Day 3 passed in a bit of a blur. My boss needed a shipment of shots from Eps. 11, 10 & 13 sent to him by 7:00 that evening, so I had to hustle to get things done in time.

Not that it was complete panic, though. I'd done the majority of the work had been done the day before, and today's big task involved setting things up to render for hour-long chunks at a time. Not being big on baby-sitting render queues, I pulled out my laptop at got to work on some of my own projects. I had a contract with a deadline looming, and a webcomic that needed to update that evening.

I worked on the webcomic first. With my recent adventures, I hadn't had time to settle down and rebuild my buffer, so things were coming down to the wire and it was making me edgy. I took a brief break to talk to xaq on the phone, and it turned out that he's been just as busy as me, trying to do all the writing for the game he's running this Saturday. I wished him luck getting it all done, made some smoochy noises at him, and then got back to my grim task.

I came close to not making the shipment time, but luckily there's a Purolator just down the street from my office, so at 6:54 I was able to fire up the old beast, rumble down the street towards the airport, and tear into their offices just before closing time.

That done, I got back to the office and starting tearing apart the next chunk of shots. It was brutal work. The last batch had been mostly little tweaks or re-renders, but this batch had some really tough contenders. There was layers flying everywhere by the time I turned in for the night. The next day would likely be just as bloody...

Today was the day I would survey the damage.

I got up early so I could catch the bus to work, and gobbled down a quick breakfast before sprinting for the door. My uncle stopped me before I could leave, though, and gave me the keys to his spare truck. He said it would be easier than worrying about when the buses stop running at night. I was damned grateful. Did I mention my uncle's a swell guy?

I came back inside for a more leisurely breakfast, and then fired up the truck when I couldn't avoid the glare of the clock anymore. Traffic was nuts. I had jokers weaving in and out of the lanes around me, and at one point I got caught between two little old ladies in matching old Lincoln Continentals, doing about 20 in a 60 zone. I lost my cool a little, until I was struck by a startling realization. I was driving around the city in a big ol' truck, and shaking my fists and cursing at people who were driving too slow. Clearly, I'd already been living in Alberta too long. All I needed was a cowboy hat.

That frightening thought still in my head, I pulled into work, a little late for the 8:00 start-time I'd been scheduled for. The door was locked. I figured that if no one was there yet, they wouldn't be until at least nine, so I settled back in the truck with a book I'd packed for the bus-trip into town.

At 9:00, some other people showed up and let me in. The first thing I did was to arrange keys for myself. The second thing I did was to look at the list of shots I'd been called all the way out here to do. They were all a complete surprise. When I left here, everything had been double-approved by the directors and the producer, so I thought that everything was kosher. Turns out, my supervisor was able to dig up some new work for me, seemingly out of the air. And it was some pretty major stuff, too. Only one episode out of the seven didn't have any shots that needed fixes, and some had lists long enough to make you weep.

Grimly, I got to work. I ground through shots until supper time, pausing once to run out with a coworker for some lunch, and then took a break to go forage. I knew that I'd be living out of the office for the next few days, returning to my uncle's only to sleep, so I needed to lay in some supplies.

A quick trip to a nearby Safeway found me sandwich supplies and a few night's worth of frozen suppers. The facilities at the office amounted to a fridge, a toaster, and an electric kettle that shot blue sparks out of the plug any time you to try to plug it in. Not exactly gourmet dining, but when you do the kind of work that I do, you learn to live out of a can while you're pulling long hours.

I went back to the office and enjoyed a meal of green pea soup out of a box before getting back to the grind. I stayed until well after ten, and then dragged myself back to my uncle's to sleep. I knew already that this case was going to be a long and tiring one...

Alina and the Case of the Unfinished Effects - Day 1

I'd had a lot of capers lately - first the move, then a brief jaunt up to the Canadian Shield where I canoed the choppy seas of Lake Gordan, broke trails through the dense pine forest and avoided those wily black bears... But little did I know that something even more trying to my courage (and my patience) was lurking in the midst of my quiet week of catch-up.

I was at home, trying to pad out my buffer, when the call came. It was my old boss. He had a job for me, if I wanted it. And he was willing to offer me gas money, one way.

I said no deal. On a case like this, I wasn't willing to go for anything than all expenses paid, plus a little extra for the trouble. He talked me around to bus tickets, both ways, and overtime pay. I must be losing my edge... But, he'd given me a line about the effects being unfinished, and I'll be damned if I let my name go on something half-done. I'm a sucker that way.

* * *

So that's how I found myself at the bus depo when the evacuation order came.

I was standing in line, ticket in one hand and my laptop bag in the other, when a sketchy lookin' hobo came tearing out of the men's room, coughing up a storm. A few seconds later, the staff started ushering us out of the building, polite but firm. They said we all had to evacuate, but the didn't say why. That didn't faze me, though. I've been in this business long enough to know how to find the clues.

The first one came pretty quickly, sirens on. Two firetrucks, followed by the HazMat team and an ambulance. I heard panicked conversation break out all around me, crazy stuff about terrorists and bombs, but I stayed cool. I knew that if it was anything serious, we'd be standing across the street, not milling around outside the front doors.

My hunch was confirmed a few minutes later when the firemen walked out, sans oxygen masks and in no particular hurry. They grabbed some industrial-sized fans, and then went back into the building. By this point, I was guessing smoke bomb.

I was close. It was mace. I found out later once they'd let us back in to board the buses, though it'd been through the rumor mill outside for a while. The bus left, an hour late.

The rest of the trip was pretty quiet, but I guess by comparison, anything would be pretty laid back. I arrived in Saskatoon, safe and sound, and found my uncle waiting to pick me up. I'll be staying with him a few days, though I imagine I won't see him much. The deadline's Monday, and I've got shots from six of the seven episodes to fix... It'll be a tough gig, but if anyone can do it, it's me.

The technology crisis seems to be over. My laptop is fixed, and my new Wacom tablet arrived last night. It is silver, and very shiny. I have yet to break it in, but I expect I will get the chance at tonight's Rifts game.

It'll be one of the last games before we leave for Edmonton. It's not long now - I'm (theoretically) done work this Friday, which leaves until the 24th for me to sort and pack my things and get the place ready to move. xaq has been a sweetheart and has done the majority of the packing already, so we're not as bad off as I keep thinking we are but it still worries me to think of the drawers of art stuff that I still need to sort. That alone is a job of titanic proportions.

Up until now, I've simply had no time to tackle any of the packing. I've hit the major crunch at work, and have been putting in some serious overtime to get the last episode wrapped up. I even went in over the weekend, in the brief periods between running errands to get ready for the move and catching up on my comic buffer.

It's in much better shape now. I've got strips through until the end of *July*, but I want to get just a little bit further ahead so that I can buy myself some time to unpack once we move into the new place.

Phew. It's been an exhausting few weeks. It will, I suspect, continue to be exhausting until we're totally moved into the new place.

Whatever it is about technology that hates me flared up again over the weekend, causing pretty much everything that I use to make Weregeek to go kaput, all at once.

When my Wacom tablet went it was a big surprise. I had just plugged it in to finish coloring the 100th comic, and it simply wouldn't start. The connection cable had given up the ghost. Flimsy devices they make these days, I tell you. I mean, you'd think I'd used the damned thing every single day for the past year now...

The power connection on my laptop going wasn't so much of a surprise. The model I have is notorious for connection problems, and mine has been giving my some problems for the past several months. Usually, jiggling the power cable was enough to convince the computer that it was actually plugged in, but lately, it's taken more and more coaxing to get it to register.

But seriously, did it have to die on me the day after my Wacom tablet did? And in the middle of a Rifts game, no less??

I eyed the scanner suspiciously after that blow, hoping that it too wouldn't join the trend of electronic lemmingry*. It, being almost brand new, and hopefully, seeing the simultaneously pleading and murderous look in my eyes, smartly decided to stick around for a while longer yet.

I ordered a new Wacom tablet yesterday. It should be here next week. I also took my computer in for repairs on Monday, hoping desperately that I was wrong about the internal power connector, and it was instead the (cheaper) power cord itself that needed to be replaced.

Expected costs to get everything replaced? $328.40

Ouch.

Wow. What a weekend. I really needed the three days off, because I don't think I could have fit everything I needed to do this weekend into only one day. Yoikes...

( Packing and running around on Friday )

* * *

( Saturday's Inheritance Game )

* * *
( Canada Day Relaxing )

Monday was taken up with more resting, packing and working on my comic. I've built the buffer back up to 3, but I'm aiming for 6 +. This next weekend's going to be a busy one, too.

What the crap? Where did my two-and-a-half week buffer go?? I swear I'd just gotten the damned thing built up to where I felt comfortable with it, and now it's up and left on me.

Two weeks ago, I was so far ahead that by the time a comic went live, I'd already half-forgotten about it. Not now. Now, I am scrambling to color next week's strips. This is not a good place to be.

I suppose that's what happens when you switch over to another project for a little while. Making my costume for SlarpCon, though fun, ate up a lot of time. Add to that the fact that I have a special Saturday update this week (that makes four comics this week!), and you'll see why I'm scrambling.

Which wouldn't be so bad, except I have a BBQ tomorrow and a Rifts game on Sunday, and at some point in there I still need to catch up on the sleep that I've been promising myself for a few weeks.

Gnee. So. Tired.

Today, at work, I had a problem.

I'm still catching up on sleep after SlarpCon (more on that later), which wouldn't be that big a deal, except that today at work I have nothing else to do except split up the large files that were shot several weeks ago and render them down into smaller chunks that I can work with. This effectively ties up my computer for hours at a time, leaving me only the use of notepad & safari. (To open anything else risks crashing the system, and restarting my previous render..)

Again, not a big problem. I figured that I'd use the time to catch up on some emails, write a blog post or two, and work on my Weregeek scripts.

The problem - my brain was not cooperating. It was laying about listlessly like some sort of beached deep sea creature, and no amount of prodding it with a stick or enticing it with amusing things on the internet was going to get it off it's sorry pseudopods*, thank you very much.

Me, being the brilliantly stubborn creature that I am, decided to fix that lazy ol' brain once and for all. I went out at lunch time and got a tasty flavored cappuccino from Tim's, figuring that a dose of caffeine would give me the kick start that I needed.

I was wrong. Now, not only is my brain still too fogged to think clearly, but I'm so wired that I can't focus on any project for longer than 3 seconds. Writing this blog post is the result of nearly a half hour of, "Check render window - still rendering, boring, switch to blog, write a sentence, can't think, check email instead, nothing new, think about tapirs for 30 seconds or so, ponder researching new dinosaur species with internet, get distracted by fark instead, check render window, rinse repeat..."

For the record - Caffeine : 10, Alina : 0


* Brains don't actually have pseudopods, or at least, I hope mine doesn't... but thanks to TMNT, every time I picture my brain, it comes out looking something like Krang. Only minus the ugly robot suit/tank.

SlarpCon is now only a day away! This year's lineup of games includes Vampire: The Requiem, Kingdom Come (a game about fallen angels), xaq's awesome seven-person Shadowrun game, an outdoor Legend of the Five Rings game, and a Serenity game.

I'm helping xaq run the Shadowrun game. It's the same scenario that we ran three years ago, at the first SlarpCon, so I'm feeling pretty confident about it. We were really scrambling the first time around - we were behind on making the props, didn't have much time to brief our staffers, and were trying out system for the first time - but now that all the props are already made and we've got some experience running things, I think it should go much more smoothly. We met with the staffers last weekend and assigned them all parts, ran them through the basics of the story, and showed them the different locations. I'm really, really looking forward to this one!

I'm also really looking forward to the Lo5R LARP. (Hell, I'm looking forward to everything!) It's the most daunting, since the costume requirements are so much different than the standard modern-day game, but people have really gone all out! I've heard of no less than three people who are coming in full armor and wearing sashimono (flags/banners) on their backs! I've made myself a full set of lightweight armor out of foam sheets, and the technique has worked better than I could ever dream. (Here's armor made by someone else, using the same technique. So. Pretty.)

I have so much work to do to finish it, though. I should be able to get it done on time, but we'll see whether or not I sleep at all in the next two days. 0.o

I'll have to make sure my camera batteries are well charged, because I really, really, want pictures of all the different LARPS. Can't. Wait!

This month's theme - busy.

I found out on Thursday that xaq and I are, indeed, moving to Edmonton at the end of July. I'm excited. I've lived in 'toon town for quite long enough, thank you. Don't get me wrong - it's a beautiful city, and it's where I've grown up and even moved back to after my various travels, but I've worn deep furrows by the river's edge with my wanderings, and I'm quite ready to pace by another river entirely.

But moving means packing, and packing means sorting through the piles of props and books and other things we've accumulated in the past year since our last move, not to mention trying to beg, borrow or rent a trailer in which to haul said things. I take one look around our living room and shudder to think of the packing to come.

This news happens to have come in the midst of preparations for SlarpCon, which means that our living room is currently the home of no less than two sets of partially constructed samurai armor and one tank prop. (Yeah, you heard me. Tank. Prop. As in, heavily armored with turrets, not the sort you'd put fish in.) I spent most of Saturday cutting, shaping and reinforcing the armor, which I'm making out of a lightweight foam sheeting, and now the living room table looks like it was hit by a kindergarten art class gone wrong. (The armor looks great - the wierdly shaped bits of foam that are left over look like they were cut by a six year-old with OCD and pinking shears.) There is art everywhere. The carnage will only get worse. I have just under two weeks, and I haven't started the helmets yet.

Plus, I just looked at the calendar at work, and the sudden realization that I'm going to be gone in two months means that I have to get these shows done in less than two months! Granted, we'd planned to have them locked by mid July, but still... If I budget in two weeks time for packing, moving, and finding a new job in Edmon-town, then I really have to be done by then!

Add to that scripting for Weregeek and building up my buffer so that the move won't interrupt the update schedule, and you will have one busy artist. Oy!

Today, I am wearing mystery socks.

What makes them mystery socks, do you ask? Why, that's simple - they're not my socks.

I don't know whose socks they are. They showed up underneath my bean bag chair last week, a pair of simple black socks too small to be anyone's but mine, and yet, I don't own any black socks. Blue with black stripes, yes, or the black pair of toe socks with rainbow toes and frogs on the soles. But plain black? No.

Still, they are a decent pair of socks. They look new, and they are a wonderfully soft, breathable fabric. I washed them up, just in case there they were some sort of manifestation of all of the socks that had ever been eaten by the dryer or slain by the toenail on my big toe. They didn't discorporate back to the ether of the washing machine, and since I'm not one to question a gift of sock-karma, I put them on this morning and wore them to work.

Mystery socks are quite comfortable. Perhaps I shall sacrifice a dryer sheet to the laundry gods in thanks.

http://www.fireflyseason2.com/

Yes, you heard me. Firefly. Season 2.

And if you consider yerself a real Browncoat, you'll git down there and sign yerself up with a profile so them big ol' corporate types know that they got themselves a proper legion of fans all hollerin' for more.

Just an update on the Weregeek site redesign.

The design and code of the new site is done! There's no major changes - just a few added vote buttons for some of the webcomic ranking sites (such as Buzzcomix), and a dropdown menu for easier navigation of the different storylines. The Extras page and Links page have also (finally) been added. All told, I'm pretty happy with how things work.

I'm still waiting on a couple things, though, which is holding up the new design from going live. If all goes well, we should have the new site up by the end of the week. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Update on the set of Weregeek LiveJournal icons = 70% done

This weekend is going to be crazy busy!

Codemonkey Todd is in town this weekend, and he's agreed to help me with the code for my new site design. It's not a major change - I'm mostly just adding in some banners and buttons here and there - but it was tough trying keep the page from looking too busy. I spent last night moving things around in Photoshop, and I'm pretty happy with what I came up with. Also, I should finally have some content for the extras page, so that'll go up as well.

Saturday is the Kingdom Come LARP. If you haven't heard of it, that's because it hasn't been published yet. We're lucky enough to know the guy who wrote it, and xaq is play-testing it for him. We're all playing fallen angels - angsty, angsty fallen angels who are trapped in human bodies. It's wonderful fun, and for maybe the first time ever, my character isn't either reeling from overwhelming depression or trying to carry the problems of the city on her shoulders, so it should be interesting to see what a halfway happy Mahalia looks like.

I hope we're not out at coffee to late after the game, because on Sunday we're having a BBQ lunch to raise some money for SLARPcon, the local LARP convention. Hopefully the weather cooperates, because I have some tasty pork tenderloins that need to be slathered in sauce, suspended over some flames and then devoured. And, because the weekend wasn't busy enough already, xaq's Rifts game is right after the BBQ. I'm going to have to color strips through the game again if I want to keep up with my buffer!

So, I'll see you all on Monday, if I'm not dead from exhaustion or the sheer awesomeness of two games on one weekend.

I am scrambling to get the buffer caught up before I head to my family reunion tomorrow morning. I'd planned it so that if I worked every evening this week, I could take this weekend off and still get the buffer built up. Everything was going fine.

But last night, I hit a wall. All of my the little clockwork gears that keep my creativity flowing suddenly ground to a halt, and I collapsed on a couch in a small puddle of exhaustion. The headache didn't help, nor did the fact that I've been waking up at odd times all week. Clearly, there was only one solution - coffee.

Now, coffee and I aren't friends. Or, more specifically, caffeine and I aren't friends. I don't have caffeine very often - maybe a little tea now and then, or the small amount I get from all the iced tea I drink, but all in all, I have no tolerance for it. A cup of coffee hits me like a steamroller.

But, desperate times call for desperate measures... I crawled to the pantry and managed to find the ancient, dusty can of instant (yes, instant) coffee hidden behind the grenadine*. I mixed myself a cup**, and then dumped in a bunch of milk and sugar to hide the taste. Regular coffee tastes deep, rich and darkly bitter. Instant tastes like metal. Metal with a tang of swampwater. I drank it anyway.

I lay on the couch a few minutes longer, hoping that it would kick in. I wondered why it was taking so long. Then, after a minute or two I dragged myself up and began to help with dinner. I stopped when I realized that I was grating carrots at Mach 12. (Seriously. I think I singed some.) Trying to slice the bread was even worse.
After a couple near misses I gave up and flitted back and forth for a bit, trying to be helpful in ways where I wouldn't lose a finger, but instead just generally got in xaq's way as he brought stuff in from the barbeque. Fond memories of a hummingbird character I'd once played sparked through my head, and I remember thinking that I should sketch some of them, but oh, it was dinner, and I should eat and drink and cut up the meat (no, knives are sharp and bad) and maybe after dinner I'd go for a run by the river or maybe just hover instead and my wasnt the sunset pretty....

It took a long while for my hands to stop shaking enough to be trusted with a pencil. It took even longer before I trusted myself to ink anything. And then, when I'd finally drawn my quota of panels for the day and I was going to sit down and start putting some of them together, my body did one of those Wiley Coyote takes, where he's run off the edge of the mountain and has only just now realized it but hasn't started falling yet, and I managed to get my sorry self to bed before I fell asleep on the couch.

But hey, I got some more strips done. And that's all good, right?

______

* Used mostly for fake blood. I can't recall ever having mixed -drinks- with it...
** Of coffee, not fake blood.

I have a shiny new LiveJournal account, and I suppose I should put it to use.

This weekend was another draw-till-you-drop session of working on the comic. I've got a family reunion coming up next weekend, and I want to build up the buffer as much as I can before then, because who knows if I'll be able to get any work done between visiting with the adults of my clan and getting mauled by the smaller cousins who think that I'm "the best toy ever!" It should be tons of fun, but not so good for getting drawing done.

I even went so far as to bring drawing/colouring stuff with me to xaq's new Rifts game. I thought it would be terribly distracting, but it wasn't too bad. The game started with a slice of combat as my character came flying through a Rift, pursued by some ticked-off Royal Guardsmen from another dimension. (I wasn't stealing those Royal documents... I was just borrowing them... Really...) I was able to colour a little during other people's turns, since the group is very new to the Palladium system, and things took a little longer than they might normally. I had to set my drawing completely aside once the roleplaying started, because there was much amusing banter and freaking out as the characters got to know each other. Much fun!

Gaming and working on webcomics? I may have reached a new level of geekiness. ;)