Category Archives: Visual Novel

Post Pencil Test

It’s been a few weeks now since Fred’s kickstarter update and the release of the Visual Novel Pencil Test to beta testers. The Pencil Test has had 132 downloads so far per the torrent tracker, and 33 of y’all took the time to provide us with feedback on the beta forum. Thank you very much for your help.

PencilTestStart

To summarize the feedback… In general, people really liked it. They thought the ‘slow animation’ approach was worth the extra time and effort. They liked the word bubbles, though a few suggested keeping the traditional visual novel text box as an option. There was welcome criticism over spelling errors, too many ellipses, and a few other issues. And going forward, they recommended that we prioritize extending the Piro canon route over working on branches or coloring.

We all wish the Visual Novel were coming faster, but it feels great that people like what we have so far. It certainly lifted Fred’s spirits, and he’s eager to get back to work on it.

Foxgirls

Over the last few weeks though, Fred has moved forward on some of the other projects he has on his plate. One of those things was finishing the artwork for parts 2 and 3 of the omake kinetic novel. The omake has taken much more work than Fred had originally thought, and if he had to do it over again, he would have probably done it as a regular comic instead. But he’s mostly through it now. He has a bit more assembly work to do, but part 2 should be out very soon. There will be a part 4, and then it will be on to chapter 12 of the comic.

Groundbeard

Fred has put some of the original arts for the omake characters and backgrounds up for sale on the megagear site. Above, you can see the GroundBeard, which is the Inn and Tavern that is owned by Sunay (Mugi’s Endgames character).

FireFox Cover

You can read more about the GroundBeard and Sunay in Chemi’s latest Endgames book, which is now available in print or for kindle from Amazon or for the nook from Barnes and Noble.

Youmacon

Fred will be at Youmacon again at the end of October and has been asked to do the artwork for the staff tshirts and a few other con-related things. If you’re in the Detroit area, stop by and say Hi.

Kimiko Blanket

Fred has a new blanket in the works. This is an updated version of the old Kimiko ‘Sad Girl in Snow’ blanket. Sadly, the mill that made the original Kimiko and Miho blankets has closed, but this new blanket will be much like the Mugi blanket from earlier this year, which was very nice and good sized at 50×68 inches. Fred is waiting on a sample from the manufacturer, but he hopes to have it up for pre-order soon and thinks it should ship in time for xmas.

WarmthRough

And finally, Fred started roughing out the next section of his B-comic, Warmth, where the plot appears to be thickening.

As always, you can watch Fred work on the Visual Novel and other projects by tuning in to his Twitch livedraws. Sorry the visual novel is taking so long. Thank you very much for your support and your patience.

Almost Almost Preview

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.

Seraphim

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.

KimikoCG

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.

FireFox

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.

JunkoExplosion

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. 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.

Almost Preview

We had been hoping to release the what-we-have-so-far preview of the Visual Novel in time for the 2nd anniversary of the kickstarter. Sadly, due to a situation in Fred’s family over the last month, this has been delayed. Fred is back at work, and the preview should be coming within the next few weeks.

KamiChan

Fred did get some more visual novel work done though, including a couple of short mangas for the scene where Piro first meets Yuki and the girls. The one above is Magical Fuwa-Fuwa Kami-chan, which looks pretty hilarious.

We hope you’ll enjoy the upcoming preview as much as we do. Sorry this is taking so long. Thank you for your patience and support.

Persistence

Fred made some good progress over the last few weeks, clearing the decks for some more visual novel work.

Persistence

The biggest thing Fred worked on was finishing part 1 of the Endgames:Persistence omake. You can download the omake game via torrent using the links in Fred’s rant, or play an almost-as-good version straight in your browser from the Megatokyo site. The omake is built using many of the techniques and work that we have developed for the visual novel itself. It looks really good.

We had a recent scare where the downloadable version of the omake was getting flagged by some antivirus programs. Fortunately this turned out to be a false positive, where the antivirus mistook the game icon picture for a virus. We have removed that icon from the program, so if your antivirus was triggering on the old version, you can download the new and it shouldn’t have that problem. Many thanks to Java, Shadow, and VirusTotal for diagnosing the problem.

WarmthCleanup

Fred also finished coloring and cleaning up the last few pages of the first installment of Warmth. It looks great, and it’s nice to finally get that finished.

KimikoCoffee

With those two major projects at a good point, Fred got back to work on the visual novel. Above you can see the CG event for when Kimiko hits Piro with the coffee pot. Fred is planning to do a lot of finishing and cleanup to the early part of the visual novel over the next few weeks. You can watch a lot of this drawing work live by tuning in to Fred’s livedraws on Twitch.

We are still planning to put out a preview version of the MT visual novel for the 2nd anniversary of the kickstarter in july. It will be available to everyone who pledged beta tester level and up. The visual novel is still progressing, though much slower than we would all like. It’s a long way from done, but we think you’ll like what we have so far. Thank you for your support and for your patience.

Omake

Fred made some decent progress the last few weeks, including some work on the visual novel.

LAAirport

He continued work on replacing some of the placeholder backgrounds in the early part of the game with actual drawings. Above is the airport in LA where Piro makes the fateful decision that he and Largo should take a trip to Japan. Shaggy has also added some more music, and Shadow made some more ren’py tweaks to make it all work better.

PirogoethMarket

Fred made a lot of progress with the omake for between chapters 11 and 12 of the comic. The drawings for the first installment are done, and he’s spent a lot of time assembling characters onto backgrounds and working on the scripting and dialogue. This omake is going to be in the style of the MT visual novel, and available both as a renpy version and on the MT website as a regular browser version for everyone. Fred has just a bit more dialog work to do to finish the first installment. Then Shadow and Klange will finish the technical work to make it available through renpy and the website. It looks really good.

NekoMihoPiro

Fred also drew neko-Miho and neko-Piro. He’s threatening to make this a branch in the visual novel, which I think would be hilarious. The originals of this drawing have already sold. But he should have a fine art print available soon, along with all the other new fine art prints he’s made available recently in the megagear store.

We are still planning to put out a preview version of the MT visual novel for the 2nd anniversary of the kickstarter in july. It will be available to everyone who pledged beta tester level and up. The visual novel is still progressing, though much slower than we would all like. It’s a long way from done, but we think you’ll like what we have so far. Thank you for your support and for your patience.

Word Bubbles

Fred got a good amount done over the last few weeks on all of his current projects, including some nice cleanup work on the visual novel.

E3Background

For some of the early scenes of the visual novel, like here at E3, we had been using temporary backgrounds cropped from pictures. Fred has now gone back and replaced many of those with real drawings. He has some work to do there, but this makes it all look much better.

WordBubbles

We made a major step forward in the visual novel from a technical standpoint. Shadow figured out how to replace the Ren’py visual-novel-style overlay box for text with comic-style word bubbles. It looks great and makes the visual novel feel even more like the comic.

WarmthColor1

Fred did a lot of coloring for the first installment of Warmth and is getting close to finished. He has most of the hard work done and only has two more pages to go. It looks awfully nice, I think.

OmakePirogoeth

Fred also made good progress on the omake for between Megatokyo chapters 11 and 12. He has the drawings done and colored for the first installment. He just needs to assemble it, and it should be going up once he finishes posting the current series of DPD character development sketches.

DpdArtPrints

Speaking of the DPD character sketches, Fred will have Fine Art Prints available in the Megagear store today. He would have had them up earlier, but his good printer has been leaking magenta ink, which has taken a lot of cleanup and maintenance time.

6148-comic0779-2-2

Fred has also put some more very nice original art from the Megatokyo comic up in the Megagear store. If you can afford it, they are very nice, and it’s a great way to help support Fred and MT.

We are still making progress on the visual novel, if slower than we would all like. Thank you for your patience. For the 2nd anniversary of the kickstarter in July, we plan to release a preview of what we have done so far to folks who made beta-tester level contributions. It is a long way from finished, but we think you’ll like what we have done.

Bookstore

Fred made some good progress on a number of fronts these past few weeks, including the Visual Novel. But since he has so many projects going at once, he’s spread a little thin.

LargoDrunkBookstore

We made some progress on the Visual Novel. Fred went back and cleaned up a number of missing Largo and Tsubasa drawings. Then he did some of the backgrounds and other artwork for the bookstore scene where we first meet Yuki, Asako, and Mami. The purple squares you see are our reminder that some character images need checked yet. They will be removed once Fred has given them the final seal of approval.

BookRain

Shadow took some of Fred’s drawings and made a nice little animation in Renpy for when Piro knocks over the table of books.

Warmth ep1p4

Fred made a lot of progress on Warmth. He got some good final coloring done, the dialogue laid in, and a synopsis finished for submission. Things aren’t finalized yet, but the publisher he’s talking to sounds very happy with it.

CharacterDev Colored

Fred continued work on his character development sketches. He did Ayanokouji and started Ninamori, to finish off Junko’s posse of friends. Then he started coloring them, which looks very nice. These should be up for sale in the Megagear store soon.

DireWater

Chemi’s latest Endgames novel Dire Water was released a couple of weeks ago. This one features Sunay, who is Mugi’s Endgames character. If you haven’t picked it up yet, you can buy it in paperback, or for the Kindle or Nook.

Now that Warmth is in a good place for the moment, Fred’s plan over the next few weeks is to concentrate on the Visual Novel, the between-chapters MegaTokyo omake, and some more artwork for the Megagear store. You can watch a lot of this work live as it happens by tuning in to Fred’s Twitch livedraws.

The Visual Novel is coming along, but very slowly. For the second anniversary of the Kickstarter in July, we’re planning to release a preview of what we have so far, so y’all can get a good sense of how the game is looking.  I think you are going to really like it. Thank you for your support and for your patience.

Dire Water

Fred made decent progress in the last few weeks on all the various projects he’s trying to get done at the same time, including some nice work on the visual novel.

DireWater

One of the big things he finished was the cover to Chemi’s new Megatokyo Endgames novel Dire Water, which will be available in paperback, Kindle, and Nook on March 13. This book focuses on Sunay, who is Mugi’s Endgames character. Give it a try, I really enjoyed the last one.

WarmthColor1

Fred also finished the artwork for the first 8 pages of the reboot of Warmth and started some coloring work. He still needs to finish the coloring and lay in the dialog, but it’s looking pretty good.

Roppongi1Roppongi2

Fred got back to work on the visual novel, cranking out some backgrounds. Above you can see two from Piro’s wanderings in Roppongi.

Tounomoto

Fred also continued his series of character development sketches. This is Tounomoto (aka poofy-pigtail girl). She’s one of Junko’s posse and has been seen a number of times in Megatokyo, though not yet named in-comic. Fred’s artwork often drives his story ideas, and he says he has a good story go with this sketch as well.

OriginalArtsFeb15

And finally, a reminder that there are a number of one-of-a-kind original arts available in the Megagear store. There are still some pretty iconic scenes left, and this is a great way to help support MT.

Busy busy busy

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.

Taisiya Truck

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.

Mumu and Mami

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.

Miho Blanket

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.

Mugi Blankets

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.