Draw, Varmint!

Got a tour starting in a couple of weeks, and for the first time in a long time, I'm really pleased with what is on Psychostick's plate and my own personal projects.

Remember, Rawrb, you cannot do everything always all at once, so just move the needle when you can.

That was me having to constantly remind myself of such things. I've been slowly reading "Feel Good Productivity" and jotting some stuff down and trying my best to live up to my expectations. Some things that I literally have written on my white board:

1. How can you make things fun, especially the tedious stuff?
2. Failure is an opportunity.
3. What would it look like if I was confident at this?
4. You get to do this for a living. Seriously!
5. Don't be afraid to ask for help. (Benjamin Franklin Effect)
6. Decide WHEN to do things.

There will definitely be more to add as I trounce through the book (currently about halfway through it), but I'm feeling pretty good about it all.

Related: Managing Psychostick and its variety of scaled back/overly ambitious projects is and continues to be a gigantic task. I've tried several project management techniques and software (even tried building my own), and the biggest challenge was simply getting the team (including myself) to collaborate and use the damn thing. Turns out that I really just need something simple that I keep track of and update as I communicate with the team. Eventually I can bring them in.

Ended up finding TickTick based on MKBHD's recommendation in one of his random videos. This simple tool has been my favorite so far. The calendar integration and the Eisenhower Matrix view is super helpful. So yeah, Asana, Wrike, even Notion - you ain't got shit on TickTick (as far as managing projects is concerned). Nice learning curve and the barrier of entry is simple.

I do like Notion for note taking and creating a reference/wiki, just not for managing projects. Yuck.

Speaking of projects, man - I've managed to wrestle the boring, un-fun Business BS (see above) into submission, and now I'm finally, finally able to really dive in and work on some content. Not just a news post or a stupid comic, but a video! Not just a video... but an animated video! Yeah, I can't believe it either.

I've "animated" two videos in my day. The rest was taken over by Murph at some point, along with Souzou. Anyway, the two videos are:

So, as you can tell, the "animation" is crude (think old South Park but worse), but they turned out to be quite funny, in my biased opinion. "Beer" up there has 11 million views, and "ABCDEath" has 1.2 million views. Granted, this was over the past... 19 years? Damn. Time is bullshit.

"Beer" was posted on YouTube in 2007. The actual flash movie was exported and "posted" in early 2003. So yeah... there you go.

(I'm not even going to go into the painstaking process of reminding people WHO made the song and video, because let me tell you, that was a shitshow)

Most of the reason why it took me that long to dive back into this was the running of this company and the "putting out the fires will having a firehose of chaos shoved down my throat" vibe that it comes with. Much has changed for the better this past year, and now I can make things again.

Anyway, Psychostick content being developed right now include several videos, one of which I'm going to animate for a certain song I shall not disclose as of yet. I fired up Adobe Animate (formerly Flash) for the first time in a long time to see if I still got it. So far... so good.

I kind of want the video to have that old school janky Flash feel, but also somewhat modernized? I dunno. We'll see how the first few scenes play out.

(Also, a week into this project, Adobe announced they'd halt all Animate support, then people lost their minds. After that huge outcry, Adobe backpedals and told the world they would keep Animate alive, but no longer add new features. That was a weird couple of days for me right after I jumped back into Animate for the first time in like 18 years)

Which brings me to my next point - actual animation.

With the Gigarob project and other potential Psychostick jimjams, I figured it's time to actually learn how to animate "properly." In order to do that, I have to like... dust off the old drawin' fangers. I spent a good seven or so years drawing a web comic for Psychostick (originally called "Alfredo Afro"). I've been wondering if I should bring that back to this domain or trying something new with that concept, but I digress.

I mean, I would doodle every now and then:

And I'm still attempting to get some kind of "branding" for rob.coffee, I think.

That kind of drawing isn't really improving my skillset. So, instead of just doodling, I decided I should start with the basics and get some real practice in, starting with eyes and hands.

Also, fuck hands. Seriously. I need to get this down. I can do "okay" but I'd like to get to a point to where I can draw 'em in my sleep.

So, yeah - at some point, it'll be more than just janky Flash animation with carved up JPEGs and whatever. Maybe I'll animate like a real boy someday. For now... HANDS. I don't think I'll have to spend TOO much time dusting things off, which is good because I want to make the things.

ALL THE THINGS.

Okay, think that'll wrap this up. Any art nerds out there have any advice? I'm sure the main chunk will be, "practice, nerd!"

Let me tell you, I'm learning that the hard way. I'm all over it.