Alex Heberling

So this week, during my four days at home (as opposed to Toledo) I decided to sit down and master the secret to screencasting.

Emy, the very talented artist and writer of Trying Human, regularly does screencasts of her work in creating her comic, something that interested me, but I put on a backburner for the time being.  I already had a channel with Ustream, but when I tried to figure out exactly how to screencast to my Ustream channel, the whole process seemed to involve three programs running at once– and that was without Photoshop running.

My computer is no spring chicken.  It chugs along at a steady clip, but four memory-munching programs going at once would surely reduce it to a crawl, and no doubt slow me down.

So I jumped ship and joined Emy and others over at Livestream, formerly known as Mogulus.  The Livestream Procaster is their hombrew broadcasting client, which has a built-in screencasting feature.  Which meant that after 3 hours of futzing with Ustream, my problems were all solved in about 20 minutes when I went over to Livestream.

So I have a Livestream channel now.  The Procaster program is very easy to use, though I’d like to figure out how to have my own personal music playing without it being inputted through the microphone– and thus, recording every sniffle and cough and keystroke I make during the recordings.  That’s a quest for another day.

But the screencasting I’ve done so far is actually really cool.  I announce them on Garanos, Twitter, Deviantart, and Facebook, so I get at least a few people popping in and out over the course of a single session.  ^_^  The nice part about it is that in the Procaster, you can check a box that means your broadcasts are recorded to the server, and they’re kept in a Video-On-Demand library in your channel, so you can then make collections of past recordings and setup reruns to play when you’re not broadcasting live. (You can also import videos from YouTube, which means that all the Garanos video blogs and Sharpie drawing videos are in my VOD library, too! :D)

On the whole, it’s made working on Garanos rather exciting and new.  Knowing that I’m putting on a show has done wonders for my productivity; for example, I’ve always estimated that a typical page took 4 to 5 hours to complete, which would often be stretched out to 6 or more hours throughout the day, since I often get distracted by opening Google Reader or Twitter every 10 minutes.

But having people watch me as I complete a page?  Earlier this week, that average page only took me 3 and a half hours.  It brings an interesting social aspect to my creative process, as I can also view my channel’s chatroom with Procaster while I record.  People can ask me questions about my methods, or watch me as I search the web for reference pictures of beaches, or whatever I’ve doing.

Having the reruns available is great, too, because once I was done with a live broadcast the other night, I was able to just hang around and chat with the people still there as another coloring session played.  I offered a little commentary as the video played, it was really quite fun.  ^_^

Screencasting.  My new love.  Come watch me next time I’m live!