Milestones

Didn't have a post last week. It's Tuesday the 23rd as I write this, so the day after a blog post might have normally premiered. Just nothing to report last week, but today, you know, a few points of interest!

Did my shopping for today! Started by walking a few blocks to the dollar store to pick up some soap before I run out, then came back to do all the shopping I had to do on my own street: got a cooking pot at the thrift store so I could heat water for my tea, stopped at the local popcorn shop again to get more popcorn and soda, and finished up at the tea shop, right there on the first floor of my building, to pick up some honey for my tea, now that I can actually make the tea I bought there a couple of weeks ago. Nice herbal stuff for my throat so I can keep performing!

Sebastian was very mad at me when I got back. The old doggo doesn't like it when I leave him alone in the apartment. He barked at me until I took him on another walk. So, successful shopping trip, everything I've wanted to gather for a while. Certainly enough crossing streets and talking to people to make me have to take a few weeks to recover...

In other news, the storyboards for the pilot episode of The Choices are approaching 70% completion, with five of the episode's eight scenes being totally done with the boarding stage. I considered today, as I have before, actually making the animatics of the scenes that are done being boarded right now, but nah, there's just so much else to do, I will wait until the entire episode is boarded, and edit the entire reel all at once.

Certain scenes being finished as of today means we can start boarding the Irregular Fantasy! teaser, a little "standing around and talking" scene about three minutes long meant to be a proof-of-concept to demonstrate that we have the characters of Irregular Webcomic! designed, voiced, set to music, and semi-animated, all with the blessings of the comic's creator! None of which we can prove right now because it simply isn't true, hehe, but one thing at a time.

While boarding, we're simultaneously doing a quick redesign of the characters; then once we have an animatic, I hope to get back the voice actors from the old Icewind Dale custom soundsets and some musical score, and show that to David Morgan-Mar, who gave me a tentative blessing for the project last June. If the teaser impresses him, then we'll finish it. Being a very simple and short scene, we can probably finish it in-house with the people we already have, no need to seek out producers or freelancers quite yet. After the teaser, not sure; after all this Choices boarding it's pretty clear I don't really have much idea of what I'm getting into, but it's exciting, diving into the unknown like this.

Regarding those character redesigns, ah, yeah! We've also gotten around to doing some of that, now that we're started boarding that Fantasy teaser, also redesigning the characters, I've shown you those designs before. Let's see, does this site let me look back through pictures I've already put on the blog so I can post them again? It sure does!

Okay, but before I do that, ah, let's see, the first picture in a blog post gets displayed in all the links to it, so... I wanna post something cool first. How about these:

These are the emblems of the main characters of The Choices... their former emblems, because I decided it doesn't make any sense for these characters to all have personal logos, and it'd be too difficult to draw them repeatedly if they wore complex emblems on their clothing. Despite this, these emblems are totally amazing and we'll have to implement them somewhere, I'm thinking maybe in the theme song sequence?

Anyway, back to the subject, these right here Irregular Fantasy character designs. Here they are:

Casey did these back in, eh, I wanna say September? Maybe a little earlier? So, yeah, great start! But the fact I've decided to make this a motion comic just like every other project instead of being CGI means we have to reduce the detail quite a bit; CGI characters can have a lot of detail because you only need to model them once, but in a comic or other drawn medium, you gotta draw them over and over again, so they need to be fairly simple. So I'm having Stacy do that -- taking this opportunity to not only simplify the characters but also maybe throw in a bit more accuracy to their comic designs, and also come up with a unique aesthetic, I'm thinking cheap action-adventure cartoons from the 80s.

Stacy's on that task because Casey is on another task... yeah, by some weird coincidence, all the projects we're actually launching are the ones where Casey did the visual development: The Choices, Irregular Fantasy, and Better Yet? Hopefully we'll get around to some Stacy and Naty style stuff pretty soon. But anyway, the reason Stacy is redoing the designs that Casey did initially, that'll be because now that Casey's done with the Better Yet? designs -- that's gonna be unveiled soon, it's really great -- she's on redesigning the cast of The Choices.

Yeah, these guys again, we've seen a lot of these character models over the past year. I am aiming now to create the ultimate, true, perfect versions of these characters, not only down to all the best little details from every drawing of them that's ever been done, but also defining the art style -- I want it very Disneyesque. After all the time I've neglected the Disney influence on the Keys & Kingdoms world, I might as well start by making the characters look like Disney characters. Injecting those influences back into the world and story, well, been workin' on it. Casey is brushing up a bit on that art style before she begins.

Of course, the standard Disney cast consists of two realistic-ish and very attractive romantic leads while the rest of the characters are super exaggerated and stylized... I don't really like the latter, but I managed to lift references from various places, mostly Disney films, to help nail the final designs of these characters. That makes diversity in body types a bit difficult, because again, all of the non-idealized characters in Disney are too cartoony for my tastes, but hopefully with what I've built up for designing these main characters, The Choices and the Keys & Kingdoms art style in general can develop a bit on its own so every character has the groundedness of a Disney hero, without being restricted to classically heroic body types.

Also! Just started work on TAPAS Podcast #50. That's a pretty cool milestone, so it'll start with a funny little on-camera intro, I'll be discussing four Disney films -- those released in 1998, including Mulan and A Bug's Life -- I'll be finishing the final book of The Secrets of Droon, and, er, there won't be anything remotely special about the fanfic segment of that episode, but otherwise very cool. Podcast #50, and then, only two more podcast episodes until we fire up TAPAS Phase Two!

*sigh* Why doesn't anyone read this blog? This thing has exactly two subscribers and only ever gotten one comment. I occasionally get a Facebook comment when I share a post there, but... not for the longest time.

Anyway, it's now the 29th, the day this blog post is due, so, let's see, what else is worth talking about?

Well, I'm a little bit nervous about my finances, getting started with vocational rehab took all month long, so I've got some utilities to pay... I'm gonna be okay, I'm not dead yet, if nothing's really turned around by this time next month, I'm gonna be worried, but I think I'm okay, just gotta take this release of information to the post office today and then, er, they get that, and... whatever comes next.

Ah, final note, yesterday was the third anniversary of TAPAS! We commemorated it with a very big Jackbox gaming video. Definitely haven't gotten as much done as I would have hoped in three years... Season 1 of the podcast still isn't over, The Choices has been in the storyboard stage for an entire year... ultimately no actual stories have been released, just podcasting and gaming and other little bits of art. But we're getting there... we're very, very close and I'm excited.

The Day That Krabs Fries

Yesterday, we filmed the TAPAS anniversary special -- a big Jackbox Party Pack marathon with a whole bunch of fun people! It will be released on the 28th, the third anniversary of TAPAS. Watch for Ziya's Joke Boat joke about bellhops, the biggest laugh of the evening by far... and I have to feel smug about the special's round of Push the Button. The crew were so certain that the alien impostors were Naty and Kenzie! Knowing that it was in fact Naty and myself, I ran with the crew's feelings, I had Naty and Kenzie expelled out the airlock so I could take over, sacrificing my own teammate for the alien cause, muahahahaha.

And today is March 14, which as we all know, is the day King Neptune comes to execute Mr. Krabs.

It's also the day last year when I put out the auditions for Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices scratch actors... really didn't want to get to the anniversary before those scratch actors could start seeing the fruits of their labor... indeed, I was pretty angry when the boards weren't finished by that June, relationships with the storyboard artists went pretty sour for a while. But now that we're back on track and I'm a better, gentler director to my people who most certainly do not do this for a living and have lives of their own, it seems we've missed the first deadline, which I am totally okay with, just a thing that happened.

Our next deadline? April 18, anniversary of when those auditions were closed and the scratch actors were chosen. Failing that, May 30, anniversary of when the official cast was announced. Failing that, you know, whatever, I don't wanna think about that, we're doing our best. So, gonna send a little email out to the scratch actors when I'm done here, give 'em another little update...

Lots of other stuff going on, though, as those storyboards edge closer and closer to completion. For one thing, there's Irregular Fantasy. Let's see, did I say this already? Heck if I know, nobody ever leaves comments here or anywhere else, so I very easily forget what I have and have not already said because nobody ever acknowledges or responds to any of my news. Don't really feel up to reading the backlog to find out if I've already said, so, I'm just gonna say it again.

Before that, let me reiterate something I said in the anniversary special. Jokingly, but also not. You, reading this: you might be someone who enjoys my content, you might be someone who reads my news and updates, and I'd like to be grateful, but here's the thing... you've never told me. Whoever you might be, it doesn't really help that you just read or watch or whatever it is you do. You don't comment or otherwise communicate, so I still feel incredibly lonely and isolated. Please leave a comment or send me a personal message or something. It's for my sanity. Tell me I'm not screaming into the void.

I mean, yeah, when I post on Facebook about how I went to the popcorn shop or the tea shop, it's a big hit. Gets like four times as much love as anything I post that's TAPAS-related. So I get that people love me, I'm not arguing that, I'm very grateful. But, y'all... TAPAS is who I am. When nobody is into it, I can't help but take it completely personally, because I have absolutely no sense of self outside of it. I know some people might not be into the kind of stories I create, but... I'm pretty sure I'm surrounded by people for whom the kind of stuff I'm creating is very much in their wheelhouse, I don't get it.

Anyway, back to the subject, that being, upcoming plans, for TAPAS.

Irregular Fantasy, my adaptation of Irregular Webcomic by David Morgan-Mar. Still not technically greenlit. David gave me the greenlight to try something, so, I'm hoping it knocks his socks off so I can proceed with it. Going to finish up a little teaser, accompany it with my ideas for additional promotional shorts and a pilot episode to see if David goes for it! Hoping it can be a little something released by the 20th anniversary of the comic, end of 2022. Pretty close to starting to board that little teaser, gonna record the scratch track later today, just my voice doing all the characters, and then once it's boarded, hoping to bring back the actors who played the Irregular Webcomic characters in the first-ever TAPAS project, the playthrough of Icewind Dale.

Other plans post-Choices storyboards, well, there's writing. Writing for more Choices in the future, as well as Luno Canyon, one of Naty's projects.

Lots of projects like Luno Canyon will be announced come Phase Two. When is Phase Two? Hard to say. It was supposed to be November 2019, the anniversary of Phase One (TAPAS was formally founded via Facebook in March of '18, hence the anniversary special this month, but didn't have any content until November). One podcast a week, 52 podcasts. And that went pretty well for maybe 16 weeks, had a great run, but now, well, it's been two and a quarter years and I'm working on Podcast 49, so... we're getting there! We're real close. But I won't make any promises that my current outline in which Phase Two begins sometime in mid-April will happen. The podcast has become a bit of a slog lately, and, well, I believe strongly in dividing things into phases, so I won't be implementing any of my planned improvements until we hit Phase Two and the whole thing can all be improved at once and get better uniformly, accompanied by the improved TAPAS logo and the big banner that teases at many future projects. Hmm, on that note I wonder if I can put the banner up top here on the blog, the blog doesn't really have any distinguishing marks. Needs more TAPAS.

Other ideas recently picked up? Well, Naty wants us to start listening to The Magnus Archives, so, later on, making videos where we do that and talk about it, I think should be some pretty easy and popular content. And, my mom and I are planning to read some books on cognitive behavioral therapy, and discussing the matter with each other, and I thought it might help with incentive if we put an element of public performance into it, make it a playlist of reading vlogs. Looking forward to that. For a long time, my executive dysfunction ran very deep. I couldn't open a book to save my life. So the many, many books on this subject that my mom kept giving me, quite the opposite of helpful. But that problem has resolved itself the way all my medicals problems do: by going away magically after years of suffering have led to the loss of all hope. So now I can read about techniques that might prevent this sort of thing from coming back. The fibromyalgia or whatever it was, I'm still constantly looking over my shoulder for that to mysteriously return.

Life is okay, you know? I take 30-40 minutes each day to detox from the addictive blue light of digital devices -- I listen to an album, usually do my dishes and sweeping followed by exercise, I'm thinking for today's detox I'll unclutter my desk and listen to a podcast my mom sent. I get plenty of walking and fresh air in, since being on the third floor means I have to descend some stairs every time my dog needs to go outside, so, feels more sensible to make it a walk each time instead of heading right back up the stairs. Well, at least a little bit of a walk... the old doggo has aged quite a bit just since I moved in four months ago. Can't eat crunchy kibble anymore -- I make him homemade stuff, lots of ground turkey, sometimes some beef as well, with plenty of rice and a dash of mixed vegetables, and he's far more enthusiastic about mealtimes than he was before, that's for sure -- and can't even handle a trip all the way around the block. But three or four walks to the end of the block and back each day, separated by about three hours of rest, that he can do. As for my financial situation, well, I'm working with vocational rehab. Lots of paperwork to go through, which sucks, but the actual people at the office are so kind and accomodating, I'm excited to get to work on that properly.

So I'm feeling good about life, and I'm hoping later on that everything comes up TAPAS. Thanks for joining me on this big blog post that kind of recaps everything, I'll have to make sure to somehow give it more promotion than usual, make sure people find it.

Marching Along

Okay, it's March now! A whole week into March, actually, didn't have anything to say last week. Er... I still don't, but I don't know, I like to nurture the blog, keep it living. Wish there was anyone out there helping me with that... you know... maybe the slightest indication that this blog isn't just me screaming into the void, but, can't have everything.

So... what have I been doing worth blogging about... taking it easy, mostly. You know? Agh, but it never works. No matter how low I set my goals they're still too much for me to cope with.

Having a Good Time

So, these past couple weeks... been pretty stinkin' cold, hasn't it? Today being 10 degrees and sunny was the nicest it's been in a while, I instantly jumped on the chance to actually go outside without being driven back in by the blistering snows and winds. Still didn't spend a ton of time outside, as the snow was still pretty deep, not easy to walk around, but it was so nice to get outside and look around the neighborhood again. Good for my old dog too, we just haven't been able to take real walks out there. We met a mail carrier, who came up to him so he could sniff her and she could pet him -- he's been very scared of strangers since we came to Quincy, so it was nice to have someone notice and come put him at ease. Very sweet encounter.

Hmm, not fifteen minutes after that encounter, my mom asked me if I ever considered being a mail carrier. Just as I was about to call vocational rehab to ask about, er, whatever it is they do, I need the employment help. What do you think? Omen?

Well, I don't know about carrying mail, but I am in contact with vocational rehab now. So much nicer and more helpful and accommodating than I expected, not at all cold and bureaucratic.

Also this week, we've done another readthrough of Better Yet? following some heavy rewrites Mason did. This time, we also discussed the script together and he's going to do some more, smaller rewrites before we start scheduling the actual recording of the drama. Had a good time! It was excellent. Such a good story. We hope it reaches people and touches them.

Also-also this week, we finished the Phase Two TAPAS banner. Not going to show you here, it's to be unveiled when we reach Phase Two. When does Phase Two begin? Hard to say. It was scheduled for November 2019. I had plans every week for a year. Started off pretty well, the first 15 or 16 weeks went okay, but ever since then, eh, things have been going slower. I have five weeks left in that original 52-week plan, so... Phase Two starts in five weeks, minimum, probably more.

60%

We've hit an excellent milestone on Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices! I've started keeping track of how much storyboarding we have left to do, really really hoping that we get on to the next step before we reach, well, the anniversary of the previous step. That was casting; the scratch actors were chosen last April, the real cast at the end of May. So, yeah, that first group has been waiting since then to see their work, and the second group has been waiting almost as long to actually get to find out what they're working on... and then do it.

But this week, my keeping-track paid off because I got to see the moment we reached 60% completion on the storyboard of the pilot. Now, just because it took a whole year to get to that point, I don't think it'll take another eight months to finish, we've been picking up speed, and enjoying ourselves more, and I hope we can get it done by the end of May at the latest.

And last May was the last time I shared any of the boards here on the blog. We kind of stopped at that point, I did go through some depression and apathy over the summer, stopped trying to get anyone to work, and no one else was up for trying either. Not until October, when I was ready to jump back in and slowly managed to rally everyone else as well.

So, here's some of the new boards we've cooked up since then!

Top to bottom: newer boards by McKenzie Eby, Michelle Jenfjord, Nathalie Jenfjord, Sadie Allen, and... Sadie Allen again! She's gotten really good.

This is about all the boards that'll ever be released out into the open, I imagine. The story reel itself will be for the crew, then probably behind a paywall after that, a special feature to encourage patronage and all that. Not the big priority, what we really wanna do is get this bad boy done, and we just hit a milestone. More gets done every week!

Deadlines

Okay, with the buffer in place, I've got many deadlines set up... it's not going great, yesterday was the due date for The Little Mermaid retrospective #7 and I had it written on time, but didn't get it recorded until an hour before it was due, and it premiered at 10pm last night instead of 4pm when I usually like to release those, buuuut, that's better than I usually do, late by only a matter of hours, I still have time to get the buffer in place, yes.

Also hoping for some deadlines for storyboarding. We've been doing that for approximately a year, it was February-ish when I had Kenzie launch into it... it was a mistake to think just one person could do it, now there are four other storyboard artists on this pilot project and only one of them is finished with their scenes, most of the others have only just reached the halfway point. But we're gaining ground, gaining efficiency, I think our speed is increasing.

March 14 last year is when I first opened auditions for scratch actors... April 18 is when we chose the scratch actors... and the real actors were cast, er, sometime in May? May 30 is when I announced it. So, that's the hope, that maybe we can finish the boards by March 14, failing that by April 18... definitely, definitely want it done well before May 30, I'm just so... fuming that I've made all these actors wait an entire year to see what they worked on, what their work will become.

It shames me. As does the fact that I proved incapable of the task of actually boarding a scene myself. I just can't construct drawings anymore, not the way that I used to. I don't have the head for it. It shames me that all I can contribute to this baby I created is writing and leadership. Writing, any mook can do. Every artist in the world has projects they've written themselves, artists don't need writers the way writers need them in return. And leading? Clearly, I'm really, really bad at it, I just haven't stoked anyone's passion for any of these projects. Here we are a year later and so much farther behind on storyboarding than I ever imagined was possible.

Well, whenever those boards are done... I think I may need a producer far earlier than I expected. A lot of the artists I already work with have, in the intervening year, moved on to a much more professional level outside my price range. Hopefully I'll have something to show a producer who might be able to invest... and in investing, also tell me how to turn their contribution into an investment, by actually generating revenue from these story things. Merch, I guess? Among other things? I don't really know.

On the other hand, here's a more positive realization! Been thinking about Irregular Fantasy, my pretty-much-greenlit adapatation of Irregular Webcomic -- I've always assumed that, being an adaptation, it should be a bigger project, and therefore actually be animated unlike most of the other projects we're working on, but the other day I had a very simple thought... what if it's not? What if it's just a motion-comic animatic like everything else? Well, then, it's probably doable.

I was always shooting for the 20th anniversary of the comic as the time to release something -- the comic premiered on New Year's Eve of 2002, the Fantasy theme less than a week later on January 6, 2003. I figured maybe we can release some teaser trailers on those anniversaries, but if we're not animating them... maybe we can get those teasers out way earlier and the actual pilot on 20th anniversary! That sounds very doable without having to go through the CGI process; even though we haven't made a full motion-comic yet and can't say for sure how doable it actually is. So, I've started taking the Irregular Fantasy project more seriously! Gonna get it done.

Whoops, forgot to post this blog yesterday, it's Tuesday now, and today, podcast #48 is due. And it's only halfway finished. So... absolutely no buffer happened, not even a little bit, it's four weeks after this podcast was originally supposed to premiere and, after setting a distant due date that would allow me to prepare multiple podcasts, I'm still frantically scrambling to finish the first one on the slate.

Ugggh, I truly hate myself sometimes, even tweeted about it late last night, about the depths to which I hate myself. Called myself a "plague", then once I was in bed started beating myself up over the fact I said "plague" and didn't think to say "cancer" instead. Deleted it first thing when I woke up, nobody needs to see that level of negativity, and it certainly doesn't help me.

Buffer

Musing about a new way of going about things, I think it's time to bow to conventional wisdom and set up a buffer. Finish a whole bunch of things before I have any intention of releasing them to the public, and then later on I'll be able to release them at a steady pace. Lots of work now for much less later down the road.

This assumes doing anything at all is possible. Thus far, off to a bad start. Really need to rewire my entire brain.

Still, trying out this buffer thing, and with that in mind... won't be much TAPAS stuff released for a while. Though Naty and I have been discussing some ideas for other content. I was invested in reaction videos for a time, seemed a guaranteed channel-grower, but with everyone scattered around so much, and reaction videos requiring so many different components, some of which are kind of illegal, I think we'll save that for when video-conferencing is not one of the balls that has to be kept in the air at the time, we'll wait until we have people who can actually hang out together with a single camera pointed at them.

In the meantime, other things to do, in particular I had a lot of brainwaves last night about bringing The Trivia Box to life as a purely virtual game show, we'll see how that goes.

This buffer thing, especially worth considering as the anniversary draws near. Not for another two months or so, third anniversary of TAPAS is near the end of March and I intend to actually celebrate it with something purty cool this time. Stay tuned.