Vlog 20160806 (Patreon)

Working remote, island times recap, upcoming exciting things!

** Transcription***

Okay... this is like my fifth time starting this vlog! Gotta sort out the audio and the focus of the recording of the transcription ...it's okay, we'll get there.

Hello patrons it is Saturday and I'm here in sunny Vancouver British Columbia. I'm happy to be back after two weeks vlog-wise being away. I was over on the island visiting my in-laws and it was fun, you know.... It was good to get a change of scenery., I did a lot of bike riding, I went to Tofino and "did some surfing" in the sense that I put on a wetsuit and walked like 10 m into the water and then decided that was too cold and I didn't want to do it... And instead I sat on the beach and got sunburned. And I went in a cave... Got to climb up a underground waterfall that didn't have any water on it... but don't worry about it. And I rode my bike at ton! So I rode 52 km between Parksville and almost-Courtney...about an hour's riding away from Courtney but it was just kind of a casual ride that I was doing so I stopped. And I let Trevor pick me up from where he was riding. 52k tho, not bad. And then I spent the weekend riding in Cumberland just it was a big trip organized by the biking club that Trevor is a big part of so that was fun!

Cumberland is really nice for riding and it's just a small hippie town in the middle of the island... just a really beautiful place. And it's the second year that I've done Cumberland rides and I enjoy it but man... lotta riding, working remote, which is his own unique little challenge.

I think I did okay... working remote is always hard. If you do it regularly you can get your set up and get your rhythms set and have your system set up really well but I find if you don't do it very often every day is just kind of a struggle of... "where do I put that file? How do I access it? I gotta mirror dropbox and put it back up again, and make sure my microphone works and where the heck is the Internet" and of so it's not actually my preferred way of working. I think countrary to a lot of people who either work remote, or dream of working remote I prefer to work in the office. I like to get up and go somewhere different and then just be in a place where everything is set up the way I need it to be and everyone is there and I can just go and talk to them. I like working in an office so working remote was fine. it is what it is, I guess. I got through it! And I actually managed to get a lot done, I think.

But now I'm back in the city and I don't handle change of pace as well... which is probably another reason why I don't like working remote. I like my rhythms I like being able to do the same thing every day. So this past week I've just been really tired and fighting through to this weeken, and then today I've been really taking it easy. It's already 3 PM usually I like to be kinda 'up and at 'em', and recording my vlog first thing and then moving on to the rest of the day... but today I really am going easy on myself. I only have two days a week to recuperate and this time I really need it so... bit of a slow start but here I am recording the vlog for all of my lovely Patrons. This... today... eventually... Maybe tomorrow? at some point I have to do my "State the Patreon" update again...

I decided that I wanted to report out quarterly...do a bit of a quarterly reflection. And last time you'll probably remember that I had a big survey. I was looking through that survey and while I was pleased that I was able to implement some things that I hadn't implemented yet by the time of the last survey, I don't think it will be necessary to go through the whole survey aspect again. So it'll be a bit of reporting on my end, but you want to do any work this time. Maybe I'll execute another survey after... you know six months/ a year? I don't know what the best frequency is for that. I feel like there is a bit of "survey fatigue" if you're not careful so three months... I'm still executing on stuff and still crunching through the learnings of the first one.

But yeah I can't believe it's already been six months that I've been running Patreon. That's crazy how quickly has flown by! Hopefully you found some stuff to enjoy... hopefully you've been enjoying it! It'll just be a big list of everything that I've delivered in case you missed anything and otherwise...

Big news to share today! So as you guys know I've been working on getting the materials together for my next Wasted Talent print collection. And as you can probably tell it's a lot of extra work for me I have to... So I've already gone through all the pages and laid them out in the book kind of the way that I wanted to. I've determined how I want the book to flow and the extra pieces that I want to put in it to stitch together the overarching story of the book. And finishing that story requires a lot of extra drawing... it requires a lot of new pages of comics and I have to make those in between my day job and maintaining my web comic. which is hard! It's hard, and it takes me a long time ...and it just... gets frustrating after a certain point. I want my book to finished! I want it to be there, I want to get it out there... and the frustration of it not being done yet kills my motivation. So this week, this last week was my annual review at work which went well... it's all good, but I decided to ask my boss for a little bit of a sabbatical to finish the book, and I got it! So it's, you know... the details are still a little bit up in the air and it will have to do a lot of... it has a lot to do with scheduling, and the projects that I'm currently working on finishing, and what's coming up next and the timing of whatever's coming next ...but it sounds like we're gonna try to make it so that I can work 3 to 4 days a week on comics for 4 to 6 weeks. And that is HUGE.

That'll make a huge dent in what I'm able to produce. I'm not sure how much will be able to produce in four to six weeks... I know that I work pretty fast and I know that I've never actually dedicated myself in that direction full-time. Even when I was unemployed back in 2008... just before 2008...2007? Between when I graduated and when I started [working, not university]. At that time I was dedicated full-time on art just by virtue of the fact that I was dedicated full-time looking for work. But I didn't have a cohesive project, that was the time when I decided to upgrade Wasted Talent from the ugly straight-pen drawings that I'd been doing in university to the to the full colour one-page comedy updates that Wasted Talent has been since then. But I wasn't trying to put together a lot of pages - as many pages as I could in a short period of time. So I dunno how much I can make in four weeks but I'm stoked to try.

So for me it's a little bit of a fire in me... I want to get everything organized and kind of cleaned and prepared an out of the way so that when that time arrives I can really give it 100%. And you guys will be seeing the outcome of that ...for better or worse whatever happens! And that's it! So today I'm going to put together a livestream... I think I'm going to take a break and do the pencils of the comic first because I know what I want to write but I haven't quite worked it out in my head how I want it to look... so I don't want to do all that messing around on stream.

Later today, probably in the evening I will set up to stream tight pencils and inks of the next page and you guys will be able to see that or tune into the recording!

So that's it that's all I'm going to say today I hope you guys have a lovely weekend and I will see you around! Bye :)