They say the first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time, and remaining 10% takes the other 90%. The MTVN preview feels like that sometimes. We’ve made progress, but there are always more little details and things to be done than you’d think. Fred had been really struggling to get out from under a massive backlog of work, and the unfortunate recent passing of Sarah’s mother has delayed things even more. We’re close on the preview release, but not quite there yet.

One of the major things we got done was finishing off Seraphim’s first scene. You can see her in the screenshot above sitting on Piro’s thought-box, which seems really appropriate for a conscience angel. This will be the final scene for the upcoming preview. Fred has also tracked down the current owner of the font that is used in the MT comic, who has kindly given us permission to use it in the visual novel as well. Little touches like that make a big difference.

The preview will be black and white, like the comic. But Fred has now colored the two CG events in the preview: Largo’s Mortal Combat victory to enter Japan, and the scene above from just after when Kimiko hits Piro with the coffee pot. We have also spent a lot of time fine-tuning word bubbles and tweaking dialogue. It’s interesting how you have to alter some scenes to account for the fact that you can’t see Piro’s expression.

Fred got a good bit of other drawing done as well, including a cover for Fire Fox, Chemi’s next book in the Megatokyo:Endgames series. The book is currently undergoing final editing and should be available soon.

Fred also drew and colored a series he calls “Unnecessary Explosions”, including one of Junko and the L337 Dud3. A lot of this is character development work, since Fred gets most of his story ideas from stuff he draws. The originals for most of these have already sold, but Fine Art Print versions should be available in the megagear store soon.

For the visual novel preview, we have a few things left to finish. Fred has been working to make the preview available through Steam, but that still needs to be finalized. The preview will also be available in other ways. There are a couple of drawings of Dom that Fred wants to redo and clean up. We would like to add a little more music. And Fred wants to fine-tune some of the dialogue, now that he has had a chance to really look at the preview as a whole.

Fred needs to clean out the warehouse before the end of the month. Now that he isn’t making t-shirts or dyesub swag anymore, the warehouse is just a cost that he can’t really afford. He also needs to secure the warehouse to protect the remaining inventory and equipment. You can click here to learn more about the benefits of installing CCTV in your warehouse. In spite of that, we will be working hard to finish off the preview and hope to have it available in the next few weeks. We think you’ll really enjoy it. Thank you for your patience and support.