Nay for Family Drama and Missed Deadlines.

[Aquamentis12]

So, about a week and a half ago I was asking family on FB about old photos of the inside of a bar/supper club where my Dad used to perform when I was little. Specifically for St. Patrick's Day he, his brothers, and their dad would perform Irish, Folk, and Western songs, tell jokes and stories. Dad solo'd there occasionally too, but family usually didn't attend those.

Anyway, both "Nays" tie in to each other. I was working on a recent art contest entry put on by the creators of the art software Clip Studio Paint. The theme was "holiday", and I decided to draw a scene from back then for my entry. Thing is, I have ONE photo. It's a close-up and kinda blurry. But it's of all 4 of them on the tiny stage. Really just a plywood platform covered in carpeting, only several inches off of the dance floor. lol  Though you can only see them from about the thighs up. lol

Anyway, NOBODY on his side of the family thinks they have ANY photos! I KNOW this was 40-ish years ago, but this was an ANNUAL thing for 5-6 years at LEAST! So it's really more like 34-40 years ago.   ONE person, an aunt, widow of one of my uncles thinks she MIGHT, but she Winters in Florida where it's warm and I don't know when she'll return to Wi.

Another aunt, one who HAPPENS to be my freakin' Godmother though...  At first it was ok, until she has the gall to ask me about these reel-to-reel tapes of audio recordings from Dad's place after he died. Reel-to-reel look like old filmstrip reels but they are audio recordings.
I say "the gall", because

Spoiler

 this aunt and I brought about 2-dozen of these reels to a place to get them looked at and digitized.... almost NINE YEARS AGO! It was LATE 2013! And this aunt not only promised, but she VOLUNTEERED to listen to them to find out what was on them, AND because of some residue that built up on the tape (from age), they apparently needed to be baked, in an actual oven, to get rid of said residue, and she volunteered to do that too! Over the last near-decade, I've asked her about them several times, EACH time she was vacant until I reminded her, this is the FIRST time she's asked ME about them! I've also given her the studio's contact information EACH time I had to remind her that she was the one who said she's take care of them.

Anyway, she got HER dander up over the course of the comments, doubting I reminded her "several" times, etc. Finally she says, "Brian, how about this you do it."

This is HER brother, her brothers, and there was even a reel that looked to maybe have recordings on it from a Christmas when SHE was little!

I reminded her of her promise and that she volunteered it, I reminded her that it's not like I was asking her to PAY for the conversions to CDs or anything. And that I always intended to make copies, like I did for audio CDs I made for EVERY FAMILY on that side of the the last known video recording of Dad and the guys playing someplace else for a St. Patrick's Day. (1 disc per family, (aunts ,uncles, cousins, etc) I made over 20 + a couple extras of that one).

I head off of FB for a couple hours to cool down and work on my contest entry. I hear a "ping" indicating there was a new comment on FB. I went to check and saw nothing... Confused, I hit refresh, and that entire 17-comment string was GONE! I was SO livid it took me days to finally stop my blood from boiling. Apparently, FB allows people to do that! Delete their own comment/chain on someone else's FB even though it wipes out EVERY comment in the chain!

The childish, pettiness of that aunt! I was so angry I could hardly see straight. I haven't been that angry in over a decade! So it REALLY caught me by surprise and made me not just remember but relive very personal nightmare-memories that had to do with this aunt and a couple dealing with my late Dad.

After a few days I was so exhausted, mentally and emotionally that I finally started to cool down to under a simmer.

I finally posted about it on FB, not naming names of course, but I did say how disappointed I was. If I was planning on burning bridges, there's a LOT I could've brought up. For her to get so steamed at ME from one or two comments that she didn't agree with, and then to delete the WHOLE string.... Just.... BULLPLOP! If she didn't want to be embarrassed by what she said, she simply should not have said it to begin with. Especially if she didn't want her kids to see it, because they are on my friends list too and are all in their 30s.

Which brings us back to the contest. I lost a few days because of that blind rage I was sent in over this. It wasn't her comments so much as the deletion. Trying to "change history" so she can pretend like it didn't happen. Reminds me of something my Dad or my sister would do. I was shocked that she did that. I just couldn't concentrate on anything else. I distracted myself with whatever I could, but because the contest entry was directly related, being family related and asking for the photos brought up the reels and the incident. I just couldn't focus on that as much as I tried to.

Anyway, so zoom to this past Tuesday night. I'm working on the pic again, and making some decent progress. The deadline was 11:59 GMT on Wednesday the 6th of April. Apparently I am 5 hours behind GMT to I had until 6:59 pm (locally) of that day. I pulled literally an ALL-nighter. And then around 5am my tablet died. The calibration anyway. I spent about 2 hours trying various things to recalibrate it, but NO luck! So, deprived of sleep I stayed up working with my mouse in Clip Studio Paint. The reason I do these contests in the first place is to practice CSP and my tablet. I still prefer using pencil and paper to draw and the digital stuff in my old stand-by Paint Shop Pro 6. Which I've had for over 20 years now.

I had a phone conversation with my mom for about 40 minutes that afternoon. but I couldn't work on the pic during that time because my phone was losing the connection for some reason at the PC. (ODD considering that there is a Cell-Tower about 300 or so feet from my apartment building). So I laid down on the couch while talking with her. The signal stopped breaking up and my back was KILLING me anyway. After the conversation was over, I accidentally dozed off for about 40 minutes. Woke up and scrambled to finish my entry. Worked right up to, and sadly beyond the deadline.

If I hadn't lost those few days to my aunt's frustrating temper. (Yes it runs in the family but don't try to tell HER that! You'll live longer!), I wouldn't have gotten my rhythm knocked off for those days. It wasn't just the entry either. I tried doing some animating on the weekends, a habit/hobby of mine that I do almost every weekend, draw or animate something. And things were SO OFF that I couldn't use ANY of the frames I drew that weekend. Even the following weekend, though better, I was still waaaaaaay too off to use any of the frames I (re)drew. Which of course irritated me again, because up until then, each weekend before had been successful with NO having to redo ANY frames. Surprising, considering it was my first time trying those poses and movements.

This is what I had done PRIOR to getting thrown off-track.

It's just a rough animation right now, details will be added later and then I rescan all the index cards that make up the frames. The gif is 38 frames at about 3-4 frames a night.

But I haven't uploaded the frames after because they are sooooo OFF!
I'm going to try AGAIN THIS weekend... What is that they say? 3rd time's the charm?
*sigh* I hope I can get things to work this time. I've been working on this project for over a year, and I was really enjoying the progress I was making on this part of it before the incident with my aunt!

*exhales* I'm going to finish my contest piece too, just not sure when. Since I've missed the deadline I'm going to slow down on it to focus more on the details of the lighting and such, as well as try to figure out SOME way to get my tablet working right again.

When I touch the pen to the tablet, the cursor shows up/clicks anywhere from a few millimeters off to several INCHES off from where the pen actually touches the screen. Then sometimes it's like it's reading the pen hitting 2 places at the same time.... I can't draw with that. It's my first Parblo tablet. I don't really know these things very well. So I don't know what's going on. Plus it's about 2 years old so it's probably past it's warranty. A new one, same brand and size would be $200. Up about $30-$35 from what I paid due to inflation and economic garbage. Even so, I can't budget a new tablet right now anyway.  

So between those two things, I couldn't get my entry done on time. :-\ A real shame because it was turning out so well! Even though I did have to make a few objects in PSP6, because I don't know CSP very well yet. The contest is put-on by the makers of the CSP software, but they allow ANY illustration to be used for the entry. (Program or traditional).

Anyway, glad to get that venting done.
Thanks for reading this far. This is a piece I made for my contest entry in CSP after my pen/tablet stopped working. So this was made in CSP using my mouse and with the line/curve and little bit from a couple other tools. The type of Guitar my Dad usually played. A Martin D-35, 6-string acoustic Guitar. For these gigs he'd also play his banjo and Mossman 12-string guitar. He was quite skillful as an entertainer!