Mid-Year Update: Blogging/Art/Streaming Goals!

So, yesterday, I wrote about my personal goals, concluding that I’m doing well overall health-wise but I still have to grow as a person… and I also went into detail about stuff that happened somewhat recently that fucked with my head and how learning from mistakes is better than dwelling too much over it… Common knowledge, I guess, but knowing about something is different from actually practising it. I also still have to do more sports. My sleep schedule is another story at the moment but I managed to fall asleep early yesterday and I hope that I can keep up the trend tonight/tomorrow. Hopefully, I’ll then be able to run a few blocks or whatever again in the mornings and basically do some basic training overall. Today, though, I wanted to talk about my New Year’s resolutions that I mentioned in this post here. These were specifically about Streaming and Blogging, hence a quick little update about where I’m at right now.

My Blogging goals were:

• Familiarise myself with the Classic Editor and some more Gutenberg features.
• Use different blocks in my posts and increase the quality that way.
• More consistency.
• YouTube!

As far as the different blocks go in Gutenberg… I have familiarised myself with a lot of them and reworked the theme and the sidebar and stuff but I didn’t really feel like the slide show or whatever would add much value to my reviews and other posts. Hence, I didn’t use them yet. Meanwhile, consistency… uh… judging from my 196-day-streak on WordPress, I’d reckon that I’m being quite consistent with the blog posts. At last, I was a bit scared of getting into editing again but it worked out well so far. I have yet to be a bit more consistent with my YouTube uploads and post more videos on there… The main reason why I haven’t uploaded too much in these last two weeks is because of time constraints and because of me lacking a bit of motivation, I guess. It’s a bit tricky when it comes to content creation, especially when it’s more of a hobby. Right now I still gotta brainstorm how I feel about the videos I make and what I exactly want to create. Maybe I’ll actually try things out more and do some runs of Monster Train on YouTube instead of Indie Game first impressions. We’ll see!

My Art goals were:

• Get into Animation in Krita!
• Get better at drawing!
• Work more on my emotes!
• Create cool gifs and stuff for the blog/stream.
• Open Commissions?

On Twitch, I’ve been drawing a lot actually. I’ve worked on a bunch of my emotes and refined my style a bit more. I’ve been getting better at it and am looking forward to continuing the Art streams every Monday! Meanwhile, animation is… tricky. It’s rough to do in Krita and I have yet to get better at it by watching more tutorials or whatever. I’m not 100% sure how certain lines affect different frames and how I do a little bit of movement without messing up everything. I’ll look into more tutorials or try out more things once I have a bit more time. Looking forward to that. Once I’m doing better on the animation front, I’d love to create some summoning circles for the Stream-Alerts as well and stuff like that… but until then I’ll have to just practice, practice, and practice! Overall, though, when it comes to just drawing, I’ve been getting pretty good at it, and I feel like it could be quite cool to open up commissions eventually.

My Streaming goals were:

• Use Drama Experience!
• Educate myself on Mental Health/LGBTQIA+ topics!
• Trigger/Content Warnings!
• More Accessibility!
• Be more positive about myself/others!
• More Consistency!
• Think up more creative ideas for the stream and branding!

When it comes to streams, I’ve been quite consistent, I would say. I’ve been keeping to a strict schedule with the occasional cancelled stream (due to IRL stuff) but I usually made up with a bonus off-schedule stream in those cases. My current schedule (Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday) has been working quite well. I just moved from morning streams to afternoon streams which is working out quite nicely. The stream has become a tad more accessible thanks to the addition of closed captions. They are not perfect but it’s better than nothing. I have yet to add more things to the stream so that it becomes a bit more enjoyable for everyone. Meanwhile, I’ve educated myself on some Mental Health and LGBTQIA+ topics and I’ve added a lot of words to the blocked terms… and I’ve got a bunch of mental health resources linked in the discord that I can provide when in doubt… I’m not an expert still, so not super good at all of that stuff yet but I’m getting there. This ties into accessibility as well but I’ve added a CW/triggers command that essentially displays topics that the game we’re playing is depicting… and it’s based on the game we’re playing and works out quite nicely. 

I still have to work more on this but I’ve been doing more with my voice and have disabled the camera for my streams. Previously, I started streaming with a cam to essentially be able to convey my feelings better. I undid that because I want to convey my feelings through my voice instead of just relying on my facial expression(s). I feel like that was a good choice overall. Meanwhile, I’ve also been using my stomach voice more which sounds a tad deeper but is overall a lot better for my throat and voice. I’ve also tried to say “yes” more often when something comes in as an input in chat, which is good because I can basically bounce off ideas in chat that way, creating this sort of conversation-feel that I was aiming for. As an example, when someone called me a “One Direction fan” once, I said that I’m the biggest One Direction fan and started quoting some Backstreet Boys lyrics which apparently was entertaining. I should’ve said that I’m a fan of many directions actually but uh… missed opportunity. In essence, instead of saying “no” and ending a conversation, you say “yes” and improvise with that input, which is something that works in improv quite well but naturally, you need to set boundaries where needed. The other day someone new mentioned wanting my phone number and I told them: No, I won’t give you my phone number. Sure, this is less entertaining but it essentially sets a boundary where needed as the thought of potentially getting doxed made me quite uncomfortable. But yeah, stuff I learned from my drama days certainly is quite helpful right now and I’m looking forward to incorporating that into more streams as time goes on. 

Overall, though, I still have ways to go. Especially when it comes to YouTube, Art, and Streaming there are many things that I want to try out and it’s important for me to write everything down and expand off of that. I was thinking about something more Underworld-related when it comes to Twitch… but I’m not sure if what I had in mind would work out or if it is too complicated. We’ll see! I’ll most likely write about it!

So, stuff I still gotta work on:

• YouTube consistency!
• Animation in Krita (or other programs?)
• Lots of Stream stuff, mostly branding and special effects!

I’m liking where I am right now though, especially art-wise and stream-wise. I hope I can build on that some more though! 

Cheers!

This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!