Well, as you can see, we now welcome Seraphim to the Megatokyo world. Seraphim, of course, is the MT persona of my girlfriend Sarah - anything good about my rather pathetic wit was developed under her tutelage, so it only seemed fit that she have some part in the comic. On Wednesday, one of sarah's childhood cats passed away, and I just wanted to pay tribute to poor little Bullet (who we usually called "Bullito"). Yesterday was a sad day. Loosing a pet is like loosing a family member and a good friend. Last year my childhood cat Jake passed away and it took me a long time to get over it, it's always very sad stuff.

One unfortunate facts (or is it an appealing feature?) of webcomics is that there is a tendency for the real people in your lives to sneak into the comics. Greg over at Real Life makes no bones about it. "Wanna be a character? sure!" :P We at MT borrow, steal, tweak, adjust, twist and totally change bits and pieces of the people around us however we see fit. The lines between our characters and ourselves is rather blurred. Piro is me but its not me. Largo is ... er, lets not go there. Tsubasa occasionally 'diets' for weeks at a time to support his TLS habit. Dom and Ed are evil IRC bots, i think... Well, all writers do this - we are just a little more blatant about it. Neither Kimiko or Erika are really anything like Sarah (if anything, she's a little of both) but when she commented to me "y'know, maybe i could be your little conscience, sitting on your shoulder with little wings" - bingo. The development sketch for Seraphim is a little 1" x 2" post-it note attached to my work computer. :)

The other thing about online comics is that they can't help but reflect bits and pieces of your real life. The comic itself has a life of its own - it reacts to things in my life, largo's life, and the forums too. Beyond this, there is the online comic community itself - and the extended communities for both gamers and anime fans. It all has it's effects. You all may have noticed, but there's never a dull moment in my life. I could use a few, really.

One aspect of that growth is the art itself. Up till now, I've been drawing the strips, then tracing them before scanning - it was a cleaners look and helped cover up scribbles and mistakes that i made in the drawings. Recently, tho, I've been getting comfortable enough with drawing these guys that I've just sat down and... well, drew the frames. both Wed and Fri's strip were drawn flat out, without any tracing or transfer. To me, this is better - not only because it's faster, but because you always loose something in the transfer. We'll see how this works - it lets me add more detail and, well, lets me get more sleep (supposedly)

oh, the screenshot? ^_^ heheh. nothing... kawaii, ne?