"Mighty Workload ... • Post" is what it says to the left of this box.

The second leg of this unwieldily tripod monstrosity is finally complete. There isn't much to say about it that wasn't covered in the last post. Although that may be because I'm just coming off of a fourteen hour work day and my brains don't feel so good.

The Making of Corporal Meatfountain

Your ears may have noticed that this episode has really awesome music, especially in the last half. This new track, "Exitium Aeternus", was made by the Hamster Alliance for this episode. Unfortunately I didn't get to use much of it, but the rest will be in the third and final episode.

If anyone commissions me to build a waterpark this is what I'll... I can't build waterparks.  But this could be one.

I won't make any promises about the final episode- it's definitely going to take awhile. About half of it is penciled and inked. I'm going to be reanimating the other half from scratch. ...Reanimating. That's what they're going to have to do to me if I don't stop working and get some sleep soon. Goopnigt

BEFOREHANDS

"I'm barely going to add any new content to Episode 2" was what I said last time. "Maybe. Can't control myself." And as it turned out, I couldn't. What started off as two simple new shots turned into enough new content to almost be its own separate episode. Good that, seeing as episode 2 was looking a little scrawny beforehand. BEFOREHANDS should be a replacement for "BC". I don't know the exact date at which hands evolved but it sounds punchier I think hands are really under-appreciated.

 I don't know when episode 2 will be out. I'm done coloring and scanning it. I've already composited and edited about half of it. I'm aiming for sometime in January, 2014 AD or sometime around January, 100,000,000 AH. But all of you should know how I am with predicting release dates by now.



Speaking of being a miserable failure, boy howdy the site done gone turned to cobwebs. I felt it was best to say that in southern because the website has become tumbleweeds. It just feels pointless updating when it takes time away from production. HOWEVER I have truck full of plans backed up to my house, ready to unload and put into action once Empire is done. Among these are schemes to force me into updating, such as "comic seasons" in which I allocate however long it takes to make about 50 comics, and then make about 50 comics, and then update regularly 2-3 times a week once I'm done. There's some other stuff too, but more on that later. I'M WASTING TOO MUCH TIME I COULD BE USING ON SOCK. MUST MAINTAIN 24/7 HAMSTER VIGIL.

Empire of Complainery

It's out it's out it's out it's out i'ts out it's out it's out it's out 'its out

Warning: I'm extremely sleep deprived. This post has got to be the most tedious thing I've ever written, but that's entirely the point. You see, the tedium of reading it is a metaphor about how insanifying the last almost two years of production has been. Have been. But you probably won't understand that parallel without an art degree. Good thing I dropped out so I have no idea what I'm saying.

I started 'Empire of Sock' a long, long time ago. Decided to try my new compositing technique idea on the entire project to speed things up. Felt invincible because of the potential speed boost this process offered and overextended myself by making 'Empire' really complicated. Oh, it's Halloween already and I'm only beginning to color this? Hmm. I'll quickly compile a two minute preview and then go do 'Valentine's Day 2012'.

Click to enlarge. My revolutionary idea that I found out has been around for like a hundred years or something.

 Used a rough version of the compositing process on 'Valentine's Day 2012'. Took forever, it came out two months late. Huh. Wasn't this technique supposed to make me faster? A few more months coloring Sock. This sure is taking an eternity. Eternity thief. I begin to scan and composite the frames digitally (post-production) just to break up the tedium. I then notice how bad the earlier frames that I made for the preview look. The outlines are all jaggedy and have all sorts of problems. Waste a month or so  trying to fix them manually, to little avail.



Despair. Go back to coloring for a few months, occasionally stopping to scan in more batches of frames and struggle desperately to make them look nice in post-production. Slowly improving as the months go by. Things are starting to look up and then I realize it's December. Missed Halloween again. Time for 'Valentine's Day' again.



 

Spent a month on 'Spacelope', during which I finally figured out how to (relatively) quickly scan/composite/finish my frames. Go back to 'Empire'. Now that I've seen how good my work can look with this method, I see my old frames and how awful they look.




Despair. Spend several months going back over the entire project and using my now complete grasp on the compositing technique to make all the frames look pretty. Takes longer than it should because I have to correct my old mistakes along the way.

 



It's been over a year now. Frustration at only being 50% done with this. Decide to try out episodic releases to create the illusion that I'm getting more accomplished than I really am. It works. I feel invincible again. All the material for the first episode is ready to go.




But wait- since I'm a complete idiot and think I'm ahead of schedule somehow, why not go back and add new content? Feverishly animate tons of new frames to scatter throughout the first two minutes that I already previewed. Animate an entirely new opening sequence. So much time has passed that my animating skills have improved noticeably. Now I have to go in and completely reanimate crappy scenes that I feel are below my current level.




Isn't stained glass cool? I should put stained glass shots in the intro. Draw them on full sized sheets of paper and everything. All of this is fine, I'll be done in no time and start pumping out episodes like nobody's business.



Seven months pass. Whoops. My computer pronounces that as 'hoops'. I finally dig my way out of the grave I created for myself, and for the first time in almost two years, manage to not hurl myself back into it on a whim. I've slept maybe ten hours in the last seventy-two. But it's done. Finally done.



Oh. Only a third done, actually. Well, that's okay. I have discovered things about sleep. It doesn't have to control us, it's just that as children, they condition you to think that it does. The good news is that in that convoluted, horrible mess, I've already completed significant chunks of the other two episodes. Because of the nightmare of Episode 1, I'm barely going to add any new content to Episode 2. Maybe. Can't control myself. It will probably be a little underwhelming compared to #1 because of this, but hopefully it's not too noticeable.




In closing, after 'Empire' is finished, animations will take a long time as always, but nothing like the nuclear train derailment that's occurred over the last two years.

Until next time!

(Various Sock pottery made by my mom)

Soon

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.