well over a year?? sheesh.

When i first came across Twitter, i thought it was like the last thing i would ever use. I have trouble getting normal blogs done, never mind microblogging. After experimenting with it and thinking about how i could use it i’ve discovered that it might actually be the perfect tool for me. I’ve been using my fredrin twitter for updates and twits as i go through my day, giving what i hope is a pretty decent idea of what im up to. Since im using Twitterific, its pretty easy, and can be done so quickly it doesn’t interrupt what im doing. I linked it on the SD forums and i’ve had quite a few people following it. Word so far is that it is far superior to the often neglected ’status’ box.

I’ve expanded on the idea a little and registered a twitter for Megatokyo itself that will contain more specific updates related to the comic so that people don’t have to deal with all of the inane twitters about me in general if they dont want to. I’ll be putting this info on the main MT site sometime this week.

So, feel free to check out and follow my fredrin twitter or the megatokyo twitter for the latest (often lame) updates.

Oh, one last thing. I was talking with my sister Jen today and for some reason she’s been getting a lot of really nasty email saying she’s a liar and that she is not Fred Gallagher’s sister. Uhm, last time i checked Jen was my sister and i’m sure that hasn’t changed recently, so lay off. Jen has her own webcomic site over at Swenyars Find that you can check out.

All you idiots had to do was check the whois on Jen’s domain and you’ll see it’s hosted on my servers. In fact, there have been times when the DNS has been borked and going to swenyarsfind.com went to the Megatokyo site. Morons.

Anyways, good to be back, feels good to update again.

I did some free sketching last night, first time in a long time. There are a lot of stylistic habits that i have in drawing that i think have been limiting me a lot, especially when i try to branch out and draw new characters or work on other story ideas. They work fine for MT, but dont give me the flexibility i need to do other things. I started experimenting a little with more ‘realistic’ structures for the face and other things, taking cues from a number of different manga titles i’ve been reading lately that have a bit more of a realistic feel to them (lighter on the puni scale than some of the stuff that has influenced me) and this is one of the drawings i did. There’s some life in this one that feels right.

[link to sketch]

Yknow, it feels good to be working on Chapter 9. With all of the other things i’ve been working on since i finished Chapter 8, it’s given me a lot of time to put my thoughts together about where MT is going from here, and i feel pretty good about it. I kinda wish the Omake was only 4 pages so that i could have started a few weeks ago, but i also feel that it’s really not fair to start something and not really finish it (like i have with previous omakes). Sarah and i still want to work a bit on the Seraphim Check, some of the lines need some work, but i’ve put that aside to work on the start of chapter 9 (I’ll put up a placeholder and post the Seraphim Check when we are ready with it

Had my first public signing in a long time yesterday at Wizzywigs, and it was actually a lot of fun. It’s not like big conventions where there is nothing but a huge line of people that you have to rush through as quickly as possible, i was able to go at a more measured pace. It was nice being able to talk to MT readers again, and was able to talk to a number of people i know and have seen come by before. It was also good seeing Jerry and Caroline, as well as Rikki and Tavisha, and even Robert and Emily Dejesus came up to visit It was fun to sit back, enjoy dinner, and talk a lot of smack about the industry we somehow managed to find ourselves embroiled in.

With the start of Chapter 9 there are a lot of things that i’m going to be trying to do differently. One of those things is to rant and blog more. It’s all part of the tightening up of focus that i need to do in order to roll out this new phase of Megatokyo that i’m really keen to make happen. It’s a goal, of course, which means that i might not be able to really do it, but i’m working on it

Random linkage and news… a few weeks ago i faxed in a release to the company that is producing the british TV show ‘The I.T. Crowd’ to be able to use a copy of MT Volume 4 as a prop on the set of the 2nd season. So, if you live over in the UK and end up watching the 2nd season, look for it. Oh, it’s not the first release i’ve ever signed, btw. There was an american movie that i signed a release for to have some MT stuff in the background, but when the movie came out i didn’t see any MT items so i never pointed people to it No, i’m not going to tell you which movie because it really… wasn’t that good (yes, it was released in theaters and is now out on DVD.)

Also, in case you were wondering, fanboys really do stuff like this. I don’t make it all up. And here’s another one. Shesh, control yourself people.

Oh, if you are into ambient at all, be sure to check out Sundummy. The title of the track i’m listening to right now is just too awesome

now back to work on Chapter 9, episode 1

:: pirotunes ::

SunDummy - By The Light of Burning Witches

from Red Waves of Tidal Siam (ep) [tzpdc 22]

Working on a number of things today, one of which is to post something textually new here on Fredart and post a new rant on Megatokyo (it’s only been a month, right? :P). I’ve been messing with a lot of web 2.0 stuff, organizational tools, social bookmarking, etc, and trying to break out of my old ways of thinking when it comes to the kinds of tools that are available. Some are time sinks, some are useless (at least to me) but some i’ve found have been quite useful and fit my needs remarkably well.

I’ll be posting a real blog here later this afternoon. For now, i’m quickly claiming my blog on technorati, just for the heck of it (and to do that, i need to post a link here :P)

Technorati Profile

there, now back to work on other stuff.

(update: well, that wont work because if you go to http://www.fredart.com/fredart/ you get a forbidden error - i need to tweak things so that index.php3 will be autoload when you hit a directory. thought it was… ah well.)

(update number 2: there, fixed the index.php3 thing so it shows properly. Now to see if it will take.)

(update #3 - hahah, it registered it as “forbidden 403″. trying one more time…)

(final update to this waste of space… its amusing when you take an old blog like this and try to make it work with the newer stuff. For now, it will be listed as “forbidden 403″ because Technorati doesn’t like old farts like me :P)

you can’t tell that i really haven’t felt like blogging for the past month or so, can’t you?

a few things of note since my MT rant… im still working on the content, so there won’t be a MT comic for monday. Hopefully i can post a DPD of some sort, i have a few things i can use. I’m getting there, hopefully by the end of today i can burn thru a big chunk of what is left. Another thing i’ve done is change my decision about editing comic 763. After reviewing a lot of the feedback, and talking it over with several friends, i decided that the change brings more attention to the original error than the revision fixes. The final revision isn’t too much different than the original, and i probably won’t change the online version. You can review the final change here (and yes, i know there is a word bubble missing in frame 4, it has already been fixed).

What else is up? Plenty. I’ve actually managed to gradually catch up with Kanon again (i was about four weeks behind) and this morning i watched ep 21. Now we’re starting to get into Nayuki’s scenario, which i feel like i’ve been waiting a long time to see. So far, this has been an excellent series, even though there are a few things that i think were more dramatically handled in the first series (KyoAni seems to err on the side of subtlety, while Toei went for a more dramatic turn). Ayu’s disappearance, Mai’s trepidation in the hospital waiting room hugging the stuffed toy and Makoto’s functional breakdown to me were more moving and dramatic in the Toei version (dramatic perhaps not being better, they were just different and i always liked those elements of the Toei version - but those were the only things i really liked about that version anyway

Oh, and i did get sucked into one more PVC figure. Meh. That’s the last one for a while, but i just couldn’t pass on a nice Nayuki figure

One other thing before i go back to work - anyone here familiar with or have any experience with Adobe Acrobat? I’ve been trying to figure out how to do something, and i can’t seem to find a solution. I’ve posted about it here, but so far no replies. If anyone knows of a solution for this, please let me know