Uncreated Conscience

A robotic baby seal throws better free throws than Shaquille O’Neal.

It’s been a long time since White-Harp’s reviewed any books for you via vlog. So here’s a video review for you! A twofer, as she touches a bit on THE DEMON’S COVENANT as well as THE DEMON’S LEXICON.

The truth is we meant to get this online for you in time for the ARC contest Sarah Rees Brennan ran, but White-Harp thought sleeping in bed was preferable to shooting while I thought reading my brains out for work was probably wiser than editing/animating. Nevertheless! We are finished! Enjoy!

Because I am sappy and because I have the most adorable Teddy Bear in the world who needs to be told he’s loved with similar levels of cuteness.

I love you, Teddy Bear.

You all want to see a video of Cap’n Sweet Valley, no? You know you all do. Because he’s really adorable.

He plays “Stoneage Literary Agent”. He’s a show stealer, that one. You’ve all seen WeBook, of course. You haven’t? Then why are you waiting?

Remember this video White-Harp made for Maggie Stiefvater SHIVER?

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Remember when I said when I’m supposed to be doing something creative, I procrastinate by doing other creative things? (In this case, I am avoiding the most tedious parts of digital artwork: “inking” in Photoshop.)

This is a project in abject narcissism and procrastination. Over 300 photographs taken with Photobooth over the period of one month as I avoided working on my novel, working on art commissions, or just plain working.

White-Harp makes appearances, of course, as she is a camerawhore.

This morning I disturbed the end of my roommate’s yoga practice with a blood-curdling scream. She ran into my room, thinking there was an axe murderer on my fire escape or perhaps a mouse (both are equally terrifying).

“What is it? Are you okay?” she asked.

Oh yes, everything was okay, everything was more than okay because I had discovered The Muppets Studio YouTube channel and their Twitter feed. And this amazing, amazing video of the cast performing Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”.

I then proceeded to do an actual Kermit flail. My arms were flapping about the place as I cried, “Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!” at the top of my voice.

White-Harp will demonstrate for you.

Win!

I’ve actually been fairly good about working these past few days (just got the soundtrack for Battlestar Galactica—what?), but a while back, in a fit of huge procrastination, White-Harp and I indulged in a little silliness.

I loves my White-Harp, I do.

So when I said I don’t want to be an animator anymore…I might have been lying. I discovered this great programme for Mac called Pencil and it may be the most awesome piece of software in the world (except for Scrivener, the greatest writing tool in all of existence). To prove my point, I made a little animation last night in under 10 minutes.

96 frames in under 10 minutes. That is GENIUS. Granted, 96 frames is only 8 seconds (I’m drawing at 12 frames per second, not 24), but most of my animation isn’t for feature film length purposes—just clips I can stick into White-Harp’s book review vlogs. Instead of individually drawing pictures over and over and scanning them individually, I can simply “onion-skin” the next drawing over it, like an actual flipbook. You should have seen the setup I had the last time: I don’t have a lightdesk, so I was hunched with a lamp between my legs, trying to shine it through a semi-transparent clipboard. Oi.

Speaking of which, I’m hoping to get her review of A CURSE DARK AS GOLD filmed and edited tonight. We shall see. I have a million things to do and on top of that, it is Bones night, which means it’s Sofa and my time to be together with me in New York and her in Virginia. I miss my Soph. :(