2020 October/November Newsletter

Hello everyone!

No Nut November is upon us again and I hope all of you are doing well this time and resisted temptation. It seems like I’ve already failed…(Them thicc cake is too lustful!) (Insert Meme --Help, I've fallen and can't get up--)  I’ve been meaning to give an update post, but I keep pushing it back. Things have been quite crazy over the past few months.

Topic Outline

• The State of Comic Production
• October Review
• Messages Status
• November Plans
• Personal Life Updates
• Misc. Notes

The State of Comic Production

Firstly, I want to talk about my comic production. Over the past few months, my comic production has been slowed down to almost nothing ever since August. While I was able to create the Velma short comic, that was not enough content produced. This was not the plan I had in mind. My comic production expectations have not yet hit the standard I want as of yet. I am working my hardest to keep this going until I get my workflow up to my standard of a comic per tier. It’ll take time, but I believe in it.

The important thing for me right now is to understand what I can do to optimize my scenes to get the render image that I want. Not all scenes are created equal since some require more time and effort to set up everything right. In the meantime, I will continue to save up for a new workstation that’ll definitely help directly with the comic production. I currently have a 2080 Ti and while it is good, I have my eyes on the 3090 with double the Cuda Cores and VRAM. This means the renders will be faster and have the capacity to fit more characters into a scene.

All comics I listed are still intended to be created.

October Review

I was not able to work on any comics for this month. The Tier 1 comic Short Sequences will take priority. From the poll, it seems MindJack had the most votes so that will be my primary task.

Short sequences are new and I don’t want to fall behind on those as I have with all the other comics. Which is why they will be taking priority first. They should also take a shorter time to complete since the pages are around 20 pages.

Messages Status

September and October messages haven’t been sent yet. I’ll be working on sending those.

November messages will be sent around the first weeks of December. (if I don’t fail again…)

November Plans

The current comic still in work is Project Skins Ch.2 which is a Tier 3 comic. This will continue to be worked on while I get the Short Sequences completed.

Once I complete October’s short sequence, I will continue November's short sequence comic.

This is a simple order I have in mind:

1. October Short Sequence (MindJack inspired premise)
2. November Short Sequence (TBD)
3. Project Skins Ch.2 (Tier 3 Comic)

Personal Life Updates

I reside in California and a lot of things have been happening. We had a lot of fire over several weeks ago and it was quite crazy. The skies were filled with a thick smoke that turned the sunlight orange. It was as if I woke up on Mars. I’m fortunate enough that I’m not in any direct harm from the fire, but the smoke was an unreal experience. This was probably around August and September. The smokey air has died down so it's all good now.

My sister recently got married and moved so I am at a point in my life where I am beginning to be an adult. I moved into my newer, bigger master bedroom which serves as my workplace now. YAY! That took several days out of November to move and set up everything.

The house is a little colder, but it’s all fine for now. This time alone will allow me to learn more about myself. (It’s not as lonely since I’m still living with my mother.) It’s funny, when we’re kids we couldn’t wait to grow up and be adults. Now, there is this yearning to be a kid again once we’ve grown up as adults. (Although I couldn’t get what I wanted as a kid… so maybe I don’t really want to be a kid that bad now that I think about it, lol…)

I’m keeping my mental state in check and it feels good to get back into the groove of things again. Another thing that helps with the stress and my overall mental state is to form better habits. I’m sleeping at a better time now rather than staying up late. Alternating between hot and cold showers feels really good. And I’m recently trying to do some beginner workouts to release some steam. I did some easy abs workout the other day and it was really good. Took me three days to recover from the soreness, but I can feel my six pack forming behind my flabby belly. Hehe :)

Misc. Notes

I have been investing some of my time in understanding DAZ Studio on a deeper level. There are many things I still need to learn, but I think I’m at a point where I can give a decent tutorial. No hard set date on when I can complete a proper tutorial since my comics take priority. But I have several recordings saved when I do my work that I can take some time to edit and post somewhere. I know several of you want to learn how to do the skinsuit effect and learn some of the basics of DAZ Studio. I’ll do what I can to share what I’ve learned and give back to the community.

I’m starting to see the importance of writing out my stories and brainstorming. I’m working on documenting my stories and filing them into folders. It’ll help me remember my characters’ names. (Cause I have a horrible time remembering people’s names… lol). This brainstorming process will allow me to think on a deeper level for each story. To find what I need to breathe life into the story.

I’m looking into learning more on Google Sheets to improve the catalog list. It’ll also be useful for me since I can organize my task to my liking.

I have several physical whiteboards which are helpful for visualizing what I need to do. The Gantt Chart is something interesting to me because it’ll allow me to organize my tasks digitally as well. There are many skills I have backlogged to learn and refine.

Some of my time is divided into finding out what works for me. There aren’t many systems set up for me so it takes a lot of tiny tweaks to get it working right. (For example, I need to set up a good system of messaging so I don’t fall behind on those as I have with the previous months.)

I’m mainly working by myself, so I have a lot of things to do. (Shoutout to Nyx for helping proofread my comics to make them much better. My typos still haunt me to this day and now I don't have to worry as much about them typos.) Most of my time is not only devoted to creating comics. Uploading my comics to platforms takes time. Researching and learning certain skills to improve my stories also takes time too. Skills ranging from learning how to storybuild, how to write more effectively, understanding 3D more, learning various softwares, etc. I'm not writing these to whine about them as excuses. I just wanted to let you guys know that I have to wear many hats doing this creative process. (I much prefer it this way too. 🙂)

I would be lying if I said all my time is used for work. No, I also spend my time doing various activities such as playing games, watching movies/shows, and doing consuming entertainment stuff. I am human and I am not perfect. I wish there was a switch where I can go into work mode, but it’s not that easy. Of course there is a time for play and a time for work, so it’s all how you balance your time. I need to get to a point where I work hard so I can play hard. This is something I am working on to fight distractions and get the work in.

This whole process of creating comics these past two years has taught me a lot and I thank you all greatly for your support throughout this Creative Journey.

Feel free to comment below any thoughts or concern or to just say hello. :)

Thank You.

<3 AstralBot3D 2020.11.16