Due to the fact that some people might be looking for actual painting tutorials at the launch, I decided to create a special debut tutorial going over a speed painting of a character. I still felt that this wasn’t enough for the launch, so I went ahead and included a still life painting of a kettle. I wanted to show what I will be working towards with these tutorials and that people need to learn the fundamentals before they learn the “cool” stuff. Unfortunately I did some last minute panicking and didn’t record the audio for the metal kettle still life until around 9:00pm. It took about an hour to render the video and then another 80 minutes to upload to Vimeo, and then it has to convert the file…so the still life tutorial might not be ready until maybe around 12:30am (for those of you who are attending the midnight launch).

In any case, I hope you all enjoy the site and keep coming back for the new tutorials. Remember, new tutorials will be posted every Wednesday and Friday. Be sure to leave comments and visit the forums! See you there!

Most of the tutorials I have done in the past were intermediate to advanced in terms of level, so I really wanted to take a step back and address the fundamentals of art and learning the basics of how to use Photoshop. The majority of the tutorials I am recording for the site are around 5 minutes long, but I do have some longer videos that cover figure drawing and still life painting. I plan to release a new video every Wednesday and Friday, so for some of the longer videos I might break them down into a few parts.

Another great aspect about this tutorial site is that the tutorials will be free. I have always tried to give back to the community as much as possible and with the ever growing problem of piracy, I really wanted to produce some material that students can take advantage of without having to steal it.

Since I will be releasing two new videos a week, I will constantly need new ideas for future tutorials. Right now I have around 25 tutorials finished, but if you have any ideas I would love to hear about them.

Site
Facebook
Twitter

Update – The site will launch 11.11.11!

Ugh, Camtasia was being a pain in the butt again. Whenever I tried adding audio filters, it would crash. Then I tried to duplicate the project and it crashed. It would crash when I opened the file, crash when I tried to save the file, crash when I tried to play the file, etc. I tried breaking it into two parts and more crashing ensued. I finally got past the crashing issues and tried to export 25 minutes of the tutorial. Again the stupid export bug reared its ugly head. You know, then one where it goes through the entire export process (which can take a couple of hours) and when it finishes, a dialog box opens up saying it is finished and that you can reveal the file in the finder. Of course when you do that there is no file and it isn’t anywhere to be found on your computer. I tried changing more settings, no luck. I tried to break the file into 4 parts instead of 2…more crashing. Finally I was able to break it into 4 parts and so far it seems to actually be working. Once I export all 4 files I then have to open them back up in Camtasia and stick them all together so that I can upload one file to YouTube. Camtasia is such a pain. Some people recommended ScreenFlow, so I am going to kick Camtasia out the door and give ScreenFlow a try. See ya Camtasia, thanks for wasting my time.

Update

Fixed her chin a bit based on some feedback I received on my YouTube site. Thanks!

Male Pose
Female Pose

I had other people asking if they could give donations for the time I spent creating these tutorials, so I decided to bundle and release them on my store. I added an additional 5 minutes to each video, talking about basic measurements and further refining the painting. I also included high res (1500 pixels wide) layered psd files of each painting and the brushes that I used. Also, the videos are higher res than the ones on my YouTube site. These new videos are 1440×900 and in QuickTime format. The whole bundle is $10.99. You can purchase it here.

I hope these tutorials help, thanks!!

Format: Quicktime HD 1920×1400
Length: 149 minutes
Extras: Layered PSD, Brushes

Bah, anyway, I’ll tell you a little bit about my process and equipment and whatnot. So I filmed the video using Camtasia for Mac. For the audio I actually used a program called Wiretap Studio. I find it easier to hit play on the Camtasia timeline and record the audio with Wiretap while I watch so that I can time the audio correctly. After that I have to export each section (I broke the tutorial up into 5 parts). Once I had all 5 parts exported, I had to put them back into Camtasia and export them as one large file. I was then able to burn that one file onto a DVD using iDVD. After that I use a program called Epson Print CD to print the DVD with my Epson Stylus Photo R1800. For the DVD insert I used Photoshop and then printed it on double-sided glossy paper with my Epson Artisan 800. I then have to cut each insert out using a good old exacto knife and a ruler. I was able to make 15 DVDs before I ran out of ink and paper. At the end of April I am attending Wizard World Con in Anaheim and in June I’m going to Singapore and Kansas City for a Magic: The Gathering Grand Prix, so I will have these DVDs available there for purchase. I may only make a few available through my site for now so that I can have some to sell on hand at the shows.

Right now I’m getting my digital download ready, so I should be able to have them available for purchase in the next day or two. The digital download will be $21.80 and the DVD will be $33. Why the weird prices? Well the state of California makes you pay sales tax on everything you sell, so I need to charge sales tax in order to cancel out the sales tax I have to pay to the state. So not only do I have to pay federal tax and state tax, but I also have to pay state sales tax and city business license tax, yay! Basically I am being taxed 4 times for everything I sell. Gotta love America. Some quick specs:

Sci-Fi Environment Tutorial
$21.80 – Digital download, 4 parts
$33 – DVD, 1 Disc
Length: 149 minutes
Bonus Material (digital download): Layered PSD, Brushes
Bonus Material (DVD): Trailers, Brushes, Portfolio Gallery

One of the most annoying problems I have with Camtasia is the bug where you export a video…it goes through the entire export process, and when it finishes a dialog box pops up saying that it is finished and you can reveal the file in the finder. Clicking on the “reveal in finder” button does nothing. So I go to where I saved the file…no file. I check everywhere, no file. I check my hard drive space before and after, no change, which means it just spent 2.5 hours exporting nothing. So I say hey, maybe it just screwed up…I’ll try again. Another 2.5 hours later…nothing. So I think maybe it is the computer. I change computers, 2.5 hours later, no file. So I think it is the file itself, I change files, 2.5 hours later, no file. I think maybe if I try changing the export options…2.5 hours later, no file. Good lord. I google the problem and many other people have the same problem. Someone suggests saving the file to your documents folder…it worked for them. So I try it on both computers…2.5 hours later, no file. So I try using my PC instead of my Mac…but as you may have found out, you can’t transfer Mac Camtasia files to PC Camtasia. Boo. Guess what else, all videos recorded with Camtasia are saved as Camtasia extensions and guess what, no other program can open them…so…I HAVE to export them…but it won’t work. I had this same exact problem with my Female Hunter AND the Final Charge videos. Sometimes it would fail, and I would try again, and it would work. Sometimes it would fail two times in a row, and I would try again, and it would work. No settings would change, no files would change, nothing. I would just hit export again and it seemed to work or fail at random. Now I’m thinking, “holy crap I just spent like 2 weeks on this video and I can’t get it to export…I’m screwed.” Oh, by the way, the file I’m trying to export is only an hour long. 15 or so hours later I give up and go to bed.

I think maybe I should try breaking the file up into two smaller parts. One annoying change Camtasia made recently is that all videos recorded in a project are saved into the project file instead of being saved in another location. This means that if you duplicate the project it will duplicate all of the videos. If you don’t want duplicates, you have to go back after the fact and delete them by hand by clicking “show package contents” in the finder. An hour or two later and finally the first part exported. Let the clouds part and the sunlight shine down and burn my eyes out…something actually worked! So I tried the second part, and it too exported. Now that I have the first half of the video exported, it is time to do the last half. During this whole time I was speaking with TechSmith support, and after going back and forth with them and not coming up with a solution, they finally said “Camtasia has a known issue with not being able to export longer videos. We will try to address it in our next patch.” So if you plan to make a video that is longer than 30 minutes, be ready for an ulcer. The thing that is weird is that I was able to export much longer videos before…but I guess maybe one of the new updates screwed things up…I dunno. So you might be thinking maybe this is just a Mac issue…well I used Camtasia on my PC for the Liche Priest video, and it had just as many problems. It tended to cause my entire computer to crash while I was filming…very awesome.

So armed with the knowledge that I can’t export longer videos, I tried to export the last half of my video. I broke it into two sections and exported them, both worked. I started to listen to it and I realized I forgot to change some of the audio properties. I go back and make the fixes and then export again…surprise surprise, the bug is back and it didn’t export anything. All I did was change an audio setting and now it doesn’t export. So I leave everything the same and just hit export again…magically it worked this time. Yay for random bugs.

You may think my bug issue is over, but not so fast there buddy. Now I am on to my crashing issues! Someone had asked me about adding captions since they have a hearing disability, so I figured I would go ahead and do it. See all those black boxes with audio waves in them that are above all of the green boxes with audio waves? That is the caption timeline. In order to write captions you have to click on one and then start typing as it plays that section of audio. Seems simple enough, until you click off of it. Crash time. It doesn’t crash every single time you deselect the caption timeline, but I would say between 20-40% of the time it will crash. Now I’m saving my file about every 30 seconds in case it crashes. Here is the kicker…in order to save you HAVE to deselect the caption timeline. If you have it selected, the save option is grayed out. BUT, in order to save you have to deselect and risk the program crashing. Kind of a Catch 22. At one point it crashed 7-8 times in a timespan of typing less than 10 minutes of captions. The other awesome thing is that it takes 1.5 minutes for Camtasia to reopen my file after it crashes (yes I actually timed it). I have autosave set to 1 minute, but still, having your program crash that many times in that short amount of time starts to add up to a lot of time lost. Oh, and it isn’t a file or computer related issue…I have tried using captions on two different computers using many different files. Maybe I am just lucky. It could be a Mac thing…maybe I should try it on my PC.

I also mentioned problems with iDVD. I wouldn’t really call it a bug, but rather just poor implementation of the program. I guess you get what you pay for (same with Camtasia). In iDVD you can make it so that it has a “Play Movie” button. BUT, it only works if you have 1 movie file. Since Camtasia wouldn’t allow me to export one large movie file, I had to break it into 5 parts. If I try to make a DVD with iDVD, I can’t make the DVD play through all 5 parts back to back. You have to select part 1 from the menu…watch it, and when it is over it will take you back to the menu where you have to select part 2…watch it…go back to the menu…select part 3…and so on. That is really annoying and something I don’t think anyone would want to deal with when trying to watch a video. I did find one bug that caused iDVD to crash. If you select something on the timeline and hit “smart delete,” half the time the program will crash. Wee! As of right now I probably won’t release a DVD version of my environment tutorial simply because I don’t want people to have to go to the menu 5 times in order to watch the whole thing.

Update Oh man…so I was able to stitch all 5 parts of my video together with Camtasia and export it as one file so that I can burn it to a DVD. I created my DVD project in iDVD, tried to burn it, and after about 30-40 minutes, I get an error saying something is wrong with the menus…the menus that COME with iDVD. So I think maybe it is just a glitch. I try again, it fails again. I try deleting the stuff out of my library/quicktime folder like people suggested…didn’t help. I deleted my entire project and created another one like people suggested…didn’t help. I tried saving to a different location like people suggested…didn’t help. So I decided to completely change the theme and bingo, it finally worked. It took 6 hours to burn one dvd because of the encoding time. The first one always takes the longest, but now it only takes 30 minutes to burn one DVD. Soooooooo, I will have DVD versions available when I launch the tutorial. Sorry, the DVD version does not have captions. If you want captions you will have to get the digital download version.

So yeah, with all of the crashing and the bugs, I have lost several days of work. Gotta love it! I should probably just invest in Final Cut Pro, but the $1k price tag is a bit steep. Maybe if I worked on videos all the time it would be worth it, but it has been almost a year since I last created a tutorial. When, you may ask, will my tutorial be finished? Well, the tutorial is done but I’m still in the process of trying to add captions. The other thing about the captions is that Camtasia will only allow the option to turn them on and off if you export it to YouTube or Screencast.com. If I want to export it as say, a quicktime file, I have to either leave them on all the time or leave them off all the time. That means I need to export two versions, one with captions and one without. This also means doubling my chance of running into the export bug. Adding captions is a lot more time consuming than I had anticipated (especially with all of the crashing), so it might be another week or so before I am finished.

Right now I am in the process of editing the video. After that I will need to add the audio and create a trailer, so I’m not sure when I will be finished. I hope to have the tutorial finished in the next two weeks or less.

In the Final Charge tutorial I asked for questions from the audience and I wanted to do that again. If you have any questions you want to ask about my process, my thoughts, the industry, or anything that comes to mind, just leave me a comment on here or on my Facebook page and I’ll try to answer them to the best of my ability. Thanks!

DVD versions of the Female Hunter and The Final Charge tutorials are now available for purchase through my store. There are only 20 copies of each tutorial available, so get them while they last!

Female Hunter DVD – $25

Length – 124 minutes
1 Disc
Bonus Material – Layered PSD, High-Res JPGs, Portfolio Gallery

The Final Charge – $30

Length – 155 minutes
2 Discs
Bonus Material – Layered PSD, High-Res JPGs, Portfolio Gallery, Brushes, Bio, Sneak Previews

If anyone picked up the Female Hunter digital download, you may have noticed the audio was pretty quiet. In the DVD version I went back and fixed the audio and increased the volume significantly.

I would also like to add that these videos look much better using a high def TV when viewed through a player using an HDMI cable…but I guess that is pretty obvious. I put them in my PS3 and they looked so much better.

Hmmm, time to think about my next tutorial. I am thinking about doing some kind of landscape or environment. What do you think?

I am also trying to think of some “cool” bonus material to package with the DVDs to make them special. Right now I have the layered PSD files on the DVD, previews of other tutorials, a portfolio gallery, brushes, and I have also been playing around with the idea of including a unique sketch inside each case…but I dunno yet.

When I get an idea to do something I tend to go all out and work nonstop until I get it done. I created some prototype DVDs of my two tutorials over the weekend. Unfortunately the Final Charge tutorial was too long to fit on one DVD, so it will have to go on two. I even tried using a DL DVD, but it still wouldn’t fit. Right now I am sitting on 20 copies of the Female Hunter DVD. I am not sure how many I am going to make for the first run, but probably not too many. Maybe 50 total? I am still trying to figure out a good price point as well. Once I figure all of this out I’ll put them on my store. I’ll make an announcement when they are available for purchase. Thanks!

UPDATE

There are only 20 copies of the Female Hunter tutorial and 20 copies of the Final Charge tutorial available for purchase at this time. I will be selling them at the Magic: The Gathering US National Championships in Minneapolis from August 20-22. If they do not sell then I will make them available for purchase through my store. I plan to make more, but it takes a lot of time and effort to create these since I make everything myself, so I don’t know when more copies will be available. Here are the specs:

Female Hunter – $25
124 min. 1 Disc
Bonus Material – layered PSD file, high res jpgs, portfolio gallery

The Final Charge – $30
155 min. 2 Discs
Bonus Material – layered PSD file, high res jpgs, portfolio gallery, bio, sneak previews (female hunter tutorial), brushes