Mupdate

Mupdate = a portmanteau of “me” and “update.” Mupdates!

May dashed by in a whirlwind! I barely remember it. I was in New York the first week, and then I was in Social Recovery for a week. I did my best to not speak to anyone.

But I also finished my book cover illustration, which left me time to focus on my own stuff, which I worked on in fits and starts throughout the month.

And lets just say, it was super effective!

Stuff I got done in snatches of 1-hour lunch breaks this month:

• Took product photos for my store and finally set it up (check it out, yay!)

• I finished my Live2D avatar and recorded 2 episodes of my YouTube Art History thing

• I wanted a little puppet rig of my avatar for the YouTube thing. I finished it this morning

Phew… It’s pretty cool what you can get done in 1 to 2-hour snatches here and there when you get obsessed.

If I’m able to crawl out of bed at 6am I can get more stuff done. But… that’s not easy for me. I do be tired.

Aside from the creative successes of last month, my roommate and I pupsat 3 dogs for her parents over the last couple weeks. I love dogs, but 5 dogs in one house is so many dog.

Here is a cute pic of all of them <3

But while me and the roomie were watching the dogs, we noticed that four baby armadillos were wandering the yard?

I knew we had an adult dillo wandering around and making a burrow under the shed. But it looks like it was a momma dillo! She’d been burrowing under my fence for a long time.

We chased the dogs away from the babies and shuffled them back into their den, and then left them alone. We figured they were just out wandering while momma was away.

I’ve been researching them, and did you know that nine-banded armadillo moms usually have four babies all from one single egg? Each of them genetic copies of each other! Quads! Wild!

Ahem… anyway….

As the week went on, I noticed that the momma’a hole under my fence was untouched. And when I looked closer at the pictures of the babies, I noticed their little hips were sticking out. After a week, I called the nearby wildlife hospital and told them what I was seeing.

They told me that I should bring them in, since they were looking skinny and I’d seen no sign of momma. Something could have happened to her.

So last Sunday I hatched a plan to capture them. I ran out to Pet Supermarket and bought a little cup of meal worms to give them something to eat. I also asked for one of their cardboard pet carriers. The ones they give you whenever you get a lizard or a hamster or something.

The woman I asked had star-shaped glasses on. When she brought the carrier out, she said “So, do you want me to fill it with rats?”

I hesitated.

“Well,” I said, “I would love that, but I can’t have rats right now.”

She laughed and fist bumped me and said “A woman after my own heart!”

I left, immensely pleased.

I brought the worms and the carrier back home with me. When I saw one of the babies out by the fence, I grabbed a dish towel, walked up to it, and nabbed it. While I was lifting it, I got a good glance of it’s pink little wrinkly belly and its… um. Well, it was a boy!

Apparently nine-banded armadillos hop to scare off predators, and this one did its best to hop me off, but I managed to keep hold of it long enough to carry it inside and set it into the pet carrier. I filled one of my rat’s old ceramic bowls with water for it (it’s hard to knock over the rat bowls) and I gave it a couple of meal worms to chase. But the poor thing was too scared to do more than sit huddled in the corner.

I hoped I wouldn’t have to take him by himself. I left him there while I waited for his three siblings to show. I’d seen them almost every day since they’d emerged a week prior, so I was pretty confident they would show.

The wildlife hospital closed at 4:30pm that day, so I checked one last time at 3pm, and lo! There was one of them over by the deck in my backyard!

I grabbed my towel and nabbed this one as well. I slid it into the carrier with its brother. I couldn’t wait any longer for the other two dillos. I figured if I saw them later, I could just do an after-hours drop off. But at least I wouldn’t have to bring the one by himself! He had a sibling to keep him company.

I fastened on my dog Joel’s collar and put him them in the car with me and the dillos. Unfortunately, the AC is broken in my car, so the ride was HOT. Florida has been in the 90s and 100s lately. By the time we arrived, I was sweating so much my pants were wet.

I parked in the shade and left the windows down while I took the babies inside. The staff at the front loved the babies. I asked for the carrier and the bowl back, since I was still hoping to catch the other two. They said they already had 4 babies, so they just added my 2 dillos to the pile.

I took my carrier and bowl back and drove home with Joel. Over the next week, I kept an eye out for the other two babies, but I never saw them again.

I don’t know what happened. I feel sad that I was maybe just one day too late… but it’s also possible that my neighbors saw them and thought to do the same thing I did. Maybe two of those other dillos at the hospital were their siblings.

Anyway… I hope the two I managed to catch are able to grow up and get released. It was nice to watch them nose around outside, and to see their little ears flop around like fleshy antennas.

Focus Time!

Apsu’s Children Novella

My writing group has left me feedback on this! I haven’t had a chance to dive in… but now that my store and my avatar are settled down, I think I’m going to start June with the intention of digesting the feedback, fixing my outline into a final version, and then finally—finally!—sitting down to write this beast. For the very last time.

vTubing

My avatar is finished!

Finishing it involved diving into the world of motion capture. Something I’ve skimmed the edge of, since that’s all the rage in digital media lately.

But yeah. I learned that making the avatar is only one small part of the puzzle. The avatar is made using a software called Live2D. It's essentially a software that makes it easy to generate a 2D animated model that maps to motion capture software.

Live2D doesn’t actually DO the motion capture though. For that, you need another software. The official software is called Nizima LIVE, and you can use the free version, but there are certain restrictions. If you want to use the full set of features, you pay around $2 per month, or around $300 per year for the FULL version.

Since I have no idea what I’m doing, I chose to use the open source tracker called vTube Studio. Unfortunately, this software also has limitations in the free version. In order to use it without a watermark (which is an annoying little flying girl that flaps around the screen), they make you pay for it.

HOWEVER—most people recommend buying vTube Studio through the iPhone App store, so you can take advantage of Apple’s ARKit face tracking, which is apparently heralded as the best. I think it works fine, but I’m not a connoisseur of face tracking, so take my words with a grain of salt here, haha.

Buying the app on the iPhone is a bit more expensive than buying the desktop version on Steam--$26-ish vs. $15-ish. But that’s not bad.

So I bought the iPhone app and use that to stream my tracking over wifi to the desktop app. Which, since I bought the phone app, removed the watermark. Yaaay!

But there’s an intermediate program that was recommended online. It’s called vBridger. It works to smooth the tracking between ARKit and vTube studio—somehow. I’m not sure exactly how it works. I believe vBridger helps to make the ARKit motions more accurate in vTube Studio.

Anyway, all I knew was that I had to redo my character’s mouth rig because now I had more parameters I could use for better lip-sync tracking. So I did that. And it turned out really well!

So… I use my iPhone to run the vTube Studio app, which connects to my desktop version of vTube Studio using WiFi. I used vBridger to make the animation smoother. Then, I use OBS Studio (an open source desktop recorder and streaming software) to record my vTube Studio window. I capture audio using my Blue Yeti microphone and Adobe Audition.

Complicated isn’t the half of it… but it works!

Once I got the hang of it all, it didn’t take long to record with it. And since Audition can clean up audio almost in real-time, I don’t have to do a whole lot of post-processing.

I’ve recorded two videos with it so far. I’m extra happy with how quickly I’m able to work with it! In about 3 hours I can record a 15-ish minute video and get a rough cut ready for post-production.

Once I streamline a few things, I’m hoping I can get that down to 2 hours, or even 1. It helps when I don’t say “um” five-hundred times and have to cut them all out!

Oh, and I threw together a little After Effects version of my avatar as a 2D cutout rig. Here she is with all her controllers.

I think the biggest struggle will come when I add in this AE rig to act out some of my story elements in the videos. That’s still key frame animation, which takes a while. But it’s something!

I also haven’t subscribed to any asset services yet. By asset service, I mean one of those sites that uploads stock footage and graphics for people to use to make videos. I’m considering using Storyblocks once I get a format pulled together. But right now, I just don’t know what I don’t know. I’m using free creative commons stuff for now.

My current plan is to produce 12 videos. I’m going to get a smooth process going with them so that I can 1) learn if I actually enjoy it, and 2) so I can have a buffer of content to get started.

Once those first 12 videos are done, I’m going to start posting them online. I’m thinking YouTube first, and then probably some clips on TikTok. I’m also considering using my own website to play the videos, while I host them on a 3^rd party service. We’ll see. I don’t want to rely on just YouTube….

But anyway! A good start! :3

Studio Moonyn Storefront

 And… it’s done!!

I basically had the majority of this up and ready to go a month or so ago. I just had to get my butt in gear and take some photos of my products. Then edit all those photos with my logo and website as a watermark… then resize them and color correct them.

So yeah, it was a large task. That I was avoiding. Mostly because I have bad memories of struggling with photographing my art in the past. But now I have some knowledge of photography and also some decent equipment—like lighting and tripods. Having the gear really made it a lot less frustrating.

All of the stuff available in the Studio Moonyn store is stuff I’ve sold at conventions in the past. So if you’d like to have a print or a hard copy of my webcomic, check it out!

Preoccupations

None for today! Just the armadillo story from before :3

Faretheewell

Check out my website for the newsletter! It has an archive so you can go back and look at old issues. If that’s something you’re into. I suppose. I know I’m into it!

Check it out here!

And alas, we come again to the end of another scribbling.

See you end of June! Summer is crawling in. Blurg. My least favorite season!