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.