A Seriesous Problem

The second chapter of Syphilis Rice is finally over. I really did not see that taking four months, but I guess that's just how things are in this modern age of quality standards. With the first chapter, I had a vague plot outline but was mostly making it up as I went along. Very transparently, I ran out of steam when the fight scene rolled around and elected to just drop it on its face.

This time around, I scripted the whole thing in advance to prevent this and I'm impressed that I managed not to flake out and see it through. The third chapter is outlined and, like the rest of my series, I have an ending in mind but frustratingly will have to wait for years in order to finish it thanks to all my other ongoing projects, leaving me Sisyphussing all over the place.

BarfQuestion Films is only a few years shy of being a decade old. That's a big and kind of frightening thing for me, because the average person only has like eight or ten decades at most, and I've wasted the first two just growing up. This third decade has seen a lot of tedious and inefficient self-education and progress in what I want to do with the rest of my decades, but as of Empire, I'm finally at a point where I'm confident enough in my abilities and want to try and tackle bigger projects. As I've previously mentioned, there are 2-3 big film festival pieces I really want to begin undertaking.

Furthering this ambition is the realization that the internet and I are not a good match. Agonizingly slow updates, original ideas instead of pop culture references, obstinate refusal to use social media, etc, etc. It's not an ideal primary venue for my work. Starting fresh with a more suitable outlet is increasingly tempting and it just feels like a waste of time to postpone this first film festival project any further. This is not to say I am abandoning my series, nor Tales of BarfQuestion in any way. These new projects are still extremely relevant to what I've been doing all these years. More on that later.

However, before this first behemoth of a film festival project would be the perfect time to wrap up Valentine's Day and maybe even Syphilis Rice (and get another comic anthology published). If I wait until after the first festival project is done, it's going to be awkward because I'm going to be caught up with the site redesign (which will be super user-unfriendly). So do I continue to shelve my burning passion for this new project in order to take an opportune moment and end one or two series, or do I awkwardly postpone those final installments for many years in order to do some much needed horizon expansion? Since I'll be doing both anyway, this normally would not be a big deal, but the amount of time they will both take makes this a big decision for me.

I kind of wish I had just let Spacelope be the final installment of Valentine's Day (those end of credit taglines promising future episodes are really kicking my ass), but I've already sketched out some character (re)designs I'm very attached to, so now it kind of has to happen. I was going to try and tackle it immediately after Empire was completed (in time for Valentine's Day 2015), but after seeing my shot list, Danielle pointed out that I'd have to complete at least one shot every day between then and Feb.14th to finish in time, which would have entailed like 20+ hour work days every day so that got pushed back.

For now, I have a couple more Hitting Stuff at a Building cutscenes and assets to make. Since we conceived the project in, what, 2010 (?!), the game has been spending years at a time on the back burner gathering dust since we keep losing interest in it. As such, it looks pretty dated. As such, I keep getting insecure about it and adding more junk to it, postponing its release even further. The further it gets delayed, the more it aggravates my fear about how dated it looks, and the cycle repeats. Fortunately, this will give me some extra time to decide on what course to take next.

P.S. - I've been faithfully updating the comic for like six months now at the cost of getting regular animation work done, so it's time to go back to sporadic updates again until I can get through another project or two. I definitely won't let it die before hitting 1,000 comics!

Way down south where the dairyswamp flows

After the chaos of Sock, I've been busy with some pretty low key stuff- namely comics and continuing to overcomplicate the already dated-looking 'Hitting Stuff at a Building'.

If you've been following the comic, you'll have noticed Syphilis Rice #2 is finally underway! I don't remember comics taking this long at all, increasing quality standards is troubling business. My normal forty hour work week only nets me two full pages which I find extremely distressing. I've been obsessively following a serialized comic called 'JoJo's Bizarre Adventure' for the last five years and I have no idea how the author manages to cope with pumping out 40 pages a month.

Syphilis Rice #2's thirty pages should see me well into May, a fact that I am not terribly comfortable with. I'd do overtime to hasten it, but I'm already putting in overtime to work on 'Hitting Stuff at a Building'. I would really like to finally publish another comic anthology featuring Syphilis Rice #1-3, but the work to do the third and final chapter would require several more months (plus some extra time to actually format and publish the book). I'd really like to get going on those insanely complex film festival projects already, so I'm not sure what I'll do yet.

Since BarfQuestion Games has its own schedule (because it's something we do during weekends), 'Adventures of Puddlenaut' should be ready to start production once 'HSaaB' is completed. I've also been kicking around the idea of making lots of tiny, stupid mobile games but we'll just have to wait and see if my schedule will allow for it. I'm also putting off the site redesign until the first film festival project is nearly complete, so you're stuck with the current, moth-eaten design for a few more years yet. Additionally, I had planned to do the final Valentine's Day project right after I finished Empire of Sock, but when I designed and storyboarded it, I realized that there was absolutely no way it would be done in time. Some other year perhaps!

Episode 3 Concept Art

A few of the designs, such as the house remains, won't be appearing until Rictus. There's quite a bit more concept art of new characters that will debut in the finale (not included for obvious reasons). It's frustrating having a bunch of designs that I'm extremely excited about but won't be able to do anything with for years and years and years. Such are the perils of running a one person animation studio and taking on several series at once.

Oh, and if you weren't already aware, the comic is back on track!

THE EMPIRE HAS RISEN

Coming off of a sixty+ hour work week, my four year marathon comes to an end as I break through the finish line tape (somehow tearing all my skin off in the process) and collapse face first onto the sprawling salt beaches of Uvenirtaly. I am too exhausted to scream, so instead I elect to remain still and become one with the burning. 

It's a satisfying kind of burning.

There's a lot I could post about right now. But I think that between the above "Making of" video and the last four years of collective whining, everything I have to say has already been said. What's more important right now is what is yet to come. The next few 'recovery' months will be occupied with relatively small tasks such as getting the comic going again (stay tuned for an announcement on when and how this will happen), finishing Hitting Stuff at a Building, designing the new website, and more perhaps. I've got a lot of ambitious and dangerously impractical ideas about the website redesign, but I don't want to say anything until Danielle and I can sit down and figure out what's feasible and what isn't. I'm worried my concepts won't work out because I've never seen a website like it before, but I hope that's because people are too afraid of losing traffic and not because it's impossible.

Come 2015, I'm going to have a whole new batch of exciting and terrifyingly complex projects to embark upon, including actually creating the website, The Adventures of Puddlenaut game, and the first of three gigantic projects intended for film festival distribution (and later, free internet distribution as always).

Like the artwork in this post so far? Do you perhaps like it enough to… wear it? Well, I've got something a little different to offer this time. I'm sick to death of wasting money on defective and poorly made Cafepress test prints, so instead I'm hosting these free mediapacks of graphics I've designed for clothing and merchandise. Download this zip and take it to any printing service of your choice to create your own merchandise! Shoddily printed work done by a third party is no longer my problem, but it can be yours for fifteen easy payments of zero cents! Alternatively, skip the headache and just use them as website/desktop decorations, whatever.

Interest in the junk frame giveaway was either depressingly low, or people these days just don't trust someone who makes animations about killing children with their physical mailing address, so every entrant should be receiving two to three frames instead of just one, if you didn't already get my form letter.

Stay in your seats, the ride's not over yet. In fact, I'm not even sure they built an ending to this ride let me check with my supervisor… ccchhkk- mmhmm…. mhmm… yeah, that's what I … mmm… cchkk. Right, as I said, they haven't built one. I can understand why some of you might object to the prospect of living out the rest of your life in a roller coaster seat, but you have to admit that you certainly got your money's worth when you bought the ticket. Value like that is hard to come by these days. Well then, now that that's settled I guess we should start breaking out the emergency provisions.

Halloween Hype Post

It's done. I can't believe it's actually, finally complete. Empire of Sock: Episode 3 and the complete omnibus cut will be released on Halloween 2014. I've got about two weeks yet, so I'm hard at work preparing more content to accompany the release:

THE MAKING OF EMPIRE (OF SOCK)

• Time-line of production and delays

• Footage of every stage in production

• Original versions of scenes/deleted scenes

EMPIRE OF SOCK CLOTHINGSTUFFS

• Six new shirts and maybe more Cafepress junk based on characters from the film!

EMPIRE OF SOCK TRASH FRAMES MAIL-AWAY SWEEPSTAKES

I don't compose my shots terribly carefully. Because of this, I end up tracing a shot multiple times, moving around individual shot elements each time until everything's positioned to my liking. This generates penciled-only junk frames that closely resemble part of the final shot, but cannot be used due to small defects or too many erased pencil lines that would show up during coloring.

I feel egotistical for thinking anyone would want these scraps, but it's this or the trash can. If you'd like one of these production mementos, send a (physical) mailing address to grey@barfquestion.com and I'll mail them out a few days before Halloween. I've got 12 regular sized frames and 5 large frames, and I'll try to evenly divide them between however many requests I get before Tuesday, October 21st. 

I can only guarantee prizes for the first 17 entrants!

reliable leak

keep meaning to update but time i spend updating is time that sock needs so no time for this what i'm doing right now it's halloween though i am told i am not supposed to give out release dates but seriously halloween good sources been working 12 hour days the last two days to make this future a reality planning things for around release like making of video deleted scenes sweepstakes what have you no one told me typing while brushing teeth would be this hard

I-It'll b-b-be worth it... right?

Just finished compiling my shot list for the last "half" of episode three. I hope you've all invested in cryogenics.