[596] a volume discount

console

< Piro >

"coloring quickly"

Thursday - August 12, 2004

Whew.

Well, the past month sure has been, uh, interesting. Seraphim and I have seen so little of our apartment that we think the cats are forgetting who we are and have started to develop the behavioral patterns of abandoned kitties. The level of rampant devastation is such that we are going to have to mount a reconstruction campaign this weekend. At least now we might actually have time to do it, as things have finally settled down a little and the biggest crunch of the year is (hopefully) behind us.

As most of you are aware, the new MegaGear store is up and running and we would like to thank everyone who has shopped with us. :) Aside from problems with the website software (which i will touch on in another rant) everything has been going fine. Lotsa store stuff to talk about, but i'm trying to keep this particular rant short -- i gotta get to work on friday's comic. :) Oh, yeah, must do a little shameless pimping: Please go buy stuff or kimiko will cry. You don't want that on your conscience, do you?

Aside from the store, there were three other things that had been looming over me. There was San Diego Comic Con, which went really well (I haven't yet had a chance to rant about that either. Sheesh, i need to rant more), then Tim from Dark Horse gave me the wonderful news last month that I needed to have the cover artwork for book 3 done by August 8th... a week after the store was scheduled to open. Gee, thanks Tim :P Actually, not Tim's fault, It HAD to be done by the 8th, or they would not be able to release the book in January. So... after recovering from SDCC, rolling into the logistics and brute panic of getting the store off the ground and running smoothly, i had to turn around and produce the cover art for book 3 in less than two days.

It actually didn't come out too bad :) I've posted the artwork over on Fredart, and a mockup of the cover you can look at here. There are some problems with it, but it will do. There had been some speculation as to who would be on the cover of book 3, well, now you know :P

I had planned out the cover sequence for MT books last year, and so far, i think the set is starting to look nice. Book 3 should be pretty cool - it contains some of my best work so far on MT (IMHO) and i'd really like to do something special for the omake this time... we'll see what i can come up with.

The last project I have had to deal with, and the one that is currently slated to take up a chunk of my time this month is a poster for the American Library Association. The ALA has asked me to do a poster for its series of posters and bookmarks for libraries. You know those READ posters you see in the library? Yeah, stuff like that :) They seemed to really like the concept sarah and I pulled together on monday, so hopefully i will be able to finish it by the deadline at the end of the month. All proceeds from sales of this poster will go to support programs and initiatives of the American Library Association, including literacy programs, etc. Sarah and I feel honored to have been asked to do this, so i hope i can do a decent poster for them.

Need to get cracking on the next comic. I wasn't really happy with the art for the last comic, so i'm gonna try to focus more - still a lot to do in this chapter.

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< Dom >

"Brain go splat"

Sunday - August 15, 2004

[Dom] - 14:00:00 - [link here]

I hate writer's block. I really do. I've wanted to rant about the San Diego Comic Con experience, and I have a rant half-written about that... which I can't seem to finish. I'm trying out for the part of Slashdot Games editor, and I should be writing for that--but again, it's half-sinished and I'm poring over the last few words trying to figure out how it should end. Heck, I can barely finish an e-mail right now, it's so bad. I don't know where this came from. My weekend was spent in San Francisco for my sister's birthday and my cousin's upcoming engagement party, and while up there I read enough books to choke a camel, so it's not like I didn't think about writing enough over the past few days.

Maybe it's nerves. I've been drifting through the past month and a half in a sort of bemused daze, and now that a serious employment opportunity has reared its head, I'm trying to do too much.

Maybe it's the blues. I've been drifting even more aimlessly than usual since Grandma died, and some things seem peculiarly less important to me after that.

Or maybe it's just my brain deciding to fart at a very inopportune time. I lean toward this explanation more than any other one.

So, in the interests of making my brain fart less prolonged, I'm going to try and write down a few thoughts here, and see if they come out coherently. First subject, the Olympics.

I've been following these Olympic Games like a rubbernecker seeing a particularly gruesome car wreck. The reports out of Athens for the months preceding the games were full of doom and signs of horrific failures, from labor problems to construction delays and power failures. But things seem to have worked out somehow, and now I get to watch the Iraqi soccer team kick a surprisingly large amount of ass. Seriously, who knew that such a gross underdog would be able to pull this kind of thing off? "That's why they play the games", as the sports saying goes...

NBC's coverage of the Olympics is also, to my great relief, less stupid than it has been in years past. I actually get to see events that don't involve Americans, and I've heard fewer stupid comments than I have in years. Absolutely fascinating.

Anyway, I'm off to try and recover some sense that I'm still capable of making words do things. Failing that, I'm going to play more of the Duel Savior demo and take my frustrations out by beating up skeletons and golems. Or maybe I'll fire up Streets of Rage 2 for some old-school action. I dunno, I'm just gonna do SOMEthing other than sit and stare at a blank document in Word.

See you guys later.