fredart : blogbits

It’s amazing how much time babies take up in the first few weeks, till you learn how to multitask better. You sort of have no choice, and i’m getting there but jeeze, everytime i turn around it’s something else (in one instance this morning, i had to change my own shirt as well as Jack’s outfit - something he seemed to be quite proud of ^^;;)

Today is Black Friday again, and you may remember this rant from last year. Funny, we weren’t getting much sleep last year either, but for totally different reasons. Needless to say we weren’t going out at 3am to wait in line for any Black Friday specials this morning. Hell no.

Though I have a feeling i might be doing it next year… ^^;;;

I’m working on a christmas ornament for this year, as well as some dog tag designs to go with the zombie ranger shirt i’ll be posting probably tomorrow in the MegaGear store. Ugh, so much to do.

You can tell i’m a positive thinker though, because i went and started the downloads for the Clannad episodes that came out since Jack arrived. Haven’t watched a one of them yet, but maybe at some point i’ll be able to…

This is one of many character design sketches i’ve done for a story idea i’ve been working on - its the character found in the recent colorwork i posted a few weeks ago. Like i said, i’m not going to post much info on this yet because the ideas are still formative, and i don’t want to give anything away yet We can say that its oddly futuristic, but with a particular slant that comes from my particular way of looking at the world.

[Link to new sketch]

Flehf. I feel like i’ve been hiding in a box for the past few months, at least from an internet pov. I’ve had so much going on in relation to the coming of our first baby that not only have i not taken the time to rant or blog about it, but i’ve almost not wanted to. It’s a weird thing, really. You’ll have little details about your life you don’t really want people to know about, and then you will have other more interesting things happen that you would love to blog about but you cant without explaining the things you want to keep private… i suppose thats just the nature of the net - you really do develop a conscious awareness of how people perceive you based on what you put up for people to see, and fears of crosstalk between data sets can make you feel… rather mum.

That said, it was actually a nice release to post my rant on megatokyo yesterday giving people a heads up on some of what Sarah and i have been dealing with in the past few months.

Today’s going to be an incredibly busy day. I still have to get back to work on the next comic, i wasn’t able to work on it at all yesterday, but i should be able to sit down this afternoon. I really don’t know where the days go sometimes.

The real indicator that i’ve been a little overwhelmed lately? I haven’t watched the new Clannad TV series from Kyoani yet. Not even the first episode. That’s telling
I’ll keep you folks posted.

I tend to work from light to dark as i work - i view areas as outlines and tend to apply color and shadow after the shapes are on the page. When looking at painting tutorials, i always note that artists often work from dark to light - creating areas of color and working back from that. That kind of this is not really possible when working with pencil (which is a thin, transparent media) but quite viable with computer art (as well as stuff like oils, etc). I did this sketch while sitting downstairs watching tv with Seraphim, having hooked my Intuos 3 up to my macbook to experiment. The subject of this painting is from a story idea i’ve been working on for several months that i’m not going to talk about yet

link to new colorwork

I’d actually like to talk a bit about things other than the damn website, or conventions, or other things. The megatokyo site should be behaving more or less normally for people today (it takes a good 24 hrs for the DNS changes to fully propagate). If you aren’t seeing the most recent comic and can’t go back into the archives, then you are still seeing Mishio. Give it time, all roads will point back to Makoto shortly enough.

I haven’t really communicated much with readers since i left for San Diego Comic Con almost 4 or 5 weeks ago. A lot has happened in that time, and i’ve had a lot of things to think about, most good, some bad, some just … different. I’m a little unhappy with the fact that i’m still not 100% back on my feet after returning from Otakon - having the website implode on me the way it did didn’t help. The last two comics were pretty bad, with Monday’s being rather pointless… but given the site condition, i am actually glad it was just an inbetween comic of sorts. Lots to talk about really, and i’m going to spend the next couple of weeks looking at some of it.

In other wanderings, i just wanted to link this site for fun. I love this site, it’s been around a while: Kurisute’s “GomiShoujo” - it’s a delightful little site done mostly in flash. I love the music he’s created for the series, and the animations are haunting and kinda cute:

Really need to start updating and adding to my wanderings list to the left… its’ only been two or three years since i’ve updated it, right?

pirotunes: 超視力の森・連鎖する幻 from the album “Shamanic Princess Original Soundtrack Vol. 2″

As many have you have noticed, the website here at megatokyo.com hasn’t been very stable. Last week we had a hard drive fail which took the entire site down for several days mainly because the server itself has been having issues that are more than just errors on a hard drive. Right now i am working with a VERY jury rigged system that frankly does not work very well. The individual who created and maintains this will be unavailable this week, so those who can help me with things are working with me to make it work until his return.

Basically, what you are supposed to see is a cached version of Megatokyo that is created on Makoto and copied over to Mishio for all of you to see. Getting that caching to work is hard enough, but the real problem is that the caching is producing an error which is not copying the files properly, leaving the entire archive of Megatokyo comics inaccessible.

In trying to post the comic this morning, things just seemed to get worse and worse. No matter what we tried or how long we waited, we were not able to get the cache to refresh. We decided to try moving the www back to Makoto and hoping she can handle the load. I’m really not sure what else can be done to make the comic availible at this point. If this fails, then i will look into more etreme measures, like hosting a bare bones version of Megatokyo somewhere else and redirecting things until this issue is fixed.

Obviously, this kind of thing is unacceptable, and i apologize to my readers for the delays this is causing. I will be taking steps in the next few weeks to see what can be done to eliminate these issues once and for all.

I recently read about the fact that AnimeEigo was loosing the license to Kimagure Orange Road… boy, that just made me feel really sad. It goes back right to what snagged me into anime in the first place (it was an add for KOR at the tail end of a Urusai Yatsura tape from a rental store). I still have all my old VHS tapes for the KOR OAVs and stuff. I never did actually acquire the DVDs of the TV series, and its been on my ‘i really need to get that’ list for a while. It’s a shame that it took this news to motivate me into looking into getting the series on DVD finally.

What surprised me was that they have all of these DVDs on sale for some amazingly low prices. If you ever considered checking out KOR, pick up the OAV DVDs - at 6 bucks per DVD, you cant beat it. I have to admit to feeling somewhat guilty at buying the set at this kind of low price… i went ahead and got all 12 of the TV series DVDs, both OAV DVDs and the Movie DVD. It’ll be sad to see what was once really one of the main staples of everyone’s anime collection now become unavailable, relegated to the background as ‘old school’. Same goes for the manga, which it is a shame may never see the light of day on these shorts. With so much crap that has been brought over, it saddens me that they couldnt bring KOR over as well. Sure the art of the first 2 books is crap, but its still a good story. Once again, so many manga acquisitions seem to rely heavily on how it looks over how it reads. Americans are shallow, remember? If its not pretty we wont read it because we’re like that -_-. (grumble)

I guess it kinda bookends an era for me - first discovering anime through an ad for KOR on a VHS tape from a rental store, to aquiring the VHS tapes of the OAV, to getting online and finding out that there had been a whole TV series of the anime, to going to my first Japanese bookstore and buying the hard bound tankubons of the series, to getting into fansubs, to the KOR translation mailing list, to my first real CG artwork of Manami an Kasumi for the KOR Mailing list T-shirt, which got me to buy my first Wacom tablet, to all the other things that has led to me doing what i do today… to now, here at the end of Animeigo’s run with KOR to buying the whole set on DVD at the end of it all… can’t really describe how it makes me feel, personally.

Oh, and i just found out about another bit of something from the past that has past away. One of the Hildebrant brothers has died - Tim Hildebrant. If you are familiar with fantasy art at all, you will already know about the work of the Hildebrant brothers. I still have a very old Toliken calendar that inspired me when i was in high school. People like TIm Hildebrant brought to life a lot of the fantasy in people’s lives, and its a very sad loss.

I guess i’m just going into today feeling more thoughtful that usual.

pirotunes: Steve Roach - Quiet Sun

Heheh, man, this week is just like some kinda run away train. it just keeps going and i feel like i just gotta hang on. ^^;;;

I had to get the lawn mowed this morning, and i barely got it done before it rained, but at least it looks ok now. It really sprouted up while we were gone over the weekend, and of course all the people around us had managed to trim thier lawns nicely - ours was really looking like, uh, like crap.

Sarah got me Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell audiobook on CD, and yay, it’s quite good. I tend to listen to audiobooks while drawing sometimes, and this is a nice one to add to the collection. I alwauys wonder how much, if any, of what i am listening to gets into my drawings… i dunno, you’d be suprised what i was listening to sometimes for some of the things i’ve drawn for Megatokyo.

I really have to start doing some promotional stuff for the store. My low-key approach to not pushing merchandise is nice, but it’s not very smart. Ahh, if only there was a way to keep things afloat without having to ever pimp stuff. I hate pushing merchandise, and goods, and getting people to buy stuff. It’s ok when it just happens, but i hate… pimping. I really do. But i guess i’ll need to - there’s some interesting products in the works and i better start building up some interest in them.

Speaking of prmotions, i wanted to link this ebay auction that Vaz from Underpower is running right now. He was casting about looking for ideas for something to draw to put up for bid, so i tossed him some ideas. I like vaz’s style, and i’ve seen him do a lot of very deep, sensitive peices, and i i wanted to see him take my Memai sketch and do something with it. This is what he did - not bad at all. I figured someone reading this might find it worth getting.

and on that note, i have GOT to get to work on fridays comic. Once i get that done, i think most of my wild ride this week is over. I think. Actually… no, i still have a lot to do tomorrow ^^;;;;

the only good thing about this week and the run away nature of it it is that it hasn’t thrown me off yet. I just need to ride this through till tomorrow This weekend, i’m very much looking forward to sitting down and devouring a little something i got in the mail yesterday - Flight, volume 2. That’s something to look forward to. (i’d link the main site itself, but it seems to be down. You can try it, maybe it’s up.)

- pirotunes: Solid Doctor - Lights On The Vibe -

This is going to be a totally pointless blog entry, but i have to start somewhere. Sorry for the lack of daily bloggage. Between the move and the subsequent trip up in my development and drawing cycle, its… been a month. Things are settling down tho, and hopefully i can get into some sort of balanced routine for a while — i kinda need it.

I think starting over for friday was good idea. You have no idea how much better this comic is than the one i had before. It was like i was totally not paying attention to the characters. As always, the commentary on it was interesting. I’m going to have fun with this whole sequence, if i can pull it off. I’ve been listening to a LOT of industrial lately, just to get my mood down for the CoE stuff. Ya, yet another Itunes purchase (there’s something just right about the pirotune listed below when thinking about the CoE and Largo’s descent into it. :P) I’ve been good tho, i want to order two CDs (Imperative Reaction and Droom) but i can’t… justify… getting them.

On a side note, i’ve been thwarted recently. I’ve been trying to watch some raw jp eps of Mahoraba, and dammit if the source i’ve been using didn’t switch to WMV9… which i can’t play on a mac. Major bummer. Oh, and be sure to watch Futakoi Alternative. That’s an order. (pics here) I’m just dying with laughter over how they took an ABYSMALLY bad show (a lame harem anime involving sets of twins which made Sister Princess look good) and… just said “what the hell, it can’t get any worse” and had fun with it. heheh. Good stuff. At least for one episode so far.

Gotta remember to remind people about the WIzzywig signing next weekend. My first public appearance this year. Gee. I wonder if anyone will come…

- pirotunes: Combichrist - Today I Woke to the Rain of Blood -