I need motivation. And cash.

Hey guys. I wasn't really able to draw very well for the past week or two because of a medicine I was on. My arms, legs and neck were all shaky and weak. Just a few days ago, they took me off the medicine and I'm already feeling better in that respect. It was really weird and kind of upsetting not being able to draw right; it felt like I wasn't even holding the pen when I tried and everything was just messy. But that's getting better now thankfully.
So I want to get a cartoon done. I have an entire Thanksgiving storyboard I wrote last year, and I have like...a week to do it, but I'm not really sure if I like it. That's how I'm feeling about all my Geoweasel ideas lately. They're just things I don't think people will like or I don't like myself. And it's weird because some people say to go ahead and just make stuff without thinking and others tell me if you don't really feel good about an idea, don't do it. So I dunno. I really want to do some more casual stuff with Geoweasel, like...less scripted or something, but that's hard to do since I'm the only one doing the voices. You can't improvise with yourself. I also want to do a remake of The Dark Storm since that was the first Geoweasel episode and it'll be five years since I made it this December. Not really so much of a remake though. The same general idea is there, but it's not at all the same script. It's just if I had done that plot today, how it would play out. But I'm not really sure if I want to jump on that either. I need something that I can just get into.
Oh! Also, I've been thinking about offering commissions lately. Not that I think many people would buy any from me, but I'm seriously completely broke. I would definitely do drawing commissions, but animations, I'm not so sure. I would offer animation to people who are looking for like a music video, a commercial, or a film they've written that they want animated or something. I have no idea how to put myself out there for that though. And for regular commissions, I have to figure out Paypal and stuff too, I've never done anything like that.
I still want to put DVDs together too, but there a few things wrong with that idea. The major thing is I'm missing a lot of the original files that I used to upload to Youtube since the last time my computer crashed. Some I still have the SWF and/or FLA for that I can still convert it, but not all of them. I wouldn't be able to put together a DVD that has episodes in order for like a collection or something. I could download the MP4 versions from Youtube, but those are not good quality for DVD. It's very cheap. Plus, I don't know if it's something people honestly would buy, or if it would just be one of those things where everyone tells me "I'd buy that if I had the money." Like the shirts and stuff I made. I don't feel like wasting my time making something no one gives a damn about.

New ideas

Hey guys. Obviously I never did the Halloween thing. And oddly, like...as soon as November started, I began thinking less and less about Geoweasel. Probably because I officially started Zane & Flick on the first (just rough planning so far though), but I also have an overabundance of new ideas, which is awesome! Some are for animated series I could do, some are for certain types of cartoons, and some other one-off animations for film festivals and the like. I may try pitching the ideas of the series to online networks, because I don't want to go through any of them alone.
I haven't really jumped on any of these yet though. I still want to do some Geoweasel cartoons before the end of the year. Who knows what I'll do cartoon-wise before then? I can't really do anything now because my hands have been really shaky and weak lately and one day I went to draw and it just...didn't work. Something didn't feel right and the drawings came out very sloppy. It was like I couldn't feel my hand and it was just flopping around. I'm really upset over that; hopefully it gets back to normal soon. Plus, New Super Mario Bros. Wii comes out this Sunday, and I don't think I've ever been so excited for a game release. I'm really having trouble with my patience with this, haha. I wish I could just go to sleep and wake up on Sunday. But yeah, between my hand and the fact that I will be playing Mario nonstop, you might not see a whole lot of drawings or anything from me for a good while. But I'll try.

Happy Halloween!

I just keep thinking too much

Countless people have told me to just stop thinking and do what you want. And I’ve been trying to do that, but sometimes I can’t help it. Like now.
I think maybe I need to find a distributor for my cartoons. Doing this independently is yielding no results. I shouldn’t say none, but I definitely am not reaching the audience I want to reach. Granted, Geoweasel is not an ideal series, even for web. There’s no substance to it. In a way that can be good, but I’m not doing it right. Sometimes I want to quit it, others I don’t, because it is something that I can just do whatever I want with. But even if I made something totally different, I feel like it would go unnoticed. I have no idea how to attract an audience. Or maybe my stuff is just crap. It’s not something I can submit to film/animation festivals or shows or websites to be featured on. It just kind of sits there, and if someone sees it, they see it, but it’s not something that someone would stumble upon and say to someone else, “Hey, you gotta check out this cartoon.”
While I was at SPX last month, I talked to James Kochalka for a while and eventually started talking about this kind of stuff and just my lack of motivation, and he said maybe it’s time to move on. Later on, I talked with Jeffrey Brown and he said, “I think you should just do what you do, and not worry about other people or getting popular or anything. That just comes on its own.” Not that nobody has said either of those things to me before, but it was just two people in one night telling me contradictory things that left me confused and thinking. I don’t know what I should do. Keep going? Get help? Do something else? Quit altogether? Back when I first started it was just, “Yeah! I’m gonna make a cartoon!” and nothing else factored into it and I just went along with what I had. But then I started feeling like I wasn’t attracting more people, my stuff wasn’t evolving, I kept getting rejected from various places to display my work, and with every one of those, I lost more and more motivation. I don’t think anything ever really happened to actually bring some of that motivation back. It just kept getting sucked away until now, where I’m at the point of making a couple cartoons a year, if that.
I know not everything can be a hit, and not everything is a miss. But I think just about everything I’ve done has been a strike out. If this is what I love doing, why is it becoming so hard to do?

Here we go, a brand new one!

After two weeks of ready-made cartoons, and many weeks of nothing before that, here's a brand new Geoweasel cartoon! And I mean BRAND new. Not like I started it a while ago and got back to it. I mean I started it this weekend and got it done this afternoon, because time was ticking with this one. It's about the Balloon Boy, which I'm sure you've heard about. And the internet works fast, so I had to get it out in the open before the next big thing came along. So please go check it out and enjoy!

Another unfinished one

Here's the second (and probably last) Unfinished Episode Theater. It's a Halloween episode from 2006. I had it online briefly for some reason, so a few hardcore viewers may have already seen this. But please guys, I can't stress this enough. Since these videos are now on Youtube, you have no idea how helpful it would be to me for you guys to share the video with friends or post it on your blogs or something; anything you find fit. There is only so much I can do in the way of self promotion (without having to pay, and I can't, so it's not an option). Online video relies mostly on you guys, my friends and fans. Rating and commenting are always good, and I always like to hear feedback, but introduce some of your friends to the series. Post episodes or links on your Facebook, Twitter, or Myspace, or if you have a casual blog, maybe like a Tumblr or something, post it there too. My current goal is to have Geoweasel become a Youtube Partner series. But it's weird. Becoming a Partner helps spread your videos and gets more people to see your stuff, but you have to gain some type of popularity before you can even be a partner. And I just don't understand Youtube and how somethings can skyrocket in popularity on its own. I'm not even aiming for that. I just want to build a bigger audience, which would motivate me to make more cartoons. But I'm never going to be a Partner if most of my videos have less than 500 views. So please, if you want to see Geoweasel keep going, lend me a hand and spread the love.

New (sorta) Geoweasel Episode on Youtube

In an attempt to build myself a buffer zone to get actual new content done, this week and next will feature old episodes that I never finished. Also, I think I'm going to only be uploading to Youtube now, since that's the best place to get feedback. Also, it would really help me out though if you guys shared these cartoons with friends, put them on your blogs, leave comments, ratings, etc. Internet video is all about sharing, and I need your help!