I got an animation program for Christmas. I’m learning how to use it my way:
Posts tagged projects
matryoshka plan
I have a blank wooden matryshka in my craft cupboard. This is the plan I came up with long ago…
LibriVox
When no one else is around I read aloud to my pets. Though, I have tested the limits of my reading aloud lately, resulting in a long standing sore throat, I am intrigued by LibriVox » Volunteer for LibriVox. I will probably volunteer and get an assignment and read things aloud so that those things might be listened to by people all over the internets. In my voice even.
hitRECord
I was in the bookstore when I saw Tiny Stories vol. 2. I picked it up and was wooed and bought it, along with something else that made me say, “bookstores put books in the ‘humor’ section because there is no section called ‘awesome.'” Have you noticed? I mean Kate Beaton was in the ‘humor’ section next to things like 100 Fart Jokes and Galvin and Jobbs. What are they thinking?! Something like, ‘oh gee, I dunno where this goes so lets through it in the only catch-all section we have,’ or ‘this has pictures, but it’s not a graphic novel, so it must be humor.’ Maybe…diatribe for another day.
Back to Tiny Stories vol. 2. In it is a little blurb about sending your own tiny stories to http://www.hitrecord.org/ for the next volume. I am relatively addicted to trying my best to get involved in an anthology project, so I had to check it out. What I found was interesting and unusual. hitRECord is something like a collaboration engine, where creators of all sorts surrender up there bits in the hopes of matching it with other people’s bits, squishing them all together and making a fabulous new thing. I am skittering on the edge as I do with most virtual socializing nite-clubs, but it looks really cool, so I wanted to say.
Monster girl’s school zine preview
I am working on a zine, have been for a while now. You’d think that it would be a simple and fast thing to accomplish. Well here is a zoom in preview. The finished product will be a yearbook from the Wyvern Academy for Monster Girls, complete with club activities, school song, pictures of the girls, the grounds and all.
Memoir Project
Another project from the sketchbookproject.com: Memoir Project. I failed the deadline for the sketchbook project – but will send my little book up to Brooklyn when it’s finished anyway. I’m kind of leery of signing up for a new project. I’m not sure if I’ve gained enough momentum yet.
The Sketchbook Project 2013
The deadline to sign up for the Sketchbook Project 2013 has been extended to November 15. I have mine and need to get to work on it. I’m thinking of posting in progress updates as I go.
YOU still have time to sign up. Go visit The Sketchbook Project 2013. And get your book.
More mapping?
I’m trying some new stuff because I had an idea that ‘The Brain’ would be good for encapsulating and displaying a concept that is as web like as I have found interlibrary loan to be (yeah, this is library stuff). But ‘The Brain’ is not so accessible when you’re traveling from computer to computer. So, I wanted to scope out some other ways of concept mapping. I found bubbl.us. It’s pretty good and a free account gets three maps worth of storage that you can share and link to. (Yes, this is all about Interlibrary Loan – it’s what I do)
What I’m really after, now that I’ve been shopping around, is a way to insert the finished mind map into my web site. There I could host and share it forever (even password protect it if I wanted). Unfortunately bubbl.us ‘s HTML export just looks like a colorful list with anchor tags:
So I am still looking. Though, to be completely on the up and up I have to admit that a pro version of the brain offers an HTML export that creates a working online brain when loaded into a web server. It might very well be what I am looking for if I could just be satisfied with what I’ve already found.
Planning web page edits
Ok, I am planning more improvements to the site again. It happens the more time I spend in waiting rooms. I flip through this notebook I carry around in my purse and see some message to myself about something I should change or update and then I’m drawing pictures of major page make-overs. Eventually I will be completely satisfied with all my existing pages and will only be able to add more. That’s what I imagine anyway.
But then I’ll learn something new.
On my Brain
I tested out both The Brain and FreeMind last weekend and I’m still trying to brainstorm up more ways to use the software. The Brain is shown above with all my stuff in it. I like the expanded view (shown) the best because it looks like some kind of biological chaos. I also really like the ability to link ‘thoughts’ to documents or web pages and then link them together regardless of their hierarchy. Instead of a standard tree branch formation you can actually have crossing branches. This would have come in handy when I was researching genealogy (for an unnamed family) and got stuck with that one generation with marriages between two couples of first cousins. Ok, yeah, it was my family. But it was so long ago I doubt it has any bearing on my mental capacities. I really like The Brain for file and project management.
FreeMind is a little different and a lot less chaotic looking. It is more of a standard tree branch set up. I’ve used it hear to get a visual representation of my characters. What you don’t see in this snapshot is that each little circle at the end of a line either expands to more tree branches or (in the case of names) expands to a full character description/bio and picture. The arrows show cross-overs of characters between story-lines. I’m currently using FreeMind to mock up my next choose-your-own adventure story. So I recommend both.
25 Lives of Marcus Trapp – coming soon
I’ve got the line-up, and believe you me it was not very easy getting all this laid out. Before I could come up with such a simple list I had to do some major studying up on my history. If you’ve been following along with any of my other project posts then you may have noticed that the original title ’22 Lives of Marcus Trapp’ has been changed to 25 lives. I started with #1, actually I started with #2, and ended up with more lives then planned for. 25 rhymes with lives, so it still sounds good.
- Tian Ma 279-251 BC
- Trappimus Marcus 248-216 BC
- Marcos Ptatat 190-164 BC
- Tarquinius Marcos 55-81 BC
- Marius Thracius 7-69 AD
- Marco Tarpeius 105-160 AD
- Marut 210-243 AD
- Mulac 359-410 AD
- Marrok Apgwyn 446-477 AD
- Mattaki 550-648 AD
- Masaru 693-760 AD
- Musa Ibn Thabit 820-851 AD
- Mar Tysson 958-978 AD
- Morcant 1058-1083 AD
- Gansükh Tömörbaatar 1187-1223 AD
- Girrafe 1250-1262 AD
- Marceau Tasse 1301-1349 AD
- Markus Pfaff 1455-1525 AD
- Mason Trask 1544-1594 AD
- Mary Tarr 1595-1602 AD
- Morten Sorensen 1602-1644 AD
- Mark Trapper 1743-1775 AD
- Marcus Trappe 1775-1816 AD
- Marcus Trapp 1836-1939 AD
- Marianne Trap 1980-2008 AD
Is this enough of a teaser? Do you wonder what I’m going to do with all this?
Your brain on your computer
How did I not know about this? Years moaning over the inability to affix tags and notes to word and excel documents to make file browsing more coherent. Years of making lists and documenting and organizing my creative pursuits in unwieldy Microsoft folder systems. How did I not know or even consider that someone with more code intelligence than I had already tackled the problem? HOW?
Can you tell I’m broken up about this? I am both frustrated and excited. So this is how it works. Somehow, in the midst of looking for something else I found code {4} lib. And I thought, ‘Wow, this is a fabulous online journal on stuff I’m professionally interested in, in speak that’s a little over my head’ – which translates to: learn new things LeEtta, go go go! code {4} lib is also a blog, conference, community and listserv. I promptly subscribed to the listserv because I could find no other way to feed information from code {4} lib into my head and I didn’t want it to be forgotten in my plethora of bookmarks.
The listserv lead me to The Brain -a mind mapping software that allows for mapping and organizing files and thoughts, interrelating those thoughts, adding notes and tags to those thoughts, and finally, making everything searchable. It’s fabulous. The introductory webinar recording (oh, and they have live webinar question/answer sessions weekly), mentioned a few other products. One of these was FreeMind – an open source and free mind mapping software. FreeMind is also nice enough to list out alternatives so I’m not going to go into them here.
I’m thinking of trying out The Brain‘s free version/trial. It looks a little more like what I wanted to do with my filing system to make it more navigable. But I’m kind of inspired by FreeMind‘s 2D-ness. It would’ve been indispensable when I was trying to map out a choose your own adventure story. That was a clunky challenge. I’ve got another one in the works, so…I will explore. And, I’ll probably report back.
Fairy tale anthology try outs
Hey, I am currently waiting with baited breath to hear if my submission to GuruKitties ‘Once Upon a Time’ Fairy Tale comic anthology will be accepted. I put in a piece for the cover art as well.
This dude here is my wolf. Surprised right? – that I could choose a fairy tale with a wolf character in it? I mean, it’s not as if you couldn’t toss a rock in the land of fairy tales and hit a story with a wolf in it.
Anyway, I hope I hope I hope I get into it. I’m tired of all this success publishing articles and chapters professionally as a librarian. I want some success publishing as a comicker! I’m just kidding, I’m not tired of professional publishing success, but I do want some art/comicking/novelist publishing success too.
So, keep your fingers crossed for me!
Participate in the 2nd Annual Mini-Comics Day: May 26th, 2012 | Mini-Comics Day
Participate in the 2nd Annual Mini-Comics Day: May 26th, 2012 | Mini-Comics Day published on Read more posts by the author of Participate in the 2nd Annual Mini-Comics Day: May 26th, 2012 | Mini-Comics Day, leems1 Comment on Participate in the 2nd Annual Mini-Comics Day: May 26th, 2012 | Mini-Comics Day
Participate in the 2nd Annual Mini-Comics Day: May 26th, 2012 | Mini-Comics Day.
Do you know me well enough to know that I am already way too excited about this even though I’ve only known about it for 10 minutes? Of course I’m going to do it. You should do it too.
Now I gotta figure out what I’m drawing. And, should I print up multiples; do you want one? …without knowing what it’ll be yet?
Project rambling
I don’t know if you noticed that I have a few comics listed on the site that haven’t really started yet. It’s kind of a commitment to the project. If I tell someone I’m going to do it, then I have to live up to my side of the bargain. That’s what this is, I’m going to ramble on about all these great ideas I have and that will mean that I’ll have to follow through eventually. I am actively trying to limit myself to how many running projects I have at any one time. I found that the relief and pride of getting one of them done is too good to delay by adding more commitments to the mix.
I will be finishing a couple more things before I get on with it, I mean with the other things I want to do. The other stories I want to write. Did I tell you that I usually think of my characters first and then make the story around them? Maybe they aren’t completely thought out, but they’ve got flesh. I’ve got so many stories racing through my head, gathering up so many characters, that I felt bad about abandoning them to dreamy memories. So when I drew them I had to figure out a container to put them in so they wouldn’t get lost. That container is a highschool. Yup, at some point in time they all went to school, sorta. Anyway, once I get some things scanned I’m going to start building an online (and expandable) yearbook so ya’ll can see the people who fall out of my head.
And in the midst of thinking up a highschool for all these people to live in, I figured out a great flashback story for Levi Levi. It will explain how Annie became his book-keeper/office-manager type person. And it will feature the time traveling twins Clement and Rosalie Skitt. They’re up on the characters page, but did not yet have a story of their own. Technically Levi Levi’s next chapter isn’t their story either…so I came up with one. It will be a choose your own adventure type alternative format comic – which means I can’t put it up anywhere until it’s mostly figured out and drawn. I mean, choose-your-own adventures don’t happen linearly so they can’t be doled out once a week.
And none of this has anything to do with my next huge comic idea: The 22 Lives of Marcus Trapp. This one actually requires research, so it’s slow going. Just writing about all of these makes me excited about them all over again.