[849] damaged but not broken

console

< Piro >

"regrouping"

Sunday - April 23, 2006

This morning i was working on a Naze Nani Megatokyo strip that seemed funny enough in its conception, but wasn't coming together as well as i would have liked. The fates seemed to agree because in the midst of struggling with it, Illustrator crashed and somehow the file i was working on was corrupted beyond repair. >_< I took that as a sign.

When you have to really focus on a project, and do it for a length of time (like pulling together Book 4 and the extra material for that book) you have to push a lot of things aside and just focus on the tasks that have to be completed. One everything is done (including all those little things that just keep coming up, small edits, things that need to be fixed, etc - you'd be surprised how much there is for a 240 page book) you'd think that I could finally relax and take a mental break from it all. Unfortunately, things don't always work that way. For me, almost immediately upon "whew, i'm done! Yay!," all of those other things I pushed aside to make the completion of the project possible came pouring back in at me. Suddenly I'm in this mad panic just trying to figure out WHAT needs to be done next. Being tired and worn out doesn't help. :)

The biggest problem with this project was how much i had to put aside Megatokyo. For two weeks i have not been thinking about the rest of Chapter 7 at all. Sure, i know what's going on, what happens next, i have my notes and sketches and stuff, but i just haven't been 'there' in the story. Getting back 'there' isn't impossible, but it does take some time and effort that i never acknowledge is needed.

I'm trying to regroup, to get myself back into the swing of things, and get my momentum back. I'm working on that now, and concentrating on Wednesday's strip... and letting Monday's strip go. I feel its better to have two decent comics this week than three rushed ones.

I always seem to discount the time it takes for me to get my bearings after a big project. I end up in a big panic trying to do things i just can't manage, thinking i can cram 4 days worth of work into two, and then somehow magically produce a comic on the evening of the last day. Panic is bad for creativity, honestly. I stepped back this morning, took a deep breath, and regrouped myself. The book is done, i can focus on Megatokyo again. It just takes a little time to get it going.

(i wrote this for my fredart blog, but i posted it here just because:)

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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.