Dealing With Obstacles

 In case I have not actually come out and said it, I want to generate an income by telling my stories and sharing them with a wide ranging audience.  To do this, I believe I need to be able to keep to a regular, or at least semi-regular release schedule, even if the releases are just story snippets and/or images of renders that are works in progress.  You know, things to show followers, patrons on Patreon and fans that I am actually working towards completing a project.

As you can probably guess by the title of this post, I have at least a few issues in trying to achieve that.  Issues such as not enough time to work on the projects, having a computer capable of completing complex renders in a "reasonable" amount of time, and the ability to maintain enough focus to work on a project.  The first two can be dealt with by having a sufficient income generated via Patreon and a presence on Youtube (yes, I am considering a Youtube channel).  My issue in maintaining my focus can be partially mitigated with having enough time to work on the projects, but my biggest hurdle with that, is how I deal with frustration at the projects, when something does not go the way I planned.

In general, the frustration can be dealt with by just "taking a step back", and doing work on something else for a short period, or researching why what went wrong, did go wrong.  Unfortunately, I am diagnosed as Clinically Depressed and flare-ups can be triggered by quite a number of things, or they can even make an occurrence even worse.

This past weekend was an example of this, having run into some repeated programme crashing with Daz Studios, while trying to complete a render of one of the last two Player Characters from the superhero table-top game I was running back in 2017 - 1018.  I made a few attempts to complete the render over Friday night and part of Saturday, but each one resulted in a CTD (crash to desktop).  I ended up spending an inordinate amount of time playing Dead Space and "surfing the 'Net".  By Saturday night, my lack of progress led me to questioning my ability to actually make a living at sharing my stories, and that set of a nasty bout of depression, which I am still dealing with as I type.

I have improved, but I am aware of some signs that I am still dealing with this bout.  Having taken some time to think about the situation, and having chatted with a few friends about this particular issue, I realize that this is going to happen, but it does not have to keep me from working on my projects and sharing them.  I also realize that I still have a lot to learn with the Daz Studio programme.  It is a very complex and comprehensive programme, with a rather steep learning curve.  I can learn quite a bit, if I put some time into researching parts of the programme that I am unfamiliar with, or just having some trouble with at the time.

These obstacles will keep getting in my way, but I am learning how to overcome them, and for any followers that consider themselves "fans" will most likely understand the issues and still be supportive of what I am trying to accomplish.  I am basing that upon the support I had when I was originally working on The Phoenix Imperative, over ten years ago now.

I can hope, right?

Blog Update

 I added another section to the blog, under the "Pages" heading.  There is now a section for image renders related to superhero table-top game/story.  Like the TPI section, I will be adding to it when I have new renders available.  Enjoy!  :)

Sigh...

 Do you know what I miss the most about The Phoenix Imperative?  The reactions and comments from the readers, and my interaction with them.  The comment threads for an episode on Nexus Mods had a habit of being more entertaining to read than the actual comic. XD  Chatting with some of my contributors in those threads, occasionally resulted in new ideas for the story, and a fair bit of confusion for other readers that did not know what we were doing.  :)

Hopefully, I can see that happen again once I get this underway again.

Where Do I Go From Here

 Okay, that is a good question.  Right now, all I am sure of, is that I want to be sharing the stories I have in my head, with a wider audience than just a handful of friends.  I honestly want to start on The Phoenix Imperative again, but I am rather uncertain of what medium I would do it in.  I could continue doing it in a visual way, as I did originally, only this time doing the work in Daz Studios.  It would be less limiting than doing screenshots in either Fallout 3 or New Vegas, but much more time consuming.  I could also do it in a text only format, which would be quicker to do, at least in theory.  I also have several other story ideas I wish to share, and they also suffer from my trying to decide upon the best way to "publish" them.

No matter how I end up doing them, I am planning on setting up a Patreon account to help fund the projects, but before I do that, I need to decide upon how many Tiers I want to have, what the cost of those Tiers will be, and what reward each of them has.

I have also  resigned myself to expanding my "social media" presence, so as to increase my exposure level, and generate more interest in my work, thus potentially increasing the number of patrons I have.

Now, before much of anything really moves ahead, I need to work on my story outlines and backstories, especially for The Phoenix Imperative.  According to my old notebook, I had plans for six chapters/seasons/books/whatever, and that requires quite a lot of planning to pull off.

While I am working through that sort of stuff, I hope to be able to at least share more renders with everyone, as well as bits and pieces of the stories floating in my head, to at least show that I am doing something, as well as be able to showcase what I can do.

I hope to hear from you guys!  ;)

As Promised

 Wait, am I making a second post only two days after the last one?  Really?  WTF?

Okay, enough joking about my horrible track record for posting.  If you look to the right hand side of the page, you will see a new section entitled "Pages".  From there, you will be able to navigate through the various sections of Comicville, as they are updated and/or added.  Right now, there are only two links under that heading, one for the main page, and one for the newly added section for my Daz Studios renders.  As it sits, it is just a generic area for any and all renders I plan to share.  At some point, I will end up adding separate pages for the renders of different stories and themes.

Yes, I am currently feeling ambitious, and no, I will not blame anyone for not holding their breath.

Where Does the Time Go?

 It has been almost 9 years to the day, that I last published something here on Comicville, and I really have no excuse for it, other than "life happens".  Other than "nope, still not dead", I really do not have much to say, other than I hope everyone is doing well.  With all the crazy stuff that has been going on over the last couple of years, I have to say I am worried about you guys, and hope you notice this update and let me know how you are.

With that said, I do not have much to report on the storytelling side of things, other than I have a few more tales moldering in my brain, other than The Phoenix Imperative.  Speaking of TPI, I have picked away at that poor old thing over the years.  Most of that has been trying to figure out how I want that to go without it being fan fiction, as well as trying my hand at recreating some of the characters in Daz Studios.  That is a 3D rendering programme, for those of you that are not aware.  I have managed a bunch of images of Cameron, and a couple of Bridget.  I have also been using Daz to come up with renders of some friends' characters from some table-top roleplaying games we have been involved in.  I will add a page to the blog specifically for the Daz renders soon.

I hope to hear from you guys!  Take care!

Dru