March Status!

FUDGE....

First thing first... I'm recovering my data from my external hard drives...

Today I got another external hard drive to backup my stuff, but I was stupid enough to go to disk management and "Initialize Disk." I wanted to change the drive letters and doing this basically made my hard drive inaccessible for the time being... And I thought I was such tech savy... guess I'm not. 

The good new is I might be able to recovery the data, so finger crossed that most of my data can be recovered.

This is a gut wrenching feeling because I lost everything I had from a fire back in 2018. It was around the time I wanted to learn how to render with Daz3D, but I went to work instead. It was a decent experience because work allowed me to save up for a better desktop that I'm still using right now. 

I have tried to learn from that and use a cloud storage to backup important files. Cloud storage can hold the important files and I can archive files not frequently used locally. I'm planning on investing in a fireproof safe in order to not spend too much on cloud storage. 

Cloud Links

Now this brings me up to the next thing I've been thinking about. I'm currently using Google Drive and MEGA to share links as well as uploading the comic files to the post. I've given a lot of thought on this I'm planning to use MEGA mainly because it provides end-to-end encryption. I've also like using the interface more compared to Google Drive. It'll make things easier to manage all the files in one place rather than having to do everything two times on my end.

I made several 4K turntable renders overtime and I thought uploading them to video hosting sites maybe a fast and easy way to share it with you guys, but there were also some problems I came across such as it's obviously not appropriate to put that kind of content on YouTube or Vimeo. The video files in 4K came out to be a big file so if I plan to do this in the long run, I'm going to need more storage. I think the video files offers a better way to view the turntables rather than scrolling up and down through multiple pictures. Most likely the plan is to upload video files onto the MEGA drive.

Content

The productivity right now is halted at the moment until I can recover my scene files to get back to work.

Overall, Fairy's Skin is coming along good these past few weeks. I'm slowly getting out those Halloween comics out the way as well as all the other comics.

February Content will still be created and messaged to you for the tier you subbed to.

March Content will still be created and messaged to you for the tier you subbed to.

Milestone and Delayed Content will also be created as I go down the list of content I need to create and messaged.

My plan was to finish all the comics and mass message everyone over all the past months you subbed to. This isn't happening as soon as I thought. I'm thinking of creating a list to keep track of what content still needs to be delivered. I'll message everyone the content I have completed for right now and update as I go.

Workflow

A lot of time has been put into learning and finding ways to do my work faster. Every new scene comes with new obstacles. Previously I've gone with 1000 iterations for most renders, but that'll roughly take 10 minutes on average. I've come to the conclusion to render around 500 iterations with the denoiser and it is producing good results. This cuts down the render time to 5 minutes on average. I'm trying to tie the scene setups to around 5 minutes roughly too. Which means in an hour I should be able to hit at least 6 renders.

I'm working on hitting 50 renders per day as a goal, but I've been able to hit around 30  renders consistently. Sometimes the scenes brings up different problems and I have to find a solution trying to learn how to fix it.

Of course I can't be rendering all day. Some days are spent learning, cooling off steam, spending time with family, compiling the comic together, and other admin stuff I need to do like managing my other sites.

But this is a good experience because I'm learning a lot on the way. I wished there was a how to step by step, but I actually learn more as I keep doing this.

Comic Creating Tools

I've been talking a lot in the past of wanting to try a different comic software. I use Comic Life 3 and while it is good, it does come with it's limitations. I tried Clip Studio, but I'm not leaning towards that yet. But I love using Affinity Photos which is why I've been using more post work effects. I don't like using Adobe products because they don't feel intuitive to me. It was hard to learn, but I love using Affinity Photos because it felt more natural.

I experimented with Affinity Designer and I'm thinking about getting it to be more expressive with the comic compiling part. I believe it gives me more options to customize the text. There aren't much presets, so I'll have to learn and create them compared to Comic Life 3.

Affinity Designer will allow me to fiddle with vertical comic format. I'm currently creating horizontal single panel format. I've been wanting to make a vertical comic with more panels on one page. It's the accustomed way of reading the comic. It seems like a fun way to have the reader's eye jumping from one place to another on the page quickly. I still love the horizontal single panel format because I can show more of the scene to the reader. It'll also be fun to experiment with the vertical multi panel format to keep the actions all in one page.

Affinity Designer also lets me edit photos on the fly with Affinity Photos so that's a big plus.

Feedback and Thoughts

I'm going to shift focus onto comics first. I wanted to provide wallpaper and turntable for every comic, but I'll need to give more time and thought into how I want to do that. I'm thinking of putting the related wallpaper/turntable to the comic folder so it won't be hard to find.

I've heard some valuable feedback on my work. I noticed that I've created too much stories and should focus more on the ones I've created. I wasn't expecting to create so many different stories. By hearing that you wanted to see more of the stories I haven't been in touched with for a while brought back the clarity and focus I need to get on with the established stories and develop them more.

I'll think more on this as I catch up with the content and plan out how to proceed with the stories.

If you have any feedback for me please let me know!

Also, my grandma recently pasted away last week. This month honestly can't get any worse... I'll have to take time for my grandma's funeral at the end of the month to take care of things with my family.

That's pretty much the updates for now. I still have lots of work to do. One step at a time though. 

2020 is a difficult start and it's already March! Hope everyone is doing well despite all the events happening around the world.

-AstralBot3D 03/10/20