#process vid will go on patreon soon

[malacandrax]

“Explain shotgunning to me”

I read 'The Affliction of the Feeling' by nondz on ao3 and it absolutely killed me, I had to get this scene out of my head.

[seraphinitegames]

The Wayhaven Chronicles—Update 05/Nov/2021

What a week!! Chapter Nine has been SO MUCH FUN!!

And even better, I should be able to finish one of the endings by tomorrow, which means I should finish Chapter 9 early next week!!! Aaahhh!!

But seriously, Chapter 9 has been a blast to write! :D There are 'fail' and 'pass' versions (the stats to pass them something a bit different than just the usual), but the fail ones are just as fun as the pass ones, so I really hope people will enjoy them! 

Again, as I've said so many times, it's not really a fail. It's just a different path. It's just this time you may not be as successful in your plan as you'd hoped, but that might lead to some unexpected consequences that may not be as bad as you think.

I really like to create balance in the games I write! So please don't think you always have to be choosing the exact choices that relate to your stats and things. Always just choose what works for your MC in the moment!

So yeah, tomorrow I'm seriously hoping to blast through one of the endings, which means there is only one ending version left. I will do my best to go straight into editing and playtesting after that, as it's a very important part of the process...but I may sneak in some Chapter 10 too ;D

And it shouldn't come as a surprise by now, but Chapter 10 has two versions of it as well, lol! 

I really have been so excited for all these versions and branches though! Book Three really feels like where things are starting—not just for the story, but for me. I want to make games that are super involved and immersive with all these details and bigger side stories for people to explore!

Okay, I'll stop getting all buzzed now :D I'm just really excited about Chapter 9, and how it's fitting in, hehe!

I'm actually really surprised I got along so far because Monday and Tuesday were social media days. Had amazing fun writing the scenarios for Patreon (F taking care of a sick MC made me so warm and fuzzy inside!), as well answering the asks on Tumblr for the month ahead! 

I've put some more asks aside in the hopes me and Nai can find some time on an evening to make, even a short, Youtube Q&A. I've missed those! But it's difficult finding time with Nai and her Little One, and I often work on Wayhaven or Creek Edge on an evening. But I'm hoping we can find time to just relax and have fun with a vid again soon!

Hope you all have the most fantastic weekend! We'll be offline as usual, so I'll talk to you all soon! <3

[channelmono]

11-12-20 UPDATE:

Hi, it’s me back again! I wanna touch on a few things that I’ve been up to for the last while, since I’ve been so quiet for such a long time.

tl;dr: more delays for reasons out of my control, I’m unsure of the long-term direction of my channel (specifically daily vids), but music is still being made so that’s cool. Listen to an early draft of a track from the upcoming BITTER/SWEET collab mixtape here!

First of all, I just wanna congratulate my US followers for participating in the election! It was a very long, tough process to get this result, and I hope we all managed to foster and renew our hope that will motivate our journey into the future. Because several of my posts regarding election information are now deprecated, I’ve privatized many of them so this blog is reduced in clutter (if anyone would like any of the information present in them, feel free to DM me!)

Second: the state of my living and what it means for this channel.

Currently, I’m still away from my usual home because while the exact meeting that required my presence was finished weeks ago, I’m still waiting for an important government letter to come and to complete the action it requires of me. It seems to have been delayed for unknown reasons (possibly pandemic-related difficulties?), so all I can do now is wait for it to arrive, and until then, I must remain away from my filming site.

With all that said, however, I likely will not be able to return to usual daily content until the end of the year. The other personal business I’m going to be up to for the remaining month and 1/2 of this year will put me in a tizzy, though some of it includes BTS stuff to make filming in 2021 much easier for me (including a few really minor upgrades to my costumes as to not look as worn).

I’m still in deep issues regarding getting a job and stable source of income to work off of, not helped by the still-ongoing pandemic. Things may clear up by January, maybe not. Either way, my ability to continually support daily content is always in question, especially as this hiatus is slowly becoming more and more involuntary due to my extended stay and Patreon is becoming unviable for me.

Truth be told, I’m unsure of which direction Channel Mono should be headed, in part due to me having this extensive “ambition creep” which makes work on it very difficult. I ALWAYS want to improve and experiment, but this is not very sustainable due to requiring resources I simply cannot afford, and in general, I’m not sure what model works for me. On Instagram, having daily <1 minute videos and pic sets has done gangbusters for me, but nothing has really broken out for me in terms of other platforms like Youtube and Twitter, and I’m unsure of whether it’s due to the format of my content or just the content itself being so offbeat and strange.

I’d be more interested in doing more narrative short films lasting around 5-10 minutes or so in length and have plenty of ideas for strange, experimental directions to take, but that’s not kind to most platforms, no guarantee of attention, is also more difficult to make anyway, and could also be very alienating to my IG-focused fanbase. It’s very tricky, and if you have anything to say about it, I would like to hear it.

As I take a break to think about this, I’m also developing more of this side joint with BITTER/SWEET. Unlike filming, making music is something I can develop without most of my filmmaking stuff, hence why I want to be able to get it done soon! My estimated release date will be sometime around mid-December, and if it can be helped, I would like to be able to film footage for a music video for it, but that will depend entirely on whether I will be able to return home in time or not.

The titles of the project are in flux right now, but current tracklist is: 4 updated mixes of previous BITTER/SWEET songs, and around 5-6 new tracks. This early draft I’ve just shared is tentatively called “What’s Your Name? I Like Your Smile”. Again, names and mixes are subject to change, but I hope you will enjoy the songs when they are finally ready by the end of the year!

In addition to uploading on Youtube, we’re gonna be setting up a Bandcamp to release it on a pay-what-you-want system. Download it for free, or for however much money you please :)

Everything still remains uncertain, yet I remain hopeful that we’ll all come to better circumstances and more decisive realizations that work in our favor. Or something.

I’ll see you all later :) 🖤🖤🖤🖤

[justindherd]

What's Been Going On | Tripping Forward Into the Future

Man, it’s been awhile since I posted on here. I spend most of my time on Twitter, doing the best I can to keep that particular ship from burning down. I screwed myself early on by originally going by the username TheDCProject, an old website my buddy and I ran that had one of the biggest animated Cel collections, but also featured our writing, poetry, as well as photos from our lives. I had established myself as a writer and had a constantly building following.

Then I tried to “consolidate my brand” by changing to my real name and building from there.

Suddenly, no one knew who the fuck I was.

But, still, I was part of the #amwriting community and was a huge fan of The Authoress’ Secret Agent contests. Then, once I was divorced about six years ago, I decided to strip the writing community from those that I was following. I had thousands I was following, but most were just pimping their latest project (100% needed, but no fun to use the service at that point), and so I unfollowed . . . and, ever since, I’ve been slowly losing followers because . . . well, most writers only care if you are following them and they can use you. Once again, I totally understand, but I reworked my experience to follow only those that I had an interest in what they had to say.

Anyway, follow me there.

So, what I have been doing since . . . [checks notes] August 17th, when I released my Fallen video?

Well, I’ve been fighting my former employer due to my Medical Leave, though I can’t necessarily talk about that just yet. I also wrote a 20,000+ word video for the Hellraiser series, after I read Paul Kane’s The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy. This is an expansion of my Cenobitic Ramblings video, but the original was less than 5,000 words so it’s a completely different beast.

I went so deep on this that I kinda forgot to work on anything else.

Well, that’s not true. I was trying to put together a video on Oz Perkins’ Gretel & Hansel (2020), but was having a helluva a time trying to get my thoughts out. You see, I had bought new microphones and TasCam recorders, and had attempted to record my thoughts on movies right after I saw them. I talked about Glass, Gretel & Hansel, and even attempted to do a non-scripted rant on Star Ocean: The Second Story from PSX days.

Unfortunately, all these recordings were so low quality that I couldn’t salvage them. But, and this is the reason that I am bringing this up, I seem to purge my brain as soon as I record/write about any product I plan on covering for the channel. So, I kinda wiped my thoughts and hot takes on these subjects without meaning to.

It took me writing my “Favorite Films of 2020” list to finally break that barrier. I spent way too much time on that script as well, breaking 10,000 words, and recorded it twice, planning on breaking it up into two videos that would equal roughly an hour long between the two of them.

Unfortunately, the DSLR camera I was using refused to focus properly, and, thus, the footage was unusable. I then recorded it again, only for the same issue to present itself. I was thoroughly discouraged, but I planned to record a third time - got the focus right, and was ready to record . . . only for my son to have nightmares, and subsequently pass out on the couch, right next to my recording area.

So, since I couldn’t record in front of the camera, I took my Gretel & Hansel script, and did an audio-only version of it. Then, once I realized there were some significant gaps in the coverage, I grabbed most of my entry from the 2020 Film list and worked it into the actual episode.

And that’s what I’ve been workin on for the past two months, going as crazy as I possibly could since my House of Leaves video.

I’m thoroughly enjoying what I’m doing, even if I kinda lost focus and am doing everything by myself, without real consideration for what order I’m putting it together. Yes, that means I’m doing editing, sound effects, adding music (for the first time since I got lambasted for just throwing music into the HoL vid), as well as special effects, and recreating the title sequence, since I couldn’t find a “clean” version without any of the titles.

Obviously, I’m moving some stuff around on the website, but I really need to reconsider what needs to be on here. My writing career has definitely taken a back seat to the video projects, even if I’ve been toying with going back to The Magician, planning and rewriting it from the ground up. I had a similar notion with Between the Shadows, but at that point I was still waaaay too familiar with the source material. However, with The Magician, I wrote that in such a blur of “Gotta go fast” that I don’t remember the multiple magic systems I made. To even edit it, I’d have to reread the entire novel, one I haven’t touched since 2014.

There’s the added rub that I placed it in the same universe as my novel, The Faithful, but the twist of The Magician was that it jumped two hundred years into the future, and these Elder Gods had taken over the world. A world where I had established that there are immortal gods, and, obviously, Raine would end up in the same situation as my robot magician. It’s kinda like the problem the MCU had for a few years, where they refused to include other heroes, despite it being clear between Avengers films that they should be able to join the conflict. Regardless, it would affect those books which are their own thing.

So, for me to move forward with this project, I’d not only have to remap the multiple magic systems my Magician uses, but I’d have to extract it from the universe I’d already built and reimagine it all. So . . . it’s now been over six years since I finished it, and it’s so fuzzy that I should be able to rebuild it without figuratively killing myself in the process.

So, where does this leave us?

Well, I’m pressing forward with my Gretel & Hansel video, and I plan on hitting some of my favorite films, rather than holding off for some arbritary end point. The only video I’m waiting on is my Hellraiser video, so that I can kinda sustain myself while I spend months working on it. I’m holding for 50 Patrons, so at least there’s some audience for it.

If you want to support me. and my future endeavors, please consider pledging money through Patreon. It’s built to give me money directly when I produce a new video, so it won’t be breaking your bank while I’m working on things.

Thank you guys for sticking with me.

Justin D. Herd

[captainjellyroll]

HOWS THE DSNHTT VID GOING ARE YOU ALMOST DONE IM EXCITED

I LOVE YOU tysm xoxo

uhmm if u want a run-down of how i planned the editing process;

i split the video into 13 parts total (bc this shitty laptop cant handle my huge-ass files rip). i did a rough edit for about ~8 of those parts, several of which i wanna really revise honestly. i didnt do 3 big scenes yet and 2 of those are bc i still need to draw my Patreon cameos, and im still waiting for refs for those. but other than that, its just gonna be a loooot of revising & detail editing.

everything is drawn out tho-- (besides the cameos which i can whip up quickly) so the hard part is done. the only things slowing me down is this laptop tbh, but im finding loopholes to still edit bc honestly i could probably get this done this weekend if i wanted. but idk, things in life are coming up now and ahhh :’^) plans are being blurred now,,,,,

also; ill DEFIANTLY let you guys know when i have a release date set in mind. though the future isnt clear yet-- i think im predicting before April probably. at least i hope so. i mean- im like, 1 week ahead of my schedule for this project and im feeling pretty confident. but who knows-- maybe ill let it sit for a bit and come back so i can do some finishing touches, y’know?

anyways, those are the current plans for DSNHTT, & this information isnt a secret, just fyi-

PS; i upload HD pictures of some frames/character models on my Patreon, and i plan on releasing some .SAI and .VEG files on there too. if that interests any of you ;)

PPS; im also planning on making hella merch of this on redbubble and whatnot-- so if you see those pop up before i actually upload the video; then u know its coming soon- in case ya’ll are just as impatient as i am haha

ANYWAYS THATS WAY MORE INFORMATION THAN WHAT THIS ASK IMPLIED but i hope future inquiries can be answered with all ive said just now aahhaa

[channelmono]

ANNOUNCEMENT! HIATUS AND EXCITING NEW PLANS

Greetings from the moon, my friends! If you haven’t already watched my last video, I’ll be going on break again from daily content (this is an important distinction), this time for an unknown length of time. Don’t worry, regular daily content WILL resume at some point, and I already have many plans of stuff I wanna work on ready to go! But I’ve realized: I need a break really badly, for a few reasons.

Let’s start with the logistics: filming has been an increasingly uphill battle. I’ve been doing this for a little over a year now, and in the process, I’ve continuously strived for improvement, both to make things more fun for you, the audience, and also to freshen things up and keep things fun for myself. Better editing, better filmmaking equipment, more costumes, more props, more intricate video ideas, and just generally trying to up my quality in all regards.

Recently, however, I feel like I’ve reached a peak where the quality of my work has started to negatively impact the enjoyment of it to a substantial degree. I can persevere through the hard work because I enjoy it, but something they don’t always tell you is that “hard work” is a constantly-changing standard that you must re-evaluate for yourself on a regular basis. What is a good day’s worth of work to you? Are the standards you put on yourself too much for any given time? Are you TOO hard on yourself?

As of the last few weeks as I was filming this continuous narrative arc, for the first time, I felt myself burning out because I was giving myself increasing workload to a standard of daily releases that was not made for it. I wish I was able to bring myself to gain more actual footage of my conversation with the moon in [Contact], but I couldn’t as I became so drained of creativity that I couldn’t figure out how to visually film that, and was just exhausted by previous filming sessions (it’s been really hot lately, and that kimono outfit is surprisingly really hard to get into, lol).

Speaking of difficulties in visually filming things, I’ve also struggled in resources and budget. As you could imagine, pandemic life has made it significantly slower to get better filmmaking equipment, more costumes, more props, and thus film more intricate videos, and also my ability to afford them has gone down dramatically. Finding work is also a pain, so I don’t exactly have as much financial freedom here.

Here’s a couple hard truths about what I do that I had to take into consideration: 1) filming content regularly in a way that’s fresh, exciting, continuously-improving is a monetarily expensive pursuit. 2) In this year-plus that I’ve been doing this project, it has NEVER been anywhere close to profitable. While I have a Patreon and Redbubble, they are very low-activity and I only make couple dozen bucks per month, which further decreases my options (I also can’t monetize my Youtube uploads, not that they get much viewership there anyway haha). I do this channel out of love and entertainment, but even I have a certain limit within realism that I have to work within.

So, what’s the plan for now?

Well, good news! While I will be holding back on mentally/financially intensive works for now, I will still be pursuing other projects aligned with NO SIGNAL STUDIO, and providing much-needed foundation for Channel Mono when it relaunches!

Within the next week, we plan to at long last have the NSS site up (we got the “nosignal.studio” domain!) to host our work, including Channel Mono. This will not only link our content onto an easily-accessible hub more sophisticated than linktr.ee, it will also also act as a blog/news outlet so we can make long announcement/update posts rather than crammed social media posts like these.

In addition, I’m pushing for more Patreon incentives, including a new set of perks I’m excited to try: CUSTOM MONO VIDS!

Starting from $25, you can send me a script every month for a short, simple video (dialogue skits, personal messages, video threats, etc.), and I’ll record it for you! There will be further tiers for additional complex features (different costumes, increased length, elaborate post-production, etc.), and depending on how it goes, I may pursue this even more!

I’ll also be opening more patron goals. Once I get past a certain budget threshold, I plan on holding monthly polls to decide what new outfits to get. Fun!

As for the future, the general trajectory for daily content will be more of a return to lower maintenance, less narrative-based skits, refreshing my work ethic and hopefully being less strenuous for me. I want to hit the ground running, but I don’t wanna quickly exhaust myself again haha.

This is only a respite for now. Once I recuperate and get my other endeavors finished, I should be returning to daily content soon. Thank you for understanding, my lovely monitors! 🖤🖤🖤