It’s somebody’s birthday in Billy Badass! Come help us blow out the candles!

Check out the third episode of Crafting Mines: A Minecraft Adventure.

Today was spent editing videos. Luckily I made everything pretty straight forward when I shot them. I don’t mind getting creative with editing and adding/removing things but it’s best to streamline for regular production. I like working in batches with projects so I can post them periodically in a series while I work on other things.

I’m glad I got that Newsletter business taken care of yesterday so I can try and spend what’s left of the week working on art. I’ve been thinking about getting back to my older comics lately. I’m getting better at staggering my workflow and I’d really like to have something new going up each day. Of course I don’t want to promise anything right now as I’m trying to get on top of things. It just feels so very nice to front load and schedule posts in advance.

It’s somebody’s birthday in Billy Badass! Come help us blow out the candles!

Check out the third episode of Crafting Mines: A Minecraft Adventure.

Gradually trying to get back into a regular sleep cycle. Today was full of lots of little bits of things that needed fixing. Most of my evening has been spent configuring the Newsletter integration for the site. It’s live but still not 100% how I want. My goal was to add a clickable banner on the homepage. That would trigger a popup form to fill out. It’s important to me that this form be triggered by clicking the banner because Tab Closed; Didn’t Read. The theme I use has Features I use on the home page to point to my various projects. These are meant to be in a grid at a certain size. Above that it has Slides that are wider and scroll through. I wanted the banner to be the most notable thing so I made it a slide. Unfortunately I couldn’t use this tutorial to make the link trigger the popup because slides require a URL, not an onclick. For now I’m pointing the banner to a page with the popup on it. I also put a sign up form on the sidebar, after fiddling with a bug that caused widgets to collapse when I tried to edit them.

So yeah, been adjusting the duct tape and bubble gum that holds the site together. Please sign up for the NoRights Newsletter, I’d really appreciate it.

It’s somebody’s birthday in Billy Badass! Come help us blow out the candles!

Check out the second episode of Crafting Mines: A Minecraft Adventure.

I’d planned a busy Monday when I went to bed last night. Then I sat there unable to fall asleep. I’m not sure if it was my frustration over the weekend, the heat, or all the iced tea I’d had but I wasn’t falling asleep. I didn’t beat myself up about it and spent time online chatting with people until I finally did get back to bed.

When I got up this afternoon I did some video editing. Luckily I’ve got blocks of video already recorded I can edit. I still need to record more for some things I’m working on but it’s good to be able to pick things up and work. Downside is I’ve got lots of files to sit through going, “Speak up, idiot! Quit mumbling!”

Dinner, grocery shopping, more editing. Now it’s late and I’m posting the blog. I can really see how hard it is to break out of a routine. Stay up, sleep in too late, suddenly the day’s over already and you have to fight to get back to sleep. The totally wrong mindset would be be to charge into bed, “I’m getting all the sleep I need tonight and waking up early tomorrow refreshed!” That’s way too much pressure to try and sleep on. I’m just going to listen to a podcast and relax.

Go back to 1993 and the ice age in this week’s Billy Badass as we discuss Cro!

Check out the second episode of Crafting Mines: A Minecraft Adventure.

I was woken up entirely too early this morning. (About 3:30) Thought we’d had a power outage over the night but my computer was still on when I got in the studio. Funnily enough I had a system update waiting that required a restart. Once all that nonsense was done I tried working for a bit. I decided Fridays I want to focus on drawing for fun, off project, and maybe some fan art. I also decided to re-read an old book in my library for a later review.

I doodled some poses but by mid-morning decided to go back to bed. I was then woken up by my dad telling me the arduous tale of finding a replacement for that piece of his truck that came off yesterday. He left and I finished reading that book. I’m thinking I’ll probably film a video review for it. It’d probably be a good idea to write some supplemental material for a blog post, too.

Go back to 1993 and the ice age in this week’s Billy Badass as we discuss Cro!

Check out the second episode of Crafting Mines: A Minecraft Adventure.

Today I decided to start a new project I intended to work on alongside that intro animation I was making. I downloaded the intro to a cartoon and I was going to try recreating it in a different style. I spent the early morning googling reference and whatnot. Then I imported the original video into Harmony as a base to work from. (They recommend you work on different shots in different files but I’ll only do that if things get unwieldy.) The audio was going out of sync and I decided it was a frame rate issue since the default file FPS is 24.

Then my dad called and said there were a bunch of yard sales going on, did I want in. So we had some misadventures there, especially when we noticed part of the lining of his truck had come off somewhere. After lunch I was just beat. I’ve been trying to properly import the video with varying degrees of success. It’s only a minute long but when it all comes in as bitmap frames on ones I can understand some struggle. I should probably just import it as greyscale or black and white vectors to make things easier. Once I get things set up properly I’ll figure out how many backgrounds I need to recreate and try drawing the characters in the different style. No idea how long it’ll take me to work on this one but I’m using it as a learning experience and chance to practice mapping out the beats and requirements of a project.

Go back to 1993 and the ice age in this week’s Billy Badass as we discuss Cro!

Check out the second episode of Crafting Mines: A Minecraft Adventure.

I slept in today as I was up late and I’ve been trying to get a better rest. I spent some time in the studio adding drawings and recording. My anxiety has been like the buzz of a fluorescent light lately and it seems like whenever I get to work it gets louder. It probably wasn’t helped by sleeping in as I rarely feel better when I do so. It just makes me feel like I’ve missed a big chunk of the day and things are out of alignment. I just do it because I know I won’t wake up to an early alarm and if I do it’s sleep deprivation headaches so I might as well sleep.

I think tomorrow it might be a good idea to dig out my noise canceling headphones. My cat’s gotten into the habit of mewing at me wanting chased. (Invariably she hides under a desk which makes trying to play with her a waste of time.) It’s also probably a good idea to do some art stuff before trying to record it so I’m more properly ensconced in the zone.

Go back to 1993 and the ice age in this week’s Billy Badass as we discuss Cro!

Check out the second episode of Crafting Mines: A Minecraft Adventure.

Spent this morning working on that intro animation. I moved some keyframes over to lengthen a shot and added some new layers to animate more elements. I recorded myself as I worked again. I seem to be in a habit of working until I find something I forget how to do, stumbling around trying to remember, then I go figure it out later off camera. Since I’m going to speed it up hopefully it doesn’t look that bad. Still trying to get used to working while filming. It’s a little stressful because I’m used to being “on” when taping myself so I don’t want to be boring. I just keep imagining I’ll be into something and suddenly run out of save space. Like my entire compute will be full of video of me messing up.

Go back to 1993 and the ice age in this week’s Billy Badass as we discuss Cro!

Check out the first episode of Crafting Mines: A Minecraft Adventure.

Today I spent more time than I expected sorting files on my computer. Eventually I got to work on that into animation I started awhile back. I added some drawings, camera movements, and easing. I also recorded it for a WIP video. I think I’ll work on it a few days and record my progression then do a time lapse.

Syncing some of it to audio meant I couldn’t listen to music while I was working, which sucks so much energy out of the room. I worked on it a little more after lunch fixing a motion. (I applied the pegs in the wrong order so the pivot point was getting screwed up.) Right now it feels like an animatic with the little motion that’s been created. I’ll hide the camera and focus on adding more keys, breakdowns, and eventually inbetweens. I can already tell I want to add more shading and lighting to round things out. But I won’t let myself do that until I get more drawings done first. Of course I think I said the same thing about adding camera motion…

Remember the short-lived 90s cartoon Yo Yogi! in this week’s installment of Billy Badass.

Check out the first episode of Crafting Mines: A Minecraft Adventure.

Today was spent working on stuff for the newsletter. I typed up several articles but the real work was in collecting all the proper links and organizing the images. Still got some more writing to do and then I need to put the sign up bit on the site but I’m pleased with myself. Considering I woke up this morning really feeling it was Friday I’ll pat myself on the back for getting stuff done. I’m also looking forward to staying up late and sleeping in a day or two this weekend. Maybe I’ll binge-watch a show or some movies. I really miss TGIF right now because that’s the feeling I want. Watching a big block of programming, maybe grabbing a cheap pizza. Hmmm… I think I’m getting an idea. 😀

Remember the short-lived 90s cartoon Yo Yogi! in this week’s installment of Billy Badass.

Check out the first episode of Crafting Mines: A Minecraft Adventure.

This morning was spent rendering more on that drawing I was working on yesterday. I took one break when my hand started to bother me and worked on it some more until I got sick of it. Then I decided it was time to write some for my newsletter. I started getting light-headed when I finished the piece I was writing. My sinuses have been bothering me and since I’m going in for a physical soon anyway I might as well ask them about that.

Tomorrow I’ll probably work more on the mailing list as I want to get some good articles queued up for it so I can put the sign up form on the site. That’s something I really need to get done and out the door so I can move on with things.