A Christmas Carol Reading

A year ago, I made this audiobook reading for my mom as a Christmas present. It was a lot of fun to do a full-length project like this from start to finish. I learned a lot about what voice actors and audiobook performers have to go through, as well as how much the editing process plays a part in audio. It took me two days to record the 116-page novella, at a total of probably 6 or 7 hours of recording time (my voice was rather tired). After that, it was another 6 hours of editing as I listened to the entire thing and cut out all my mistakes, moments of dead air, etc. Finally, I had to listen to the whole thing over again, which ended up shortening to just about 2½ hours. Quite a bit of work for such a short production!

How to Lose 40 Pounds in 10 Months, and Keep It Off Forever

I never really was one to worry about my weight. I was always a pretty average-sized kid, and when I was a teenager, I ate all I wanted and my body never changed. But after getting married, the pounds slowly started packing on. I didn't really think much of it. I felt fine and took pride in my love of all foods and willingness to lick my plate clean with every meal so nothing was wasted. Besides, all my weight seemed to just go to my gut. I didn't really "look" fat at a glance. But once I hit 210 pounds, I decided it was time to lose some weight. Fast forward to today, nine months later, and I'm 40 pounds lighter! Let me tell you the keys to my incredibly successful weight loss story and you may find something that works for you.

A Year of Selfies!

For the past year, I've been taking a selfie every day. I've been looking forward to finally compiling all of them into this video, with my theme song in the background! I've also lost 35 pounds since February, so it's fun to see that pretty visibly too. Enjoy!

Project: D&D Item Sheet

Since D&D has become a bigger part of my life over the past few months, I've been having a huge interest in compiling resources and making the DMing process as streamlined as possible. My latest venture has been copying all of the items from the Dungeon Master's Guide into a Google Sheet for easy filtering by rarity, item type, etc. After doing this, I decided to have some fun and adapt the artifacts from Heroes of Might and Magic III and the items from Warcraft III into D&D 5th edition as well. They've been one of the most amazing sources of inspiration for me. It's fun to try and adapt things like morale bonuses and Warcraft mechanics into D&D's system. Here are a few examples of the items and my take on what they do in D&D:

What the 2017 Eclipse Was Like in the Totality Zone

I come from a small town in Idaho of little renown outside of the Latter-day Saint community, and even within it if you don't live in the West. But this year, it finally got some regard due to forces completely out of its control:

An amazing, nationwide, total solar eclipse.

Austin's Weekday Routine 2017

My life has been in such a same-old same-old routine lately that decided to jazz it up by immortalizing it for no reason and writing it down. And who knows? Maybe you'll find my life more interesting than I do. Probably not, though.

Vox Machina Critical Role Fanart

Geek & Sundry's Critical Role has inspired me greatly this past year, both to make new friends at work and to actually become a Dungeon Master! During their weekly show, they showcase a bunch of art submitted by the show's fans, so I finally made time to make this fanart and submit it. Hopefully it'll make it into a future episode's intermission, but if not, it was still a fulfilling piece of art to work on. It actually made me miss Knight Guy, which has officially been on hold for a year now :(

Anyway, below is a picture of the heroes of Critical role, Vox Machina. Enjoy!

Some Interesting Concept Art from the Warcraft III DVD

This is a somewhat informal video I made just to break the monotony between updates (my fanbase is getting quite anxious about any and all other Easter eggs I can find and upload to my channel which is great but exhausting!). A while ago I bought the Warcraft III Special Edition DVD, and this is basically my take on all the fan art found on it. And if you're considering buying the DVD on Amazon like I did, don't. It's not worth it. But hopefully the "Art of Warcraft" book I ordered this week is...

>>goo.gl/gfmpcf<<

AustinCraft 1.12!

I realized that AustinCraft was somewhat outdated, so I did a quick update. The future ones should be a bit easier to keep compatible, since it seems now that it just replaces anything missing with the original files. Anyway, here's the stable release!

AustinCraft 1.12!.zip

Make sure to unzip the file into the Minecraft resources folder. I guess that's a new feature and it was baffling me for a long time.

Warcraft Resources for D&D 5e

Man, this is one of those projects I just look at and think "Did I really do all of this?" I've definitely got lost in this document. Ever since I discovered Critical Role at the beginning of the year and subsequently bought the core rulebooks for Dungeons & Dragons 5e, assembled materials to be a Dungeon Master, and played some of my first games, I've tried to adapt the Warcraft universe to a playable setting. I began by creating my own custom races, and after balancing them with some help from people online, I decided to add deities to help DMs interested in playing a Warcraft setting design clerics. I also realized that I'd better add an items/weapons section to add in the appropriate information for the exotic weapons used by the custom races, and before I knew it, I now had a 16-page document detailing everything from new mechanics to changed spell names to lore considerations in the Warcraft universe.

Warcraft III Easter Eggs Bonus: Models (Part 2)

Not much to say at this point, other than I'm getting burned out from these again. Well, that's not true. Mostly I'm just starting to care less about little details or accuracy. I'm not a pro, after all. I do all my research for these in-house with no help except from YouTube comments. Pretty good all things considered.

>>goo.gl/LrehOO<<

WarCraft Easter Eggs Bonus: Models

I'm back into my one claim to fame, the Warcraft III Easter Eggs series! This time I'm looking at the models in the game. It was fun to look closely at each model and see some of the things that make the game tick. Once again, there doesn't seem to be many resources online that talk about the things I've found, so I just keep filling that empty niche. You're welcome, everyone. The ending of this video was unexpectedly fun to make. My only explanation for its weirdness is that I just do what the Muse dictates.

This was also my chance to celebrate having more than 1,000 YouTube subscribers! Woot!

>> goo.gl/Xzptkm <<

D&D Spell Cards

I've been really into D&D more and more lately, and am starting a work group to play it with, which is really fun. I just love how 5th edition is so accessible compared to older ones. If you haven't tried it (I don't care what your excuse is), you should! Seriously! It's such an inspiring game for creativity in many forms.

Painted Talisman Figurines!

I've owned Talisman for a couple of years now, and consider it one of my favorite board games. It is a bit slow, but the balance and general roleplaying atmosphere of the game have been a lot of fun to play with. One issue I had is that the figurines in the game were all a straight gray color. It was somewhat annoying to track which player was on which space on the game board. This weekend, after using them as game pieces in the D&D game the other week, I decided to finally sit down and paint the figurines. I consulted their class cards, which look like this:

Arena Games: My Experience Finally Being a DM!

Two weeks ago, after aspiring for two years, I finally was able to try out DMing a game of Dungeons & Dragons! I always thought I'd find a group and play as a player before actually running my own game, but the game that some coworkers run at work was too slow for me (Only two hours a week, split up between two days), and the GURPS game I play with my friends leaves much to be desired (I really hate the GURPS system, and I found myself being too picky on the DM), but luckily watching Critical Role gave me all the experience, inspiration, and motivation I needed to give it a shot.

Hourly Comic Day 2017

I've never done this before, but this year I remembered just in time and was able to participate! Had a lot of fun and definitely exercised my punchline-making and observance skills. Enjoy a snapshot of my nerdy and somewhat boring life!

Battle card 2.0: Wild Archon

I just had the urge to resume working on these now that I have a lull in responsibilities. Hopefully I'll be able to use this motivations to get back into Knight Guy. I liked the way this Battle Card turned out.

Voice Acting and DMing - or - Why Dreams Don't Come True

When I first started this blog, for some reason I thought it would be fun to make an entire feature of this blog about complaining. My very first post even established a name for it, "Complainin' Hour," complete with stupid made-up quotes about why complaining is awesome. Well, as dumb as that was, I'm gonna have to do it in this post. A part of me regrets referring my WarCraft III Easter Egg video fans to this blog, but first and foremost, this is a personal blog, so by golly, I'm gonna let this frustration out whether you imaginary readers like it or not. Today's topic: DMing and voice acting.