Friday - October 6, 2000
[Piro] - 18:13:00 - [link here]
Ah, I'm a little late with today's rant - gomen. It was a really long hard week, and it's taking me a little bit to recover from it. I already know that next week will be busy, so i am endeavoring to get ahead this weekend. The goal - get the strips done ahead of time for once.
yea, right.
I was really happy to finally introduce the girls - even tho its a rather limited introduction, and we won't see them again for a while (chuckle - i am an evil person, i know) Someone commented in the forums that it was good to have the girls in there as a 'main squeeze' - ahhh... it doesn't really work that way. Squeezing Erika would be bad for your health, and Kimiko... well, you'll see. :)
Some of the emails i have received have said something along the line that MT was really an 'online manga.' This is pretty accurate, i think. It's been my goal from the start. A normal manga series will run 10-12 pages once a week in large, phone-book sized mags like Ribbon or Shounen Jump. A 'Manga-ka' (that's 'manga artist') and his/her studio (if they have help) has to pump out a slew of pages every week to meet this pace. Full page American comics run about twice that many pages but only publish once a month. I do 3 strips a week. The pace for all of these is different, and these are established, acceptable runs.
the biggest problem with any story based comic is the ability to pump out episodes fast enough to maintain the interest of the readers. I never did the 'one manga sheet a month' shtick because it just seemed to really not work well for story flow. (and it is one of the main stumbling blocks for 'warmth') The challenge for me is how to tell a good story in this kind of format - without making people wait three months for the next installment. I am trying to do something that is in between a online comic and a true manga series. Megatokyo is the first experiment - what i learn from this i can apply to 'warmth'. I'm sure our faithful readers if we are doing a good job or not. :)
I got home early yesterday and was in a very pleasant, dreamy, tired but not tired-with-a-headache state. I plowed my arm into the Tape Pile (tm) and pulled up a random tape, popped it in the VCR, and curled up with a hot mug of tea. Lo and behold I had grabbed a tape of Akazukin Cha Cha (Red Riding Hood Cha Cha), one of the funniest and cutes shows EVER. Wai! I sometimes forget where some of my influence comes from. The insanity, the over the top situations, the characters! wai! NO ONE says 'wai!' like Cha Cha! Cha Cha is like one of the best shows EVER. If you get a chance, dig out Cha Cha 1-4 and give it a watch. I'm gonna dig for the OAV series, the OAV kills me... I wanna go to magic school!
I did a little gift art last night for Greg Dean over at Real Life, just for the heck of it. Heck, I cameo anime and manga series all the time - why not online comics? Greg is a huge lain fan, so I had a little fun with it. A little something for all of us mired in the wired. ^_^ Hope you like it, Greg.
Sunday - October 8, 2000
[Largo] - 00:20:00 - [link here]
I reinstalled my operating system and all my applications, and now a smiling paperclip is staring at me. This is not acceptable. I am now running Windows 2000, don't ask why because I really don't have a good answer.
This weekend I went binge spending at my local gaming crack shop. I finally picked up Crimson Skies. After listening to everyone else rant on how sweet this game was, I felt it was my sworn duty as "Ace Largo" to see this, for myself.
About an hour later, I realized I should change my name to "Parachute Largo." Like any good gamer, I blamed all my inadequacies on my equipment and ran to my local Gamestop store to buy the Cadillac of joysticks, the MS Sidewinder Force Feedback 2, (say that ten times fast.) In the store I checked the box to make sure it was compatible with Windows 2000, it was! Lucky!
Getting home I plugged it into my pc, installed it - and jumped back into Crimson Skies, ready to blow something up. Unfortunately, the new stick didn't work. I had come to find that though it says it works with Windows 2000, it doesn't … at least not yet. This put me in a really sour mode for the rest of the day.
Not really wanting to deal with trying to make the new stick work, I went back to using my old one, a Logitech Wingman Force Feedback. It's a good stick, though it doesn't have rudder control. Something that would have really come in handy for Mechwarrior 4.
Crimson Skies is a rocking game, the setting takes place in the late 1930s in a world where the United States dissolved long ago - and is dominated by air pirates and warring kingdoms who use planes and zeppelins to assert their control over the now not so friendly skies. Basically it's a lot like today except air pirates are much nicer then American Airlines.The single player is played out in a really over the top storyline. To give you an idea of how square jawed and absurd the dialogue is - I don't even think Bruce Campbell could pull off some of the hero's dialogue. I think "corny" is a good word here. Though I'm not knocking it - it's fun! It's really cool to play a game like this, like the planes - the acting is done in the same classic style motif where the main character is unbeatable, and he makes sure everyone is well aware of that fact. I haven't had a chance to try out the multiplayer yet, though I was promised a bout with Tycho "Wings" Brahe the next time I run into him.
Switching gears - I retired to watching a new DVD I had got in, called "Dual.", Dual is a AIC show, marked by the same old character designs that appear in just about every AIC/Pioneer title. Still the show is sweet, A lot like Evangelion, except minus the pretentious snooty artsy crappy depressing stuff. Basically it's just a happy robot show. I recommend Dual to all you people who would rather watch something uplifting and that won't make you suicidal.
That damn paperclip is still starring at me, if he so much as blinks I'm going to shoot him…
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