I don’t know what it is about the past few days, but my mind has been wandering far more than it should. I got an email today pestering me to rant again - it’s been more than five days, comeon! He did thank me for the comics tho.
Gosh, he must not remember the bad old days when it was rare to get 3 comics per week 
Anyways, i really need to shake myself loose a little today. I spent Saturday mired in email setup (which went well, even tho its really not all finished) and sunday… well, sunday i sat down and did a lot of writing. Writing isn’t easy, at least not for me, and the hard part is not the ideas, its taking them all and somehow putting them together in ways that work. I’ve been doing better at that recently… inspiration is not the problem, it’s applying inspiration that’s the real bugger.
Still not doing well on MT rants. I gotta loosen up on those, im really falling down on my goal (sigh). Good material for today’s, just need to manage some images first. Whee.
- pirotunes: また、あした〜回想録〜 from “AIR Moive Original Soundtrack” -
I don’t think you should be rushing yourself Fred, just take your time. ^-^
Ditto what Neko-san said. And I can sympathize with the lack of rants…just look at my own blog, today was the first ‘real’ post I’ve made since New Years…and that one was after a couple of months, I think. Yeesh, all the time I spend on my computers and I neglect my own website. -_-;;
As someone who is just starting to try to piece together their first really major story based project , I get how you must feel; there’s all these wonderful shiny pieces, and the huge lack of ways to stick them together :p . Ah well, keep on rockin’ on.
@that creative guy: please at least invent new messages, so that it isn’t boring.
@fred: You should propably consider a nick=>ip lock. Or make Cortana do it ^_^
(or a registration/whatever)
@fred (part II): You should propably let random people do the rants. You know, like… Mike. Or Sabyr. Or Cortana. Or other Webcomic people (as if they hadn’t rants themselves)
Or you do a DPD, put it on Fredart, say “No rant, but a DPD. Are you happy now?”.
Or if you’re just out of ideas what you could rant about, I’ve got plenty:
The origin of Piros hairstyle
The origin of all the other characters names (i.e. the ones not based on real people) / hairstyles / colorscheme / …
Random fan mail (quote it and post your response)
Warmth
Myths surrounding MT(/you) (who’s the homosexual character, what is the cool thing, are you a sick bastard that locks out sad girls in skimpy outfits during a snowstorm and so on) Just make shure that you don’t give real info, just hints.
Why you can’t lick your elbow
You bookmark list
Programs you use
How you decorated your desk
Why a lot of people who are told that they can’t like their ellbow try it anyways. It doesn’t work. Trust me.
@fred (part III):
You’d better lock this until you’ve got the problem solved.
My, someone must have been really bored today. Not very original either. Anyways, deleted and ip banned. Hardly worth yawning over.
oh, this is part of why i only keep the most recent comment threads open. Before i started that, i did find quite a bit of comment spam in old posts (all of which has been deleted) and ecto has this wonderful new feature that allows you to turn comments on and off right from Ecto.
anyways, back to work.
@URMEL,
actually, i have a very solid subject im working on (locations, pictures and doing backgrounds and sense of place from them) but im getting cross eyed writing it. MT rants are kinda like school papers sometimes, but thats ok, sometimes they come out interesting. Really dumb ranting i do here
awwh come on, none of this is “dumb ranting”! it’s insightful to say the least! i think it gives a good picture frame into the piece of (art)work that you are ^_^
oh and love todays comic… it’s always great when Largo is the one being caught off guard, love his expression….
u know, i also noticed by reading Book 3 that your way of drawing bodies and in proportion to heads is different (better proportions)…. Largo looks older now (more like the 25? or 30? that he is) and so does Erika… i think it makes her look prettier… she’s also.. smiling, almost genuinely….
sorry if this commentary doesn’t go here, but i figure you’re more likely to read it here than anywhere else
Hello! I finally got around to reading the first volume yesterday online, and I have also noticed that as time goes by, your art gets better. I agree with Hikaru that everyone is starting to look their age. Schedules suck, don’t they? I still have to finish the rough sketch of my next page but I have so much work to do and I have a cold. Gah.
As for applying inspiration, let’s see…try imagining it happening, like a movie or something. ^_^ Works for me. Another phrase for it is: daydreaming. Hahaha P:
Daydreaming can be bad though… especially when you pull into your works car park and can’t remember which route you took in to work because you were thinking about something else the whole way there!
I also agree with everyone else. I wouldn’t say your art has improved, rather that it’s matured. When you draw a portrait of a real person, the more you do it the better you get and the more it looks like them… the same applies to Megatokyo. It sounds weird I know but I guess I’m trying to say the characters now look more “real”.
Personally, I’m kind of fond of all the “Fred” periods of art — though I will say you’ve definitely moved into your own style rather than “generic anime”. And carry forward with Dorsk’s note … the better you know the mind of your subject (fictional or not), the more “real” the drawing is likely to be.
It seems when you cut back on rants and sketch output in Fredart, the MT SD forum begins to gnaws its own legs off… I have a request.. if you do any of those… (not even sure what you call them, but they’re usually a supplement to a model sheet) sketches that are a 10,20, or 30 facial expressions and body postures of one character — publishing one of those might save the last leg of the eight legged forum
Someone did a wallpaper of a Ping “collage” that would resemble these.
OT: Finally got to watch ep. 7 of Air and I must admit I’m having trouble following the logic even metaphorically of whats going on. Off to goople for some help here but any brief pointers appreciated.
I know what you mean about the school papers and rants, I had the TAKS today and GOD was it annoying. Well, for some reason my computer is going amazingly slow on the torrents(except at 5:30, when it blazes past the world record), even with plenty of seeds, right now I’m on Air ep. 3. Oh and I don’t know what URMEL’s problem is, he has waaaaaaaay to much free time on his hands.
Hey, at least the rants you have so far are good ones. If they were all horrible, pointless,and boring, Try not to set huge goals for yourself when you’re supposed to have extra time for yourself to relax like I did. I left tons of stuff to do over february vacation, and now that its actually vacation time I have the flu, and i’m struggling to get my regular stuff done.
sorry I messed up in my last comment. I was editing it and hit the button to soon what I meant to say is : Hey, at least the rants you have so far are good ones. If they were all horrible, pointless,and boring, it would be a lot worse than having one, say, every month.Try not to set huge goals for yourself when you’re supposed to have extra time for yourself to relax like I did. I left tons of stuff to do over february vacation, and now that its actually vacation time I have the flu, and i’m struggling to get my regular stuff done.
My problem is that I’ll think of something good, but get distracted by something else, and then forget what is was until much later when, once again, I am unable to actually note the idea down…. or something…
But yeah… Actually applying them can be a problem and you end up with something like;
PersonA says something that really ticks off PersonB, so PersonB does something to PersonA…
Well… not quite as bad as that… but you get the picture… or at least i hope you do… Also, sometimes it’s the little things that you can’t figure out that really kills the idea…
It could be what one character says, or how another responds to it… Or even the actuall whos to it…
I have quite a few character ideas, when it comes to pesonalities, but only a select few have names, and fewer even have faces…
O.O
oops.. sorry for the rant there… gomen…
Well! Ja ne! Now I’ve got to wait for Air, Hikaru no Go, X/1999 and variouse other things, all in diferent ways… I’m going to be doing a lot of wiating over the next few weeks..
hope ya get better delia. I gotta cold and man is it rough in school. Yes, daydreaming can be bad. Like when you’re not paying attention in web page class, miss something, and your friggin text won’t blink. lol Poor forum. 8 legs? Hey, we’re studying arachnids in biology. =)
The more you draw, the better you’ll get! XD I’ve been drawing this stuff for 4 years and it took me that long just to figure out body proportions!
Just had to add:
I don’t think you’re doing so bad with the rants. I mean, the ones that are posted are really interesting (at least to me). Of course, I’d probably think anything is interesting, so…um. Anyway, that’s why I come here. It’s neat to see how you think about things and being able to have a little window into the “fred-ness” is cool.
And inspiration…it has a way of tapping you on the shoulder when you least expect it, and then demanding your attention even if you don’t want to give it, huh? ^-^
Yeah, even if inspiration gives ya an idea, its still pretty hard to put in motion. I was inspired to do a Shiori fanart the other day, but completely messed it up. Stupid shawl… It’s sorta like writing a poem when inspiration strikes but not being able to put it into words.
Anyways, just read your rant on MT. I guess the flu is spreading across the nation, because about half the students I know at school are sick. It might not really be the flu. Maybe just allergies.
Man… first day I don’t have any homework *Thank you TAKS testing…* and I don’t even bother to edit any comics! I’m a disgrace to all editors out there…
I hear you’re feeling poorly, hope you get well soon, I’d send you some snow by mail, but I don’t think it would make it.
I know, i make little sense. Nice lesson by the way.
Fred… just take your time, and get well soon…
We’ll be waiting for more xD but your health it’s first… ok?
greetings from Chile ^^
Are you going to be at Megacon this year?! I didnt see anything posted about it, so I suspect that you arent, which is a bummer =/ I know you are a busy person, so I’m not gonna be too bummed about it.
If not this year, can you come next year? Being on this side of the country makes it hard for us (meaning geeks) to participate in events where all the awesome artists are. <3 and keep up the good work 
Oh yeah well being in the middle of the country in a place where cons rarely happen sucks! T_T And what really sucks is that when there is one, you have no way of getting there. >< Aieee! Cool lesson and love the newest page! Awww I wanna hug Piro ^^