Vlog 20160813 (Patreon)

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Okay he hello patrons it is Saturday. I'm here in sunny Vancouver British Columbia, another lovely day.

I'm hoping to get outside after this for a brief walk... So I'm just home today trying to work on comics and it's one of those days where it would be ideal for me to be drawing the comic but I'm not sure about my script yet. It takes me.... It's really hard to describe the writing process, I mean if you're a writer you understand it innately but I'm not sure if other [non]writers can really understand the type of work that goes into it.

Sometimes I have a scrap of an idea and it makes perfect sense and I can translate it very quickly down onto paper. And other times I have a scrap of an idea but I'm not sure it's going to work I need to work it out a little bit more in my head and sometimes you have a scrap of an idea and I'm not sure is good enough. I'm needing to think back and remember and look over my notes trying to remember other things that might fly better as a comic for this week.

And it's very stressful because I'm obviously on a deadline. If I can't come up with something to write in time to actually get through it and draw it by the end of Sunday I'm... I'm late for the week! So it's... it puts a lot of pressure on the process I think and some of my best scripts of come out of this process but also... Sometimes it just doesn't work out in time in my opinion. And it's always really interesting to see how it shakes out at the end of the day. And at this point I don't know what I'm gonna draw.

So that's why I think you know... There's a lot to be said for discipline: for showing up on time and just doing your best and making it work but since I have a little bit more time to play ...I don't really have anywhere to be today/ tomorrow I think I'm just going to give myself some space and let the process work in my subconscious. Basically this is an excuse for me to go out to the seawall and play Pokémon Go, let's be real... but like I was out superduper late last night and I don't think my brain is at peak performance.

So it was one of my coworkers' birthdays yesterday and he wanted to go watch the meteor shower... Which at the time I was like 'oh sure that's-- yeah let's go' you know it'll get dark, we'll drive up the mountain to look at rocks falling out of the sky and then we'll be back, it'll be fine and I didn't realize at the time that ...you know he was intending to be out there until like two/three in the morning. So I didn't get back home until 3:30. And as a result I just feel like... Kinda garbage today. And so I feel like it's not really gonna work out for me to stress out too hard... I think I might just get what I can done today and take a nap and hope that a script just manifests. And yanno that type of wishful thinking doesn't always working but sometimes it does! So. Really hoping I can find a Pikachu, maybe some more magikarps out on the seawall, that's my goal.

Othwerise been having a good time watching the Olympics. The Olympics always makes me kinda nostalgic for when it was here in 2010 and it's exciting. Summer Olympics is of course a bit of a different beast from the Winter Olympics. I enjoy it, I don't know why...- Obviously is it's flawed as a system that has a lot that you can complain about-- it's a big bureaucracy with a lot of things stacked against the athletes but I still really enjoy seeing people from all over the world come and get celebrated for just pushing themselves to their physical limits. Something foundational about that you just can't shake no matter how how bad and toxic the process itself gets. And that's nice but it's been really interesting to watch and see how often people have been mentioning the financial challenges that athletes face. And maybe this is because one of the sponsors for the Canadian side is a bank but I still hear it in the announcers as well .. And I just hear it being brought up more and more often whereas... Maybe I was just too young to clue into it or but --I feel it wasn't part of the discourse 10/20 years ago. That people didn't talk about how financially challenging it really is to be an Olympic calibre athlete. How much time you have to dedicate to training and how not financially lucrative that really is most of the time and how much you have to invest in yourself and your own equipment in your own time at the rink or track or wherever it is you have to go train. The time and money you have to invest in your trainers. Time and money you have to invest going to events to compete and get your rankings. And then the ultimate time and money you have to invest to get to the Olympics. It's not a free ride for a lot of these athletes and it's really bewildering... And just puts a whole other spin on it, so it's was been really interesting to see how much more that's been getting attention in the discourse and I think it reflects how a lot of people have become more financially challenged and the last 10 years or so. That it's more front of mind. Even when you're faced with something as spectacular and overwhelming as the Olympics and this athletic prowess... You can't extricate yourself from some of these other issues. And so that's been really interesting... But I like the Olympics... It's only one more week left and so I'm streaming it whenever I can.

The last thing I want talk about-- we're already at six minutes but--- got my quarterly Patreon update up and thank you everyone who has contributed feedback to that. It's really valuable to hear from you guys with regards to what you feel is working what you feel could be better, what you like or don't like. Sometimes I'm putting stuff out there and even if you like it I don't know! It's hard for me to really get that feedback of what you like so whenever people to give feedback I super appreciate it. It helps me know what you guys enjoy and what I can do more of.

The live streaming now is the... I feel like we've gotten this vlog transcription thing sorted out I --have it recording for me automatically with the software that's working ---so vlogs are going fine.

It's the livestream question which I think is now the next thing that I have to tune. And what's... Been getting a lot of feedback that doesn't suprise me... If that makes sense? But not feedback that I feel it is easy for me to act upon. So the livestreams are a bit of a mixed bag. What I like about them is that it's taking advantage of a process that I'm doing anyway. For example every week I have to draw a comic so no matter what's happening I know there's going to be a period of time were I'm going to be at my board drawing a comic. It's just a matter of getting it set up and recording and that's not hard. The experience though of watching it and interacting with me live is not something that's as accessible that was hoping it would be. So because I'm not able to be as... "eyyy" dancey kind of performative when I'm concentrating and making the work, it's not as engaging for people and the timing of it is always kind of weird. I try to give as much advance notice as I can but it takes me a while to get set up and get it going in my day and then it's really hard to get it set up and takes a long time to record and then once it's recorded it's still not that enjoyable experience for people to watch. And it's fine --- it's just that it's a formatting thing, right? Comics are wonderful because even though they take hours to draw, you can get a very detailed and layered experience out of it very quickly and I think that's what a lot of people appreciate out of comics and comic are not designed as a performance. That's just kind of inherent in the in the method of creating comics. And so translating it into a performance is not working out. And that's fine. The challenge now for me becomes how do I either get it to the point where it's gonna work or what to replace it with. So the big thing about pulling it is that it is be one dollar Patreon reward. I know people just want to support me and give me financial support just because they like the work that I'm doing and want to see it continue and grow which I appreciate from the bottom of my heart but... Even with that being the case for a lot of people I want to make sure I can provide something at every single backer level. And the one dollar backer level... for example with the five dollar backer or level these vlogs take a bit of an of investment time for me so I feel like it's it's worth the five level. The two dollar level is all the sneak peeks and all that extra stuff... But the one dollar level doesn't get the sneak peeks, they don't get the vlog's-- and I want to make sure I provide *something*. Something that I can provide reliably-- which is hard-- and something that I can provide without a lot of extra work. So if I can leverage what I'm doing already that's the best. These Pokemon cards were an interesting experiment... been finishing up these and they've been... Really fun to draw on but these took time right? You know.o. It worked out this month but I don't think it would work out every month and another thing that was suggested is maybe progress pieces... I'm reluctant to go into more video because video is not my strength. Video takes a lot of time and investment to get it edited and up and proper... So I'm not sure extra bonus videos are going be that solution. So yeah. I'm just... And then the suggestion was made that instead of the scheduled livestream: more regular livestreams. I have to do some more experimentation to see if I can make that work. I think if it was more intermittent and more casual it would be a better experience for people but it wouldn't make sense as a one dollar reward... Because like I said I wanted it to be something that I can provide consistently and predictably.. So we'll see... that's an ongoing process of making that into something that I think will work.

But I don't want to talk more about that I've heard been talking for quite a long time. so I'm going to go out and enjoy this beautiful day and hope my brain starst working again and I hope you guys are having a wonderful weekend where you are. We'll chat soon. Bye!