fredart : blogbits

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.

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.