A TEAM OF ONE

Disgruntled Media is a team of one - for now. In addition to creating the content, D4Disgruntled, also runs the company operations encompassing managing the company website and online store, order fulfillment, customer relations, social media marketing and engagement, to all legal and tax documentation and filings.

Whew!

At some point in the future, when he can afford it, he will hire a small team where it is most needed. For now, it is just him. Now he has implemented as much infrastructure and operational automation behind the scenes to lighten the load. Still no use of AI though to accomplish these tasks.
 

TOOLS OF CHOICE

As mentioned in another section, D4Disgruntled does not utilize AI in his workflow, in the creation of the projects nor for company operational streamlining. He does however use digital tools such a PC computer and related software for the creation of my publications, artwork, and music.

For all of his visual work, he utilizes Clip Studio Paint, Sketchbook Pro, Adobe Photoshop, and Storyboard Pro. For my publications, he also uses InDesign for the page layouts and Microsoft Word to write the copy. For his music production, he uses Digital Performer 11 for composing, Vienna Ensemble Pro 7 to manage his immense library of virtual instruments, Adobe Audition to perform additional audio mixing, mastering and meta tagging, and iTunes for testing files that were downloaded from the store. Oh, he still use pen and paper for the conception stage of all his projects.

For all video, they are hosted on YouTube and Rumble. There will be a move to host all video content exclusively on Rumble as they are much more easy going with content that uses copyrighted video clips in a fair use manner. YouTube is censorship heavy and litters even short videos with tons of ads, detracting from the enjoyment of D4Disgruntled's content.

Communication with clients  entails various methods of file transfer and communications. To send large files, he uses WeTransfer.com but in some cases, due to a client's preference, he would use Google Docs, Google Pages and Drop Box. He also uses Zoom and Skype for conducting online meetings and screen sharing.
 

WORK FLOW

While all projects will vary and deviate as needed from time to time, they all follow a common chronological pattern from start to finish. First, I watch the news and other online content for ideas. Then I use a pen and paper to sketch out my visual ideas, create flow charts for story structures, and music notation shorthand and graphical road maps for how I envision my music cue structures. Other times, I just wing it inside the software programs and skip the conception pre-production stage. Then I mock stuff up in the applications and from there I fidget with the ideas, revising and revising and revising until I get the idea into a form I am happy with. Some come quickly, others can take way too long to coalesce. Eventually, it all comes together into the marvelous final products featured on this website. I top it off with inserting my "D4D short hand signature within the imagery.

With my music, if its a standalone album I have to come up with the story first. I outline the story and then come up with track titles that would serve as potential chapter titles. If it is a re-score album, then I pick the movie I want to use, watch it  several times taking notes regarding the themes of the story, the overall tone I want to emphasize and what perspective is the story being told from. Then I proceed with coming up with a soundscape (or combination of instruments) that will be used to create the compositions. Once the music is composed, I mix it and insert the meta tags so that the digital files will load all the details about the album and each track in iTunes or any other media player a costumer uses.

With the publications, I routinely outline my stories. If it is visual based or sequential art based publication, I create thumbnails of the pages. While some publications I can use my templates repeatedly and just populate it with new content, others are more custom made and differ greatly from each other.  So templates are not an option on some projects. For all text based publications, i create them in Microsoft word, proofread it and create the appropriate file formats for digital downloads. For the more visual based publications, I take my thumbnails and start creating the actual artwork to be displayed on the pages. Any additional text element are added later. Once these are done I proofread everything and look for mistakes in the artwork and layout elements. Then, I export the publications in the appropriate file formats for digital downloads.

Then I populate the website with all new items and content, I write the copy, I create the imagery, and I prepare all digital files for use both on the website, the store, 3rd party vendors for production and fulfillment - all for the customers to download with ease. Then I proceed to posting about it on social media in hopes to find clever ways to attract attention and direct people to my website. Then I repeat the cycle with every new project.  I try not to stagger projects over each other unless necessary.

Depending on the project type, I document the whole process with time lapse desktop screen recordings of my creations from start to finish. I also scan in the doodles, sketches and flow charts to add to the content that will be made available to subscribers. Later I create the behind the scenes work in progress videos which I have to edit and polish as best I can and hope they are entertaining and informative enough to make it worth subscribing to.

Whew! That's a lot of tasks and I am exhausted just typing out all the things I do.

If I am ever contracted again, I will return to utilizing Zoom and Skype for conducting online meetings and screen sharing. I will also use WeTransfer, DropBox anfd Google Drive (Docs and Pages as well) for sending files for review. Email is the best way to contact me as I have activated all the alerts on all my devices.
 

WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS

Since I am a force of one, I work out of my home office / studio. What first started as a small 6' x 10' additional space in a cramped one bedroom apartment in Hollywood, CA with my partner and 2 large dogs has grown to a much larger space in the 2nd bedroom of a 2 bedroom house in East Los Angeles, CA. While it is larger, I still keep the work station area compact and "pod like" or as my partner joking refers to as my "man pod". All I am missing is a mini frig and a microwave.

I started with one computer and a laptop and a old Yamaha synthesizer bought from Best Buy. Over the years I reinvested my income and earnings from freelance assignments to slowly upgrading software, then hardware. IT took upwards of 5 years easily to make the upgrades.

Now, I have 2 workstations set up. One for my digital drawing and the other for my music production. I have a large drawing tablet connected to one computer while my music keyboard is connected to the other computer. I also have a laptop and a smaller portable drawing tablet that I use when wanting to work outside of my "man pod". Then I transfer the files to the main computers and finish up the projects there.

My workspace is surrounded by reference books ranging from how to books for digital art, art history books, the making of books for movies and comics, concept art books for movies and games, photography books, art picture books by various artists, some graphic novels and comics, music theory, music history, and score books for actual film scores. Also, I have many movies on DVD and Blu-Ray from over the years, but the crowning achievement collection is my soundtrack collection. It has been a source of inspiration creatively as an artist but is now a point of reference. It started in 1989 and has grown to over 1000s of titles.