 | |
| |
|
|
view titles only (low bandwidth) |
| |
| The ol' black and white | May 31, 2016 8:40 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
Added 1 new A* page:Thanks once again to those folks keeping the comic going by automatically kicking a buck or two my way each month via the A* Patreon campaign! I get to send little rewards out to Patreon supporters each and every month; here's an ink sketch I sent off to a supporter as their monthly reward a little while back:
Thanks, again! : D
|
·····
|
| |
| Surprise, it's a page! | May 30, 2016 9:31 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
|
Added 1 new A* page:Here is your bonus Memorial Day page! ^_^
|
·····
|
| |
| Tennis, anyone? | May 28, 2016 12:55 AM PDT | url |
|
| |
Added 1 new A* page:Readers help me produce A* by pitching in a little each month through the A* Patreon campaign, and they can get themselves sweet little rewards for their assistance, like this sketch I mailed out to a reader as their monthly reward a few months back:
Thanks everyone for your help, it means a lot!
|
·····
|
| |
| Production notes: brushes and encoders | May 26, 2016 11:01 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
Added 1 new A* page:Something more in particular than usual has been bugging me from time to time about the daily A* artwork I've been doing lately, and I think today, after word searching through my own old blog articles (aha! obsessive self-journalling pays off! and they said I was crazy! well who's laughing n— okay sorry), I finally figured out what it was: turns out that the old pages I was looking at and wondering why I've fallen off of some of the more successful aspects of, well, those happened not long before I switched brushes about two episodes ago! So I'm going to incorporate the old brush back into the fold, alongside the newer one, and we'll see how that goes starting tomorrow. I know this is all a little vague but I don't want to say too much until some results are in, so I'll probably be discussing this more in-depth next week! Meanwhile, see if you can spot any difference in how the next bunch of pages come out.
~~~~~
Between art live-streaming sessions today, I learned a couple things about live video streaming that I probably should have known before! First, I've been broadcasting with my video bitrate set to the maximum my streaming service, Twitch, allows to non-bigwigs, namely 3500 kbps—this yields a pretty darn sharp 1080p, 30 frames-per-second picture. But! I *have* had a few people come in and complain they were "buffering" from time to time, by which they meant that their video paused and hitched while it tried to keep up with my stream—and now I've learned that that's because Twitch also doesn't allow viewers of non-bigwig streams (such as mine : P) to scale their detail level down to view high-bitrate streams on low-bandwidth internet connections. Which seems downright silly, because you'd think it means that Twitch is serving up more data than people want or need—although now I kind of suspect that what they're doing is that instead of having one stream that can adjust its bitrate to viewers dynamically, they're taking the bigwig streams and broadcasting multiple bitrate versions of them at the same time, and switching your detail level on those streams simply switches from one version to another.
Anyway the short of it is that I could lower my stream's detail level to the commonly suggested middle-ground of a 2000 kbps bitrate, and then more people—those people on slower connections, to be exact—would be able to watch it; but that would also mean that the artwork I'm working on and trying to have people watch would be blurrier for everyone. Sheesh! That doesn't sound so great, so I think what I'm going to do is just keep doing what I'm doing, and hope our communal high-bandwidth future catches up to my other potential viewers sooner rather than later. In the meantime...sorry for the inconvenience if really fast internet hasn't reached you yet! Meanwhile, you can always go watch the finished videos in sped-up time-lapse on my YouTube channel.
~~~~~~
The second thing I learned today about live-streaming is that I've been having my broadcasting software (the widely used free and open source Open Broadcaster Software) encode the video—which means packing the video images into a video format a receiver such as Twitch can use, I guess—without taking advantage of several highly efficient methods of doing this that my streaming laptop's particular hardware supports, so the poor thing's central processing unit has been having to put a ton of power—and thus, heat—into processing the video to go out, when it could have been offloading that task to other specialized processors on board—and its internal fan has had to keep blowing cool air on it at a fearsome rate to keep it from melting down; said blowing gets rather loud and had even begun to irritate my ear on that side. : P But! Now I can keep the CPU clocked way down, to the point where it barely gets warm at all, and the fan hardly needs to make a whisper, because other chips in the computer can handle the video streaming no sweat. Whew!
|
·····
|
| |
| Safe Keeping | May 25, 2016 9:21 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
|
Added 1 new A* page:I seem to keep coming up with scenes where I draw lots of little things on shelves.
|
·····
|
| |
| Dot Daily hits the club scene | May 24, 2016 9:06 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
Added 1 new A* page:Patreon is a service you can use to support artists and creators you like easily and automatically each month, even with just a buck or two—it's the main thing (besides sales of the daily original A* paintings on eBay!) that helps me keep this comic going! And I get to send little rewards to people for supporting the A* Patreon campaign, frinstance here's a sketch I mailed off to a reader a while back as the reward for their support that month:
Thank you! : D
(Was still in my costume design phase for episode 28—more of a glam take on the jacket thing this time around.)
|
·····
|
| |
| Hwair are we? | May 23, 2016 8:57 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
Added 1 new A* page:More "o"s should have a dʘt in the middle—not that that was really an "o." Pfft, advertising. : P
Also, semi-abstract horses are fun to draw!
|
·····
|
| |
| A little black jacket | May 21, 2016 1:46 AM PDT | url |
|
| |
Added 1 new A* page:Every month I get to send out rewards to readers who are supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign, because it's a super-important way of helping me stay at work on this comic day in and day out! Here's a reward sketch I sent to one reader for their support in a past month:
Yep, more costume design studying for Selenis' outfit in episode 28!
|
·····
|
| |
| How to make a bat eagle (beagle?) | May 19, 2016 9:24 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
|
Added 1 new A* page:At first I looked at pterodactyl wings and Komodo dragon legs, but pterodactyl wings have a somewhat visually spare single membrane, and Komodo dragons have stumpy legs that aren't really made for snatching and grabbing things off the ground, so I ended up basing this view of the critter on bat wings and eagle legs.
|
·····
|
| |
| Dig that high top though! '80s Shazamarama | May 18, 2016 9:11 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
Added 1 new A* page:Folks are helping me keep A* going by contributing to my Patreon campaign—it's a huge deal for A* and I really appreciate it! Sometimes I even get to send them rewards, like this monthly reward sketch I mailed to a supporting reader:
Another costume study as I was working on Selenis' look for episode 28! Gosh, you'd almost think I lived my formative years in the '80s or something ('_('
|
·····
|
| |
| Please, please *don't* walk in the park | May 17, 2016 10:07 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
|
Added 1 new A* page:Sometimes it seems like I have the hardest time drawing the simple things you wouldn't really even think much about, like...someone walking. : P Oh well, no walking tomorrow, what a walk (oops) in the park that'll be! : D
|
·····
|
| |
| More jacket sketching! | May 16, 2016 9:15 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
Added 1 new A* page:Here's another monthly reward sketch I sent to a reader for helping me out through the A* Patreon campaign : D
Thank you very much!!
|
·····
|
| |
| More of a Cowboy Bebop look I guess : o | May 14, 2016 2:34 AM PDT | url |
|
| |
Added 1 new A* page:Readers just like you are keeping this comic going by helping fund my efforts each month through the A* Patreon campaign! In return I get to send thanks and even little rewards, like this sketch I sent to a reader as their monthly reward for the support they give the comic through Patreon; I used the occasion to work on a design for Selenis' hair and outfit for episode 28, so this was one of the preliminary versions of her look there:
Thanks everyone for your support! I couldn't do this without you! : D
|
·····
|
| |
| Watercolor for a Patreon supporter! | May 12, 2016 9:51 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
Added 1 new A* page:Readers are helping me keep working on A* by pitching in automatically each month through my Patreon campaign—it's a huge help! Thanks to everyone who's joined the campaign! : D
Here's a watercolor sketch I made for a reader as their monthly reward for their help through Patreon : D :
Thank you!!
|
·····
|
| |
| All about Selenium! | May 11, 2016 10:35 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
Added 1 new A* page:It occurred to me the other day that there's one chemical element that shares a name with an important figure in A*, and that is element 34, selenium! Both A*'s character Selenis and the element selenium get their name from selene, the Greek word for "Moon" (and the Greek goddess of the Moon); selenium's name came about because one of its discoverers in 1817, Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius (considered one of the four founders of modern chemistry!—and discoverer of three other elements, with yet two more discovered by students in his lab; on the other hand, for a while he denied that chlorine was an element : o; he also originated the term "polymer," among others), noticed it was similar to tellurium, whose name comes from tellus, the Latin word for "Earth."
Selenium is also similar to sulfur, occurs in coal, and "is produced as a byproduct in the refining" of metal sulfide ores. Selenium is relatively rare, and although it has some interesting properties—in the 1870s for instance it was noticed that selenium "transmits an electric current proportional to the amount of light falling on its surface," which means it can be used as a light sensor, and was used by Alexander Graham Bell in his photophone in 1880, receiving a speech-encoded beam of light—it has gradually been replaced in most industrial and electronic roles by less expensive elements. It is still used in alloys, flexible solar cells, DC surge protectors, and photographic print toner, among other things. It is even in some anti-dandruff shampoos: selenium sulfide kills a scalp fungus.
Selenium is also an important nutrient: it plays roles in several antioxidants, in thyroid function, and in several rare amino acids. You don't need much of it—just about 55 micrograms a day (a microgram being one one-thousandth of a milligram!), and you probably only have about 13-20 milligrams in your body, total. Natural sources of selenium in our food are nuts, cereals, and mushrooms, with Brazil nuts having the highest concentration! Taking too much selenium (400 micrograms per day or more), though, can lead to selenosis, characterized by garlic-smelling breath, and, as selenium concentration increases, basically everything else going wrong with your body until you die.
Speaking of selenium and smells, remember that it is chemically similar to sulfur, which is responsible for our sweat smelling—so be sure to catch the chemists of the University of Nottingham telling us in their edifying and informative episode Selenium - Periodic Table of Videos why it is said that "people get off the bus when selenium chemists get on."
So that's selenium for you! Rare, deadly, good for hair, potentially smelly.
|
·····
|
| |
| Bangs for the memories | May 10, 2016 9:36 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
Added 1 new A* page:Here's a sketch I sent to a reader as their monthly reward for keeping this little comic going by supporting it through my Patreon campaign; Patreon makes it easy to keep your favorite creators at work by automatically sending them a little funding every month; even just a buck makes a big difference! : D — but oh yeah the sketch!:
Thank you!!
|
·····
|
| |
| The most A* element? | May 09, 2016 9:23 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
|
Added 1 new A* page:What might be the most A* element? I have one that I hope to blog about onnn let's say Wednesday or so. What's *your* pick?
|
·····
|
| |
| Selene, Greek goddess of the moon...walk | May 07, 2016 12:33 AM PDT | url |
|
| |
Added 1 new A* page:Some nice readers are keeping A* going by supporting the comic each month through the A* Patreon campaign, and I return I get to send them little rewards each month, like this sketch I mailed off to a reader a little while back (and the hot new episode 28 e-books I'll be mailing out this weekend):
I think I was testing out some wardrobe and styling possibilities for Selenis there—or maybe some fresh new dance moves??
|
·····
|
| |
| Everything's fine. ... Probably. | May 05, 2016 8:53 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
|
Added 1 new A* page:Seems like tangible space news has been kind of slow lately! Or is this just when the killer space robots are sneaking up on us? : o
|
·····
|
| |
| Not-Earth Boy | May 04, 2016 10:17 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
Added 1 new A* page:Here are a couple character design sketches I did yesterday before settling down to draw that certain new character who appeared:
Probably the closest I've come to doing a proper character design sheet or something. : P There were other sketches just before these but eh they were much worse.
Readers with freakishly obsessive recall may see a resemblance with the "Earth Boy" dolls encountered around episode 17, page 60; that, I assure you, is mere coincidence—or more specifically, the result of me being bad at this sort of thing and just drawing things in the apparently very few ways I like to draw things. : P Anyway, the character in this episode has a few specific physical traits differing from those suggested by the Earth Boys (in addition to not being a stuffed doll, I mean : P), and why he has those we will learn in oh about two more pages!
|
·····
|
| |
| Support your local singularity ^_^ | May 03, 2016 8:27 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
Added 1 new A* page:Here's a sketch I sent to a reader as their monthly reward for supporting the comic through the A* Patreon campaign! The support I get from readers through Patreon is the main thing that helps me keep A* going, so I super-appreciate everyone who's tossing a few of their hard-earned shells and marbles my way each month through Patreon's handy-dandy automated system! And I bet the other readers appreciate them too! ^_^ A* for everyone, woo! Oh yeah, here's the sketch I mailed to them:
Thank youuuuu! Now, if you'd like to get some cool rewards like sketches or e-books sent directly from me to you each month, or you just want to help me make this comic (and boy could I use the help!), think about signing up for the Patreon campaign! It's relatively painless! : D
|
·····
|
| |
| Episode 29 is go! | May 02, 2016 9:02 PM PDT | url |
|
| |
Added 2 new A* pages:Here we go with episode 29! This one may get a little weird. (Have I said that in previous episodes? : o) Like, probably starting with the very next page, I suspect.
I got episode 28 all bundled up into an e-book, which you can pick up for a song (or however much you feel like) on the episodes & e-books page. Those folks contributing to my Patreon campaign at the e-book reward level or higher will be getting their free download link emailed to them next weekend!
|
·····
|
|
