Down with the Sickness

It has been a while since I posted so I wanted to wrap up the holiday weekend with a production update and share my absence. Shortly after attending Nebraskon, I came down a case of con plague and I was shelved for a few days. Then we started to travel to my sister’s house for the holidays.

Over the holiday weekend I have been working with some of my voice over talent and getting some paperwork in line and getting scripts and questions resolved. I brought my tablet along to do some work while on the holiday break but after being full strength for a couple days, I caught something else and am under the weather again, which is why I am writing this weeks update as opposed to hopping in front of the camera again. Once I am back up and running, I will recap Nebraskon and share more information about episode 2.

I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday! Talk soon 🙂

Production Update 209: Books and Orientation!

I wanted to record a video this week, but the week took a bit of an unexpected turn. We had a death in the family so we spent some time away this weekend helping to go through some things and just to support other family members and plan for a funeral later this week.

I completed 2 more chapters in my book on animation production and have crossed the hallways point. I am on pace to finish the book while on vacation, which will help me form a route on episode 2 for Cosmic Rage.

I also completed my orientation for my online class, which is a go at your own pace, traditional animation class. I plan on documenting the progress of the class and hopefully recording my work as I go through it. The first video/lesson is planning out a shoe animation with timing charts and such. This will be a good way to knock off the rust and also try out some new tools, AnimDessn, a plug in for animating in Photoshop and also my new Cintiq which I haven’t used nearly enough since I purchased it. I look forward to sharing everything with you! Let’s get to work!

Production Update 204: Script Near Completion

Production Update time once again, let’s do this! I spent time this week working on the script and pushing it towards completion. My goal is to wrap it up this week before a local film-maker meet up so I can have a few people give it a look over and poke holes in the story. Since I am so close to the project it is good to have a few more sets of eyes and perspectives on it. I am very excited to meet up with the crew again and for us all to check in on each others progress and talk about each of our projects.

Once the script is being passed around to fellow film-makers to look at, I will be spending some time working on getting things ready for my art show in May, where I will be showing Cosmic Rage.

Outside of the script work, I have been pushing ahead on a freelance project which will go towards paying for voice over work for episode 2. I am very excited to be getting things near completion so I can begin storyboarding and drawing. Thank you all for your support!

Production Update 203: Script Work

Last week there was some work to do on the back end of the site, routine web maintenance, so I didn’t get a chance to update. So let’s get into it!

I started working on polishing up the script for the second episode. It has been a while since I had a chance to look at it so it was a nice time to work with it some more and get familiarized with the contents again. I got about half done with it this past week, so my goal is to finish it up by the weekend so I can get some more eyes on it to look at and see if they can poke some holes in it.

Script_reworking_2
While the script will be with a handful of people to take a look at, I will be spending the time after that to prepare for a local art show, giving Cosmic Rage the chance to get in front of more people but also to help explain the animation process to people who may not know. I am very excited to see my work hanging up in a venue again 😀

With convention season approaching, I’ve been working on getting a few panels submitted to some conventions I have planned out to travel to. Most of my convention season is going to be late summer and into the fall since this is a pretty busy summer but you will get a chance to see me at conventions in 2017!

I am starting another freelance project which is needed. Since my Patreon page hasn’t quite covered my VO costs for the second episode, I needed to pick up a project. This will also help with my convention travel this summer as well so it’s just a small price to pay. But in terms of timing it works out really well since the script will be making the rounds to trusted friends and writers and while some files will be at the print shop for the art show.

Thank you everyone for checking out the blog and as always, thank you to my Patreon supporters for their continued support!

 

 

 

Production Update 201: Back to Work!

Lot’s of things have been going on so I haven’t been on the blog as much as I would have liked to for the month of February. However, things have calmed back down and we’ve got some catching up to do. So much, it required a video update. Take a look!

Production Update 181: Tokyo in Tulsa… Here I come!

I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday break! My break was filled with some gardening and catching up on some odds and ends to free myself up to work on Cosmic Rage. I also hit the midterms for the summer session, which means I have about 4 or 5 weeks of school left! I even found some time to work on my freelance project too.

This week I am preparing for Tokyo in Tulsa, my first time going to the convention. I will be running an art table, as well as a couple panels so I am looking forward to all of the events going on. I have been working on a secret item for my artist table that I will share next week once i get it wrapped up.

I am going to keep things short this week since I will do another update on Monday!

Production Update 179: Sketching

I started working on sketching the e-book cover. I have things roughed out right now so this week I am going to refine it and hopefully get it inked so I can color it in the car on the way to and from SoDak Con! The original plan was to try to finish up the cover, but I picked up a freelance project so I was working on that over the weekend outside of class. My plan is to use the freelance project to help cover the cost of VO for the second episode. I am currently still pushing forward on the script, but it has taken a little bit of a backseat to the e-book cover so I can get that into the iBooks store for people to see.

Outside of that, photography class has been going pretty well, I believe I have about 6 weeks left until I am all done with school. My grant paperwork will be in the mail later this week. Once again, I need to thank the South Dakota Arts Council for their support in Cosmic Rage. This past year has been an amazing ride and the grant has helped me so much with getting the first episode wrapped up.

Finally, I have been spending a bit of time in our garden this week getting caught up on weeding and just unplugging for a bit. Our weeds were getting a little out of control, but we had to let the plants grow so we knew what a weed is and what isn’t. Hopefully we get caught up on weeding this week as well.

Next week I’ll have a recap from SoDak Con!

Production Update 178: Next Stop, E-book

I know. I know. I have been writing the past few weeks about how my goal was to get the e-book cover or the script to the second episode written but I have a confession. The past couple months I have been creatively burnt out. I didn’t want to admit it and I thought it was just a week long funk but it turned into a good month to 6 week session. The good news, I honestly feel like I am coming out of it.

While I had some traveling this past week and some school work to do, I did start moving the ball on more Cosmic Rage items. First off, I have a rough sketch of what I want the e-book cover to be like. I spent some time in the car working on some rough layouts and working through some of the elements on I wanted. I feel like I have come to a very good solution and I am hoping to get into that this weekend! I have the lofty expectation of getting it wrapped up this weekend. (My Patreon supporters will get to see these sketches, if you are interested in supporting Cosmic Rage, check out my Patreon page)

I also need to get my grant paperwork filled out and sent in as well. I made a lot of notes and I need to flesh out to areas yet and that will be off of my plate as well.

Lastly, I had a rough outline for the second episode completed. I can now say that I have officially started on the script! While it isn’t close to done, I have begun writing out the first few scenes and I am very excited to build onto the world.

I really appreciate your patience, as much as I try to be transparent here, I really underestimated the amount of burn out I had. But I will leave you with one of my pictures from this past week in photography!

Shutter_Speed_2