#atrixfromice

[atrixfromice]

I picked up one of the Molly sketches I did HERE , and this is the result!

Funny thing, I thought my first animal crossing character was going to be Jacques, you know because of my soft spot for french characters heheh, but I felt inspired to draw Molly, and now that chirstmas comes soon I thought it was going to be cool to draw her on cristmas outfit. 

[jenniferstolzer]

Oh I think I'll be very exciting to see a hug with my characters Rita and Pierre the Enteroctopus Dofleini!

Though if it's too hard to draw you can tell me and I could suggest some other characters. I know for a fact to draw an octopus is not that easy sometimes.

An eight armed hug is a mighty hug!

[threadcaster]

Soul's Magic by Atrixfromice

A beautiful piece of fanart by my friend Atrix drawn for my release day! It’s gorgeous, Atrix, thank you!

[atrixfromice]

I'm not done yet with D'coolette! :D

Here is a drawing of him I've done little by little this week. Sorry about the lack of art lately but I haven't felt very well this week. A lot of back pain, even since the first hours of the day.

But I feel happy I could be able to finish this drawing at least! I always thought he'd look very handsome on a gala suit, and he does! He was supposed to be on a gala event on this drawing, but I feel I'm gonna mess up with the background so I'm going to leave it like that I think.

What do you think? I made it with my watercolor brush markers, a part of it have been done with water and the other part without water.

[atrixfromice]

More Jacquimo sketches! ^^

[atrixfromice]

Another Chirstmas drawing I’ve done. This time, Twipsy the cybermesenger from the TV show Twipsy. It was a giftart for my dear friend Sara, to thank her for all these years of support and love to my art and original characters!

Also because I missed to draw Twipsy, hehehe

I made it with my brush pen markers, in both ways, by mixing the colors to make watercolor (in the background) and using the markers directly (on twipsy), since my computer died I’ve realized I can try to do more stuff in traditional.

[atrixfromice]

Teeny Tiny sketch I did before sleeping *chuckles* And here Antoine is sleeping cos I feel sleepy right now but I wanted to draw him one more time, hehe

Since 1 am is already another day, is already 22 Oct.

I adore this coyote!!! 😍❤️

[atrixfromice]

If isn't one thing, is another!!!

Or “the odyssey of quest for the best microphone!”

I’m going to talk about this, because I promised to some folks I would. But also because I feel the need to talk about this to feel...well, maybe not better...but to feel a bit less dissapointed at least.

I was really excited about going one step further to a higher level regarding my fictional characters, but unfortunately for me, “if isn’t one thing is another” as we say in Mexico. Is an expression for when we have one and another and another misadventure or bad thing happenning succesively.

And that’s precisely what happened to me in general this year. But specially, with this animation project. First my computer started to have trouble, so I told myself “well if that’s so, I might just make the animation in traditional and I could tell my brother to lend me his computer so I can put the drawings together on movie maker”.  And my mom helped me with the traditional animation tools that are the glass desk I use as animation table, and the portable lamp. These ones!

But at the same time with my computer trouble, I had a lot of trouble too with the quality of the audio records when I found my character’s voices, since the peeps who were enthousiastic to work voicing my characters had no microphone to record, and I had no microphone to record either!

They recorded directly with their smartphone, and I with my smartphone and using an earphone as microphone. So in all the cases the voice was overcame by the sound of the street, the neighbords, people talking in the distance, etc.

Plus, one of my friends was so nice to spend an afternoon and night with me until 4 am (via chat online of course, he lives in mexico city and is far away from where I live) talking about my fictional characters and making voices so I could know if he could fit for one of my characters, because he was so excited a bout this animation, and mostly because, as I said before, he always wanted to be a voice actor for animated cartoons.

So I thought it worth the effort to help them and myself a bit, and I had the brilliant, brillant idea ( now I know it wasn’t a good idea XD) of making a tour on my town to see if I could find a good quality micro for a decent price so I could buy at least 2 or 3, and send then 2 to my friends and one for me, or send one to one of  my friends and take one for me.

But what happened I think I wouldn’t have predicted it!

Firs of all, almost all electronic stores were closed due quarantine. Except for one who was a little modest store that had recently oppened. So I bought my micro there because I had no choice.

The first “micro” I bought was actually not a micro (even if the girl who was selling there told me that is was usable to record) but just some headphones that worked via bluetooth with a micro included but they were only to talk, not to record. So yeah that day I learned that you cannot record via bluetooth. Because even if I installed an app so my smartphone could recognize the mic, the sound was horrible!! It sounded like someone who was talking to you from 3 meters away or something like that! Even the records sounded better with my earphone used as micro! And that was so much to say.

So I went to the store and I told the girl I needed to change the product or the return of my money cos this product wasn’t able to make what I needed it for, that was RECORDING AND GIVE ME A GOOD QUALITY SOUND! And then the girl said she couldn’t give me back my money because their enterprise didn’t allowed that, but yes to product changement in case of trouble. So I accepted and she gave me an earphones with microphone included, it was a generic brand but the girl told me it worked well, so I thought everything was going to be ok.

But no, actually that was worse! It got worse and worse.

I arrived home almost at dawn and I spent almost all day walking to go from store to store and come back. So as you can imagine, I was exhausted. I felt like the toothpaste you squeezed and it’s almost to get over. I wasn’t going to record my fictional character’s voice at that moment. I even didn’t ate all day! But I didn’t really cared, I felt too tired so I just I collapsed on the bed like a log.

So the next morning, I woke up and I happily proceeded to test the micro, and for my misfortune, just one of the headphones worked well, and the other didn’t, and the microphone, that was important part I needed, it didn’t worked at all!!! So there you have me, walking 2 hours to go and come back from the same store (since the transports are not doing their service due COVID) to change that micro, and then the girl gave me another brand of headphones with microphone, and I prayed God for this to the good one!  

Again, same stuff, I didn’t ate and I was tired, but this time I didn’t collapsed like a log, I tried to test the micro to know if it worked or not, and then, it happened that the headpones worked both of them, but the micro didn’t work!

So next morning I went to the store for the 3rd time and I was very upset, I told the girl to give me back my money because I didn’t wanted any other product from this store. I'm appreciative she was very understanting with me, because she treated me nicely and with calm even if I was so exasperated, pissed off and cursing in french.

No kidding on this! In retrospective...it was so embarassing because every people at the store turned their gaze at me like if I was a mad woman! LOL But you can deny after the 3rd time receiving a bad product you would probably have felt the same.

so I calmed down as well. And this time she gave me a lapel microphone, because she couldn’t give me back my money. And thanks goodness when I came home, I tested it and it worked. I I felt relieved and could eat finally.

The next morning I prepared myself a sandwich, and took care of my home duties like moping and swepping and dish washing, that stuff. And when the afternoon came and I tried to record on my new, and I realized that while it worked, the sound quality was very bad cos it picked up a lot of the background sounds and it made to some clicking and squeaking like if I was moving it but I wasn’t.

So I took my afternoon to look on google for how to record with a cheap or bad quality microphone (this one was not that cheap, but it was bad!) and I did all what people adived on on youtube and on blog articles. And I tried to record for two afternoons. like 6 and 6 hours, imagine it, I spent 12 hours voice acting!

Even I put covered my windows on aluminium paper, and I recorded on my bathroom and inside of my closet! XD But nothing worked because, while there was a bit les background noise, the recordings still had those annoying squeaking sounds, and when the voice made high notes, it sounded like someone's fingernails on a blackboard!

It was particularly hard to record on the closet, cos I was up for 6 hours and a bit more standing up trying to record something, and I had to start from the beginning because of the so annoying sounds that were made when I made emphasis on the words. So at the end my feet were numb and burining like hell! That not counting that more the time passed, the less my physical strenght to record I had.

And then after I finished, I thought it was really good, and I was so proud and satisfied with the result, then I gave the record to one of my friends, who offered as beta tester to listen my records, and he commented he heard an squeaking sound and that in the pauses when I talked, he could hear my breath! And that he couldn’t understand what was being said. And he’s an native english-speaker, soo, sooo it meant the record was not going to be able to be used!!!

So you can imagine why at the end I was so dissapointed and sad! Because I had a really exhausted body, a wounded pride, and a sore jaw and throat, because when you record voice (specially on a bad quality mic) you must exagerate a bit your voice and pronnounce well, and move your mouth a lot so you can get a good emphasis on your dialogues. And after all this effort I only got a 2 or 3 minutes recording, which was awesome, but the quality wasn’t good enough to be on an animation!!!! *sobs*

It was a dialogue between two characters, the main character from “good team guys” and the main “bad team guys”, from one of my stories. It was an epic battle between these two, and it was so...so awesome and mindblowing!

No kidding! It had all what I wanted it to have, all those delicious emphasis on the right words and phrases. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to record something THIS GOOD ever again in my life! Because I was inspired, and this doesn’t happen very often.

That without counting that I feel like a great jerk now because I feel like I failed to the peeps who were so participative offering their voices to voice my fictional characters, and who were enthusiastic and excited about voicing one of my original characters. But I think I’m smart enough to notice that right now I don’t have the tools to do neither animation nor voice acting.

So.. that’s why I dediced to not record more, not continuating animating, because I’m just I messing up my health and sleep and with this bad quality micro and computer I’ll not have any good results.

I think is better to save money to buy a good microphone for the voice, or a couple of ones, and send one to my friend. And wait until my brother could borrow me his laptop.

I think, while it makes me sad to come back to illustration and comics only...I feel a bit better by talking about my oddysey. So I thanks a lot to y’all who have been here to support my art and listen to what I write about my art projects.