Today was a very productive day.

I made some phone calls I needed to make (no mean feat when one has an often crippling phone anxiety) and I got closer to finishing some long-term projects.

But the most amazing thing of all is this: I uploaded two videos today.

For those that don’t know, every Monday – and occasionally on Fridays – I upload a video to a collaborative YouTube project called Vlogtag 2.0.

The original Vlogtag experiment occurred during 2008 and was based on the Brotherhood 2.0 concept popularized by John and Hank Green: two people communicating with each other by video blogging back and forth.

Instead of every day, however, Vlogtag videos were uploaded on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. And instead of two vloggers all year long, Vlogtag participants would do this for one month before “tagging” two new entirely new people for the next month. The first two Vlogtaggers, Mandarific and xbr0kenb0ttle, already knew each other. Most subsequent Vlogtaggers, however, would begin as complete strangers.

The original Vlogtag project experienced a slow death: one of September’s chosen Vlogtaggers was never seen. The other participant, malarayofsunshine, posted a few videos in the hope that her partner would show, but the month eventually proved to be a wash. In an attempt to save the project, two previous Vlogtaggers – helenzebcharles and AslanEnlisted took over during the month of October. However, the project would not continue beyond that month.

Many of Vlogtag’s participants had, by this point, formed bonds of friendship with one another, whether they had been paired together during the project or not. xbr0kenb0ttle – who had already participated in the project for a second time during the month of August – decided the premise of Vlogtag needed to change for 2009.

And so, Vlogtag 2.0 was born, to allow this community of ex-Vlogtaggers to get to know each other better through video. Instead of two people for a month, Vlogtag 2.0 would involve the same group of people getting to know each other over a whole year.

Six former Vlogtag participants – xbr0kenb0ttle, AslanEnlisted, SciFiGirl1023, themefund, helenzebcharles and myself – each selected a day of the week to upload videos. The additional day was originally reserved for another member of our group, lesliefoundhergrail, but her schedule didn’t allow her to participate regularly. She shows up on the channel occasionally, dubbing herself “Vlogtag’s bitch”. Fridays became challenge days, in which we fulfill a challenge given the previous week and “tag” another Vlogtagger (according to the roll of a die), who must then make the next Challenge Friday video.

With that, I should move on to my previously promised time-lapse blog of my Frost Park artwork.

Adam’s first attempt at chalk art, drawn during the seventh week of the Frost Park Chalk-Offs.

I’d been attending the Frost Park chalk-offs from the beginning – running around with my video camera and getting to know the artists – but it wasn’t until the seventh week that I decided to try my hand at this crazy thing called chalk art.

I hadn’t drawn on a sidewalk since I was a kid, so my first entry was pretty simple, and paled in comparison to the work of the masters drawing on either side of me. My drawing was little more than a plug for my YouTube channel, with a winking TacomaGnome (a local blogger) in the hope of grabbing a few votes – perhaps even from the Gnome himself.

It didn’t work. The TacomaGnome voted for someone else.

Adam recycles Lance Kagey’s pencil from the previous week to create his second entry.

I was out of town for the eighth week of the chalk-offs, but on the rainy ninth week, I was determined to create something more impressive than my first attempt.

I arrived to find a very weather-moistened Frost Park, so I decided to try drawing on one of the cement walls in the lower corner of the park. They were at least moderately shielded from the rain by the branches of the plants whose soil they held.

I had no idea what I was going to draw before I got there – being so new to chalk art, I was very nearly frightened away by the sight of the additional challenge that descended from the sky. But when I saw that part of a piece from the previous week – a pencil that had formed the nose of master artist Lance Kagey‘s innovative, multi-wall Pinocchio piece – I knew exactly what I had to do.

Kagey’s original artwork, from Week Eight.

I had to steal that artwork.

Art theft is taught in schools all over the country. I remember many art class assignments that involved emulating another artist’s style or even reproducing a piece of art, either in whole or by enlarging a small section of the piece. Clearly, all that was to prepare me for this. Half of my work was done for me – I just needed to touch up the partly melted pencil and add to it.

Remember, kids: always recycle!

I’m not sure if there was ever a precise moment I decided that I would have a recurring theme. I’m not even sure why I chose to do so. Perhaps it was seeing the mid-week battle art some of the artists released online, featuring some recurring representation of themselves (and, often, other artists as well).

Or maybe I just didn’t have any other ideas.

Whatever the case, when I drew the personification of my Adam the Alien logo onto that pencil, it was clinched. From that point forward, an alien wearing a brimmed hat would appear in all of my chalk-off entries.

The biggest mistake I made with this entry was giving in to my desire to fill empty space. I didn’t have enough time or chalk to make the Earth part of the drawing look good, but I didn’t like leaving the big empty space beneath. I do like having the world beneath the flying alien and the artistic Frost Park “moon”. However, I could have accomplished a better effect if I’d only drawn half as much of the planet, allowing the drawing to taper off instead of trying to fill so much space.

Adam’s rendering of blogger Erik Bjornson, also known as the Tacoma Urbanist.

Over the previous nine weeks, there had been an assortment of artistic depictions of Frost Park attendees, whether it was in chalk or the aforementioned mid-week online battle art. I’d noticed, however, that some of the major Frost Park faces were still conspicuously absent from this growing list of honored chalk-off regulars.

Erik Bjornson, also known as the Tacoma Urbanist, diligently served as a go-to coordinator for Frost Park throughout its first season. In addition to starting the voting threads each Friday and blogging about Frost Park throughout the week – letting us know about any new developments, battle art, videos and more – this was the man behind the majority of the competition’s prizes.

In fact, Erik was the originator of the prizes. There was no prize the first week, other than the title of Best Illustrator in the Universe of Tacoma. When the second week rolled around, Erik took it upon himself to offer two tickets for a well-hyped event to the winner. After that, if a business wanted to sponsor a chalk-off by offering some sort of coupon, treat or Erik was the person they’d talk to. And if there came a week when no sponsor came forward, Erik would track them down.

Large artwork can be hard to fill. Sometimes, smaller is better.

Chalk-off founder R.R. Anderson had drawn the Tacoma Urbanist as part of a recurring gag of Tacoma-themed action figures in his local political cartoon, the Tacomic, but had occurred before the chalk-offs began. So it seemed to me that Erik deserved a drawing.

As the go-to guy for Frost Park, Erik was usually the first person to post his sets of Frost Park photographs. He used his cell phone to take the pictures, automatically sending the files to his Flickr account. He would then select the best photos later and embed them in the weekly voting thread so that people who weren’t there could see the art and a little bit of what else went on. So it seemed the most fitting to draw a representation of him taking a picture of a representation of me chalking.

I do confess I was also trying to win at least one vote in the same manner that I tried to win the TacomaGnome’s vote.

My biggest problem – other than the fact that it looked like Erik had jumped out of The Simpsons – with this piece was that I made it too big – there wasn’t enough time or chalk to give the whole thing a good, solid color.

The size also prevented me from giving much attention to detail. The lack of charcoal – and, again, time – prevented me from being able to give the phone the details it needed to look like a phone.

Unfortunately, that’s all the time I have for today. Check back tomorrow and I’ll continue the time-lapse.