Filmed in front of a live audience

…not exactly because it's the season to be jolly.

You probably noticed my new avatar, which I made yesterday. If you saw it used in one of my comments on someone else's old post, you'll be wondering how I managed to use it before creating it. But the interesting thing about this avatar is not that I've been wanting to make it since July, it's that I created it while Livestreaming.

Created in 2007, Livestream is a platform that allows people to transmit live what they're doing on their computer (by capturing their screen) or at their computer (by capturing their webcam). Recently, many artists have been using it to broadcast their drawing sessions. To be brief, I decided to give it a try.

Created for my
July 4 post

Since I was essentially creating a product, I thought I needed a hook: what was going to set my stream apart from the others? I watched a few of them and realized they never talk; they never say what they're doing unless you ask them. I, on the other hand, do it all the time – even when I'm alone in the house. I don't know what that says about me, but I do know that there has to be someone out there interested in listening to that.

The only problem I find with Livestream is is that, once you stop transmitting live, you are left with a bunch of videos that don't really make any sense. The whole point of a Livestream is being able to interact with the person at the instant you see them do a certain thing – live. However, I've seen (through DeviantArt) that people are interested in the process that led up to making a piece, so people would still want to see them… if only they weren't so long.

The solution was, as I saw when making my post about the Zelda anniversary, to do a time-lapse: a fast-motion video created by sampling only one frame out of every 16. And so I did. For every one of my livestreams, I'm creating a time-lapse and uploading it onto YouTube.

The playlist showing the creation
of the laughing avatar contains
3 videos, condensing 5 hours
into 13 minutes

I set myself to do this because I wanted to spend more time on my art during the Christmas break, but all these extra things are actually making me spend a lot more time than I had initially thought (there are, for instance, things that need to be edited out of the time-lapse videos because they make no sense at that speed, and sometimes only take up 2 frames). And given that I've had 8 views total (added up all the livestreams and YouTube videos, and subtracted my own views, and the people who only did it to send me spam), it makes me wonder if I haven't set myself on a fool's errand.