[847] Guest Strip: One more building

console

< Piro >

"down to the wire"

Thursday - April 13, 2006

First off, just a reminder that the four "Two Week DPDs" are up for auction on Ebay. Each one is a separate auction and all four auctions end on Sunday, the first one ending at 3pm and the others in half hour increments afterwards. (for example Miho ends at 3pm EDT, Erika ends at 3:30 EDT, etc - note that the times listed on the auction page are PACIFIC time (PST))

Two Weeks DPD #1 - Miho
Two Weeks DPD #2 - Erika
Two Weeks DPD #3 - Yuki
Two Weeks DPD #4 - Ping

If you are interested in any of these four drawings, please take a look. Thanks for your support! (Not that i deserve it with the way things have been going this month ^^;;;)

Next, i want to say a big thank you to Hawk and Ananth over at Applegeeks for Wednesday's guest comic. As you may know if you are reading Applegeeks, the boys are in Tokyo, so what could be more natural than Hawk wanting to take a RAZ for a spin? :)

I was a day late on my April 11th deadline, my first big deadline for having the bulk of the material done for the book. Now i have an even bigger deadline looming - to finish everything by Thursday April 19th. All the little things (like free talk, extra drawings, etc) and the task that has me the most worried - finishing the eight full pages i've added to the Circuity story - have to be DONE by then. Even if i were to put Megatokyo on hold for another week i'm not sure i would make it. I don't even like to think about where i'd be if i hadn't taken two weeks off at the beginning of the month, and i'm not happy that i'm still up against it as the final deadline looms near.

I'm going to do a comic for Friday, because i really don't want to miss any more comics, but i'm not really sure what will happen next week. A lot will depend on how smoothly things go this weekend. I'm really sorry that the book is yet again effecting my release schedule for Megatokyo - i worked really hard to try to keep it from doing this, but i guess it wasn't enough.

Oh well, i'll do my best. Thats all anyone can do. :)

The only nice thing is that after next week the book will be DONE and out of my hands and i can get back to normal. Also, this is the last book i do that will require this much work - starting with Chapter 7 i have been processing comics in book format as i make them. I just wish i had started doing that back in Chapter 5.

What will i do if i have to miss comics next week? Not sure yet. Hawk and Ananth might do yet another guest strip to help me out, and i might just crack under the pressure and have Ukyo dump the MT servers in the river. Haven't decided which yet. Thanks for your patience and for bearing with me as i get through what is turning out to be one of my most overloaded months in a while.

We are still running our specials on Boo and have all that new Merchandise in the MegaGear store, so if you haven't checked it out, please do.

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< Dom >

"The Con Paradox"

Friday - April 14, 2006

[Dom] - 12:00:00 - [link here]

(warning: the above link includes pictures of girls wearing exciting underwear. You have been warned! Or your interest has been piqued, your call)

The convention circuit has always been a strange experience from me. I've experienced it from pretty much every perspective by now, which has certainly contributed to a general confusion about what I'm supposed to do at the damn things. I mean, the very first convention I went to was basically a Saturday shopping trip with Ed as we poked through tapes (yes, tapes, it was a primitive time) and posters and toys.

A few years later, Fred and I were staring at the hundreds of people packed into a room built for dozens as we talked about this little "MegaTokyo" thing in Chicago.

A year or so after that, I was roped into staffing at Fanime. And then came the press phase, and subsequently the experience of sitting at the booth with Fred.

It means that sometimes, I'm confused as to which side of the table I'm supposed to be on--am I being interviewed? Am I interviewing? What am I supposed to do with this book in front of me, sign it or give it to someone and bow, asking them in my politest Japanese "Could you please sign this?"

What's my point? All that running around and wearing different hats gets you exhausted fast. You can't get into any sort of comfortable groove, and when you get home, you just want to curl up into a ball and hibernate for the rest of the summer. So, last year, I went to maybe two, three cons that weren't for work, and spent most of them playing video games.

Now, I have this full-time job, and guess what? I have the urge to go to conventions again, if nothing else to go out and talk to more MegaTokyo fans--something I haven't done in two years or so. Oddly, working for MegaTokyo would be a welcome vacation from working at this Giant Corporation(tm) and working as a freelance writer.

I don't quite get it, when I wasn't working regularly I found the conventions tiring and a drudge. Now that I'm working an office job, I miss them and can't wait to go back.

Which leads me to my next problem, which is that now that I'm working a full-time job, how much time can I put in to conventions? I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm going to E3, but how much time can I afford to take off to go? And what about the anime conventions? I've gotten my urge to go to cons back just as I've lost the time to go to the ones I really want to.

One thing that's especially up in the air is the aforementioned E3--I just don't know if I have the energy to go to that glorified light show this year, and while I know dozens of people who'd kill me for my badge, I know just as many people who keep wishing that E3 would just go away so they wouldn't have to deal with the headaches, the sore feet and the hordes of people who _just don't belong at a press convention_.

I'm undecided on a lot of things right now, and I wish I could say I had a quick answer for all of these choices ahead of me. Do I have the time to take out for San Diego Comic Con? What about the various cons that KOTOKO is attending (hint: I've already met and interviewed KOTOKO, I don't have the burning urge to meet her that I did as of this time last year)? And what about the ones that require significant travel and hotel lodgings?

I just don't know. I'll tell you when I figure things out, though that may not be until a day before the dang things.