As I mentioned in my previous post, my trading cards are now available via my Patreon. Some of you may know that this is a project I have been working on for a few months now. I decided to call the series “Bizarre Garden: Creatures That Are Weird” (BGCTAW for short).
The series is currently comprised of 32 original characters that I came up with, each with their own descriptions, stats, and abilities. The cards are loosely based on Pokemon cards and are theoretically playable as a game. All but two of the characters were illustrated by me (it shouldn’t be hard to identify the exceptions).
Now why did I do this? I have done various digital art, but I have never designed something for print. I thought it would be a new and interesting experience to make something physical like these trading cards. I am now working out the details of distribution.
These cards are already available via my Patreon page, but I am looking into more distribution channels. Here are some previews of what the cards actually look like.
$1/mo.: You get the Patron role on the Discord server
$6/mo.: 1 Bizarre Garden trading card per month
$12/mo.: 4 Bizarre Garden trading cards per month
As of now, this is the only way to get your hands on my brand new exclusive “Bizarre Garden: Creatures That Are Weird” trading cards! Collect all 32 bizarre creatures!
Those of you who watch my Twitch streams have probably noticed that I always have a charity fundraiser going. For a long time, the charity was The Muscular Dystrophy Association, but that is changing starting today.
After hearing some complaints about the fundraising tactics of the MDA Telethon and doing some of my own research, I decided that it was no longer a good match for my channel. They also decided to bring back the telethon with a well-known homophobe hosting, which was another big factor in my decision.
From now on, I am planning to rotate different charities on a monthly basis. The link to the current fundraiser campaign is stevotvr.com/charity. Visit that link each month or visit my Twitch channel to donate!
If you know of a charity that you want me to consider, please let me know! I am also working on some incentives for donating…
For me, the challenge of building a custom PC is finding someone to put it all together. I know what parts to get and how to put it all together, but I can’t physically do the work, so I have to talk someone else through the process. Troubleshooting the problems that inevitably come up is also hindered by my inability to physically manipulate the hardware.
This time, however, I decided to try my luck at ordering a fully assembled system. I ordered a custom PC from CyberPowerPC. Here are the specs:
MB: ASUS ROG Strix Z390-E Gaming
CPU: Intel Core i9 9900K @ 4.7GHz
RAM: 32GB (2x16GB) G.SKILL Ripjaws V DDR4 3200MHz
GPU: MSI Geforce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB
Storage: 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe M.2 SSD
PSU: EVGA 850W GQ 80+ Gold
Case: Corsair Carbide Series 678C
CPU Cooler: Corsair Hydro H115i PRO RGB 280mm Liquid CPU Cooler
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Professional
It took about two weeks to arrive after placing the order. It was packaged very well (I ordered the enhanced packaging) and everything was in perfect condition. It worked right out of the box. They did a great job with cable management with most of the wires out of sight and neatly bundled with zip ties.
We had to transfer some drives and the capture card from my old system, so some of the zip ties had to be cut and cable management disturbed. The M.2 cards are secured to the motherboard by the heat sinks rather than mounting screws. I don’t know if that is how it’s supposed to be but that is how it came. That caused an issue where the main drive was not detected and we had to re-mount it. Other than that, everything went as planned.
I have a few minor complaints. The GPU I ordered was an Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti, but the one that I got was an MSI RTX 2080 Ti, but those are equivalent as far as I am concerned. I was also supposed to get a free 2TB 7200 RPM hard drive but I got a 5400 RPM drive, but I can’t really complain about a free hard drive. I also would have preferred that the boot drive be installed in the M.2 slot farther from the CPU, but that is a very minor complaint (in hindsight, we could have easily swapped the M.2 cards when we had it open).
In conclusion, the overall experience was good and I would use CyberPowerPC in the future. I also considered iBuyPower but I decided to go with CyberPowerPC because I was able to get a better GPU for the same price.
Anyway, please enjoy this photo of the inside of the case. The AVerMedia capture card and the Blu-ray drive were supplied by me. Also there are a few untamed SATA cables that were not there originally.
I recently started streaming on my Twitch channel. I invested so much in quality audio recording equipment for my animation, so I thought I would put it to good use and do some broadcasting. That was actually my main inspiration.
I’ve been streaming several different games on different days of the week and it’s been pretty fun so far. I may decide to change this format in the future. I also need to work on the branding and graphics, but for now I am keeping it simple.
Come check it out if you are in to this kind of thing…
This post is a continuation of my previous post Playing Games With One Hand. The setup described in that post works great for PC games, but it is useless if you want to play console games. In order to do that, you need a way to connect the PC to the console and emulate a controller.
After searching for a bit, I found a product that can do that, called the Titan One. This little device allows you to use different controllers with different consoles, and most importantly, keyboard/mouse via the MaxAim DI plugin.
The MaxAim DI plugin maps keyboard and mouse (buttons and movement) input to buttons on a controller. When you plug the program cable into the PC, the virtual controller is able to send input to the console. It supports many controller types.
I am using this with a Nintendo Switch, which requires a little bit of setup. First, since this is a wired device, the System Settings > Controllers and Sensors > Pro Controller Wired Communication setting must be enabled. I am using the XBox 360 controller layout in the MaxAim DI plugin.
So far I have been playing Super Mario Odyssey fairly effectively. This device works very well. I also tried the Pokémon: Let’s Go Demo, but found out the game doesn’t support the Pro Controller, so that doesn’t work. I can’t comment on any other games or consoles yet, but maybe I will update this post after I try more of them.
I decided to try to learn how to create animated videos. So, I got a subscription to the Adobe Creative Cloud and Skillshare to learn via video tutorials. I also bought a condenser microphone for recording dialog. After watching a few classes, I started working on the first video.
The first video is called Bob’s Robot. I drew the backgrounds and characters in Photoshop, recorded and edited dialogue in Audition, and animated everything in Character Animator. Here is the result:
The second video is called Good Advice Unicorn. This time I drew backgrounds in Photoshop, characters in Illustrator, and animated using After Effects. Here it is:
The third (and latest as of writing this) video is called Nutopia 2: Attack of the Legumes. I used the same workflow as the previous video, except I used an inverse kinematics plugin to rig and animate the characters. I also recruited some guest voices, which was tricky but worth the effort. This one is significantly longer than the previous videos, and I think the quality is significantly better. Here it is:
The YouTube channel is called VideoStove. You can find a link to it on the amazing website I created for it.
Anyway, that is what I have been spending my time on lately. Enjoy!
