With the stunning growth in our business over the past year since we opened the new shop on the ground floor of our building in Asakusa, the demands on Dave's time have increased kind of exponentially. So for the foreseeable future, the Twitch stream will be active on a 3-days-a-week schedule. During the summer period, it will be Monday/Thursday/Saturday, at 8:00 am Tokyo time for around 90 minutes. (US west coast: 4:00 pm previous day / US east coast: 7:00 pm previous day / Britain: 0:00 / Australia east coast: 9:00 am)
Because I can't possibly keep track of all the activity in the Chat while I'm carving, and thus miss questions, I've set up a special email address for those, and will be monitoring that mailbox during each stream. Here's how it will work:
1) use the email address <twitch@mokuhankan.com>
2) put the word 'question' somewhere into the subject line
3) ask your question (keep it short and simple).
4) send the email. (Also put the question into the chat if you wish, so that the others can see too …)
I’ll base my commentary/discussion during the stream on what comes into this mailbox … either during the current stream, or perhaps in a subsequent one …
Thank you for trying this!
Of course we're on Facebook, and if you would like to follow news about new prints, and our general activities, please look us up [there](https://www.facebook.com/mokuhankan/).
In addition to this, a group of Twitch followers have set up a Fan Page, which you can find [here](https://www.facebook.com/groups/314276632382888/).
There are a number of projects on Dave's desk currently, including Ukiyo-e Heroes prints, a new design that will soon appear on his [Gift Page](http://woodblock.com/gift/), the upcoming New Year print, and of course, one of the most famous items of erotic art ever created, a design by **Katsushika Hokusai** - the same man who created the iconic Great Wave image - featuring a woman engaged with an octopus ...
If you would like to learn more about Dave's project to make that print, please visit [the website set up for the project](http://theoctopusprint.com).
We hope that our Twitch friends will also consider making a visit to our [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/user/seseragistudio/videos) ... Thanks for watching!
Ukiyo-e Heroes
My workshop is where the famous Ukiyoe Heroes prints - designed by **Jed Henry** - are made. Started off by a massive Kickstarter campaign back in 2015, these prints are playing a large part in reviving the old Japanese woodblock traditions.
See them all [here](https://mokuhankan.com/heroes/).
Our main intention being here on Twitch is to let people see the printmaking, and to generally spread word about our work, not for funding. So at present, we haven't 'turned on' the affiliate or partner options that are available to us here. We (well, Dave) are having a ton of fun with this streaming, so please don't feel like you need to pay us for it - simply participate in the chats, and enjoy the companionship and discussions that we hope will come along!
Having said that, we do have a [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/mokuhankan) available, which was established with the specific purpose of hiring staff to help Dave get away from the office management, and get back to his bench ... and that's working! (As you can see ...)
The camera picking up my carving is a cheap Handicam, but it has a pretty good optical zoom, letting it get ‘close enough’ to my carving knife.
It’s connected through HDMI output to a Magewell 'USB Capture HDMI Plus', which connects to my Macbook via a proprietary USB cable supplied by the maker.
The audio is picked up by a Rode mic clipped to my shirt, which is connected by WiFi to its master unit, plugged into the MacBook. (We also pick up a bit of audio from the outside camera, which is connected to the computer through an identical Magewell interface).
For broadcast software I’m using OBS Studio, running on a MacBook M1 Pro.
Audio sync: this was troublesome at first, but we have learned that we need to use a 'video delay' setting in the OBS software, in order to have audio/video properly aligned in the stream.