Saturday, October 31, 2009

Friday, October 23, 2009

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?

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

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!

Friday, October 16, 2009

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.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

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!

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Tumblr's got more action

If you're not already, you guys should be following me on Tumblr. You don't have to get a Tumblr account if you don't want to, but you should at least check it out or maybe subscribe to the RSS feed. On this blog where I only post if something important is happening. On Tumblr, I post all sorts of things throughout each day, whether it has to do with Geoweasel, myself, or interesting stuff I find on the 'net or through other people. If you're interested in seeing samples from my sketchbook that I don't post elsewhere, behind-the-scenes Geoweasel stuff (I've been putting up a lot of early production art lately), or just random stuff about me, head on over!