So below shows the progress I've made on the infographic, compare it to the last one and while it all looks well and good, I did actually waste a lot of time editing things which didn't make it to use on the graphic. The two main wastes of time being an alternate anime face which, in my original plan (Remember in my last post) was a cartoon guy with a thumbs up (Found an almost perfect image by the way) and the other on the layout for the next section; Company comparisons.

To even start the day off I had to go out into town which took a huge chunk of time out of my day so the time to work on this was crippled. But anyway, talking about the cartoon guy, I found the almost perfect image for me to use in my original plan. The problems were though that the image was faded and there was a background which almost blended into the clothing, these two things already bring up a nightmare job for editing but I got to it and actually for a good while it got better and better. I managed to remove the background and what was left was a good image to use, until I started fixing the fading and editing the colours. This is where it all went wrong, basically I couldn't use the image as it was because it didn't match the style of the graphic I'm using so I had to fix up the colours and sharpen to image. Long story short, what was a brilliantly edited image turned into the kind of barf you'd expect if you ate a bunch of crayons. It was horrendous, and I made too many changes that GIMP couldn't undo enough (I think it has a max of 100 or something?). Anyway, I couldn't change it back, so instead of wasting all the time again, keep it simple and this is why we have a very happy chappy saying "Hire an Artist wants to change this!".

The other waste of time was finding a good layout for the timeline style graphic I want to go for, which will be designed to show the generic processes of agencies and spec work sites in comparison to Hire an Artist. I was also going to include the open freelance platforms, the big bad companies I'm going against, but it would leave an uneven 3-1 ratio so it removed it and kept it to 2-1. It just makes things look nicer, I think you could agree looking at the image below. So, basically I was looking through Google finding inspiration and usable content, eventually deviated into attempting to create my own layout on an image editing program, but the result looked incredibly ugly on the infographic so I scrapped it. Eventually, I gave up and decided to it all completely new on the infographic with no external content. No doubt it'll take longer, but I've already wasted time doing it the 'quicker' way, I'm not wasting anymore.

So that's it, these are the reasons not much progress has been made, pretty embarrassing that I actually thought I could have completed the layout by the end of today. It's tougher than I fought. To be fair, I hadn't properly planned on the layout of this section, everything else I have a good idea. Then again, my plans haven't always led to the quickest routes and I'm doubting some of them are even good. I just can't wait to get down actual facts and stop wasting time on images!

In other news, I forgot to mention that yesterday I was expecting an update on the progress to my site. I haven't seen the site since 2014, not good! The site development has been stuck in maintenance mode which means I can't view it. I have a small feeling some disastrous has gone down on their end and their trying to recover? I don't know, the things they've told me don't really qualify as a good enough excuse in my opinion. They say I'll be able to see the site Monday, "possibly Tuesday" too they say. does that second part fill me with confidence? Pfff, actually I honestly can't be upset in the grand scheme of things, they've done such an incredible job so far.

Perhaps I'm being unreasonable to criticize. I'm far from privileged, when you're on the poor end of society there's not that many open doors to becoming successful, let alone starting a business. Exactly what I experienced when trying to look for web developers to develop my platform, I went to god knows how many and the good quality services wouldn't even listen to me because I don't have money for it and the low quality services weren't capable of building what I'm after. The people developing my site right now are basically my only option and honestly for the quality of work they've done so far, they've been a godsend. In retrospect, I definitely should stop whining.

Anyway, more progress on the graphic coming tomorrow!