Did a quick tech test of Ustream last night to see if we could use it to stream the carnage of Art Fight. Have to say, I’m fairly impressed with the results. All I had to do was plug in my camera, hit record, and the little web app recorded my impromptu sketching session. This is great for little quicky vids like this. Once you’re finished, you can send your recorded video to YouTube. I don’t know how it deals with videos longer than ten minutes yet. May have to run another test sometime tonight. But if we get permission from the Ottobar and the musicians performing, we could be streaming Art Fight live so you can watch from the comfort of your own home.

I can’t imagine anyone sitting through me drawing or coloring an entire page, but apparently, Ustream is the webcartoonist’s new platform of choice. There are some nice encoding tools once you’ve recorded your show. It records your video as an flv, but you can request to have it dumped out as an mp4, mov, or wmv. You can then download the format of your choice and keep it on your machine to archive your show or upload to wherever. The help docs say you can upload to other sites like blip and such directly from the interface, but it wasn’t working for me last night. YouTube obviously worked like a charm, but the other services were unavailable (either I’m a moron which is more than likely, or this is something they’re trying to fix).

Overall, quite impressed. Very easy to just plug and play. Haven’t gone much further than that. At some point, I’ll want to figure out how to take video of my screen. Perfect solution if you don’t want to mess with editing and don’t care too much about high quality video.

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This week we have Masked Rider 1 and 2 from Kamen Rider: The Next and an amazingly detailed 1/144 Super HCM Pro version of Char's Zaku II. Big thanks to HobbyLink Japan for once again hooking us up.

I’ve also set up a YouTube channel for the vlog, Angry Zen Movies, so if you like you can subscribe and get the latest AZM video madness when I update.

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Finally got this all edited together. We get a sneak peak at what the webcomic guests are really like when they’re away from their tables and panels. It’s a frightening world of pain and sorrow.

I’d like to thank Applegeeks, Dead of Summer, Rockets Rock Out, Onezumi, Fragile Gravity, Paradox Lost, Steve Bennett, Quest to Nowhere, Staccato, Partially Clips, Erfworld, and The Fump for not punching me in the face when I pointed the camera at them. Although, now that this is out, they might do so when I see them again.

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This week, we review the Chara-Works Vol. 2 Macross Valkyrie collection, the HCP Pro SP RX-79 ground type Gundam, and the S.I.C. Kamen Rider Faiz.

Later in the week I’ll be announcing yet another give-away contest so stay tuned.

Special thanks to HobbyLink Japan!

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Finally got this edited together for the site. Witness my powers of utter fail as I attempt to assemble my new PC!

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Managed to survive the Katsu with all my brain meats in tact and a few more ideas for future art projects that MUST BE DONE (including a few I’m going to work on as soon as I post this)! I shot some fairly amusing video of some of the webtoonist guests that I’ll try my best to post sometime later this week. It should more than convince you all that webtoonists are absolutely batshit insane. Also got some footage of the Iron Artist competition and the charity auction that sold our pieces to benefit cancer research.

I’ll leave you now with a short vid the lads of Dead of Summer and I shot while preparing to battle each other in Iron Artist competition. Nick’s team won by one point, but a good time was had by all. I hope we get to compete again next year.

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My friend Mason Booker of May-Sun Productions entered into a short film competition and asked for some help on his submission. He needed a Yakuza boss and he wondered if I’d be interested. Sure. Why not! Okay, so it’s a fairly stereotypical role, I admit, but who doesn’t want to be a Yakuza boss! We shot for two days on location in Baltimore. Long ass days, but I had a lot of fun on set. The short, “Slice,” won an award for its lighting.

It’s a story about a boy, a girl, and the pizza that changed their lives forever! DUHN DUHN DUUUUUHNNN!

[Via May-Sun Productions]

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This is pretty exciting! Got a new format for the vlog complete with intro and outro. HobbyLink Japan sent over a couple of toys for me to review, the Souchaku Henshin x Kubrick gashapon trading figures and the HCM Pro Hi-Nu Gundam. You can purchase them directly from HLJ:

• Souchaku Henshin x Kubrick Vol 1
• HCM Pro Hi-Nu Gundam

Next Wednesday, I’ll be making an announcement for our first Angry Zen Master giveaway contest where you can win the full set of Souchaku Henshin x Kubrick Kamen Rider gasphapon trading figures!

CORRECTIONS: It’s HobbyLink Japan with no space between the Hobby and Link. I’ll correct that on the video when I get back home. Also, the Kamen Rider Kubricks are trading figures, not gashapon as I said on the review. Gashapon come in capsules. Trading figures come in blind boxes.

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A friend of my mom’s who works at the National Zoo gave us a behind-the-scenes tour early last Sunday. I brought along a camera to capture some animals doing really cute things. The pandas are just as cute up close as they are from far away.

The panda trainer ran out of panda treats and the young one, Tai Shan, let out a cute whimpering sound. Here’s that clip by itself so you can hear a panda cry.

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A very rough pencil test of the AZM Vlog intro all painfully drawn and animated by your’s truly. Click on the image for the vid.

Hibiki or I guess Todoroki rocking out is close to finished. Ultraman has some lineart that I can deal with. The others are quite rough. I think I’m going to have Godzilla munching on a train. The last scene will be Sho Nuff yelling “MASTAH!!” I want to try to have this close to finished fairly soon to coincide with something really cool that might be happening on the vlog, but I’ll have to keep it hush hush for now. After this is done, on to Monster Cutie which will be 30 seconds of animation hell!

Oh, I used Flash for the animation. It’s all key framed by hand. No tweens or objects save for the background behind Todoroki. All the characters will be hand keyed (hand animated). I’ll probably fudge the backgrounds with tweens and patterns and other happy stuff. Enjoy!

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