Adventures in the Park

The other morning I woke up and, still wiping my eyes, toddled over to the computer to check messages. This was when Facebook took it upon itself to remind me that I had an anniversary coming up – that day. Who knew.

The husband and I agreed for our anniversary we would upgrade my phone so we could play Pokemon Go together. I’m not a big fan of Pokemon, but I am a small fan of finding ways to do moderate exercise without getting bored. I’ve tried all sorts of programs. So that’s what we’ve been doing the past few days: playing Pokemon Go in the evening when the heat releases its hold on the world a bit. Late evening. Okay. Night, right before bedtime.

I have no idea if this latest exercise weight loss scheme is working yet. I’m not holding my breath or anything.

DSC00027All in all it’s been a pretty active few days, though. Another bit of action happened yesterday. We took ourselves to the park for a bit of filming. Good stuff! After looking at our footage – more test footage than anything – I’ve decided to go in a different direction with this planned short piece though. I don’t normally rewrite things, but this piece is meant to be 100% improv so I have this peanut butter freedom a script doesn’t normally afford in my world.

I do love making film as a hobby, and although I have no intention of going full tilt with the things I do let’s face it: I’m headed that way fast. The Mohegan Project is growing, and I have all of these ideas (and so little time). The husband has also been bitten by the creation bug. I’m practically tearing his jaw off while pulling at the reins. Whoah, Nellie!

For now I’m trying to concentrate solely on this one little idea while planning the other 2 for the future. Y’all know that when I plan for the future, this sometimes means the far future. I won’t bore you with another update on my usual projects: it seems to be all I talk about on this blog, I swear.

The only drawback to increasing the level of my physical activity is that my schedule gets thrown completely off, and it’s hard for me to keep work going at a steady pace. Today I woke up at a classic 6 AM despite my best efforts, though, which generally means the switch in my head that puts things back on track has been flipped. I’m good for that.

But yet here I sit, wondering what I’m supposed to be doing right now. The truth is I don’t like to start work until around 1:30, which is when the husband goes back to work after coming home for lunch. Hrm.

Sometimes my Clients Love my Productivity and Sometimes They Don’t.

The Heavenly Bride took another knock back today as the ad system that’s been on it for years, Project Wonderful, delisted one of the ad boxes. They do that automatically when a website hasn’t had enough activity – which I think is effing stupid personally. They shouldn’t care if a website has a lot of activity or not. Seems to me there was this other ad system that had that requirement and, uh, they don’t exist anymore.

So what are ya gonna do except carry on, really. I had already been carrying on before this happened. So I’ll try to figure something out for that spot. M’kay.

So here’s what I’ve been up to lately and why my clients are a little peeved at me.

1. The brandnew computer I almost held a fundraiser for but didn’t have to? It died mysteriously. I set it to render something you guys would love, took a walk, and came back to a dead computer. It happened that unexpectedly. We know the power supply is dead. We don’t know what else because we can’t afford a new power supply. We have no idea why it happened. So I’m still using the old Charlie body (my gremlin of course stays with me no matter what I use), and it likes to give me blue screens of death from time to time. My work has been slowed down (again) as a result and I’m a little frustrated.

2. Despite that I’ve been doing my thing with The Heavenly Bride and fun things like that. If you’re a paid member of Bride you’ll notice that the last page was animated. Shock! Gasp! But did you also know that Akashik was always meant for animation? It was even to the point that a certain studio had contacted me to see if they could be the ones to produce it. You might remember that. So here I am working on it as I can. Even if a certain 3D generated show seems to have borrowed Taus – and Ganji besides – so now I’m wondering why bother because even though I was here first people aren’t going to see it that way. (grumble)

3. I really miss Akashik. A lot. And I have all these little side stories and things that go with it. One of them, which I have named The Brat, is currently  under serious production because.. .I got inspired. And when inspiration strikes a real artist, you’ll not get a single thing out of them otherwise. Doesn’t matter the art medium. It’s just how our brains are wired.

So The Brat is going to be a visual novel. I’ve played a few of them, and I like the gaming medium. So it seemed natural to go for it. It’ll be easy, right? It looked like a means to get something attached to Akashik out there quickly but in a fun way.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

It has become a larger thing than I had planned when it was only going to be a comic. I’ve went from la ti da I have some pages planned to OMG I HAVE TO ANIMATE THIS PART!

My inspiration spells are really demons of possession that feed from client ire.

Let me explain.

I wake up in the morning. I say to myself, “Okay, Spearcarrier. Today you’re not going to spend all day sucked into DAZ 3D preparing models for the Brat. You’re going to be a good little freelance slave and get that nice man’s cover done.”  After I’ve had a few sips of my morning tea I’m thinking, “Well, okay. Maybe you can give yourself an hour. But then you really have to get those flats done! People are counting on you!” And then several hours later I’m telling myself, “Well… you’ve lost the day but you can still get on track. Fifteen more minutes working on the models and then you have to go!”  Finally at 2 in the morning I’m going to bed without having done anything at all.

This is where the demon gets stronger. I start getting emails from clients that read things along the lines of, “Where the fuck are you, you lazy ass bum! I wouldn’t leave you alone on your honeymoon, and I’m certainly not going to leave you alone now! RAR!”

All that ire flung at innocent little me through the internet is soaked up by the demon. The demon in turns feeds me feelings of recalcitrance. Suddenly I’m reluctant to work for other people because, well, they’re mean. And I stay working on my own stuff. It’s not my fault, really. I’m powerless in the demon’s grasp!

Today is going to be different, though. I already have my work loaded up. If I can just find some holy artistic garlic to keep the demon at bay I’ll be fine. *breathes*

I would hold a fundraiser to help fund the visual novel, but we all know my fundraisers are usually flops. But I’m going to need things like voice actors and music. I already have contacted someone to help me program it. Pestilence will be using this as a tool to learn a little programming, but for now neither of us are up to doing some of the things that I have in my head to happen. So it goes.

And I think my hand is tired, so … back to work. Makes a lot of sense, huh.