What's with the 'piro art day' strip? Well, a couple of reasons. Remember how monday's strip was very late? And then the guest strip for Friday? Quite simply, the work schedule caught up with me. I burned out over the weekend. After two weeks of barely managing four hours of sleep and pushing myself way too hard I finally fumbled and wasn't able to finish. When you are pushing yourself hard, fumbling like this has an odd effect on you. You don't just pick up and keep gong, you find that you can sometimes get stuck. I got a little stuck. Both largo and I have been so exhausted lately that i find that we've been looking for bigger and heavier bats to deal with each other, and we were sniping at each other more than usual. When i started looking into the price of a used rocket launcher, that threw up a red flag that I needed a time out.

As i've said before, Megatokyo is a work in progress. Part of the fun here is that you get a hell of a lot closer to the people and the process by which the comics and whatnot are made than you do with professional strips. Pro strips are usually weeks and weeks ahead. For some reason, I have never been abe to manage to get the strips done on time for the 1 am deadline. I feel like I'm on some kind of Reality TV show sometimes. ^_^

Anyways, I'm taking a bit of a break this week. Aside from the fact that I have two trips ahead of me - Seraphim and I leave for Chicago in two hours, and next weekend I am going to hook up with Largo at E3 - Largo and I feel we need a little break here to size up the scripts and the storyline. Now that we have a feel for the new format we need to rethink some of the strips - we need some time to take care of some story development. Tentatively, I am planning on doing one full strip for Wednesday of next week, and having some simpler, one-panel strips and/or art day strips for Monday and Friday. This will let me enjoy my trips, get caught up on sleep, and also fine tune what we are doing so that we can produce even better strips.

I *hate* taking breaks, but I also have a pretty good survival instinct. I'd rather cool it for a week here that find than the quality of the strip goes down. You should note that i'm not planning on disappearing, just cutting down my workload for a few days. I apologize about this, and Largo and I appreciate your patience. Besides, it gives me a chance to just sit and do some nice development artwork for fredart too. I've also started working on a rather long rant that talks about manga style drawing and why I think people gravitate to it so much. Look for that rant on Monday or Tuesday.

Oh, and one other thing. I have mounted today's drawing of Kimiko with the winged backpack and I am bringing it with me to Anime Central. I'm planning on submitting it to the art show - hopefully they'll still be accepting submissions by the time i get there. I can't remember how these things work, but i think that you can bid on drawings or there is some sort of auction - either way, someone will probably be going home with the drawing. If not, i'll have it at the Megatokyo Panel on Saturday for all to see. The Panel is at 3:00 in conf. room 16. If you are going to be at Acen, i'll see you there. Also, i have been roped into being a guest commentator in the Iron Guest competition which immediately follows the panel. Ugh... ^^;;

A few weeks ago i talked a bit about some of the side projects that Tsubasa and I are working on. One of those is the production of two songs for a future MT multimedia project. We're currently working with a group called Device High, a very talented group that tsubasa and I have been fans of for a few years. With tsubasa's help and some input from me, they are currently writing the tracks, and I am looking forward to hearing them. They were a bit overwhelmed by the amount of people who visited their website via my link that week, and they are very excited about our little project. ^_^

Many people expressed interest in purchasing copies of their CDs, so with the help from a few friends in the US, we are looking into doing this. We would like to find out just how many people are interested in acquiring their first CD, 'Let's Install'. I've had the disk for a year now, and it's good stuff. Since the original disk had such a short run of publication, Hashimoto-san is looking at re-releasing the disk to include english translations of the songs in the liner notes. More information on this is available in this thread on the forums. The two new Megatokyo songs are not on this disk, but they will be on their upcoming second release due out this summer (i'm also gonna do a little artwork for them ^_^)

At any rate, if you are interested in purchasing this CD, we need to get a realistic idea of how many people want to purchase the first disk. If you are interested, please email mailto:mtcdorder@hotmail.com and you will receive more information.

There's a little more info on the group in my previous rant.

Oh, i had posted in the forums that the new t-shirt designs were available for purchase at the Megatokyo store - well, it looks like i was premature... for some reason, the shirts disappeared off the site last night. I know CafePress was in the middle of a big update, so I'm sure that the designs will be available soon. The new shirts include the IAC design, and two versions of the 'j00 d34d f00' shirt (a largo and a piro version). Hopefully they will be back up before the day is out. :)

Ok! I gotta run. Seraphim and I have a 5 hr drive ahead of us. Chicago should be fun. Cant wait to hit the Asahiya store...