What's Incredible

You know what's incredible?

Some people make money by making videos of themselves playing video games.

Imagine someone trying to do that, like, ten years ago- the year 2004. YouTube didn't exist yet. The Xbox 360 wouldn't come out for another year. We didn't even have iPhones yet.

Imagine the following conversation:

"Hey, Bill!"
"Hi, Chuck! Hey, didja see Battlestar Galactica last night?"
"Nah, went to see the third Harry Potter movie. Was it good?"
"Of course it was. Hey, have you figured out what you're gonna do now that you've lost your job?"
"Actually, I have. I've decided that I'm going to make videos of myself playing video games. I'll post them on the Internet, and when people watch them, I'll make money from the advertising they'll have to watch."
"...what?"
"It'll work, man. You'll see."
"Why would anyone care about some random guy playing a video game?"
"I don't know... I'll do funny voices or something."
"Get a real job."

According to Wikipedia, the great-granddaddy of the Let's Play video was Something Awful's screenshot playthrough of The Oregon Trail in 2006. You can see how far we've come since then.

(As a side note, WOW! Oregon Trail! In first through third grade, they used to take us to the computer lab and let us play that! On the reeeeally old Mac computers.)

So people really can make money by making Let's Play videos. Want an example? Just look at PewDiePie (but be warned that sometimes he says bad words. Ooooooooooohhh.). Plays video games, kicks butt, screams a lot, gets a check from YouTube.

There are a bunch of people who have made an entire career out of making YouTube videos. Like, they don't have other jobs (although they might work on other profitable projects, as well). My personal favorites (who, as fair warning, also sometimes say bad words) are jacksfilms and Tobuscus, and all their related channels.

It's kind of crazy to see how many people are making money by posting videos on YouTube. Thanks to the Internet, the world is becoming increasingly self-published. People can create art, videos, and books and make money off them without going through the traditional film companies or publishers.

People have suggested to me quite often that I write a book and publish it for Kindle. I am not quite ready to abandon the traditional route of publishing (and it'll also be a miracle if I ever finish writing a book. You've seen my NaNoWriMo efforts). I just feel like the final product is much more polished that way, since there are a ton of people whose job it is to put books together and you also have an editor who is not afraid to tell you when something you've written is garbage and needs to be changed. Granted, not every traditionally published book is good (there are a few doozies I could talk about in a different post), but I think that there's really something to be said for a trained and experienced editor collaborating with (or I guess sometimes bringing down the hammer on) authors to create the best book possible. That's not to say that self-published books can't be good; some of them are excellent.

It's the same with these videos- none of them have the production quality of big blockbuster films because these poor people are working with the revenue they get from ads, but they're still fun to watch.

I think traditionally-published and self-published art can coexist peacefully. And I commend anyone who makes a living from either method.

NaNoWriMo Word Count: OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAND!!!!

...except it's actually over ten thousand, and I didn't think to use this joke until it was too late.

I hit ten thousand words on my NaNoWriMo project! Yaaaay!

That's well and good, but I really need to be approaching 30,000 words right now... Anybody for a writing marathon?

I've been working on the Great Graphic Novel Project of '13, too, and I've got two more pages penciled. If I can stop messing with the scanning settings, I'll try to upload them for y'all to see.

My laptop's been having Internet issues lately, which is part of the reason the blog's been quiet for a few days, but I seem to be making a little headway in that department, so hopefully the radio silence will end here.

A happy NaNoWriMo to all, and to all a good night!

Catching Wi-Fi

...aaaaaand we're back!

Ladies and gents, my deepest apologies for my absence over the past few weeks. I was kind of exhausted (and didn't do anything interesting to blog about) after I got back from Europe, and then I had band camp. Marching band at the collegiate level is intense, and therefore my life consisted of nothing but band for about a week. But now classes have started and I'm settling back into a normal routine, so I'm going back to blogging!

The Wi-Fi in the dorms is always a little sketchy at the beginning of the year. Some of my devices are having better luck with it than others...

Since it's been forever since my last post, I wanted to do something kinda big to make up for it. I decided that I wanted to do a really traditional cartoon with pens and pencils and all that, like I did before I got my tablet. So I sat down the other night and sketched out a cartoon that had been in my mind for a while. After I penciled it, I inked it using two different kinds of pens (the difference isn't that noticeable). After erasing all the stray pencil marks with the fancy-dancy eraser I got in France (I'm so kidding-- I got it at a French grocery store), I went to get my colored pencils to color it in.

And I apparently do not have any colored pencils.

Which is weird, because I know I saw them while I was packing, and I'm pretty sure I put them in the box with all my other office supplies. I got really annoyed. Frankly, a lot of the stuff I had before the summer started is missing. Like my dustpan, ice trays, and hovering TARDIS. I think I know what happened to the ice trays, but there's no telling with all the other stuff. Absolutely no telling.

Anyway.

I couldn't color in the cartoon because I didn't have any colored pencils, but I thought a plain old black and white comic wouldn't suffice for the occasion. Therefore, I used my tablet to digitally color it. Of course, that almost didn't work, either, because the USB cable had gotten separated from the tablet and it took me a really long time to find it. But I found it!

I'm pretty happy with the color in this comic. The only thing I'm really unhappy with is the way the black ink shows up on the scan. You'll have to take my word for it, but the ink on the original is as dark and solid as it can be. Sometimes black ink just doesn't transfer too well. I gotta wonder how professional comic artists do it. Is there a type of scanner that produces higher-quality scans? Does India ink just show up better after scanning? Who knows? Not me, that's for sure.

I'm thinking a lot about this because I'm actually taking a graphic novel/comic book class this semester, and I'll be required to draw comics for a grade. I will probably have to scan something at some point. I didn't have a problem with the way my Blue Justice cover scanned, and I used the same kind of pen, but maybe it just looks better because the lines aren't as thick? Or something?

I don't know. I like inking with physical ink because I'm just better at it than I am at "inking" with my tablet. But maybe from now on I'll just pencil my comics on physical paper and take care of the rest on my computer. According to my Stan Lee book, a lot of comic book artists do it that way these days. We'll see.

Hopefully this comic book class won't be the death of me!

Random Fact #11

Random Fact #11: When you use French Internet, you get to watch French YouTube ads.

Source: Personal Experience

The App, The Blog, And The Internet

At this very moment, I'm on a charter bus. I have been on this charter bus for a total of twelve-ish hours today, and I'm still far from my destination. There are some really fun people on this bus. There are some really quiet people on this bus. Some of the people on this bus play the baritone, and if you've played in a marching band for a few years, that information ought to give you an idea of how this bus ride is going.
I finished my book. It was very entertaining, but now I have nothing to read. I'm up to date on Facebook and Twitter. I'm not feeling especially talkative. I'm not currently feeling sleepy. To entertain myself, I thought I'd write a blog post.
I have an iPhone with beautiful, lovely, gorgeous Internet capabilities. I'm on a charter bus that has WiFi. You'd think this would be a match made in heaven, but in fact, I have never been able to get my iPhone to connect to the bus Internet. Therefore, I've been rockin' the 3G for a while.
It was over 3G that I pulled up Safari on my phone and went to the Blogger website. A little orange box at the top of the page complained that it didn't like my browser. I ignored the little orange box and opened up a new post. The website promptly quit working.
Not one to be defeated by technology, I decided to go to the App Store and download the Chrome app to see if that browser would find more favor in Blogger's eyes. It did. Kind of. But it was pretty irritating to type in the normal document-thingy. The screen on my phone is a bit small for that, and it got intolerable once I started trying to make some words bold. So I gave up on that.
I went back to the App Store and downloaded the actual Blogger app. I would have downloaded the app a while ago, but I had seen a few negative reviews and decided I could live without it. But desperation drove me to it, and I winced while installing yet another app over 3G.
So far the app seems okay. Not perfect, I guess, but it's much easier to use than the website. I appreciate it.
So, yeah. That's my story about the app, the blog, and the Internet. I've still got a few hours to go on this trip, so who knows? Perhaps I'll tell another story before the night's done. Or maybe I won't. Maybe I'll go to sleep. Maybe I'll just listen to the baritones who got a hold of the bus microphone. Or maybe I'll write a novel. Or maybe I'll go to sleep.