[848] Guest Strip: Rainy Day

console

< Piro >

"life back: Monday"

Thursday - April 20, 2006

The one thing i've always noticed about any project i take on is no matter how hard i push to finish things early, they always take what i thought they would take in the first place. On monday i figured that drawing non-stop would realistically take me until Friday to finish the drawings for Ciruity. That is what it took (i still have four left, should be able to finish them today). Push and get it done by thursday? Didn't happen. Luckily, everything else is done, and the fine folks at DC/CMX have been pulling the rest of the book together (i get to review things this weekend). If i finish up Circuity this weekend, we should be able to make all of our other internal deadlines and not delay the release of the book.

It was a hard month, and ive missed over three weeks of comics. I probably should not have gone to Sakuracon, but that was set up long before i knew what i was facing this month (and hell, its a great con and always fun to attend). Anyways, its almost done, and the Circuity rewind is looking really good. I really should have cut some corners on the drawings for this, but hey, once its in the book its in the book forever. You will probably never get much timeliness out of me, but you usually will get the best work i'm capable of doing. That's just the way things are :)

No one is looking forward to getting back into the swing of things with Megatokyo more than I am. As you all know, Circuity is a rather tragic story, and i think it's making me sniffly and gloomy. :P If all goes according to plan, next week will be a three comic week :P I'd like to give a big thanks to Hawk and Ananth over at Applegeeks for the guest strips this week, and for the amusement we've had with the 'near misses' in each of our comics. In a very recent comic you can even find Ping in all her pink-haired glory :)

Finally, a big thank you to everyone who bid on the Two Weeks DPD drawing auction that ended last Sunday. To say that the results of the auction exceeded my wildest guilt-ridden expectations by a factor of 5 would be a massive understatement. ^^;; The whole experience has made me wonder if it would be more fair to people to have prints of some sort available of some of my work. Perhaps experimenting with high quality prints that in some way replicate the nature of my pencil drawings so that i'm not dealing with just one original that many people are viewing for, but quality prints that can be mass produced and sold for much more reasonable sums. Even though i work primarily in black and white, there has always been this reluctance on my part to make prints or posters in black and white. The idea feels cheezy, or unfinished. But i dunno, maybe i'm not respecting the fact that people seem to like uncolored work with that attitude.

Anyways, i don't really have time to think about stuff like this right now, i have to get back to drawing. Thanks for your patience with the lengthy pauses we've suffered here at the end of Chapter 7, and hopefully i haven't lost too many readers as a result. I hope that people find the ending arcs worth the wait. ^^;;

Oh, speaking of art for sale, if any of you are a fan of Aaron A.'s Serenity Rose (published by Slave Labor Graphics) like i am, you need to head over to Heart Shaped Skull. Most of the pages from the series are up for sale and you should hurry if you want to snag any of your favorite pages. Consoom, as Serenity would say :)

And finally, to perhaps illuminate the extent of my own extreme sacrifices in the past month, i have not yet even watched a single episode of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu. Not a single one. I am being ostracized and laughed at by my friends. I hang my head in shame and isolation in the hopes that one day i can finish my own work, and participate in the wonder that is Haruhi.

(sinks himself into a fantasy that involves Kyoto Animation doing a 'Warmth' tv series. Now that's a fantasy to grin about.)

(note - rant image screencap snagged from lollitron. Yes, yes, but he has such nice screencaps of shows (i didnt have time to make my own today).)

UPDATE - posted Dan's gift art. Visit Clone Army for more Dan goodness and by all means read Penny Tribute. :) I asked him to draw Yuki for me and gee, he did. Thanks Dan :)

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< Dom >

"The Twain Meet"

Thursday - April 20, 2006

[Dom] - 12:00:00 - [link here]

How you know you're not living right: two of your nieces come up to you at a wedding. One asks "Hey, weren't you on Jeopardy like Uncle John was?"

The other asks "Uncle Chicken, are you going to the HYDE concert in Anaheim? Oh my GOD, he's so cute!"

My life is weird, and will stay weird until the day I die--and I'm willing to bet that there'll be some strange circumstances around my death, too. I don't know, maybe it'll be linked to organized crime, or people will never find my body, starting rumors that I'm secretly buried under third base at ~~Pac Bell~~ ~~SBC~~ ~~AT&T~~ Pac Bell Park, or in the foundation of some new UC Berkeley facility. Maybe I'll die under the massive pile of anime crap I've been accumulating since I was sixteen.

But anyway, it won't come close to the surreality of my family relations these days.

See, my family has always known me as "Ga," the quiet, nerdy one in the family (well, okay, one of the quiet, nerdy ones). Their recent discovery of the side of me known as "Dom" is a shock to them. In a recent trip to Tahoe, I overheard a conversation where they discussed stories they'd heard about me outside of the family circle, like how my cousin said that when I was at my job interview, I was a completely different person than she was used to.

Or, to put it in another cousin's words, "There's the Ga we know, and then there's Dom, who signs tits."

Now, before I go any further, I'd like to clarify one thing. I don't sign tits. I signed one, ever, and it ain't happenin' again. So that statement really should be "and then there's Dom, who signed a tit once and found the experience rather distasteful."

But anyway, the point remains--I've kept the MT side of my life and the family side of my life almost entirely separate, with the biggest anomaly being one dark, dark incident at Anime Expo which involved a cousin, his friend's copy of the MegaTokyo book, and a complete lack of eye contact.

Now they know, and not only do they know, my cousin's wedding on Saturday (note that I've referenced four entirely different cousins in this rant--I have 18, so if there is any cousin overlap, I'll tell you) was marked with a conversation with a fifth cousin about the recent eBay auctions, in which Fred's sketches went for a sizable amount. That produced the following conversation:

"Dude, sell out. *pause, grab an in-law* Hey, Burns, tell Ga what to do. If people are willing to spend that much money on pencil sketches, how about you give them an original? It's not ripping them off if they're willing to pay that much for it!"

"My advice to you is: sell out. Trust me, work doesn't get any more fun as you get older."

There was a lot of swearing in that conversation that I've omitted, but there was a lot of alcohol involved that I've omitted too, so I guess it's fairly even.

So, in conclusion, my family is awesome, even though they occasionally make me realize the folly of my existence by asking me to translate their J-rock magazines for them (yeah, this has happened too, to the same niece that was mentioned at the beginning). But I still don't think anyone would be willing to buy an SGD strip. I mean, Fred already overpays for them--meaning that he pays for them at all.