[1357] BPAD: bad piro art days, what i'm callin them now

console

< Piro >

"skipped beats"

Sunday - March 10, 2013

I’ve often joked that the way the Megatokyo storyline has held together all these years (as much as it has held together) is that there must be a part of my brain that is writing this story but doesn’t like to talk to me often. With that in mind, I was a little amused when a good friend of mine pointed out this particular Megatokyo comic from way back in October of 2001: “my heart skipped a beat...”

-_-

Great, not only does that side of my brain not talk to me, but it knows my future medical history and has been mocking me about it for over ten years now. (shakes fist at that side of my brain) All joking aside, the metaphoric possibilities presented by cardiac problems can make for fertile story material (like in, say, Katawa Shoujo) which... or at least I know it probably will be at some point.

Speaking of that stuff... I’m going in for a cardiac catheterization tomorrow morning. I’ve never had any sort of procedure done before (the biggest thing I’ve ever dealt with was having my wisdom teeth pulled) so I admit I’m a little freaked out about it right now, though logically I know its nothing to worry about. I’ve been deliberately NOT reading up on the procedure because I’ve talked with enough people close to me who’ve also had it done and they’ve told me not to worry it’s no big deal so I’m just gonna trust them. For the record, the doc doesn’t think they are going to find any blockage or anything wrong (I don’t have any indicators of those things) so this is very much a diagnostic procedure to rule out a bunch (like blockage) of things so they can focus on what they think is really the problem (heart rhythm (electrical)) It’s outpatient, I’ll be home by the afternoon.

Above I’ve posted a bit of artwork - a pencil drawing of miho I did a few days ago. Been doing a lot more pencil drawings lately, and now that I have a good setup for broadcasting live drawings from my desk, I can freely move between digital and pencil/COPIC work and still bore you guys to tears with the pace of my arting. :P

Oh, the fact that my art days are called “Dead Piro Days” seems amazingly insensitively inappropriate for right now so... let’s just call it an art day, ok? :P Ok, maybe I’m being a bit of a dramadere, sorry, it’s how I’m made. >_>

Finally, a note to all of you with outstanding MegaGear orders - I put in as much work as I could over the past few days to get things printed and put together to get your orders ready to ship. Hopefully, I can get back to the warehouse on Tuesday and start sending some of those orders out. As a thank you for your patience, I’ll be sending along free character sketches with all orders over a week old as a thank you for bearing with me as I struggle through these health problems. Thank you.

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< RayKremer >

"Broken Prophecy"

Tuesday - December 18, 2012

[RayKremer] - 17:43:26 - [link here]

You folks remember the "Behind the Masque" short story placed in the Endgames game world, right? You'll note two authors are listed there, though these are Fred's characters and he provided a lot of input to the story, the main writing duties were performed by Thomas Knapp, aka Chemiclord, aka that third guy often seen behind the MegaGear convention table with Fred and Ray. This is of course not the only writing he does, just over a year ago he took over writing duties for the webcomic Exiern, and he's got a blog site that features his original universe called the Gate Series (though there is a recent post there relevant to Endgames). If you google properly you may even find some fanfiction he's written.

So that's Tom, and he launched a Kickstarter project today to produce the first full length novel entry in the Gate Series in real, dead tree, printed book format. I know money is tight for a lot of people these days, but please won't you consider joining me in supporting this effort. I'll let Tom tell you more about it in his own words:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I'm not entirely certain how to present this (and no doubt many of you have already heard this rant), so bear with me.

For ten years, I sat on this manuscript of mine (with a couple limited releases for what amounted to family and friends). It wasn't something I advertised, wasn't something I particularly pushed. It got a handful of sniffs from various publishers, but for one reason or another (didn't like their copyright policy... I didn't want to "sex it up" or "clean up the language", I didn't want to alter the content, etc...) the deal never took off.

But at the same time, sitting on it was going nowhere... and it's not right to keep things going nowhere.

Over the last month, I have been gathering information, getting quotes, and negotiating with a printer... and I think it's as good of a time as any to actually make this a reality.

But for that, I'm going to need your help.

Over on kickstarter, I've started a project, for a book titled The Broken Prophecy. This is effectively what amounts to a pre-order campaign; if enough support is there, the printing will go as scheduled. If not... then no one is out anything, and I go back to the drawing board.

I'm not particularly one to sell myself, so I have no idea if this is going to work out. But I can't keep putting things off and hoping things will fall into place. Success or failure, it's time to actually try.