Things have eased up a bit more for Fred over the last couple of weeks, and he was able to get some good work done, including a couple of comics and some character work for the visual novel. You can read more in the Rant that Fred posted to the Megatokyo website here. It’s nice to having things moving again, and with Fred’s son starting school again soon, we’re hoping to get some real momentum going.

Fred drew all of the Erikas for Piro’s first day at Megagamers. Erika is wearing cosplay of Mai Kawasumi from Kanon there. Nice to finally see Erika in the game.

Fred also drew a few more Yuki, Asako, Mami, and Tsubasas where we thought they would help. The way we have been working is that Fred created thumbnail storyboards for how he wanted scenes to look, then I script that into Renpy and we give him a ToDo list of basic character drawings, backgrounds, etc. Fred draws those up and adds some additional poses or expressions as ideas strike him. We integrate those into the game, and then go back and add a few more where we all think they’re needed. It seems to be working reasonably well so far.

Fred also got started drawing the Pings for the first day at Megagamers and the following night and morning. To the right of that Twitch screenshot, you can see Fred’s current ToDo list. We have actually reached the end of Book 1 for the Piro canon route with the ToDo list, which feels pretty good. Fred still needs to actually draw all that stuff — tons of work to do yet, but at least this is a milestone that is in sight now.

Fred also storyboarded the OP for the Piro route. DarkMorford is going use AfterEffects to produce the whole thing and add special effects and whatnot. The above gif was a quick sample that Fred put together to show DarkMorford the kind of thing he was looking for.

Unfortunately, development on the BakaQuake scene has hit a bit of a snag. Java had been planning to do it using the Quake 3 engine for Machinima but has struggled to find a decent editor that he can use. We will have to change gears and try another approach.

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.

Fred still has been busy these last few weeks dealing with issues related to the failing health of his parents, but he did get some good stuff done, including work on the visual novel.

For the visual novel, Fred got some good work done, including nice backgrounds for both outside and inside of the Megagamers store. This inside background from behind the counter will be used a lot, so Fred was careful to do things in layers to make it possible to put characters behind the counter or center island and to handle later scenes after the fanboys have trashed the store.

Fred also got a little more work done on part 2 of the omake kinetic novel. This flashback scene of Sunay at the beach should look familiar to anyone who has read Chemi’s Megatokyo Endgames novel “Fire Fox”.

And Fred also drew and colored some more character development drawings, including the crew of the ‘Save Point’, Piro and Kimiko on a scavenger hunt, and Doll Girl at the Cave of Evil reconstruction. Originals of these artworks and many comic panels (as well as some less expensive prints) are available in the Megagear store. Buying artwork is a great way to help support MegaTokyo.

The forum on the visual novel site has been swamped with bot-spam, which has overwhelmed our ability to handle it. We have temporarily put the forum into maintenance mode while we figure out what to do. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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.

Sorry for the delay in getting this update post out.

The last few weeks have been pretty rough for Megatokyo. The health of Fred’s parents has gone into steep decline since the latter part of last year, and especially over the last month or two. His father has a bad case of Parkinsons, to the point where he has difficultly eating and making himself understood. His mother’s increasing dementia has made her mean and uncooperative (as sometimes happens), which has made her other serious health problems more difficult to handle. Fred had been spending a lot of time trying to help them live independently, and is now dealing with the hospitals, lawyers, care workers, accountants, city hall, and others as they try to move his mother into long-term care and arrange their affairs accordingly. This has made progress slow on all of Fred’s projects, including the comic and visual novel. Fred still has some things to do there over the next couple of weeks, but he’s through the worst of it now and should be back to regular production soon.

Fred did make some progress on the visual novel though. He drew some new computer backgrounds for the scenes in Tsubasa’s apartment that bracket BakaQuake. And he also drew Hitomi-chan, who is from the game that Piro is playing the next morning. Shadow added some nice animations for when Piro checks and deletes all his emails (including Yuki’s). Next up should be our first scenes at Megagamers.

The BakaQuake scene itself got off to a slow start as we struggled to find textures and a game engine that would do what we want and didn’t have legal or IP issues. We think we have that figured out now, and Java has things moving forward. We don’t have any good screenshots to show for this update, but hopefully next time.

Fred also drew a couple more character development sketches. There was a very nice Asako in a Dr Strangelove tribute, and also DollGirl who’s helping with rebuilding the Cave of Evil after Largo’s weaponized rickroll.

I would like to apologize for the current state of the visual novel forum. It is so overwhelmed with bot-spam that I just couldn’t keep up with it. I have been in despair over what to do. We’re going to try to put our heads together in a couple of weeks and see whether we need to nuke it and start over, or if there is some way we can salvage some of it.

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 very much for your patience and support.

Fred had some good and some bad over the last few weeks. He slipped from his goal of weekly comics, but he did get a lot more finalized on the upcoming omnibus, finished the cover for Chemi’s new Megatokyo Endgames novel, and made some nice progress on the Visual Novel.

Fred finished up the Railcard scene, Piro’s walk back to the apartment, and Largo’s l33t n3kk1d skillz. They look really good, and it feels great to be making good progress again.

Next up is the BakaQuake scene, which Fred fully storyboarded out. We’re hoping to do something really neat with this. It’s much more ambitious than the rest of the team had anticipated, but it’s going to be a lot of fun (and work) making it happen. Fortunately, most of that work is something the team can do. Which means Fred should be moving on to Piro’s first visit to Megagamers next.

Chemi released his latest Megatokyo Endgames novel “The Daynish Campaign”, which tells more of Pirogoeth’s story. It’s available now at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The Endgames books are a lot of fun. Give them a try.

Fred also did some new story concept art, with the nice Pirogoeth above and the start of a new “Unreasonably Comfy” series, this one staring Mugi and Yaku. Originals of these artworks and many comic panels (as well as some less expensive prints) are available in the Megagear store. Buying artwork is a great way to help support MegaTokyo.

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.

Only a little progress on the visual novel in the last few weeks as Fred spent a lot of time trying to finish up prep work for the Megatokyo Omnibus 2, keep up regular comic production, and deal with his ongoing family health issues. He is nearly done with the omnibus now, and we hope to be doing more visual novel work soon.

A little progress was made on the visual novel, though. DarkMorford got started on the opening video for the Piro route, using some of the artwork that Fred has already made plus a nice new song from TheShaggyFreak featuring Miku. We also had people scouring the interwebs to find some old MegaTokyo character Quake mods. We’re hoping to be able to use those for the upcoming BakaQuake scene, if we can track down the original creators and get permission.

I hadn’t realized quite how much work is involved in getting a book ready for publication, even for a collection like the MT Omnibus 2. Fred spent a lot of time finding and fixing up old comics and artwork, laying out what should be included and how it should be arranged in a giant spreadsheet, and creating some new items where needed.

One of the big items there was extending the front cover he had made for the Omnibus 2 to wrap around the spine and cover the back as well. He’s not quite done with the omnibus, but he’s close, and is eager to get back to visual novel work once this is done.

Also book-related, Fred finished the cover artwork for Chemi’s next Megatokyo Endgames novel, “The Daynish Campaign”, which is tentatively scheduled for release on May 20.

Fred does most of his drawing work live on Twitch, and he’s recently created Miho and Mugi emotes for subscribers to his channel. Please join us for the livedraws. They are a lot of fun.

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

Fred spent a good bit of time over the last few weeks dealing with ongoing family health issues and moving years worth of accumulated stuff out of the warehouse space he rented to house his (now broken) t-shirt printer and other things for the megagear store. That has cut into his drawing time, delaying the latest comic and much else. But he did still managed to get some nice drawings done, including work on the visual novel, comic, and omnibus.

For the visual novel, Fred drew some more backgrounds. Above you can see the Inokashira rail line and a street in Kichijouji. These are both from Piro’s long walk back to the apartment after he gave his railcard to Kimiko.

Fred also drew a Stop! page for the end of the Omnibus 2, just to remind people that MegaTokyo doesn’t read right-to-left like manga does. Since this one features Asako, I’m almost scared to see what the dialogue is like.

Fred also drew and colored 4 new works in his Lost Wings series, which is set in the world of his old Circuitry omake, inspired by Haibane Renmei. He needed another one of these for the Omnibus 2, but it turned out so well that he drew 3 more. I think these are his best drawing work yet. The originals are mostly sold now, but he should have prints available in the megagear store soon.

The warehouse move should be finished today, which should let him then finish the current comic and get back to a weekly schedule. After a few more days work to finish off the Omnibus 2, Fred plans to concentrate on visual novel work. As always, you can watch him do this live on Twitch.

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

There were more of the usual life difficulties for Fred over the last few weeks. But in spite of that, he got a decent amount of work done on the comic, visual novel, omnibus, and other artwork.

Fred made more progress on the railcard scene for the visual novel. He drew some more poses and expressions for Kimiko, and also colored the CG event above. He still needs to do a little scanning and cleanup, but then we’ll be on to Piro’s long walk back to the apartment.

Fred also continued to put out comics on a regular basis. He hasn’t quite met his one per week goal so far this year, but he has been pretty close. It has been years since he has been able to sustain this kind of comic pace, and we’re all hoping it keeps coming.

Fred spent a lot of time over the last few weeks getting Omnibus volume 2 ready for production. He still has a little writing to do and a Stop! page to draw, but the vast majority is off to Dark Horse now. It is already up for preorder at Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and other booksellers.

Fred also drew and colored the very nice N1nj4 and Foxgirl above. Fred draws in pencil, then scans and prints if he wants to color. The Copic markers he uses would smear the pencil otherwise, and Fred doesn’t ink. Fred gets a lot of his story ideas through drawing, so these are a big part of the comic planning process. The originals of this drawing have already sold from the Megagear store, but there are a lot of other originals artwork and prints still available.

We are still plugging away at the visual novel, if at a much slower pace than we would all like. Sorry this is taking so long. Thank you all very much for your patience and for your support.

It was another rough couple of weeks for Fred, as dealing with his parents’ health problems has taken up a lot of his time. He has struggled to meet his weekly comic goal, let alone have time to work on the visual novel and other projects. But that has started to ease up some lately. He got some visual novel work done this past week and will hopefully be back on track with regular production soon.

For the visual novel work, Fred got some work done on the bookbag search minigame and much of the scene where Piro gives Kimiko his railcard. Above you can see the outside of Takaido railstation.

And here are a series of Kimikos showing her reactions for part of the railcard scene.

This visual novel has really become like drawing the entire comic all over again, but with the better (and much more time-consuming) artwork that Fred is capable of now, and with significantly more artwork in total. The ‘slow animation’ approach Fred is taking to this visual novel looks great, but it requires more character poses, expressions, and such than the comic did. And where comic panels can often have limited or no background, that doesn’t look right in the visual novel. As we get further into the comic, scenes will stay in places like Megagamers for longer periods and we should be able to reuse some artwork. But the early part of the story jumps around so much that Fred is having to draw everything from scratch. If you want some interesting topic like why does everyone hate imagine dragons, you can read this article for more information.

Fred streams most of his drawing work on Twitch, so you can watch the comic, visual novel, and other work happen live. For those who ordered Kimiko blankets from the Megagear store, Fred has shipped some of them out already and hopes to have them all shipped over the next couple of weeks.

Sorry the visual novel is taking so long. Thank you all again for your patience and support.

Sorry for the late update post. Fred has got a good bit done over the last few weeks, but not so much on the Visual Novel. The big thing that Fred has been doing lately is putting out Megatokyo comics again on just about a weekly basis. In the last few, we’ve seen what looks like a guest appearance by Nurse Joy and the introduction of Mugi’s daughter Yakugashi. Fred’s plan for this year is to do at least one comic per week, then try to tackle all his other projects in the time remaining.

One of those other projects is Fred’s new b-comic ‘Warmth’. He got the pencil drawings and most of the photoshop cleanup done for chapter 2. Coloring with copic markers will be next, and then on to chapter 3. You can watch Fred do this and just about all of his other drawing work live on twitch.

Another project that is making some slow progress is the 2nd chapter of the omake kinetic novel. Chemi, Shadow, and I did some more first pass scripting, and Fred has started to review and edit. We’re hopeful this will be ready before too much longer.

Fred also got some more concept artwork done, including the ones with Junko’s posse and Mugi above. Fred did a lot of this kind of thing over the last year, in part to improve his coloring skills. This past week, he made about 20 of these prints available in the Megagear store.

Speaking of the Megagear store, the new Kimiko blankets arrived at MT world headquarters this week. It will take him a few weeks to get them all mailed out to people who ordered.

Fred is anxious to get back to work on the MT Visual Novel again. As usual, he has more projects than time to do it. But we’re also excited that comic production is going well again. Once Fred is really back in the groove there, we’re hopeful that will leave more time for Visual Novel work.

Sorry this is taking so long. Thank you all once again for your support and patience.

Not much progress on the Visual Novel over the last few weeks as Fred has been trying to get some other projects wrapped up in preparation for restarting Megatokyo comics. We did have some more feedback from testers of the Pencil Test beta. We’re glad you all seem to like it, and we appreciate the constructive feedback. Thank you very much.

Fred intends to start chapter 12 of Megatokyo in December “come hell or high water”. When he does, he plans to pump out comics on a more regular basis than he has for a while. To help make that happen, he has been trying to clear the decks somewhat on his other projects to leave himself more time for comics.

The omake has taken so much more time than planned that Fred has finally made the hard decision that he can no longer delay chapter 12 comics in order to finish it. He does plan to finish it, eventually. Chemi, Shadow, and I have stepped in to do more, under Fred’s direction, to try to help get it finished while freeing Fred to spend more time on other things. Part 2 is now closer to done, but still needs some final editing and tweaking.

Fred was at Youmacon in Detroit over Halloween, for which he made the artwork for both the staff t-shirts and the cover of the Detroit Metro Times.

He got the cover artwork done for the 2nd Megatokyo Omnibus. This one will cover volumes 4-6 and should be released later in 2016.

Fred also made more progress on Warmth, with the hopes that he can get the first installment done and off to DarkHorse soon, leaving one less thing on his plate when he restarts the Megatokyo comics.

The samples for the new Kimiko ‘Sad Girl in Snow’ blanket came back from the manufacturer, and they look very nice. These are available by preorder only, he can’t afford to stock them. Preorders are open until November 20th on Megagear.

And finally, Fred got a new fine art printer, after his old one finally died. Fred would like to apologize to all those who ordered fine art prints. With the new printer in place, he finally has all those cranked out and should be shipping orders soon.

As usual, we’re sorry the visual novel is taking so long. Thank you very much for your support and your patience.