fredart : blogbits

Last week was a good week - I actually managed to get three comics done early and posted on time (using the new website back ends feature that allows me to put the comic in que early and have it automatically post at 1am).  It felt good, and i am going to do what i can to do this from here on out if and where possible.  Friday’s comic wasn’t fully hatched, which was a little bit of a bummer, but it DID get posted on time.

Right now, i’m finishing up the hatching, which shouldn’t take too long, then back to Monday’s comic. Really hope i can post on time tonight.

I know people are not really enjoying this omake very much, it’s not as much fun as some of my previous ones, i know.  A lot of it has been more an exercise in loosening up more than providing the best possible entertainment in the world, and im sorry for that.  Hopefully when the next chapter starts up next week or sooner (depends on a few things, i’d like to start it THIS week, honestly) things will be a little more enjoyable. The big things that have happened in this omake are not really story related - you might have noticed that i’m doing a lot more full body stuff, and that the art has improved a little over the past year.  The other improvement is the posting of FINISHED comics.  I am very keenly aware of how the tail end of Chapter 9, while quite readable, does not show the level of finished comics you guys not only should expect but that you deserve while reading Megatokyo.  It’s been a high year for me personally, with the birth of my son Jack, but the comic did suffer quite a bit, and my hope is that from here on with a fresh new chapter things can get back on track to being a good online comic that people look forward to reading.

There’s also another big project for MegaGear i’m working on this week which is going to take up a lot of time early in the week, but hopefully it won’t impact the comic schedule.  I’m going to try not to let it.  The upshot of it will be that i’ll be offering full color character designs on t-shirts in time for back-to-school.  THAT will be very cool, if all works out.

Oh, i found a lot of friend requests on last.fm, so i went ahead and took care of those.

It’s a bizarre but delightfully pleasant experience to not only have been done with Monday’s comic ahead of time but to be almost done with Wednesday’s comic on tuesday afternoon.  More often than not when ‘missing’ a comic i actually found myself not able to work on it at all until the evening it is due, so there has been little ‘getting ahead’ in the past six months.  Last week, however, i did manage to get most of ‘Friday’s’  comic done and, rather than posting it Saturday afternoon, made a comitment to see if i could use the boost of having a comic done “early” and then diving into the next comic in the framework of my currently “skewed” work schedule.  Trying to work from a positive position rather than a negative one.  It feels good, i’m hoping i can keep it up.

Why is my work schedule so ’skewed’?  Well, it has a lot to do with the fact that Sarah and I are both trying to work ‘full time’ both here and at the warehouse, we both have a lot to do, and we are trying to raise a baby at the same time (and not using day care).  Since a good part of our work (mostly mine) is working ‘at home’ in theory it’s a great idea… until you find out that taking care of a baby during the day can be a full time job, especially when he has a habit of only sleeping for 30 min at a time >_<.

There are two things that are improving this rather daunting issue.  First, Jack has been taking longer naps (mostly because i think he’s taking a breather from some of the teething hell he went through for a few weeks) and we have a baby sitter that is going to come in from time to time to watch him and give us some much needed work time.  Just one day of her help last week really took a lot of pressure off, as you might be able to tell by the rather positive bent on my infamously problematic production issues.

Part of this will also involve more blogging and ranting.  I’m trying to get over the idea that people don’t want to hear my whining by seeing what i can do to reduce that whining and prattle about more interesting stuffs.  This might not bee particularly interesting, per se, but it’s a fair reflection of things at this particular moment.

That said, comic 1137, FMP 09 is just about done, drawing-wise.  I need to hatch and render some things, then put it together in illustrator (the dialogue is already done).  Doing one comic ahead and posting on time is ok.  Doing two is even better.  Three is a real triumph, but what i really want is to find the norm being that comics are posted ahead of time and are availible at 1am like they are supposed to be, on a regular basis.  It’s been the holy grail of my life as a comic artist, as i am sure you all know, but for once it seems oddly possible… and possible without having to seriously comprimise the art or the content of the comics.  So we’ll see. 

And now for some randomness… i’ve been experimenting with notebook applications, not sure right now if i like Evernote or Yojimbo better.  It’s almost like i wish i could mix the two (With Yojimbo it is all stored locally, evernote is on a server (and you have 40mb or 400mb allowances)…  given how graphic-rich my clipping tends to be, i worry that 400 meg per month might not be enough… i’ll blog more about this in my next post.  Anyone else here using similar programs that act as thier brain repository?