DAWN OF A NEW AGE

A few days ago, I opened the channels for viewer input on a new distribution method for future BarfQuestion animations. The polls are closed and I am urping various gratitudes all over the floor in liquid format; please feel free to take some home. Buckets will not be provided.

The story so far: As monochromatic chicken-scratch evolved into actual effort, I've had an increasingly hard time dealing with ever-extending production times. I began using a digital composition technique to offset this, but not until recently have I discovered how to use it quickly and efficiently. Many months were lost.

However, the future projects I have planned are even more maddening than the long awaited 'Empire of Sock'. Updates could potentially be years apart. The solution: EPISODIC RELEASES.

From now on, animations will be split and uploaded as 1-3 minute 'episodes'. When the project is finished, I will release all of them together as a complete and uninterrupted film. This changes nothing about the actual projects themselves, except that now it's as if you have the option to 'stream' them over extended periods of time. It's like the worst internet connection you could possibly imagine!

 If you hate this new system and it is ruining your life: simply refrain from laying eyes on the episodes, and wait for the complete releases. If you hate this new system, it is ruining your life, and you do not have the self-control necessary to wait eons for the full product: please avoid food and addictive substances as you are prone to ruin your life even more if you haven't already in which case you are probably pretty offended right now! Good!

And thus, the first of three episodes cometh in early 2013.

Empire of Tedium

Current mood

This 'thing' is one hundred and one shots long. As of right now, fifty two are completely finished. The remainder are mostly only penciled and inked, which leaves the monumental task of coloring, scanning, cleaning, and compositing the frames. I'll still probably add about twenty shots from scratch on top of this. Spell checker, why don't you think compositing is a word. It is a word. Stop bleeding underneath every 'compositing' I type in a poor effort to distress me. 'Empire of Sock' has transformed me into a being of pure distress, your pathetic attempts do not even phase me.

 Compositing, as it turns out, does not save time, much in the same way that sales do not save money, comma. It lures me into biting off way more than I can chew with the reasoning that "well, all of these convoluted, overly complicated shots won't take you as long as it would if you were to do them without compositing", just like a sale that promises "well, if you buy way more crap than you need, it won't cost you as much as it would if you bought all this at the normal price."

Your butt's on fire your butt's on fire your butt's on fire hey

The extra time is more than worth it for the final product though. I just have to restrain myself from giving estimated release dates for any of my projects ever again. 'SuperVillain in 2011' hahahaha. Especially since I'm pushing it back further; once 'Empire' is done, I'll be doing some short things in order to break up the projects that will require a year's+ worth of time:

• A short toon. Not really sure about what yet.
• A 'content transfer' between the Music Video section and the Toons section. I hate the music video tab of the films page. I think the only ones that don't make me cringe in some way are 'Me Not You' and 'The Faster the Treadmill'. I think I'll be re-editing some of the others into BarfQuestion.com exclusive toons, with new music, sound effects, and footage. 'You Don't Want to Leave' is at the top of my redo list as it was tailor made to be unoriginal, cliché, and utterly lacking in the imagination I intended for the piece. If you still want to watch the crappy old versions, they'll remain on YouTube.
• HITTING STUFF AT A BUILDING, DELAYS EVERYWHERE
• Site redesign! Now that Danielle is helping me with Actionscript, I'd like to make the site into something more unique and less of a blatant homestarrunner.com rip off.
• Ending this comic drought. I've had serious issues getting back to work on the comic ever since I began ignoring its pleas for attention in order to get 'Empire' done faster.

After these things are out the door, I'll get into 'SuperVillain 6', which already is promising to completely dwarf 'Empire of Sock' in complexity. Also I really need to get around to making SpermRider 3: Spermouroboros.

If you missed it, Sulek's new album "Unbound at Last" is out! It features "The Runaway", which is the song played during the first time travel sequence in 'Valentine's Day 2012'.
Check out their website for more information on purchasing a copy.

Microwaves, like genies, have a small reserve of magical energy that can grant three wishes. However, most everyone wastes this energy by wishing for hot food.

After about a thousand hours of production and one and a half months of running late, Valentine's Day 2012 is finally ready for viewing purposes. As I discussed in previous posts, this will be the final annual installment of the Valentine's Day series for the following reasons:

• Danielle and I have agreed that these are taking way too much time to produce, and we'd rather spend time together instead of me spending five months on 50 hour production weeks.
• This is the first year this started to feel like an obligatory chore rather than a fun opportunity to make something neat.
• I feel these animations are starting to get a little repetitive.

 This is the only one of my series that will have an unexpected, 'cancelation' style ending. I've had the plans written out on how to end the other series (SuperVillain, SpermRider, and Sock) for three to four years now.
However, in a few years, I'd like to come back to the series and make a climatic, send-off episode, but for now we've agreed that it's best to end the series here.

Considering how every episode seems to involve some kind of car/vehicle thing, Danielle and I also think that the series would make for an awesome racing game sometime in the distant future.

 This animation marks the official debut of the new 'digital composition' post-production technique I'm using to save time. 2007's "VoyageWaffle," 2010's "The Faster the Treadmill," and the upcoming "Empire of Sock" technically all did this previously to some extent, but "Valentine's Day 2012" is the first to extensively use it. Due to rushing and a gross overestimation of how much I could achieve with it, I composed some of the shots poorly and had to over-rely on digital blurring and other effects to make the shots look nice when compiled. I like how the final product looks, but I'm going to avoid making the same mistakes in future because I hate losing details.

 Since the new method requires me to painstakingly scan every frame one at a time, and my scanner is going senile, I had to make this paper frame thing to preserve the light levels. Unfortunately excessive exposure to the scanner's crazy x-ray light thing caused some adverse side effects. Sorry Scanny Buddy, your eyesight died for a good cause.

Anyway, with Valentine's Day out of the way, the Empire of Sock can finally birth. The entire piece is penciled and inked, and the first two minutes have been fully completed (as previously previewed). All that remains is going back and redoing a couple of shots I don't like anymore, coloring the last 75% of the film, and postproduction.
This means I'll be seeing you all at some point in the next decade.

The Final Delay

Since 2008, I've had each of my series more or less planned out: how many more episodes I'll be making, how they'll end; which characters should return, which characters should die, which characters need to lose some organs/heads; amorphous genetic monstrosities made from human limbs, flying condom carpets, and nuclear warhead spiders- all planned. Except for Valentine's Day. This short was initially just a one-off gift, not really meant to go anywhere (as evidenced by the slightly awkward and directionless sequel, VD2008).



Since it began, I decided to make them for as long as was possible, or as long as both Danielle and myself enjoyed them. However, since 2007, each installment has more or less increased in complexity. This has become a problem for two reasons- A) the more time these gifts require, the less time I spend with the recipient. "Valentine's Day 2012" saw me working 50+ hour weeks throughout December, and we've both agreed this has become slightly unhealthy. Reason number B): The Valentine's Day series, being the only series with a deadline, has been nearly single-handedly responsible for every major production delay in history. "Empire of Sock" has now been put on hold twice to make way for this series.



And so, Valentine's Day 2012 is going to be 1) probably a little late because of it's complexity, and 2) the last regular update to the Valentine's Day series. In a few years, I'd like to make one final "send off" episode for the series to tie everything off properly (as VD2012 wasn't written with it being a finale in mind). So, see you in later-than-usual February/early March for the penultimate "Valentine's Day 2012."

Trendy SOPA/PIPA post + DIY Free Gift That You Had All Along

As you might have heard, the government is getting all up in our cooking apparatus again in an attempt to pass SOPA/PIPA. In short, these are bills that will disembowel the internet and offer its organs as tribute to the Gods of the Entertainment Industry (who have become angered as they have chosen to think that online piracy is to blame for their lack of success, rather than the truth, which is that nearly everything they sell is uninspired trash).

The record labels that own the music that I've made officially commissioned music videos for are already kind of unmanageable. One, in particular, continuously flags my videos on YouTube, I theorize, in order to put ads on them (ungratefully failing to realize that my videos are already free advertising for them, and they should be thankful to even have them online). If these laws were to pass, my site could automatically be shut down without my consent in a similar act of kerdickery, and I would have to go through court to prove that I have the rights to upload my own work. (In reality, if these bills pass, I'll just rip the music out of the videos in question and replace them with a proper soundtrack. And considering some of the music's quality, that'd be beneficial to everyone.

Anyways, instead of blacking my site out or putting melodramatic censor strips over logos, I did something else. As I mentioned earlier, I spent a month or so in early 2011 remastering all my work in HD. I did this with intent to put out a DVD later on, but then I realized something. I art because I enjoy it. Not because of money. These multi-billion dollar enterprises and (to a slightly lesser extent) their artist-slaves are already rolling in lakes of cash and seas of supporters, but I've become content with my tiny shack of a career, out in the middle of some dense woods that not many venture out to because of all the ticks. And so I uploaded all the 1080p files of my work (originally intended for the DVD) to MegaUpload for free download.




But then the government realized they didn't need SOPA nor PIPA to be corrupt and took down MegaUpload on a bunch of overinflated charges and technicalities. Along with all the files I spent a few days uploading. As I don't have time to put them up on another site (only for the government to tear them down too), I've made some instructions (that many of you may have already known about) in order to download any of my work in HIGH DEFINITION.

STEP 1) Go to http://www.blip.tv/barfquestion
STEP 2) Scroll down and click on the animation you wish to download.
STEP 3) Copy the URL
STEP 4) Go to http://www.keepvid.com
STEP 5) Paste the URL of the selected video into the text field and hit DOWNLOAD in a dramatic fashion
STEP 6) Right click and select "Save File as" on your desired file type.
        Select >>Download MP4<< - 1080p if you want a HUGE FILE for GRAND PURPOSES such as burning a DIY compilation DVD.
        Select >>Download MP4<< - 240p if you want a TINY FILE for TINY PURPOSES such as putting the animation on a mobile/handheld device.
        Select >>Download M4V<< - 360p for some kind of iPod format thing. It is fairly tiny, and also suitable for tiny purposes, like putting on mobile devices.



You absolutely can:
• Feel free to make archives/torrent(s) of these files and upload it to various file sharing/torrent sites. File sharing sites are getting hit hard though, so be aware that your hard work might go to waste.
• Copy these files to your various fancy mobile devices.
• Copy these files to your various not fancy mobile devices.
• Burn DVDs to share with friends, fellow fans, or family.
• Use screen captures/footage for fan sites/media/tattoos, etc. (Use with discretion. Stumbling upon good fanstuff boosts self-esteem and productivity. Stumbling upon cancerous fanstuff makes me question if I should even be uploading my work to the internet in the first place).
• HURRY AND DOWNLOAD THEM ALL BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE AND THE FEDS TAKE DOWN KEEPVID TOO WAUGH.


You absolutely can not:
• Upload these files to other video hosting sites/film festivals.
• Charge money for these files.

Happy Holidays and remember to steal, share, and enjoy!