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altarwaiting · 4 years

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How to gif without photoshop

Hello! By popular demand (of like 4 people) I am going to write out a tutorial of how I make gifs when I’m on my personal laptop and don’t have access to photoshop. There is another method I use with a different software that is a bit more complicated and if people are interested, I will make a tutorial of that method as well. I’ll do my best to keep this concise, so let’s get started.

Warning that this is VERY text and image heavy because I know how frustrating it can be when a tutorial feels like it’s skipping steps and I want this to be as clear as possible. Also please read this on desktop, tumblr mobile kills the quality of gifs inside text posts.

This is the video I will be giffing and here is the gif I will be making!

What you need:

A video to gif

For the best results, I recommend a video that is either 720p or 1080p (basically the higher the quality, the better). Videos with good lighting and bright colors also turn out the best. Unfortunately for me, I gif the TV show Prodigal Son a lot and that show has neither of those things, which is why my gif example is from that show; if you can make a scene with zero lighting or vibrancy look even somewhat decent, you can make anything else look good.

A video downloader or screen recorder

This is the video downloader I use and this is the screen recorder but basically any youtube video download website or screen recorder program works. Keep in mind that ezgif has a pretty low upload limit for videos, so if you want to gif something longer than like ~4 minutes, cut the video down to the specific parts you want first on a website like this one.

ezgif

A very straight forward website that anyone can access. You don’t need to download anything, it’s all online.

Bonus: Online Image Editor (not required, but I use this website to add text to gifs)

1. Making the gif:

Once you have a video downloaded, you go to ezgif.com and go to the section video to gif. Click choose a file, scroll to your downloaded video, and hit upload video. Your screen should look like this now.

There are two ways to pull out the sections of the video you want to gif. You can either write in the start and end time in the little sections (you have to convert them to seconds: for example, if my gif started at 1:16 and ended at 1:20, it would be 76 seconds and 80 seconds respectively). Or you can do the method that I feel is easier, where you go to the section you want it to start on, hit pause, and hit the blue button that says “use current position” then let the video play until it hits your stopping point, hit pause again, and click on the second “use current position” button.

Once you have the start and end time recorded, scroll down to the next part of the screen with the size options. For size, select “540xAUTO (for Tumblr)” since tumblr gif sizes start at 540p and go down the more gifs are in a row. For frame rate, try to do either 20 or 25; the higher the frame rate, the smoother the gif will look. If you are trying to gif something in 540p that is longer, you might need to chose 10 to keep it under 5mb, which is the tumblr gif size limit. For method, leave it on FFMPEG. Then hit, convert to gif.

your gif will now look something like this!

Now, this gif is currently 5.7mb, which is above the size limit for tumblr (5mb or above gifs will still play if I recall, but the quality will be really bad when you post them). If I was planning on keeping the gif this size, I would go back and change the frame rate to either 20 or 10 to get the size down. However, I am going to resize the gif to 268p, so I don’t need to worry about it being to big.

Using the correct gif size for tumblr is one of the easiest ways to make sure the gif looks good! For gifs that take up a whole row, the size should be 540p wide. For two gifs in one row, the size is 268p each. For three gifs in one row, the sizes are 177p, 178p, and 177p in that order. Here is a visual of it.

The next step would normally be resizing the gif, but Prodigal Son youtube videos come with a black banner on the top and bottom that I need to crop out. You will see a menu full of options under your gif, and you want to click on “crop.”

Cropping is pretty straight forward; you just move the little box over the part you want cropped, then hit the “crop image” button. Make sure width stays 540p!

Your gif now looks like this

Next, you look at the options under your gif again, and go to “resize.”

Again, resizing is pretty straight forward. I just put in 268 into the “width” section and leave the “height” section blank since the site will automatically resize the height. You can ignore the other menu options.

Your gif now looks like this

Next step is optional, but I usually do it. Once again, you go to the menu of options under your gif and select “speed.”

Speed is also super straight forward. I almost always reduce the speed of my gifs somewhere from 90% to 80% no matter what, just because I think it makes it look smoother. For gifs that are of short scenes that go really fast, I will reduce it to anywhere from 70% to 50%. You can try different speeds to test out what you think looks best. For this gif, I’m going to put it at 80%.

Here’s what we have so far. Congrats, you have made a gif!

Now for the fun part!

2. Coloring the gif

Go to the “effects” option, in the menu under your gif. You will see a LOT of options, but the panels I’m going to focus on are “colorize”, “brightness and contrast” and “color presets”. This section is going to vary a lot depending on what specific video you are giffing so remember to be flexible and try lots of different options out! It took me a while to get to a place where I can just eye a scene and know what settings to use. It’s super easy to go back and tweak a setting if the gif doesn’t look like how you want it the first time, but it’s a lot of trial and error.

The main option I focus on in the “colorize” section, is “saturation.” This is what will make all the color in your gif pop out. The saturation I use varies a ton; for scenes that already are colorful/bright, I usually keep it around 120 to 150, since you don’t want it to be over saturated. If I’m making an edit that is supposed to look toned down or more grey/neutral tones, I’ll decreases the saturation in the range of like 90-40. For a show like Prodigal Son, where there is basically zero color vibrancy, I tend to go full out with saturation, usually in the 150-200 range. For this gif, I have it all the way up to 200.

Next is brightness and contrast. This also varies wildly, but a good rule of thumb is I always try to keep my contrast at least 5 points higher than whatever my brightness is, it just makes the lighting more even. You need to find a good balance; obviously, the darker the scene, the higher you want the brightness and contrast, but if you go too high, the gif with be staticy/grainy. For Prodigal Son, which has horrible lighting, my brightness is anywhere from 10-30 and my contrast is anywhere from 15-35. For this gif, my brightness is on the lower side since the scene is outside in natural light; brightness is 16, contrast is 26.

After you get those settings, I go over to “color presets” section and click on the “tint” option. It will pull up a color chart that looks like this

You ALWAYS want the intensity up to 100. This part is where the most trial and error occurs; there isn’t any one color option that works for every gif. The shade I use most often is light red/pink or light blue/light purple. For scenes that are lacking warm tones (which is almost all of Prodigal Son) I tend to go to the light reds, and for scenes that are lacking cool tones, I go to the light blues. The light reds are best for making characters skin tones look more...like actual skin tones and not totally washed out. To select a color, you just move your mouse around the chart. This is the range of color codes I tend to use.

Again, intensity should be up to 100 (it automatically starts at 50 and I was too lazy to move it while getting screen shots :P).

For this gif, I actually used a new technique I’ve been trying out where I start with a light blue tint to even out the color tones, then once that gif is done, I go back to effects and add a layer of pink to make the colors brighter. Usually, one color works fine, but sometimes it’s hard to find a good balance (the red colors can get too red and the blue sometimes brings out too much of a yellow shade). For now, I have my color tint set at #eeebff.

Ultimately, this is what my effect settings look like and this is what the gif looks like now.

Now, like I said before, I added another layer of tint to this gif. All you have to do is go to the menu under your gif, and click on effects again.

It will take you back to the panel you were just on, expect now your colored gif is on the top and all the settings are blank again. The only setting you need to use now is the tint option; go there, and select a light red shade. I used #fff0f0.

And here is the final gif! To save it, just right click and hit “save image as.”

I know it seems like a long process, but once you get a hang of it, it goes by super fast, especially if all your gifs are coming from the same video.

BONUS: Adding text

If you are trying to gif something with dialogue or you want a quote to put over your gif, you will want to put text over it. ezgif has a “text” option that you can use if you want, but I personally don’t really like their font options, so I use the website Online Image Editor.

This is what it looks like. You can either hit “upload an image” and upload your saved gif, or you can go back to ezgif, right click the gif, hit “copy image url” and paste that url into the “upload from url” option. The web page should now look like this.

It’s pretty straight forward from here; click on the “add text” button and a menu will appear on the left hand with options for the text.

Type whatever you want the caption to be in the “type text here” box. This website has a ton of font options you can play around with, but when I just want to caption a gif, I stick with “Arial Bold Italic.” For a 268p gif, the font size should be 10-12, depending on how much writing you plan to put on each gif (if some gifs are going to have more writing than others, pick a smaller font size so it stays consistent!) When I make a 540p, the font goes up to 14-16. I use white for the color and black for the stroke. I make the strokewith 3 because it makes the caption stand out more. Once all these settings are selected, hit the “preview” button under the text box.

You can now drag your text anywhere you want on the image! The only bad thing about this website is that it doesn’t automatically center text, so you either have to eyeball it, or if you’re picky, like me, open up one of those online ruler applications and use it to measure out the center. For captions, I move the text just slightly above the bottom of the gif.

Finally, you hit apply. Once your gif has the text on it, all you have to do to save it is right click it and hit “save image as.” And here is the finished project!

That got a lot longer than I thought it would, but I hope it was informative! If anything was unclear or if you have further questions, feel free to send me an ask. Thank you for reading.

#gif tutorial #giffing tutorial #giffing #gifmaking #mine #my gifs #long post #I hope this makes sense lol #pls rb if it helped!!!#also if mobile doesn't keep the read more...idek

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absolutelyabby23 · 4 years

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College AU Sanders Sides Headcanons

Hey everyone! I’m getting back into writing and I also recently got accepted to college! I’m going to be a biology major :) With all of that going on, I started thinking of some Sanders Sides College AU Headcanons so here we go! Let’s start off by introducing everyone.

Roman Prince: Freshman. 18 years old. He’s a theatre major with a minor in musical composition. In his free time, Roman likes to write fanfiction correcting Disney movies. He also frequently uploads to his YouTube channel which is called RomanticRoman. He mainly does covers and skits. Occasionally, he will do livestreams where he reads his stories.

Logan Berry: Freshman. 17 years old. Logan skipped a year because he’s just that smart. He’s a psychology major with a specialization in teaching. He wants to become a professor. In his free time, Logan shadows the campus counselor, Emile Picani.

Virgil Sanders: Freshman. 18 years old. He’s currently undecided but working towards his degree with an exploratory major. He’s a major procrastinator and spends most of his free time watching YouTube videos. He enjoys conspiracy theories and has started to dip into some ASMR. He’s in the process of starting a podcast.

Patton Rogers: Freshman. 19 years old. He’s a child psychology major with a minor in chemistry because “he likes to mix stuff.” In his free time, Patton likes to bake treats for various clubs and organizations on campus. He also helps a certain sassy sophomore named Remy Stewarts at their coffee startup.

Dee Jones: Junior. 20 years old. He’s majoring in pre-law with a minor in sociology. Dee is the Resident Assistant (RA) for the dorm that the other five all live in. In his free time, Dee is the DM for a campus DnD club. He also likes to visit the small animal center in the veterinary school and feed the snakes.

Remus Prince: Freshman. 18 years old. He’s an english major with a specialization in creative writing. In his free time, Remus likes to prank his brother Roman and his friends. Remus also has a YouTube channel where he specializes in “childhood ruining” facts.

Okay now let’s get to the headcanons!

-Roman, Virgil, Logan, and Patton all live in the same suite-style dorm room. This means they have a common area, bathroom, and two bedroom areas. Roman and Logan are in one room and Patton and Virgil are in the other.

-Remus lives in another dorm room with Remy and two other students. Their room is across the hall from the other four which makes it a prime spot for scouting out pranking information.

-On moving day, Patton was the first to arrive. He made plushies for his three other roommates based on things they said they enjoy on their roommate profiles. He also figured that they might be a source of comfort when the others inevitably started to miss home. Roman got a red dragon wearing a little golden crown. Logan got a robot wearing a labcoat with NASA patches on it. Virgil got a blackbear wearing a purple-patched hoodie.

-When Virgil moved in and saw all of Patton’s pastel pillows and rainbow potted houseplants, he took one look at the MCR poster in his hands and wondered if this was going to work out. However, when Patton came in and saw that they both had fairy lights to hang, they became fast friends while helping each other set them up. Patton actually laughed at Virgil’s edgy humor while Virgil seemed to enjoy Patton’s puns.

-Roman brought about 5 Costco-sized packs of ramen noodles with him and his own personal coffee maker. Remus was behind him threatening to drop his video camera out the nearest window. Roman simply rolled his eyes and moved the rest of his stuff in.

-Logan was the last to show up. He brought a big stack of textbooks and an array of extra supplies that his roommates would go on to “borrow” from for the next four years. Meeting Roman was pretty anticlimactic.

Logan: Is that Shakespeare on your desk?

Roman: *Looking up from doing his makeup in a lightbulb mirror* Yes.

Logan: Cool.

-Things didn’t stay that chill for too long though. Roman and Logan frequently got into arguments about everything.

Logan: Roman for the last time, eating a cup of instant ramen does not automatically make you a more cultured person!

Roman: Okay… but have you tried an egg in it though?

-Patton quickly becomes like the dad of the group. He loves taking care of his friends and it definitely shows. However, they didn’t quite get his parental nature at first.

Patton: Okay kiddo time to get up from your nap and do your homework!

Virgil: Kiddo? Patton you’re like three months older than me.

-However, Virgil and Patton soon started to understand each other more. Virgil knew about Patton’s caring nature and Patton started to learn how badly Virgil procrastinated and got stressed. This led to them coming up with a sort of rules and rewards system. Patton would start saying things like “Okay Virge if we get our math homework done in the next twenty minutes then we can have a cookie and watch YouTube for 30 minutes.”

-Platonic cuddling also proved to be a way to help get rid of Virgil’s anxiety about his future. It was hard to ask him for things like that back home. He was able to trust Patton though so it’s enjoyable for both of them.

-Virgil has trouble sleeping at night after hours of doing homework and trying to get himself to do said homework. Dee was in the hallway one day and heard Virgil telling Logan about this problem while chugging an energy drink. The next day, Virgil had a package waiting on his desk. It was a purple weighted blanket with black spider print on it. Virgil has been sleeping better ever since.

-Logan recognized Roman from YouTube and remembered a few of the technical and research problems that he had with the channel. Logan begins helping Roman with scripting, setup, and editing. People start to notice the quality improvement.

-Roman and Logan went viral when they wrote a song about Crofters jam. Logan’s moms send them jam in care packages. After a late night of studying lines for Roman’s theatre assignment, they ate Crofters straight out of the jar with plastic spoons. Logan started humming a melody and Roman sang along until Virgil banged on the wall as a request for them to shut up. They wrote down lyrics until 4 in the morning. They recorded the video the next night and it got over 1 million views.

-After the Crofters collab, Logan started to appear more on Roman’s channel. He soon became almost a weekly regular.

-Patton invited Remus and Virgil to his new coffee startup to try some of the drinks in order to name them. Remus had some… creative suggestions (some involving horrid ways to use milk), which Remy and Patton immediately shot down. Virgil’s best idea was “Strawberry Survival” for an energy drink with a sugared berry taste and energy boost.

-Dee was able to recruit Roman, Remus, Virgil, and Logan to his DnD club. This is how the club meetings usually go. Roman wants to roll to marry every character. Remus rolls to seduce every living and nonliving element of the game. He then rolls to kill every living and nonliving element of the game. Virgil just thinks of more and more creative ways to try and eliminate his own character. Logan is just whining the whole time that nobody is playing correctly. Dee just tiredly says, “Roman you cannot kiss the villain. Remus you cannot fuck the rock. Virgil that cat cannot rip your heart out. And Logan, here��s $10. Go get me a coffee and chill out. I cannot wait until I’m 21 and can block out you little shits with straight vodka.” Though he’s exasperated, Dee really enjoys the meetings. He just won’t tell the truth.

-Virgil starts his podcast halfway through the year. People immediately love his sarcastic, yet calming, voice. He does a mixture of things on his show. Sometimes he just talks about calm things with Patton while they bake in the school kitchens. Sometimes he broadcasts the DnD sessions. By far his most popular is the segment “Dumb Debates” that he does with Logan where people send in meme questions and they each pick a side and argue about it. A chair might’ve been thrown during “Is water wet?”

-Roman and Logan solve every argument with a rap battle. They sometimes vlog it for Youtube. Four way arguments are solved through a Mario Kart tournament. Everyone always tries to get too technical with the best tricks except for Patton who almost always wins.

Those are basically it for now! Comments and likes are appreciated. Let me know if you want more headcanons or would like to see a fic out of any of these situations. Take care everyone and I’ll be back with more soon!

#thomas sanders #sanders sides #sanders sides au #sanders sides headcanon #sanders sides college au #roman sanders #logan sanders #virgil sanders #patton sanders #remus sanders #deceit sanders #sympathetic deceit #duke dont look

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comicteaparty · 4 years

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March 28th-April 3rd, 2020 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from March 28th, 2020 to April 3rd, 2020. The chat focused on the following question:

How many hours do you work on your comic per week, and how do you manager to balance that with other responsibilities?

Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS

heheh So we are.. cheating a bit Both me and my coworker are unemployed, and is working on hour comic, like was it a full time job. It is our passion project, and dream that we can work and live of makeing comics. In Denmark you can apply for grants from the government, but you need to have releashed a book before that is possible. We are useing the comic, to show potentional clients in the future what we can do. For now we are working on it from 09:00-17:00 ish (with a long lunch break) while applying for other kinds of grants, and also does all the things we are supposed to to get our unemplyment money, and searching for jobs, and freelance gigs, gathering the courage to start our own small company (not right now though) and yeaah time will tell

carcarchu

@Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS that doesn't sound like cheating to me? more like using the tools at your disposal to turn your passion into a viable career

Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS

hehe it feels a little like cheating! there are some debates about if it is okay or not, but we think that strengthening our skills is a good use of our time

eli [a winged tale]

Haha also not cheating! It’s great you’re using the time to chase the dream I’m curious what’s your breakdown for those time working on the comic? As for me, usually 1-2 hours a day with a bit more on the weekend if time permits. These days with the quarantine it’s about 2-3 h a day

DanitheCarutor

Since I'm unemployed until who knows when I've been working on my comic between 40-50 hours a week about 6 to 7 days a week... most weeks. Some days, like update day or chore day, I hardly work on the comic or don't work on it at all. Admittedly I'm not the best at balancing drawing with other responsibilities, sometimes I get so into it that I forget about daily house chores, other weeks I do the opposite and only do house chores which makes me totally behind of comic stuff. I can't seem to find a good middle ground, it always turns into completely focusing on one or the other.

eli [a winged tale]

Yeah when I get in the zone, time flies and life gets put to the wayside

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

So I have no school or work, so the webcomic has become almost a fulltime project for me

I average about 10 hours per day working on it, not counting on chores and exercise

Another thing I worry about is the possibility of carpal tunnel syndrome, which is why I've been relentless with exercise, too

I guess it's just a combination of relentless reminders and also sheer willpower that gets me to do other responsibilities haha

@eli [a winged tale] also I know that feeling

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

So since my school had to cancel, I have to be more responsible for my online course. Sometimes I give myself 2 days off each week to work more into my upcoming webcomic but I have to switch my mind for school work, online classes. Also extra time for food. I need to get back into exercise or I feel exhausted more easily. I keep a wall schedule so that I make it a routine to write what I'll do every 3 or 5 days, to keep my active brain reminded(edited)

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I spent the majority of last year (fun)employed (partially by choice, partially not! my previous job let me go rather unceremoniously... and I needed a hiatus anyway... so it worked out) so I poured a lot more hours into that chapter of Phantomarine than I usually did. I worked on it almost every day - at least for a couple of hours, but sometimes up to a full eight-hour day. That number has dipped tremendously since I’ve gone back to work, but I’m spreading the same amount of time out in a broader way. I’m trying to get a good buffer during my hiatus, so I can work and draw in a healthy balance. I don’t have crazy overtime at my current job like I did at my last one, so that’s already a comfort. I’m confident I’ll be able to hit a good stride once the comic returns in June (edited)

eli [a winged tale]

Can’t wait Lady!!

Feather J. Fern

Two part time jobs, and school killed my comic, but I been working on getting one panel done a day, which is around 30minutes to an hour if possible.

eli [a winged tale]

My routine used to be rendering on the commute but now just once in am and once pm until this limbo time is clarified

That’s awesome Feather! It’s so rewarding when everything comes together after putting effort everyday

Feather J. Fern

Once school is done in two more weeks I will be more free to do things so I hope to get maybe two panels done in a day XD

Online school, stupid quarantine

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

Due to the pandemic im mostly off school and my part time job so i spend like 4-5 hours on my comic per day. Still would like try to get a page done per day but lmao digital painting is slowwww

eli [a winged tale]

What’s everyone’s tips for breaks/stretches/balance? I feel like I certainly need to revisit these to avoid burnout and continue feeling motivated!

Feather J. Fern

Actually there was a cool manga artist who's tip was literally he only worked working hours. His mornings are free and since manga was his job, he worked form 12-6, giving him 2 hours to do other work he needs to get done, and takes morning walks and stuff.

Another person I know had "No working weekends" as a thing becuase they are a freelancer.

I personally have try to make sure I ahve a routine, and actually, stretch before drawing.

Streetch before, during a break, and then after, to keep that body nice and warmed up

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Health-wise there's this hing for your : every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. I'm not good at following this, but when I do it, it helps a lot.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Despite the current pandemic, my work-life hasn't changed much (unless you count stress getting in the way). I am currently "unemployed," but I do consider comicking my full-time job. I am also not very good at balancing work and life. Something's always gotta give. Last year, I worked at a job that basically ruined my ability to work on my comic. I worked 30-40 hours typically, ruined my sleep schedule, took work home sometimes, and was constantly exhausted. This is what resulted in my year and a half long hiatus, and it's what drove me to work like hell on my comic when I quit. Now (when I'm in the groove and not suffering from art block), I typically spend 60-70 hours on my comic and get 2-3 pages done: - 30 hours sketching (I know, ridiculous) - 5 hours filling in base colors - 20-25 hours painting - 5 hours adding text, speech bubbles, sfx, and finishing touches - 1-2 hours formatting for Webtoon I also spend some time throughout the week typing up the script, doing concept art for things coming in the future of the comic, and preparing for conventions, but I can't tell you exactly how much time.

eli [a winged tale]

Thanks for the breakdown! I’m always keen to learn from everyone and seeing how the workflow is like for different people

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

oh don't forget to do wrist stretches!

eli [a winged tale]

Ahh formatting time is always so tedious for me!

Yes wrist exercises! Any recommendations?

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

hmmm well the easiest one is literally just shaking it out

like every hour

and I also like to hold my arm out parallel, point my fingers up and using my other hand to pull the fingers back so i'm stretching the wrist

then I point the fingers down and pull on the fingers until my wrist is stretching

eli [a winged tale]

Awesome. Will be adopting those!

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I'm pretty fast. 2-6 hours per page, depending on how detailed it is. Average of 3-4. I could probably do 2 pages/ week easily enough, but don't want to do more than that. I'm the kind of person who always needs to be doing a million different things. I need to leave time for my other hobbies and my paintings and my academics and extracurriculars. Otherwise I'd get burnt out doing one thing only

Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS

@eli [a winged tale] So since it is both me and @Q (Wayfinders: Off Course) working, we start with working on a rough each, our goal is one step (so rough, ink, color) for two pages pr day, pr person. So in a weak the goal is four finished pages a week, and then we upload 3 pages per week. So it is divided that in the morning we start at 09:00 in the morning, maybe checking mail, being practical or whatever. Then we work until 12:00 were we eat lunch, go for a long nice walk and then we go back to work between 13:00 and 14:00 ish and then work until 17:00 when we begin to prepare dinner. Then of course breaks inbetween

Q (Wayfinders: Off Course)

It’s pretty wild to be able to dedicate your entire day to comics like that

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

damn you all work fast

do you guys have any tips on how to work on a webcomic faster?

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Lol, I wish!

Still looking for those magical secrets

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

@shadowhood (SunnyxRain) You know the 80-20 rule? You can get 80% of the result with 20% of the effort? My comic is very messy if you zoom in. I don't spend time making sure the linework or the coloring is perfectly clean. Also, I'm pretty fast at drawing figures. I used to practice figure drawing a lot by rushing to draw strangers irl before they moved, or by drawing a bunch of fast figures from the free figure drawing model websites online. I've also taken a figure drawing course (didn't even have to pay because it was part of my university! Even if you don't have that option you can probably find free life drawing sessions on Meetup or similar!) which really helped me streamline my process for drawing people

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

Oh I see! Yes, I used to take life drawing classes too! And your response makes me feel a lot better

I tend to be a bit messy with inking, and since i'm a perfectionist a lot of my time is wasted on editing/clean up

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I've seen cronaj draw, and while I think the results look excellent, I think her method is a kind of inefficient. She draws like a printer, nearly finishing one detailed body part before moving on the the next. I think maybe if she drew in a more classical way, going from a gesture drawing to progressively more detailed, it might help her be faster and her poses more cohesive and dynamic. Maybe working on 1 or 5 min figures would help? Practicing things like this?

eli [a winged tale]

Yeah I try to do figure practices for efficiency

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

I heard that there are some online life drawing vids you can follow too

but what are your experiences with online life drawing vids versus the real thing

like is there a real difference?

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

found some of my old 1 minutes

To me there's not too much difference

I've heard some people say that life drawing is either way easier or way harder though. Because of your depth perception when looking at a real person

But the bruises on my legs can attest to my horrid depth perception haha. That might be why I don't notice a difference

Actually those previous sketches might be 30 seconds? I don't remember

I would recommend you try both but right now we pretty much only have the online option haha

eli [a winged tale]

Yeah I’ve done both and I think irl creates complexity with depth and the interactions with others etc is helpful but online is my go to for flexibility

I think having a process streamlined will make things more efficient. The downside is that it might feel tedious and I do switch it up from time to time for variety

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Might feel uncomfortable but that's how you know you're improving

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

There is a TON of difference for me. I HAVE to look at a physical model in front of me.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Can't get better if you always do the same things

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

This is what my brain does.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I wonder- could drawing yourself in a mirror be a decent substitute?

If youre lucky you might also be able to ask an SO or roommate to model for you. Should probably pay them back by cooking for them or something though

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Brain: sees a real model in front of me Brain: translates 3D to 2D, result: drawing Brain: sees a photo/video of a model Brain: SHIT. That's supposed to be 3D, isn't it? Brain: Translates 2D to 3D (basically re-constructing it in my head, or attempting to re-construct) so that it can translate it back to 2D Brain: BSOD

There's some online resources out there that have "3D" photos... you know, two near-identical images side by side, so if you look at it cross-eyed, it becomes 3D?

But I can't do those because I get a headache X'D

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Just thinking about drawing from that makes me dizzy

eli [a winged tale]

Oh interesting!

Yeah maybe looking out the window to draw people would be the way to go...

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

But maybe figure drawing in VR exists?

eli [a winged tale]

Balcony figure drawings

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I live on the top floor so those are going to be some very small figures

eli [a winged tale]

For ants

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Once this coronavirus thing is over, there's lots of ways you can do gesture drawings from just random people -- bus stops, cafes, museums (I have not done this, but people who have done this report this is really good because others assume you're drawing the artworks. XD)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I've done this a lot

Sometimes I've even shown people drawing of themselves if they've turned out particularly nice

They've always taken it well

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

I like drawing my professors because they use hand gestures a lot when they talk

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Airport was REALLY good for finding people stuck in one pose indefinitely

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

they alwayas laugh when I show them

eli [a winged tale]

Shadow omg I do that too

Draws classmates

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

yeah the only issue i have with drawing classmates

is that they're always doing the "i'm using my phone" pose

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Become the master of drawing people on their phones

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Maybe try drawing children on the playground?

This works better if you're a woman

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

oh thank jesus

I also like going to the zoo or the museum

or the aquarium if i'm feeling adventurous

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I am a University student so I also have some pretty interestng drawings of people asleep in weird poses

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I really need to start going to weekly figure drawing sessions once this is over (there's one here... 20 min drive... 8AM Saturdays )

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

ditto or just go to the park and draw

and @Eightfish (Puppeteer) I've had some.....weird poses from all my profs

one guy was incredibly hard to draw; he was VERY enthusiastic about showing us knife skills

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

The parks here are too spacious, to a degree where it's weird to get close enough to people

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Bring binoculars

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

Don't worry ma'am I'm an artist

nothing sketchy

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

(except my sketch)

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

A+ pun right there

another place to go for figure drawing

theaters

like.....opera/plays

I once tried drawing the men dancing in the Newsies musical

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Tried that once, but it took me out of the performance

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

same i was dazzled by dancing men

aaaaand then i abandoned sketching at all when they started throwing newspaper strips into the audience

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

But they were giving you free paper!

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

THEY WERE

i'll take what i can get

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

@Eightfish (Puppeteer) While I agree that my method of drawing is "inefficient," I do not draw like a printer. There are videos of people drawing like a printer and it's not what I'm doing. I have done gesture drawing before, but it always looked incredibly abstract, and not quite like people, which is fine, but not what I'm going for. I treat gesture drawing like a warm-up exercise. It doesn't really do anything for my end result, but gets my drawing muscles stretched out.(edited)

eli [a winged tale]

Gesture drawings are definitely a good warmup!

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Perhaps it was an inappropriate analogy. What works for me I guess wouldn't work for everyone. I was trying to offer advice because whenever you talk about how much time you spend on art and you work life balance it's commendable but also dismaying. I hope you find something that works for you in the future

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Oh god.. I sometimes work 6 hours a day. I guess thats like 30 hours a week? Crazy to think about, it's like a full job

Oooh you guys are sharing figure drawings... I swant to show some of mine

Behold

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

My figure drawing usually breaks down into like, medical anatomy study. I feel like I understand body shapes better by including the muscles & bones

carcarchu

ABS the most important figure study

Deo101 [Millennium]

ah figure drawing? I love figure drawing ^^

I do like a lot but this kinda thing is most of it

anyways as for the question at hand, I do a lot of different things for my comics weekly. My millennium pages take me 2-6 hours i would say, but I also have patreon things I need to do so I'd say i spend 10-15 hours on it a week. for my other comic, I spend about 6 hours an update, and it updates every other week. but honestly, all of my free time goes to assorted comics. If i'm not working on school work or chatting with people, I'm working on things for patreon, potential merch, or other comics I want to start sometime.

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Oooh nice poses!!’

Deo101 [Millennium]

thanks!! I have a ton of gesture/figure drawings but these ones are my most recent that I have saved to my computer i think

10 minutes im pretty sure. very good for speeding up

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Those look really nice, good values

Deo101 [Millennium]

thanks ^^ I really hate working in charcoal honestly, it kinda always winds up hurting my body somehow, but its very quick sooooooo

kayotics

My answer for the prompt question has changed a lot since I started quarantine lmao... I used to do about 10 hours of work throughout the week on my comic page (usually after work, I have an office job) but ironically it’s gotten harder while I work from home. I’ve been struggling to find time since I don’t have a separation between work and home now, and putting the boundaries up of “I’m not always available” to coworkers is difficult.

Also on figure studies: they’re a great way to practice speed. I use the concepts of figure drawings all the time.

RebelVampire

@kayotics As someone who always works from home doing remote contract work, I have to say I think this is something a lot of people underestimate about work at home life. In that it's sometimes really difficult to establish boundaries with ppl and make them understand you aren't always available and also aren't gonna work billions of hours of overtime. So I'm sorry to hear that's affecting your comic work.

Shadowmark Productions

I work anywhere from 6-8 hours a day on comic stuff. That’s an average though. Sometimes I slack and need to pull all nighters to make up for it. Yes, I am terrible at time management. They say entrepreneurs are the only people willing to work 80 hours a week for themselves so they do not have to work 40 hours a week for someone else. I guess webcomic creators are the only people willing to work 80+ hours a week so that they can... go to work for someone else afterwards

AntiBunny

4 days of procrastinating, 1 of procrastinating and hating myself, and 2 of actual comic drawing seems to make up my weekly comic making schedule. :p

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I can only imagine how stressed I would be if I forced myself to update weekly

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

This is a hard question to answer because it varies a lot depending on my energy levels. Ideally I’d spend several hours a day on comics, but realistically I draw as much as possible when I have the energy (5+ hours a day for as many days in a row as I can handle it) and then go weeks or months too tired to do comics. On average, barring any long periods of exhaustion or other interruptions from RL, I spend about 20+ hours a week making pages for my comics.

sagaholmgaard

I prefer to work on my comic for about an hour ever morning and maybe 2-3 hours in the evening, that's the ideal routine for me. Right now I sadly have a lot of schoolwork to do (writing my thesis) so i might get less than 30 minutes in the morning and then feel rlly tired in the evening so I dont get as much time then either. but oh well!

I can still work for 4-5 hours on the weekends so I manage ^^(edited)

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

The whole stay-indoors order's currently completely wrecked my pattern, but before that I did between 3-4 hours a day.

Shadowmark Productions

Can’t imagine the stress of a daily or even weekly posting schedule. Hats off.

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #creator babble #creator interview #comic creator interview #comic tea party #ctp

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nikatyler · 5 years

Note

Hi I just wanted to come in and say I hope you’re having a good day and also a question: what is some advice/general tips and tricks to working on a legacy with tons of screenshots? Your Breeze NSB Legacy got me back into working on my own legacies recently and I just wanted to let you know.

Thank you! I’m sorry it took me so long to answer, I just wasn’t sure where exactly I should begin or how I should go about it. I guess I’ll just take it step by step - editing, writing captions, folders I use to keep things organized, drafting the posts and getting them ready to be posted. It might not be the best way, but I’ve been doing it like this pretty much since I began posting on tumblr and it works well for me. I hope it will still make sense when I put it to words.

It’s under the cut because I can’t keep things short, it’s a problem.

1. When I leave the game, I always try to edit the screenshots as soon as possible so I don’t lose any ideas for captions.

2. I open Photoshop, game’s screenshot folder and the legacy’s folder - for example, Breeze NSB Legacy. That’s where all my edited NSB screenshots will go. For writing down the captions, I’m using a simple Notepad file called G3_Captions (as you can imagine, it was G1_Captions for gen 1 and G2_Captions for gen 2).

3. In the game’s screenshot folder, I just click on the first picture and open it in the basic windows photo viewer. There, I look at the pictures and pick which ones I’ll edit and post, and which ones I won’t.

I usually have 1-3 screenshots per post, so when I pick these 1-3 screenshots, I open them in Photoshop. I just open them, editing will come later.

4. Now I’m back in the Notepad file. First, I assign a number to every screenshot. When I save them later, I will name them that so it’s easy for me to tell which belongs to which post. It looks like this:

[01] [02] [03]

5. Under these numbers, I write the draft of the caption, conversation, whatever I want to put there. Even those dumb little things I say in the tags!

[01] [02] [03]

Everyone’s favourite legacy is baaack!

#finally huh #your wait is over now

(note: that’s not the actual first caption of gen 3, it’s just an example :D)

6. Then I repeat steps 3-5 until I have 10 pictures opened in Photoshop. It’s easy to tell because right after I open them, I give them their number in the Notepad file. And I try to work in sets of 10, which also makes things easy.

The Notepad file looks somewhat like this:

[01] [02] [03]

Everyone’s favourite legacy is baaack!

#finally huh #your wait is over now

[04] [05]

*copy yellow gen requirements here*

[06] [07]

Sunset: “I want a rocketship.”

[08]

She got herself a rocketship.

[09] [10]

This generation is gonna be fuuuuun.

7. Now it’s time to edit those 10 screenshots. I usually only slap an action on them and adjust brightness, so this step is quick. This might be weird but I work backwards, meaning I first edit screenshot number 10, save it in whatever folder Photoshop offers me (it should be the game’s screenshot one) and then I move on to number 09, then 08, 07 and so on.

8. All 10 screenshots saved and closed? Perfect. To make things easier, you can either delete the unedited pictures, or you can be a hoarding mess like me and create a special Unedited folder where you put them so they don’t bother you in the game’s screenshot folder. I do that so that I can see exactly how many screenshots I still have to go through.

9. Now repeat steps 3-8 to get to 20 edited screenshots, and repeat it again to get to 30, and so on. I take a lot of screenshots, so I usually end up with about 50-60 edited screenshots after a gameplay session. Or 200, like when I played Realm of Magic on Thursday last week...don’t ask.

10. When there’s nothing left to edit, I move all my edited screenshots to the Breeze NSB Legacy folder. For the record, that folder now contains over 1100 pictures.

11. We have the pictures, we have the captions to them, now let’s upload it to tumblr! I usually don’t do this right after editing, simply because I’m lazy. Just upload them when you feel like uploading them.

12. For a long time, I uploaded the posts directly to the Queue, but I was having issues with that, so now I save them to Drafts first. Besides, as far as I know, Drafts are unliminted and you can only have 300 posts in the queue.

13. I open my Notepad file. On tumblr, I click on that Photo icon that lets you upload posts with pictures. I navigate to my Breeze NSB Legacy folder. Now I check in the Notepad file what pictures I’m supposed to upload. The first post is made of pictures [01] [02] [03], so I pick these. When they’re uploaded, I copy the caption I’ve already written in the Notepad file. If I’m happy with it, I keep it the way it is, if I’m not, I can always change the wording.

14. For tags, I use the Quick Tag feature of x-kit so I don’t have to write the same tags over and over again and at the end, I add tags for the sims present in the pictures. When I’m done tagging, I just save the post to Drafts.

15. To make my work as fast as possible, I have another folder in my Breeze NSB Legacy folder. It’s simply called Gen 3. It’s where I put the screenshots I’ve uploaded already. Screenshots [01] [02] [03] are uploaded, which means I can put them to the Gen 3 folder. Or I could delete them, but again, I’m a hoarding mess, I don’t delete my screenshots :D

I’m doing this so that when I choose the screenshots I want to post next, they’re on the top and I don’t have to spend minutes scrolling and looking for the right numbers (and I would do a lot of scrolling - I think gen 2 had about 2000 screenshots, so imagine how awful that would be).

16. Repeat steps 13 - 15 until you get bored. You might end up with 10 posts in your Drafts, you might end up with 50. It’s okay, you don’t have to do it all at once.

So assuming you don’t want to draft anything anymore, let’s move to queueing the posts! We’ll just move them from Drafts to the Queue. (by clicking that wheel icon and choosing Queue, but I assume you know that already) This is probably obvious, but queue the oldest posts first.

And of course, once you have the queue, you can change how often you want to post. If you decide you want to change some of the captions when they’re already queued, do it! I actually always re-read the queue for the next day to catch grammar or spelling errors, but sometimes I change the text completely because I just don’t like the original one anymore.

Of course, you don’t have to follow everything I just said, this is just how I do it and how it works for me. Maybe just a part of this will work for you and you’ll do the rest your own way? Anyway, I hope this helps!

#answered #this would be so much easier if i made a video huh #nebula-3124

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grimelords · 5 years

Photo

Two days after I said I’d upload it tonight, here it is! My October playlist is finished and it’s chock a block full of good music and also bad music that I love. From John Mellencamp to drone metal, from Katy B to Cassius, it’s all here and more. Deadmau5 also is here and for that I apologise.

Small Town (Acoustic) - John Mellencamp: Guess who had a legit emotional reaction to a John Mellencamp song this month, thinking deeply about what it means to be from a small town and how much this song gets right and wrong about identity and freedom in a small town versus living in a big town? This guy. I think this song works a lot better stripped down acoustically than it does in the album version. It gives the lyrics a lot more space, and really lays out just how simple the sentiment of the song is. It sets the tone of this month's playlist pretty well now that I think about it. I've been feeling like a real pea-brain hayseed this month and big chunks of this playlist really reflect that.

Katy On A Mission - Katy B: It feels like this and Hold It Against Me by Britney Spears (which was also 2011) is the moment that big american style dubstep completely crossed over into the mainstream, Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites was about six months ago and from there it was a tidal wave until oversaturation and complete death. But Katy On A Mission is different because it's at least got the credentials of dubstep pioneer Benga producing it and it doesn't go all-out on the super dirty bass, or even particularly have a big drop at all - it just uses it textually all the way through and it's better off for it.

I Only Have Eyes For You - The Flamingos: The way this song is recorded is insane. It literally sounds like they're at the bottom of a well. And it's mixed in that good early stereo hard-panned style so the lead is in the right channel and the whole harmony is in the left channel and absolutely soaked in reverb in a way that just sounds incongruous with the rest of the song. It sounds like a dream. My favourite moment is at about 2:30 when the harmony vocals get so large on the high note that they clip out and distort in a way that just sounds very, very cool.

Horses In The Sky (Live Version) - The Sound Of Animals Fighting: The Sound Of Animals Fighting was a post-hardcore prog supergroup where they were all anonymous (it was just the entirety of RX Bandits plus Anthony Green from Circa Survive) and I really wish they'd done more like this after their first album - because they still wrote very very good songs but they got lost in the mire of studio ambient interludes and being avant-garde for the sake of it which sometimes worked and most times just bored you which thankfully they only succumb in the end section of this version. Compare this to the studio version if you want to know what I mean, halfway through the guitar solo it just starts playing in reverse.

Split Wide Open - Cannibal Corpse: Here's what I mean about feeling like a pea-brain this month. Cannibal Corpse is proper troglodyte moron man music. It makes me feel dumb as fuck like a real stupid guy. There's something interesting about Cannibal Corpse's enduring ability to shock people, and that a band making such extreme music are at least a name that people know. They were in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective for god's sake. Before Marilyn Manson and that wave of cabaret shock-rock really got into the popular consciousness Cannibal Corpse were making shocking, violent music without any of the glamour and I think it's served them well in the long run. Songs like 'Hammer Smashed Face' or 'I Cum Blood', are shocking in title, artwork and content to this day are still musically shocking to the vast majority, far more than Marilyn Manson's spooky androgyny and wearing like a top hat and having fangs or whatever that's aged like milk and become just another boring cliche. The idea of the devil being charming and sly, disguised in charisma is so much more boring than the devil just tearing you apart like mince meat and eating you. Anyway I'm here to say Cannibal Corpse is good music for dum-dums like me.

Funeraloplis - Electric Wizard: Someone's edited it now but it's still in the footnote links, but the best ever piece of writing on wikipedia was the quote on Electric Wizard's page where they were explaining the origin of their name because it said "Is the name Electric Wizard made out of two Black Sabbath song titles? [smokes a big bud of weed through a can] Hahahaha, yeah it is!" which is so good and sort of all you need to know about them.

I <3 U So - Cassius: Looking back through this list it seems I'm having a real 2011 moment for some reason. I don't think I *get* Cassius. From everything I read about them they seem to be french dance royalty but they literally have two good songs and they're both in this playlist. These two songs are very good though so maybe it's just that. Anyway it's a shame what Kanye did this to song on Watch The Throne but I don't blame him, it feels like this song is just impossible to work with. It's at a weird tempo, it's incredible loose, it basically has one section. I imagine this song would have frustrated a lot of DJs when it was popular cause I really don't know how you would mix in or out of it, but fuck it while it's on it's a great song!

Youth, Speed, Trouble, Cigarettes - Cassius: This is the other good Cassius song. I'm pitching it as the theme song for when they eventually reboot Skins. I really appreciate that this song has 1 idea and basically just does every variation it can with it before bringing it to a climax. When your idea is this simple and this good that's all you need. Also the big toms that kick in after the 'just one more' but are heaven sent.

It Took The Night To Believe - Sun 0))): Sun 0))) are such morons and it's so funny that you can be so dumb and so serious about this sort of music at the same time. On this song Greg Anderson is credited as Mystik Fogg Invokator and Stephen O'Malely is credited as Taoiseach, which is the name for the Irish prime minister. Whenever I listen to Sun 0))) for the first two minutes I'm like 'lol this sucks' but then suddenly the guy is like 'cry yourself to ash' and I'm feeling the pull of the void quite heavily. Basically it's just like that meme.

Seven Angels - Earth: I remember ages ago some guy posted Earth 2: Special High Frequency edition and it was just this whole album with a high pass filter on it which is a funny joke. Anyway it interesting to think of this album in the context of when it came out. Two years after Nevermind, six months before In Utero - grunge at the absolute height of its power, stoner metal like Kyuss and Sleep huge when suddenly this guy comes out of nowhere and distills guitar music down to its essence: slower, louder, heavier than anything else by an order of magnitude.

Mutual Slump - DJ Shadow: I finally saw Xanadu this month and now I can finally relate to the weird smiling breathing out your nose noise that she makes after she says 'I'd never hailed a cab before' in this song.

Walkin' On The Sidewalks - Queens Of The Stone Age: Queens Of The Stone Age's first album is 20 years old this year and I've been thinking a lot about how it was a two person operation. Josh Homme played and sang everything on this album except the drums and it's funny to think about writing this sort of music all by yourself outside of a jam structure. He really sat down with a pad and paper and wrote down 'outro: bass riff x400' and then recorded it just like that.

Witch - Maps & Atlases: I wake up with this song in my head so often it's insane. I think a triplet groove in 4/4 like this is such a good and underused feeling and this song really deploys is perfectly. I want more of this, the good kind of math rock where it's not just guys doing midwest emo tappy riffs that all sound the same.

Down 2 Hang - Kirin J Callinan: This is what meeting up with people from the internet feels like. It's kind of a shame that this album got completely overshadowed by the Jimmy Barnes screaming meme, and that it's the first and last a lot of americans will ever hear of Jimmy Barnes but in reality it's exactly what Kirin J Callinan wanted to good for him I suppose.

Fast In My Car - Paramore: If you can't tell already I'm having an extremely basic bitch moron man month and that included listening to this Paramore album a lot and telling my girlfriend about how isn't it so interesting that the guitarist Taylor York just took over drum duties for this album after their longtime drummer quit and did such a good job playing drums AND guitar and her rightly not caring at all. I'm always impressed by songs that keep the same chords through the verse and chorus, it seems impossible but it works great here.

Don't Stop The Dance (feat. Delafleur) - Breakbot: I'm clapping my hands to stress each syllable when I tell you that Disco Will Never Die.

Oqiton - Jeremy Dutcher: I'm so glad this album won the Polaris Prize because I feel like I would never have heard of it otherwise. I absolutely love it, and I think what I love so much about it is that it doesn't fall into the trap of similar projects like this in the past of smoothing out all the jagged edges and turning it into plastic pretty music from the untouched ancient peoples - it's a real and alive reinterpretation of old music that looks toward the future and past in equal measure. Including the actual original recordings in each track is such a smart move, it gives you the context you need so this album isn't about liner notes and extra sources and it lets those old recordings seamlessly fold into these new reorchestrations.

I Remember - Deadmau5 & Kaskade: Anyway moron month continues here with the only worthwhile contribution to the planet earth that Deadmau5 ever made, I suspect by letting Kaskade do most of the work. It sounds sadistic but I really appreciate how this song is nearly ten minutes long, I'm a big fan of any song with that much confidence that actually pulls it off.

Overtime - Jessie Ware: Fucking Jessie Ware is back and she’s got Bicep producing! I think I added this song to my playlist before it was even a minute in, I just heard the bassline and my brain stem said yes.

Body - Julie Jacklin: I really think Julia Jacklin might be the best songwriter around right now and I cannot wait for her new album. I guess this keeps with the moron man theme by telling it from the other side. I keep listening to this song and then getting into a real mood for about an hour afterwards so I can't imagine the damage the album is going to do to me.

Can't Tell Me Nothing - Kanye West: Throughout the whole ongoing Kanye drama I've been thinking of this song. " I feel the pressure, under more scrutiny, and what I do? Act more stupidly" "I'm on TV talking like it's just you and me". Anyway he's had is money right for a long time but it's becoming increasingly apparent that you really really can't tell him nothing. I think it's interesting that the thing that seems to have spurred him into clarifying his beliefs and finally backtracking on anything is that Candace Owens tried to credit him for the shitty Blexit thing and it turns out the one thing you can't do to Kanye West is manipulate him into putting his name on something he doesn't believe in or didn't create. It's insane that John Legend and Mos Def and Talib Kweli reaching out didn't change anything but Candace Owens taking one too many liberties absolutely did.

Like Wolves On The Fold - Colin Stetson: I've said it one million times but I love Colin Stetson. I love how straightforward this is for a Colin Stetson song. You can sing along to it! So much writing about him focuses on the intricasies of his technique rather than his resulting very human, very primal music. I feel like his music is not very far from beating on your chest and yelling a lot of the time (especially toward the second half of this song) and the saxophone element just makes it a lot more socially acceptable.

Sack 'Em Up, Pt. I / Sack 'Em Up, Pt. II - Gwenifer Raymond: Bandcamp had a really good article about American Primitive the other day https://daily.bandcamp.com/2018/10/10/american-primitive-list/ and I found this album in it and fell completely in love instantly. I listened to it five times in a row. It's just incredible and I'm so glad that the music I love is finally being rescued from the mire of New Acoustic youtube men with their slapping and tapping and harp guitars and moving forward in new ways with artists like Sarah Louise, Marisa Anderson and Gwenifer Raymond. Women are finally allowed to play guitar now and thank fuck. One of the things I really appreciate about this album is just how written it feels. Every part, even the very swirly Part One of this song feels very purposeful, and if not totally written at least improvised in a tight framework before moving into the completely written second half. There's nothing wrong with improv but in a genre like this that's almost overrun with guys putting out hour long improv records it's refreshing to hear someone with such a clear vision execute it so expertly.

Bleeding Finger Blues - Gwenifer Raymond: Also, get a fucking load of this. An absolute powerhouse performance from a master. There's not enough solo banjo music around and it's a shame because I don't know if there's a better argument for banjo as a solo instrument than this song. The other thing I like about this album is there’s three banjo songs on it, which works well for breaking up the sequencing and making each song really distinct in a genre where albums can really blend together.

4:30 - Danger: It's a shame that Danger never really fulfilled his potential. With songs as good as this as 19:11 he seemed set. But then he took about a decade off before his debut album and I guess he lost something along the way. Anyway, doesn't matter because when you've got a song as good as this it's all you need. Also here's a good video where someone just put this song over the bar scene from Terminator which really accentuates the vibe in my opinion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z37R39-mff8

Crybaby - Abra: I love love love the production on this. A friend sent it to me because he said it reminded him of the Call Me Mr Telephone song I was raving about and he’s absolutely right. I love how formless it is, it goes through about three different verse ideas before finally getting to the chorus at about a minute and a half in and it’s only stronger for it. I’m so glad a new generation of darkwave adjacent people are discovering freestyle because this is great.

OMG!!! - Yelle: This song is probably best experienced with the music video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoWK4rV3INY It’s fantastic on its own, especially the “oh my god!” sample and the whole chorus section, but the video - titties out, covered in glitter, very very good dance move for the rising 'ooo' part, a hamster is there. Really accentuates it.

Copacabana (At The Copa) - Barry Manilow: Was thinking about this song the other day. Woke up with it in my head actually which was strange. I feel like this song and the Pina Colada song definitely take place in the same cinematic universe.

King Of The Dead - Cirith Ungol: I've been rereading Lord Of The Rings and also a very dodgy 70s sci-fi series called Dray Prescot and so divine fate has drawn me to discover Cirith Ungol. The good kind of metal where all the album covers could also be fantasy novel covers and all the songs are about how cool it would be to slay an ancient demon with a sword. I love this song because it feels impossible to sing it without doing some very dramatic face acting and also his voice is completely insane. I feel like this is maybe just how he talks.

Sugaree 10/21/1978 - Grateful Dead: Grateful Dead are good and ever since I came to terms with that I've felt like I'm always on the precipice of buying a box of tapes, covering my car in confusing stickers and dropping completely out of society. The problem with a big chunk of live Dead recordings that I've heard is that while the playing is always on point, the vocals can vary wildly - especially when they try any kind of harmony, but this recording is just great. Fantastic vocals with a lot of feeling, ample crowd noise so it doesn't feel like just a sterile soundboard recording, and of course an incredible extended jam.

Ring De Bell - Brother Resistance: I don't fully understand what rapso music is yet, I don't have enough understanding of the culture or surrounding genres. I basically just found this Best Of compilation and have been listening to it a LOT. As I understand it it's 70s Trinidadian calypso music that got very political, which is very cool. I'm a big fan of this sort of lyric where it feels like you could just go on and on for days about all the places you should ring the bell.

Kojack - David Rudder: The crown jewel of this compilation is of course this song I've posted about before and absolutely love to death. A protest song about them taking Kojack off the TV because it's too violent when shows like Dallas and Dynasty, which are far worse, remain on the air. Miami Vice! Before youtube comments and online petitions you had to make extremely good songs about this kind of thing, and its a huge shame that we've allowed this to die.

The Power Of Love - Celine Dion: I love Celine Dion because all her songs sound like they were recorded across 5 countries and 8 different studios and cost two million dollars. They always sound too expensive for casual listening to me, like I should have an emergency mink coat on me at all times just in case The Power Of Love starts playing in a supermarket.

Airworks - J Dilla: I've been listening to Donuts a bunch this month and really thinking about what makes him so good and the vast legion of Dilla imitators on soundcloud bad and I think this song is a good example. The main sample sounds straight up ugly, it's backwards and twisted to hell, the main strings part keeps folding over itself, it's just chaos but completely controlled chaos. Every imitator is so afraid to make a total mess like he does and is too focused on the underpinning laid-backness of the beat, where Dila somehow makes the relaxed feeling easily as a result of a million clashing elements.

Anti-American Graffiti - J Dilla: I also found a playlist on Spotify where someone had put together Donuts with all of the the original tracks it sampled (or at least the ones that are available on Spotify) and it's such an illuminating new way to listen to this album. https://open.spotify.com/user/keatonkreps/playlist/1TPeWt38uceWXD1Vhyf7wx?si=NJ_jHrYqQpCt18q-W9nrag

Marvel - Solillaquists Of Sound: Every genre has good music in it. Even rappity rap conscious hip hop has good songs like this one. There’s another song on this album called Popcorn that’s basically the It’s Media picture converted to a .wav but this song is good. Especially her vocals when they come in halfway through sounding like an astrology zine except good.

Rock Island Line - Johnny Cash: Johnny Cash has around one million songs about trains, including ‘Blue Train’, ‘Train Of Love’ and a song called ‘I’ve Got A Thing About Trains’ but this is the best one because it’s about train-related fraud and doing perhaps the most outlaw country manoeuvre ever and telling the toll man that you’re carrying livestock when you are in fact carrying pig iron.

I <3 U So (Skream's Made Zdar Feel Like He Was 20 Again Remix) - Cassius: Also as a kind of coda, here's Skream's version of I <3 U So, where he's completely ironed it out and turned it into a pulsing dnb thing which is always impressive to me when people completely reverse the feel of a song in a remix.

Worms Of The Senses / Faculties Of The Skull - Refused: Stereogum had a really good article about The Shape Of Punk To Come on its 20th anniversary and whether it really did turn out to be the shape of punk to come. They asked a bunch of people whether the title seemed arrogant and the vocalist from La Dispute had a really good answer where he said "But it’s like calling your shot and then fuckin’ hitting a home run. If it was arrogant, it was justifiably so." which is so great. https://www.stereogum.com/2020358/refused-shape-of-punk-to-come-turns-20/franchises/sounding-board/

listen here

#playlists

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penneyreddy027-blog · 5 years

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Convert MIDI To MP3 ( Or WAV, OGG, AAC, WMA)

MIDI is a compact, notes-primarily based file format broadly used for keyboard instruments. I do not think there's a approach to forestall that, at the very least not now. By converting an MP3 to MIDI you're basically asking a machine to guess what devices are in an audio file. Step 4- Use the file chooser on the following dialogue menu box then choose the MP3 file to convert to MIDI format. That video made my level better than any of us could: mp3 to MIDI is mainly a pipe dream. Even with easy monophonic audio, the outcomes have been close to useless. Go to the official website of the Bear File Converter and midi to mp3 converter free download android go to the MIDI converter web page. Then, click on the button labeled Upload" as a way to get the audio loaded to the interface. If not, you can drag and drop the respective audio file into Bear File Converter interface. The importing course of will likely be notified through the progress bar. Since it's an online device, you'll have to wait considerably longer until the file is totally uploaded. You will find enjoyment in upper class of transformed sound because of built-in volume adjuster and audio effects. Volume adjuster amplifies the quantity of too quiet audio or its parts like speech and voices. Audio results embody fade-in and fade-out, trimming of silence in the beginning and finish of tracks. Enabling of fade-in and fade-out audio effects ensures the flawless transition between the songs. AmazingMIDI is an extraordinary product from Araki Software program to convert MP3 to MIDI. Like Intelliscore, AmazingMIDi is different Home windows software for MP3 to MIDI conversion. It even converts WAV files to MIDI format. That said, it could actually handle both monophonic and polyphonic music. Start the conversion utilizing AmazingMIDI and it will likely be simpler than you ever thought. Just obtain it from CNET and be happy to use it. The second strategy to convert recordsdata from MIDI to MP3 format is utilizing the most effective software program out there available in the market these days, it is Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate. If you could complete your tasks fast and without shedding its quality, this tool is very really useful as a result of is 30 X quicker than another software program, can be utilized as a media participant and edit your movies. With Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate you'll compress and convert your video and audio information in few minutes, for example, convert midi to mp3 converter free download android to MP3. We counted how many steps each program took to finish quite a lot of tasks and found that Xilisoft makes converting audio recordsdata simple and easy. It extracts audio from a wide range of video files, together with MPEG WMV and MP4. 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As you may see above, free on-line converters and desktop-based software have their own professionals and cons, you may choose to transform MP3 to MIDI utilizing free online converters or desktop-based software program in accordance together with your requirement. MIDI to MP3 converter accepts and encodes MIDI files of "Format zero" and "Format 1" to customizable MP3, WAV, AIFF, FLAC or M4A formats. Its major perform is allowed to musical devices and quite a few digital instruments to interface with one another. You possibly can change over MIDI to MP3 format to make it compatible together with your system. Berklee College of Music - Reside chats and streaming audio. The famous Boston music academy presents particular person programs and certificate programs in songwriting, producing, theory and arranging in addition to a 12-week keyboard method class for $495. Simply copy these two recordsdata to the C: \ Program Information \ VirtualMIDISynth \ encoders" directory as shown within the message. Conversion Cat is another wonderful utility which is consumer-pleasant, as well as its interface, is clear and more comprehensible. Much like Bear File Converter, the audio files to be uploaded, midi to mp3 converter free download android will be as giant as 50 MB. Permitting the streaming service to compress and convert your audio information does not necessarily mean the standard will degrade, but some compression algorithms increase peak signals enough that the audio can sound distorted. Once you use a trusted program to transform your information to the proper format for each platform, you possibly can hear to every one to get a good idea of what it is going to sound like as soon as it's published.

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blazehedgehog · 5 years

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I'm curious if at this point you're good enough at writing and video editing, to get reviews out on time, and the gimmick is just held out of legacy. It feels like you could.

There is no gimmick.

This is going to be very “how the sausage is made,” meaning it’s a long post. A very, very long post. So I’m hiding it behind a “read more” tag.

I mean, I guess there kind of was a gimmick, nine years ago when I first started doing video reviews. And that’s because I originally envisioned my video reviews as the same stuff everyone else was doing at the time: older games. I didn’t have a lot of money, so it wasn’t going to be a show for new games. It was going to be whatever I was thinking of and playing at the time, which was universally going to be old games, and usually old games I’d replayed more than once. Astal, Shenmue, Klonoa, etc. Classics and oddities.

Starting with Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, I started doing video reviews for new games almost exclusively. I’d get a new game at launch, and from the moment it was in my hands, I’d put together a video review for TSSZ. So, it took me six weeks to put together the All-Stars Racing review. Five weeks for the Sonic Lost World review. And so on.

When I got bold enough to start doing video reviews in HD, things started taking exponentially longer. DKC Tropical Freeze, Mario Kart 8, etc. all took me around 3 months a piece. Part of that was the methods used to create HD reviews, as my crummy Roxio Gamecap HD required huge amounts of time (weeks, sometimes) to transcode footage out of their broken format in to something Sony Vegas would accept. But I also began to incorporate more artwork in to my reviews, because I wanted to utilize a talent of mine that was beginning to atrophy. It was a good excuse to draw again.

The longest video on my channel is my “How Do We Fix Sonic?” video. It’s 30 minutes and 30 seconds long, and took me 14-16 months to put together. It took more than a hundred drawings, and even some animation, something I’d never done before. It was the biggest video project I’d ever undertaken at the time.

For reference, the Sonic Mania video review I published in July is the exact same length – 30 minutes and 30 seconds. Depending on how you count, the Sonic Mania video review was put together in three months – the same amount of time it took for Tropical Freeze, Mario Kart 8, et al.

I say “depending on how you count” because Sonic Mania came out in August of 2017, in a period of time where I was homeless. I technically had a Sonic Mania video review script written by September of 2017, but we did not find an apartment to move in to until November of 2017. And, even then, when we moved in, my desktop PC was damaged – the motherboard and power supply had suffered an electrical surge when I plugged my system in to an unsafe outlet while staying at my brother’s house in the four intervening months. I spent $200+ on replacement parts and had to rebuild the whole system, something I was not keen on doing in the middle of the holiday season in an unfamiliar town, in an unfamiliar state. I’d just left my childhood home, the place I’d spent 24 years of my life in. It was a nightmare. All of this took place a year ago, and I still feel tremendously homesick. I abandoned everyone, everywhere and everything I ever knew.

So I didn’t get my system rebuilt until March of 2018, and didn’t really get to work on the Sonic Mania video until April. April to May, May to June, June to July. Three months. For a video that was the same length as the longest, most difficult video I’d ever put together for my channel.

Tristan wanted to air my video review on the TSSZ Twitch channel on the day Sonic Mania Plus was launching. I was hoping to get it out before then, but in the end, I think I only had maybe a week (or less) between finishing my video and Plus launching. So it goes.

There’s a small lie in there, however, in that Sega offered us an early review copy of Sonic Mania Plus. I recall that I was still putting the finishing touches on the original Sonic Mania video review when I had a copy of Plus sitting here on my desk.

I took a few days to myself, just to rest and recharge, before I dove head first into producing the Sonic Mania Plus video. Except that when Sonic Mania came out in August of 2017, I finished the game once as Sonic & Tails. I started files as Tails and Knuckles, but I hadn’t really played too far with them, knowing I’d need to replay the whole game multiple times for video capture purposes. When Plus came out, I was coming off a stint of having replayed Sonic Mania four times for the capture – as Sonic & Tails (with the emeralds), as Tails, Knuckles, and Sonic alone (without the emeralds). I was not actually in the mood to keep playing it.

So my playthrough of Mania Plus was… sluggish. I think the game had been out for a week by the time I’d finished it as Mighty, Ray, and done a full playthrough of Encore Mode. But, by early August I had a video review script written and production was starting to get underway on the Sonic Mania Plus video review. I had a sketch of what I thought the review would look like in the end (called a “shotlist,” which I have uploaded here) and I was starting to capture the video I needed and whatever else.

There was one problem with this: SAGE 2018. It dropped in the middle of August and upended everything I was doing. It was a tremendous undertaking. I wrote nearly 30 pages of text about 85 games in just six days. I thought I could handle it, and in a lot of ways I did, but it left me absolutely fried. On top of the growing burnout from spending now four and a half months doing two Sonic Mania video reviews back to back.

After SAGE, I was going to take a few days off, maybe a week. It ended up being nearly four weeks. That still didn’t feel like enough. It threw everything off balance.

Getting those gears turning again was a struggle. It was October now, and I had plans to do other videos for October. Halloween videos. I split my time researching potential Halloween videos with capturing the rest of my footage (a week), doing artwork (a week and a half), and getting my voice over in order (another week, as the stress was starting to get to me, and that doesn’t make for a good environment to do voice work).

I actually tried to cut corners on my video capturing. Rather than capture footage from six full-length playthroughs of Sonic Mania, I scaled things way back, hoping I wouldn’t need quite as much b-roll as I usually capture. Instead of playing Sonic Mania to completion six more times, I:

Captured one entire playthrough of Encore Mode, minus collecting the seven emeralds. I already had a completed file with the emeralds, so having two files would let me compare the endings.

Because I wanted footage of Ray and Mighty also in Mania Mode, I split one playthrough in half between them: every three levels, I would trade off. Ray would take Green Hill, Chemical Plant, and Studiopolis, then Mighty would do Flying Battery, Press Garden, and Stardust Speedway before I’d switch back to Ray again for the next three. This gave me half of the game as each character, and one complete playthrough between them.

Similarly, I needed footage of Sonic, Tails and Knuckles in Mania mode, but since I had Sonic Mania Plus on PS4 and my original review was produced using the PC version, my save couldn’t be transferred. Instead, I grinded out Blue Spheres medals until I could unlock Debug Mode, and summarily, stage select. Then I just did the same thing, but every two levels: Sonic would get Green Hill and Chemical Plant, Tails would get Studiopolis and Flying Battery, Knuckles would get Press Garden and Stardust Speedway, etc.

Unfortunately, even with being smart like that, it wasn’t enough, and in the middle of editing everything together, I still had to go back and capture footage of specific moments to fill in the gaps I was missing. The lesson is: though you’ll throw away 99% of it, you’ll never have enough b-roll captured. Never ever.

Which brings us to the end of October, me not getting to do any Halloween videos, and the final, finished Sonic Mania Plus review. This time, 20 minutes of video in four months.

Could I have been faster? I don’t know if that’s for me to say. Even though I took a month off (almost all of September), I was still struggling really hard with burnout on the Sonic Mania Plus video. I work on these videos from home, and I have an incredibly poor work-life balance as a result. Essentially, I wake up every morning, turn on my PC, and work on whatever until I go to bed. The only breaks I take are to eat, go to the bathroom, or run errands (shop for food, help babysit my nephews, etc.)

What this really means is something that’s familiar to people who have struggled with burnout, and that’s days where all you do is sit around and worry about work but not actually do any work. I’m trying to get better about this, to have hard cutoff points in the afternoon where I stop working and let myself relax, but that’s easier said than done when you relax at the same place you also work. It’s a learning process for sure.

So, like, yeah, it could have been done a few weeks earlier, but that’s assuming I wasn’t burnt out from working too hard, which means I wouldn’t have worked super hard to get to that point anyway, so no, maybe it wouldn’t have been done a few weeks earlier. I’m not a robot.

I am, however, incredibly stressed. Still stressed about moving to Nevada, stressed about being so far behind on the videos I promised to put out, stressed out about things I won’t even mention here on tumblr because they’re personal issues.

But I am going as fast as I can. I might even be going faster than is healthy for my body.

You’ll get your videos when I’m actually done with them and not a second sooner.

But for now, I need a lot of rest. It’s time for an extended rest-and-recharge session. I still have the promised Sonic Forces video to figure out, and that’ll get done eventually, but I’m running on fumes, I need to gas back up, and it’s a big, empty tank.

#questions #sonic the hedgehog #sega #sonic team #sonic mania #bltn #better late than never videogames #video review #behind the scenes #inside baseball #how the sausage is made #Anonymous

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nafisflahi · 4 years

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7 Top Content Optimization Tools To Gain Authority in 2020

Content writing is an art, and content optimization is how you ensure your art is seen by the right admirer of the art. I just tried to be a little poetic, but the point remains the same To assist you in this quest of creating unforgettable content, there are plenty of content optimization tools out there. Here in this resource, you will discover many content optimizer tools that should be part of your workflow. I have done my best to share more than one tool in a particular category so that you have a choice to pick anyone based on your preference. These content optimization platform/softwares will help you: Identify content problems: Using machine learning, these tools will let you discover problems that prevent you from ranking higher in search engines.Specific recommendations: Rather than generic recommendations, many of the below-mentioned tools will scout the web, and personalize the recommendation for your pages.Get more traffic: With a bit of change, you will be able to increase your traffic significantly, and that too only quality traffic. None the less, the next article that you going to publish: Take the help of these tools, and your content would shine at the right place and at the right time. Moving ahead…

Best Content Optimization Tools For every writer and marketers:

1. Frase: I discovered Frase last year, and since then it has been my go-to tool for creating a content brief and writing content. This not so popular tool deserves to be known by every digital marketer. Frase uses artificial intelligence to help you quickly create a content brief. Within seconds, you will have the content topic and sub-topics you need to cover to gain authority on the topic you covering.

It does not stop here, as the content optimizer part scans the top-ranking articles, and suggest what you should be adding in your writing to improve the ranking. You can use this content optimization feature for an existing article or even for a new article. What I really like about this tool is, it is beginner-friendly and pocket friendly too in comparison with its peer. Frase offers a trial that lets you create 5 content briefs for free. If you are upgrading to a paid plan, that starts from $39/month, you can use coupon “SHOUTMELOUD” to get a 20% discount. Take a free trial of Frase 2. SEMRush writing assistant

SEMRush does not need any introduction, as they have established themselves as the #1 SEO suite. There are many modules of SEMrush that helps in content optimization, and one among them is “Writing assistant” or “SEO Content template”. This tool can be accessed via SEMRush web app and also available as a WordPress plugin. This tool is perhaps one of the simplest solutions for agencies and teams to start crafting SEO friendly content. Like other SEO content optimization tool, this one scans all the top-ranking pages for your target keyword, and recommend changes like: Number of wordsWords to includeSemantically related wordsWhere to get backlinks fromAverage readability score

By implementing all the recommendations, you can easily optimize your content for search engines, and hence improve your overall on-page SEO score. This is a paid tool, and if you have never heard of SEMRush before or tried this feature, you can take advantage of their 14 days free trial. These 14 days is good enough to help you see the benefits of SEMRush’s SEO Content template feature. Take 14 days trial of SEMRush 3. SurferSEO

Your on-page SEO process will become easier, faster, and more comprehensive than everSurferSEO This is the tagline of SurferSEO, and it does the heavy lifting of analyzing your content and target keyword to recommend the on-page SEO changes. What makes SurferSEO stand out is by focusing only on data-driven On-page SEO optimization, whereas all other tools, do a lot of other stuff. This puts SurferSEO in a unique position, as it constantly taking feedback from the community, and improving their machine-learning algorithm to give better optimization recommendation.

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If you are using WordPress as your publishing platform, chances are you might be using Yoast SEO plugin. This plugin is primarily focused on On-site and On-page SEO. However, at the same time, Yoast SEO also lets you perform social media optimization. That means you can have a unique title, image, and description for social media sharing. This way, you can make your content more sharable on social media platforms. To use this feature, simply go to Yoast SEO section in your post editor section, select “Social” and optimize the title, description and add a social media friendly image. (See screenshot below)

If you have an editor who edits your content, you can add this as a part of your workflow. Read everything about Yoast SEO 7. ShortPixel or ImageOptim A fast loading webpage is a common attribute of a well-optimized content. Heavy images are usually the bottleneck for a fast loading page, and you can fix this bottleneck by using an image optimizing solution. There are plenty of solutions available, and ShortPixel tops the chart when it comes to WordPress. This is available as a plugin, and it automatically reduces the image size without degrading the quality. You can use this plugin to optimize your existing and newly uploaded images. Alternatively, you can use this Mac desktop tool called “ImageOptim“, which is what I use on a day to day basis. However, if you are working along with a team, using a cloud-based solution like ShortPixel is better. Download Shortpixel plugin If you are in a mood to learn more about speed optimization, here is a webinar of around 30 minutes to help Content writing is an artwork, and content material optimization is the way you guarantee your artwork is seen by the suitable admirer of the artwork. To help you in this quest of making unforgettable content material, there are many content material optimization instruments on the market. Here in this useful resource, you'll uncover many content material optimizer instruments that must be a part of your workflow. I've accomplished my greatest to share extra than one device in a specific class so that you've a option to choose anybody primarily based in your desire. These content material optimization platform/softwares will make it easier to: Identify content material issues: Using machine studying, these instruments will allow you to uncover issues that forestall you from rating greater in search engines like google and yahoo.Specific suggestions: Rather than generic suggestions, lots of the below-mentioned instruments will scout the online, and personalize the advice on your pages.Get extra site visitors: With a little bit of change, it is possible for you to to extend your site visitors considerably, and that too solely high quality site visitors. None the much less, the subsequent article that you just going to publish: Take the assist of those instruments, and your content material would shine on the proper place and on the proper time. Moving forward…

Best Content Optimization Tools For each author and entrepreneurs:

1. Frase: I found Frase final yr, and since then it has been my go-to device for making a content material temporary and writing content material. This not so fashionable device deserves to be recognized by each digital marketer. Frase makes use of synthetic intelligence that can assist you shortly create a content material temporary. Within seconds, you should have the content material matter and sub-topics you have to cowl to achieve authority on the subject you masking.

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I normally copy-paste my writing in the Hemingway desktop editor to discover advanced sentences, and enhance on it, to enhance the general grade. I like to recommend concentrating on anyplace between 5-7 as your studying grade. Though there might be instances (technical writing) when grade might be greater. Remember, the decrease the grade is, the higher it's. This is a free internet device, after which there's a desktop model which is obtainable at a value of solely $19.99. Use Hemingway editor without spending a dime 5. Grammarly (Optimize for studying)

Grammarly is one other fashionable device that must be a part of each content material crew. This device scans your article for the grammatical and spelling errors. I've written extensively about Grammarly earlier, and you may examine it right here. Grammarly is obtainable for all platforms together with internet (chrome extension), desktop app, Android, and iOS app. It works with nearly all the writing platform together with Google docs. There is a free, and a paid model accessible. Download Grammarly without spending a dime 6. Yoast website positioning (Social media optimization)

If you're utilizing WordPress as your publishing platform, likelihood is you is likely to be utilizing Yoast website positioning plugin. This plugin is primarily targeted on On-site and On-page website positioning. However, on the similar time, Yoast website positioning additionally helps you to carry out social media optimization. That means you may have a novel title, picture, and description for social media sharing. This means, you may make your content material extra sharable on social media platforms. To use this function, merely go to Yoast website positioning part in your put up editor part, choose “Social” and optimize the title, description and add a social media pleasant picture. (See screenshot under)

If you have got an editor who edits your content material, you may add this as part of your workflow. Read the whole lot about Yoast website positioning 7. ShortPixel or ImageOptim A quick loading webpage is a typical attribute of a well-optimized content material. Heavy photos are normally the bottleneck for a quick loading web page, and you may repair this bottleneck by utilizing a picture optimizing resolution. There are loads of options accessible, and ShortPixel tops the chart with regards to WordPress. This is obtainable as a plugin, and it routinely reduces the picture measurement with out degrading the standard. You can use this plugin to optimize your current and newly uploaded photos. Alternatively, you should utilize this Mac desktop device known as “ImageOptim“, which is what I take advantage of on a daily foundation. However, if you're working together with a crew, utilizing a cloud-based resolution like ShortPixel is higher. Download Shortpixel plugin If you're in a temper to study extra about pace optimization, here's a webinar of round 30 minutes that can assist you study pace optimization in WordPress:

More content material optimization instruments:

There isn't any finish to variety of content material optimization instruments accessible in the market, and it's best to choose one which inserts in your content material course of. At any level of time, you want following instruments: website positioning content material optimizationImage OptimizationReadability optimizationSpeed optimizationSocial media optimization I’m very thrilling about many new instruments that are using the machine studying to offer higher suggestions. Some of them that are in my radar, and I’m but to discover are: Page Optimizer professionalTextual contentOptimizer I'll maintain updating this useful resource as I uncover new instruments. For now, it’s your flip to let me know which content material optimizer device must be a part of this checklist? If you discover this checklist helpful, do share it with your mates in content material advertising and digital advertising house. Here are a couple of hand-picked assets which might be fashionable amongst customers such as you: arn about speed optimization in WordPress:

More content optimization tools:

There is no end to number of content optimization tools available in the market, and you should pick one which fits in your content process. At any point of time, you need following tools: SEO content optimizationImage OptimizationReadability optimizationSpeed optimizationSocial media optimization I’m very exciting about many new tools which are utilizing the machine learning to give better recommendations. Some of them which are in my radar, and I’m yet to explore are: Page Optimizer pro TextOptimizer I will keep updating this resource as I discover new tools. For now, it’s your turn to let me know which content optimizer tool should be part of this list? If you find this list useful, do share it with your friends in content marketing and digital marketing space. Here are a few hand-picked resources that are popular among users like you: Read the full article

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suzanneshannon · 4 years

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My Interview and Podcast Production Process on the Hanselminutes Podcast

Hey! Did you know I have a podcast? A few actually but Hanselminutes has been doing for over 700 episodes over 13 years and it's pretty good if I may say so myself. It's a 30 min show meant for your commute. It offers fresh faces and a fresh perspective on lots of topics. While it's often tech and programming-focused, I do often have guests on to talk about less techie things like relationships, mental health, life hacks and more. I model the show after Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

I recently got a tweet from Xi Xaio asking how I host my show. The planning, the content, the restricted timing, the energy, avoiding wasted time and words, etc. Getting a good question is a gift as it leads to a blog post! So thank you Xi for this gift.

If you work for NPR, you're welcome to put all 350 hours of the show on any public radio station. I'm also available to host Fresh Air or, ahem, Science Friday, and I'd do a good job at it.

Here are Xi's questions and my answers. You might also like my article How to start your first podcast - equipment, editing, publishing and more as well.

How do you keep up the number of guests for a weekly podcast?

I haven’t had too much trouble as I just watch hacker news, Reddit, Twitter, etc and if I see someone cool I will invite them. I have 8 guests "in the can"right now so I like to stay a month or two ahead. I also prioritize quieter people. Lots of folks have a PR or press person (I get a dozen pitches a week) but the most interesting people aren't doing podcasts because they are making amazing art/tech. So I like to talk to them. I know I've gotten someone good when their response is "me? Why me?" Well, because you're making/thinking/commentating!

What drives you to keep publishing even when you are on holiday, for the promise of a new episode each week - for better audience engagement, or for the demands of the advertisers?

Consistency is key and king. If you publish regularly people start to (consciously or unconsciously) come to expect it. You can fit into their life when they know your show is every week, for example. Others “publish when they can” and that means their show has no heartbeat and can’t be counted on. Life is a marathon, not a sprint, and step one is showing up. I like to show up every week. When I took a few months off last year to stay in South Africa, I had 12 shows already recorded and scheduled before I left.

You introduce the guest on their behalf. Why not let guests do it themselves?

Because most people aren’t good at introducing themselves, advocating for themselves, or talking about themselves. I like to take a moment, be consistent and talk them up. It starts the show well because it reminds them they are awesome!

You keep the episode length within 30 mins. Guests are different, some keep talking and some are succinct. How do you achieve this goal?

A typical show has 6 bullet points, 5 minutes each, as I plan the content. I'll do a lot of research (think 50 tabs open, etc) and then I work out the story arc (where do we want to take the audience) with the guest ahead of time, and I optimize the show and conversation for that process.

We bounce bullet points back and forth over email for a while or have a preliminary Skype/Facetime.

Would you mind sharing your content producing procedures after recording? I'd love to learn what steps you take from editing to publishing, and tips to be more efficient.

I store everything in a workflow of folders in Dropbox. I have an “input raw shows” folder and an “output produced shows” folder. I use zencastr to record, and the result is a WAV file for each speaker. Then my paid producer Mandy will level the audio, edit and merge them in Audacity, then add the music, produce the MP3, add the ID3tags, and put the result in the output folder. Then she uploads it to Simplecast and schedules the show for Thursday. My custom-built podcast site then pulls the show from the Simplecast REST API and it shows up at http://hanselminutes.com.

In addition to your perseverance, what other recommendations do you have to new tech podcast hosts, like me?

Perseverance is key. No one listened to my first hundred shows. Do this for yourself first, and the audience later.

Also, audio quality is everything. If it’s low or bad or hard to hear you’ll lose audiences. One other tip, as you get better as an interviewer the less you’ll have too edit, which will save you time. If you mess up, stop. Clap, then start again. The clap makes it easy to see the mistake (it'll be a spike on the audio waveform) and then you can do a "pull up" and just elide that portion.

What do you mean by "I optimize the show and conversation for that process"

The point of a story is the story arc. You can't just randomly chat with folks, you need to have a plan and a direction. Where are you taking the listener? How will you get them there? Are you being empathic and putting yourself in the shoes of the listener? What do they know, what do they not know?

How much should you talk?

Less. It's not about me or you, it's about the guest. I play a role. I play the foil. What is a foil?

foil - a person or thing that contrasts with and so emphasizes and enhances the qualities of another.

Here is a real show. I'm in green. I'm there to ask YOUR questions (as you're not there!) and advocate for the listener. Whether or not I know the answer or not isn't important. I'm there to expand acronyms, provide context, and guide the journey.

Do you have a podcast? Leave a link below and share YOUR process!

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My Interview and Podcast Production Process on the Hanselminutes Podcast published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

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philipholt · 4 years