Fred has done a lot of good work over the last few weeks. Unfortunately, little of it has been on the visual novel. Once he gets a few of these other projects wrapped up, we should be back on the MTVN work.

If you’ve been tuning in to his Twitch livedraws [http://www.twitch.tv/fredrin], you’ll know the big thing Fred has been working on is a reboot of his old comic “Warmth”. Above you can see Taisiya almost getting run over. This will be part of an upcoming DarkHorse anthology, so Fred is working on a deadline. It looks pretty good so far.

Fred has also been working on MT omake that goes between chapters 11 and 12. He’s doing it in kinetic novel style as an animated gif. A kinetic novel is like a visual novel, but without the branching and choices. This is all in the same “slow animation” approach that we’re using for the visual novel itself.

He been working on a couple of new development sketches. Above you can see the completed sketch of Aoi Mumu, the host of the radio show that Kimiko appeared on in comic 695. You can also see the start of a nice looking sketch of Mami.

Fred has also been working on a new Miho blanket to go with the recent Mugi blanket. He’s gone through a couple of iterations on the Miho drawing, but isn’t quite satisfied with it yet. It will take a bit more work, but good news that a Miho blanket is in the works.

And finally, the Mugi blankets arrived at MegaTokyo World Headquarters for those who preordered. Fred has been busy shipping those out to all. If you missed out on the preorder, Fred will likely have another later in the year.

A big thank you to all who bought blankets, calendars, prints, originals, books, and all the other MT related swag that Fred sells. It’s your support that makes MegaTokyo possible.

Happy new year to everyone. We made some good progress over the holidays.

Fred finished the pencil core drawings for Mami, Asako, Yanagisawa, and Yuki, and started the process of assembling bodies with faces in all the different variations. If you have been tuning in to Fred’s Twitch broadcasts lately [http://www.twitch.tv/fredrin], you’ll have seen that this involves a lot of grinding in Photoshop. It’s been a little slow with this first set of characters, but Fred has been refining his technique and it is getting faster as we go along. Fred is feeling pretty good about this approach.

He has the initial core variations for Mami, Asako, and Yuki done for “torso Left”, which is 245 total drawings so far. He’s going to work on the “torso Right” variations next, which should go easier. Unfortunately, Fred can’t just mirror the current drawings in Photoshop because the girls aren’t totally symmetrical. But he can use the mirrored drawings as a starting point, which should make it go much faster than drawing from scratch.

In other news, Chemi has finished the first draft of Dire Water, his next Endgames light novel. With the start of the new year, the 2015 Megatokyo Calendar is now discounted in the Megagear store [http://www.megagear.com/]. And the Mugi blankets are now in production for all those who preordered.

Fred is going to be working on more core character variations next, as well as the next comic. So tune in to his Twitch broadcast and join us for the live draw.