[36] Bedding Down

console

< Piro >

"lotsa work to do..."

Saturday - November 4, 2000

Sorry for the shortage of rants this week... in fact, i apologize for Friday's comic. I finished and delivered a fairly complicated document Thursday afternoon which left me effectively brain dead for the rest of the week. (Excel Bad. AutoCad Good.) It you thought Friday's comic was funny, you are a loyal megatokyo fan indeed. Both Largo and I were so tired Thursday night that no matter how hard we hammered on the script, it just came out lame. Even the Amazing Dom couldn't save us. (sigh) It's humorous, but it doesn't have the little extra edge we like to see. It's all Dom's fault. Bad Dom. :P

So, in the interest of Excellent Scrpititage, I've been sitting here typing out a fairly complex outline of where Megatokyo is going. Largo and I have most of the story in our heads, but Dom alerted us to the fact that this is not really the best place to store it, given our past histories of brain failures, memory lapses, and blue screens of death that hamper my ability to remember my own phone number on bad days. As for Largo, I think i know why he is such a X-box fan - his brain operates with the reliability of a Micro$oft product in it's first week of beta testing.

It's always interesting to gather up parts and pieces of things - notes from script dumps an chunks and pieces of ICQ conversations and IRC logs. What gives me a headache is just how much material we have produced in the past few months, and how much drawing I'm gonna have to do to get it all out to you. ^^;; There are some real challenges ahead - things in the story that I have no real idea how we'll be able to convey in the 4 panel layout we've been using. Story arcs that need to be threaded together, relationships that we didn't even realize existed, that tie the story together better than we realized... It's just that *damn* - it sure takes up a lot of time. :)

The other thing that has been keeping rants down this week is that I am in the process of coloring a drawing of Erika, so that I have a matching set of Erika and Kimiko (the goal here is to have a t-shirt available for each girl). I'm also working on a shirt idea for Fredart - that's going to take a bit of time to pull together. I have a few other color drawings that need to be done - and I need some better color versions of Largo and Piro, as well as color versions of Dom, Ed, Ping-chan and a some of the yet unintroduced characters. Ugh.

Rounding out this insanity are two other projects. Last weekend I pulled out all the material on 'warmth' and started to grind down a plan to produce some experimental flash files to test some of my ideas for doing it in a 'visual novel' format. (did i mention that I need to learn Flash now too?) I know that some of you -really- want to see this. Please be patient, 'warmth' is not like megatokyo, which can be dolled out a panel at a time. I'm doing the best i can. :)

Finally, the thing that makes me 100% certifiable is the fact that I have a November 30th deadline to finish (and, er, start) my submission to the MJ-12 doujinshi project. MJ-12 is a doujinshi circle - which is a group of True Love Story fans (a dating/love sim game) that produce a CDrom of fan art, short stories, manga, and music all inspired by the game. Last summer, Tsubasa and I produced a visual short story called 'envelope' that was featured on the 'Heartful Seasons' disk. I'm very thankful to Noritac-san and the rest of the MJ-12 group for accepting my submission, and so i don't want to dissapoint them for this project. Oh, and before you ask, Heartful Seasons sold out on the first day, so no - there are no copies available for purchase. :( 'Envelope' was about 50 drawings by me and a story by me and tsubasa in both English and Japanese. If you are all good little boys and girls I'll make it available online someday. Right now, Tsubasa and I need to bust our asses to get something done for the Winter comike disk. The project is tentatively called 'snapshots' - you'll probably hear more about this later.

(sigh) i better get busy...

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< Largo >

"gin-esis"

Saturday - November 4, 2000

[Largo] - 23:10:00 - [link here]

Ah, the joy of ranting...

See, between working sixty-hour weeks at my new and improved though much harder job, I've decided to add even further complication to my life by moving. I know you are not interested in such trivial details of my life, but I thought I at least owed our readers an explanation for why my rants have been being retroactively posted. That being said I think moving sucks, in fact - it's the most annoying thing in the world, next to Barbara Streisand and Detroit of course.

Some good news this week, We are honored that Cartoon Community gave our little strip it's Comic of the Month award for our Sony is evil strip. I believe this is our first award, at least that we know about...

Also this week we were, 'walked about' over at the always cool Lazy's World. Every week Lazy walks about with other online comics, apparently this week it was our turn to be paid a visit.

Since I'm being overworked, and don't have any new games to review, (hint to you game developers who read the strip and have yet to let me beta test your sweet games.)I thought I'd try to answer some of the questions I get emailed about on a regular basis.

One of things people ask Piro and I is how we got into doing MegaTokyo, why we are doing the comic in the first place, and how we've managed to gain a nice following, in such a short amount of time.

As for the how we got into this racket, my memory on this is really kind of fuzzy, I remember it involved boredom, an interest in the team effort that went into the creation of Penny-Arcade, and gin. In fact after entering the comic strip arena, I soon learned that most comic artists and writers hold Tycho & Gabe in a high regard not just for their comic work, but rather their continued willingness to link anyone who could use some exposure. If you want a lead on new comics, read Tycho's rants. Giving credit where credit is due, it was Tycho's willingness to share links that led me to do same thing. Well that and it makes for great filler in my rants!

Looking back on it, I think the main factor in the creation of MegaTokyo was gin, specifically a gin called Bombay Saphire, which if you haven't drank the clear liquid bliss that is Bombay Saphire, you are either not alive, or a Mormon.

As for the 'why we decided to make the comic' question, we did it because Piro had been looking for a medium to get his art out into the open, and together we thought that a online comic may be that medium. So far things seem to be going well, and if we can ever find some sponsor with deep pockets to support our work, we'll - we'd be really pleased. This is a crack pipedream for now though.

Finally, as for the how did we find a audience or how did our audience find us? To be honest, we really have no idea. I can only assume it's from us being linked off so many other great sites and online comics. Which is a real shame considering those links could have gone to far better and more deserving then our stuff. That isn't to say we are not proud of out little two man chop shop, things continue to get better each day, and we love having our work well-recieved.

Oh well, whatever happens, happens.