fredart : blogbits

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.

It’s a bizarre but delightfully pleasant experience to not only have been done with Monday’s comic ahead of time but to be almost done with Wednesday’s comic on tuesday afternoon.  More often than not when ‘missing’ a comic i actually found myself not able to work on it at all until the evening it is due, so there has been little ‘getting ahead’ in the past six months.  Last week, however, i did manage to get most of ‘Friday’s’  comic done and, rather than posting it Saturday afternoon, made a comitment to see if i could use the boost of having a comic done “early” and then diving into the next comic in the framework of my currently “skewed” work schedule.  Trying to work from a positive position rather than a negative one.  It feels good, i’m hoping i can keep it up.

Why is my work schedule so ’skewed’?  Well, it has a lot to do with the fact that Sarah and I are both trying to work ‘full time’ both here and at the warehouse, we both have a lot to do, and we are trying to raise a baby at the same time (and not using day care).  Since a good part of our work (mostly mine) is working ‘at home’ in theory it’s a great idea… until you find out that taking care of a baby during the day can be a full time job, especially when he has a habit of only sleeping for 30 min at a time >_<.

There are two things that are improving this rather daunting issue.  First, Jack has been taking longer naps (mostly because i think he’s taking a breather from some of the teething hell he went through for a few weeks) and we have a baby sitter that is going to come in from time to time to watch him and give us some much needed work time.  Just one day of her help last week really took a lot of pressure off, as you might be able to tell by the rather positive bent on my infamously problematic production issues.

Part of this will also involve more blogging and ranting.  I’m trying to get over the idea that people don’t want to hear my whining by seeing what i can do to reduce that whining and prattle about more interesting stuffs.  This might not bee particularly interesting, per se, but it’s a fair reflection of things at this particular moment.

That said, comic 1137, FMP 09 is just about done, drawing-wise.  I need to hatch and render some things, then put it together in illustrator (the dialogue is already done).  Doing one comic ahead and posting on time is ok.  Doing two is even better.  Three is a real triumph, but what i really want is to find the norm being that comics are posted ahead of time and are availible at 1am like they are supposed to be, on a regular basis.  It’s been the holy grail of my life as a comic artist, as i am sure you all know, but for once it seems oddly possible… and possible without having to seriously comprimise the art or the content of the comics.  So we’ll see. 

And now for some randomness… i’ve been experimenting with notebook applications, not sure right now if i like Evernote or Yojimbo better.  It’s almost like i wish i could mix the two (With Yojimbo it is all stored locally, evernote is on a server (and you have 40mb or 400mb allowances)…  given how graphic-rich my clipping tends to be, i worry that 400 meg per month might not be enough… i’ll blog more about this in my next post.  Anyone else here using similar programs that act as thier brain repository?