I'm sure for those of you who are following the story, the past two weeks have been excruciatingly slow. For me, it's zoomed by way too fast. In fact, i can't believe it's friday. Ugh. Well, the good news is that Megatokyo returns on Monday, and we dive right back into the story. I got a lot done in the past two weeks, but i still have a LOT to do. I'm still very worried about my deadline, but I've done all i can to get closer to hitting it... we'll see how the next few weeks pan out.

If nothing else, the DPDs have been somewhat interesting, both in concept and the final works. There's a lot in them that is reflective of the shift in ideas for what i'm trying to make Circuity fully my own story. It also was interesting working on a 4 drawing sequence, playing with ideas and seeing how they played out. I hope you enjoyed them, even if they are a poor excuse for real comics. While at Sakuracon, I actually did a few other drawings similar to these (one of Ping, one of Yuki and a really small one of Erika) for the Charity Auction for the Make a Wish foundation. I believe they raised around $800, so i was pretty happy with that.

Aside from Charity auctions, i rarely sell or auction off my artwork unless i have a specific idea of what i want to do with the proceeds. When i started this set of 4, i actually did it with the thought that if they turned out ok i'd put them up for auction to fund a little something i'm planning for a certain someone (note that it's not Megatokyo related :P) I think these are pretty decent, so i'm going to go ahead and put them up on Ebay next week. I'll be auctioning each of them separately, so that's four chances to pick up one of these original pieces. Shh, don't tell Sarah. :)

In other news, you may have noticed that the forums have been down for several days now. The original plan was to take things down and upgrade the software to the latest version of IPB, but something keeps failing in the upgrade process. After several tries, we decided to go back to the last version on the current server (Nayuki) and try to discern what is going wrong by experimenting with new installs on our new server (Akiko). Loading up the old forums does take some time - the databases are pretty big. We figure it will take a day or so to finish loading the databases. Of course, this morning we were in the middle of doing that when power went out to the cabinet and we have to start over again. -_- We're hoping to have things up by Sunday.

The hardest thing i've had to do since i got back from Sakuracon was keep my inner fanboy in check. Way back in January of last year, after watching Kyoto Animation's AIR tv series (and fanboying over it) i wrote about how i felt it compared to the Kanon TV series by Toei Animation. I also expressed this wistful thought:

"All in all, i am very happy with the anime version of AIR. I just wish they had taken this approach with Kanon."

When i got back from Seattle, i found out to my inner fanboy's total delight that this implied wish that KyoAnime might someday do the same wonderful job with Kanon has come true. It has been officially announced that Kyoto Animation will be doing its own version of the Kanon series. Even better, i've read that they are planning 24 episodes! Maybe now Nayuki will get the attention she deserves (she got *shafted* in the Toei version, IMHO). There is a tiny little promo you can watch (here are some screenshots), and from the look of it, the visuals are making me very happy indeed. :P

yay :) (happy happy)

Yeah, yeah, i know. I'm sure you are sick of reading about Kanon and Air related stuffs on this website. In fact, i can hear the groans already as you look for a year full of Kanon anime fanboy gushing. Well too bad :P With a nickname like 'piro', what do you expect? :P