Fred had another rough few weeks, including middle-of-the-night emergency dental surgery and other family medical issues, the continuing issues dealing with his parents’ failing health, and some struggles getting the art right for the latest comic. But he did still manage to get some good stuff done, including some visual novel work. Hopefully things are easing up for him now, and we’ll be back rolling on the visual novel.

Fred did get the Pings finished, cleaned up, and integrated into the visual novel, which is a big step forward. It’s interesting. After 16 years of Megatokyo we’ve become used to Ping as a very sweet person, and it’s a bit shocking and sad to really look at her introduction again and how Tsubasa, Piro, and others treat her more as a thing than a person. The visual novel works really well in with things like that.

Fred got the CG event for Ping’s introduction drawn, though he still has to color it. And he also got started on the Yanagisawas. Next up will be a lot of photoshop work to make the different variations for Yanagisawa and Largo that are needed for the rest of the Book 1 Piro canon route. Not only are we getting to the point where we can reuse some existing artwork rather than Fred having to draw everything new for every scene, but he’s also able to modify some previous artwork to change outfits or expressions instead of having to draw completely new from scratch. This should help a lot with the upcoming Largo artwork. We’re hopeful that this will start to make a real difference in production speed going forward.

Fred also did some more character development drawings. These are from the same alternate universe as last months drawing of the MT girls as the crew of the ‘Save Point’ bomber aircraft. Fred gets most of his story ideas by drawing, so this is kind of how he writes and develops.

Recent comic panels and development art like these are available at Fred’s Megagear store. Unfortunately, Fred’s t-shirt printer and dyesub are both broken, so the store only currently offers original arts and fine art prints. Fred is planning to outsource t-shirts and other swag, probably to Zazzle. But like with many other things, he is so overwhelmed with stuff to do that he hasn’t had time to get that done yet. Hopefully soon.

Fred and Thomas Knapp (author of the Megatokyo Endgames light novels) will once again be appearing at Youmacon in early November. If you are in the general Detroit area, stop by and say hi.

As always, you can watch Fred work on the visual novel, comic, and other stuff live on Twitch. Join us for the live draws. They’re a lot of fun.

Sorry this is taking so long. Thank you all very much for your patience and your support.