2012 Schedule

Small Press Expo
Baltimore, MD
September 15-16

Jet City Comic Show
Seattle, WA
September 22

Possibles:

Stumptown
Portland, OR
April 28-29

Emerald City
2013

Bellingham CC
October

AkiCon
October

I finished an obnoxiously long work week (56 hours is no fun), and I'm so glad I pushed to get ahead on pages the week before, because it means I had SOMETHING to show you all this past week. I apologize for the unfinished quality of these pages, but Em and I are really gung-ho to keep things moving, and I'd rather have lame updates than no updates. That being said, I finished thumbnails and planning for Chapter 4 during my lunches this past week, and that is good to go very soon!

I'll actually be hitting my 100th page soon! Isn't that awesome? If ever I was hinting for fanart, this is a hint. I would love you, show your work on the main site and did I mention love you forever? :3

I know I use the "I'm Dead" avatar a little too often, but that seems to have been my state of being for the last 6 months. I took a look, and my last comic page update was in JULY. Yikes! No wonder I feel like I haven't gotten anything done! But I should remind you (and myself) that I completed all the coloring on Jikoshia Chapter 1 in a single month, fixed and prepared everything to print Aspect Chapters 1 and 2 (which included shading 10 pages that had been lost in archiving) And also COMPLETED the 30 characters challenge this year! Creating a plethora of new characters for my side project, which I'm officially announcing the title of: Issendoth: Reclaiming Himmerd

I have another story I'm considering working on as well, but that will depend on how much my wits get frayed by this holiday season. Being a print monkey does mean that I will have less and less to do as Christmas and New Years approaches, though, so expect some more regular updates from me in the near future.

Thanks again for being here to read this. The idea that people appreciate my work gives me a warm little spot in that lump of coal that serves as my heart :)

Getting the printed proof sample from Ka-Blam has taken MUCH longer than anticipated. Even after my PayPal payment went through, it took 12 days before it even shipped, and that takes another 3. So I'm looking at POSSIBLY having it in hand today, and at worst, Monday, which means it has taken TWICE as long as advertised on their site for the print.

The downside of this is that I have decided NOT to get a print edition done in time for SPX on the east coast. I'm very sorry for this, but I will be starting preorders for Vol 1 as soon as I can work out the best way to add a Paypal button. The preorders will go on from the point the link start on the Aspect homepage until Sept 10th or 15th. At that point, I'll place the first order through Ka-Blam, and set it for their standard turnaround of 28 days. At that point, they'll ship to me, and I sign and doodle however people request on their order. Then they'll ship out to all you lucky customers. After Sept 10th or 15th (I'll see what date looks good after I finally receive my first print...) no more signed copies will be available outside of Conventions and appearances.

On that note. I'm looking in to making some Convention appearances in the next year. With this published copy of the first two chapters, and my big push to help Em finish Chapter 1 of her copy, I've really decided that comics are what I want to do. I want to make some plans for the progression of the comic, and start producing some merchandise that people actually want to see. Most of all, I want to try and explore ways to get the comic out there, and get more people reading it. That's the most important thing, after all.

1. Look at all those updates! wowiie!

2. All those updates will likely slow to a halt again in the near future.

3. *dodges tomatoes being thrown at her* argh! Hey, stop! I get plenty of vitamin C on my own!!

4. My partner in crime Almighty M sent me a proposition to finish the remake of chapter 1 of her comic in the next month! That means a PAGE a DAY for a month! She's even offering to pay me for my shading time, AND it means we'll finally have completed something that goes to print! Neat, huh?

So long story short, Small Press Expo out in Maryland offered M a table that had been declined last minute. She's getting some of her buds together on that table, I'm helping them arrange to get a booth banner printed, and we're trying to round up swag! For those who are excited at the prospect of seeing both of us, I'm sorry, but I live in Seattle, and my husband is once again out of a job.

No pity. No pity. Calm down. We're doing okay, that's what unemployment's for. But for now it means I can chip in free time, but not the kinda cash it would take to go meet up with my cohort on the east coast. So if you're in the area over there, go check out the Square City Comics Booth at SPX! Wayward Studios will make a small showing, and there might be little freebies from us like when we gave out postcards last year.

So I guess everyone deserves a little explanation of the events of the past few months. This is partially a summary for myself as well. We began the year with several deaths in my friends' family. Christmas was hectic because my husband's contract start-date kept getting moved back, and money is always tight on unemployment. We went through January and Febrtuary hesitantly, and around the end of February, his car died. Either the crankshaft broke or the pistons bent, but the dealership said it would cost another thousand dollars just to break the engine open to see what the problem was, and Saturn claimed that their recall only covered replacing the engine ONCE, so we were borked.

Another came our friend Nick, who offered to sell us his dad's old car. I tried selling some stocks I've had for ten years (literally long before I was legal age to actually SELL them!) and after two weeks banging my head against the wall with PG&E, realized that it wouldn't happen soon. Nick was nice enough to strike a payment deal with us, and then I found out that my friend (same one whose family had been dying off) owed 500 bucks to her ex-mother-in-law in Missourri, who was threatening to toss her stuff out. I set off on a whirlwind of frustrating phone calls with the dragon-lady (not a chinese slur, this lady was just a bitch) which culminated in a week-long road trip to there and back, a three hour phone argument with U-Haul, 2k in lost money, and lots and lots of frustration.

When I got back, work jostled between insanely busy and dead-slow. I still didn't have chapter 3 entirely ready to update, and when I finally get the color cover up, I get assaulted by comments asking if the entire comic will be in color from now on. To which I go, "Huh? I don't have time for that!"

And then AlmightyM says exactly what I've been thinking sarcastically for a long time, "Man, your coloring is GOOD Tsi! We should team up!"

"Haha!" I respond. "Right, I barely have time for my own comic! I can't color both of ours! You'd have to do all the flatting or something!"

"Really? I love flatting!" She types back.

"..." My brain spins. "I hate flatting..." I type back hesitantly.

"I always have trouble with the shading-" She says, as if reading my mind.

"I love shading..." I respond, as if reading hers.

And after a few test-pages, a wonderful partnership is born! Unfortunately I'm down to 1-page-a-week. But man, they're shiny pages!

And while this is happening, I spend a month back and forth trying to get a credit-union account set up, move from one apartment to another, while moving my friend Tech OUT, accidentally stumble into a new job (That I start Monday! Hooray!), deal with the bullshit of the job I'm leaving, etc. etc.

Now, as life is finally settling down, I'm looking around and not feeling too bad. Hopefully my roomie will be getting into college, maybe something better will come along for my husband too, and even our cat is finally chilling out in the new apartment. Did I mention it has a bigger porch? And growing season is just starting :3

My life in the past two weeks has just been a huge series of , "Really? Something ELSE Has to get done in the next month?" life has been busy to say the least. I'm sorry the updates of Aspect have gone so haywire, but I have a lot of things I need to get back in order. Luckily, one of those things fell in line today when We finally located a decent apartment. Next weekend I'm helping my parents move their storefront, and two weeks after that I'll be driving to Illinois to help my friend get her stuff before it's destroyed. A week after that? I have to move my OWN stuff into the new apartment! Life isn't slowing down until April. Here's hoping I don't explode in the meantime.

So apparently my husband's car has a dud engine AGAIN at only 90k miles. The timing chain is broken again, and Saturn has once again refused to admit fault. Unfortunately, the class action lawsuit that has been started about this part is stalled because the company declared bankruptcy >_< so we're a little f'ed. And I've been pacing around the house with muscle stress in my shoulders bad enough to make my hands go numb (no joke). But our friend Nick's dad happened to be wanting to sell his old Impala, and I have some stocks my grandpa gave me that will barely cover all the costs, so it all works out okay. But that's why I didn't really get ANYTHING useful done this weekend. I'm also still scrambling ot get our new apartment location figured out, the family store move is looming, and I was still sick last week.

The only plus side? Car insurance is SURE to go down, because the "new" car has about 70k more miles on it (but we know the owner and we can just beat Nick up if it's a lemon, mwahah). And I rode it in while my hubby test drove it with Nick. It's reaaaaally comfy on the inside. We both have a good feeling about it.

So, the Holidays ended well, shook my hand and bid me farewell. Then they snuck up behind me as I was on my way home and beat me with a metal baseball bat.

My cat died. My car needs maintenance. I just got done with a week of horrendous overtime printing excessively huge CRAP art, I'm stuck with my mental wheels spinning on chapter 3, and we'll probably have to move our apartment again in two months. *sigh* Also, we have to move my parents' business, with it's untold number of DVDs, merch, and other anime and manga related goods. Not to mention the amount of stuff my parents have stashed at said business for convenience. Hopefully the internet treats ANIMEniacs more kindly in the future.

In other news, If you haven't noticed the new layout, then take a quick look around. Most of the facilities are the same, but with a slick new paint job and some nice rounded corners (unless you're using Internet Explorer. In which case, tsk tsk). I'll try to update the chapters page and the characters page sometime soon, as well as getting the forum up and running so you can once again kibitz about the most recent page or my lack of updates.

In other news, is it a good or bad sign that I audibly 'squeed' when I saw Blind Ferret on the list of people bidding on ads for this site? Between that and a few words of encouragement from my husband, I'm definitely feeling more energized about this comic.

So the holidays have come and mostly gone... I'm happy with my progress this past year, and looking into the next year over the top of several weeks of lacking updates. Aside form just being TIRED, I've been busy, broke, and stressed. Presents are all handed out, and though I couldn't afford many for other people, I baked and baked and baked, and tried to apologize despite the constant reassurance that "They understand that funds are tight this year".

The hubby will hopefully be starting work at Microsoft again around Jan 5th (unfortunately two weeks later than the contract company originally anticipated! Oh well...), which should stabilize finances, but then we'll just be looking forward to the long decline into housing limbo as our 9 month lease lets up, and with it, possibly our roomate... oh dear.

As for the comic? I'm ironing out some details for chapter 3, thinking a little further ahead in the story, and generally biting my nails about my lack of talent while simultaneously trying to reassure myself that it's a good effort...

No I'm not restarting. F that. But I am thinking of how to negotiate between my impressions of my characters and story, what I've produced, and what the bleep I'm DOING with this whole story, y'know? As I told my husband, who's tip-toeing into working on a video game in his spare time, "Don't do what I did, honey. Make a defined, SMALL game. Start a project you can see the end of. Don't be like me and fall in love with an open-ended concept."

Well, that's how the last few weeks have been. Since people like to know these things: the Christmas haul was A Kindle, a bunch of DVDs, a brush-painting set, an AWESOME coat, two more coats for Rikki and the hubby, as well as a hat each for them, two video games, some books. Gods... I can't keep track. Stuff! Okay! I did stuff, got stressed about stuff, and got stuff! Bah humbug and merry holidays! I'm going back to bed until next year!

So, It's been constantly busy for me lately. Visiting people baking cookies. Chores. Cookies. Work. Cookies. Notice I'm mentioning cookies a lot? Well I've been doing a LOT of baking! I mean TONS of baking! And somehow between all the baking I've done, I don't actually have much leftover for myself XD

No, I'm not busy at work. No, I'm not medically incapacitated. I've just been tired, and life keeps throwing curve balls at me. I finally had to take our younger cat into the vet because the fleas had gotten so bad he was becoming emaciated! :( And I've had a few headaches in the last week. One of which is labelled "PEO". They hav a charity auction once a year, and I have no money to make up a gift basket, nor do I have any idea what to donate to sell for money. I plan to make goodies, but after that vet visit, I don't even have money for special ingredients to make lots of yummies. *sigh*

So I've just been kind of mentally drained. There WILL be a Thursday update of some sort though, I promise you!

So there's apparently a Webcomics list awards nomination thing going on. Apparently only other webcomic creators can nominate people for this, and then it's judged by other webcomics people...

Anyone care to nominate me for anything?

Here's the livestream address:
http://livestre.am/qyUo
Link
See me there at 6pm!

So I'm going to try switching over to LiveStream. AlmightyM reports good luck with their programs compared to UStream. I'm going to start around 6pm Pacific this time, and I'll post a link when I've got the details ironed out. I'll be working on the comic as usual. PS - check out the 30 Characters link to the right of the comic. I'm participating this year amongst a bunch of very talented artists! :)

This has so far been the laziest, best weekend that I haven't had in a while.

Let me be more specific. I woke up kinda earlier (7am ish) on Saturday, and realized something profound. I DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING THIS WEEKEND. Once that dawned on me, things spiralled around my brain for a while. Given that I don't have TOO much free money, but near-inifinite local options, what do I wanna do?

So I organized the DVD shelf finally, and started to organize the book shelves. Started to rearrange boxes in the workroom (which is still not open enough to actually be WORKED in. Sigh) Went to Top Pot, bringing back a box of donuts and the empty cup from a heavenly white-mocha (they make the absolute best IMO)

Tech cleaned up the kitchen, and we all talked about going to see Scott Pilgrim again now that it was in the 3$ theatre.

And I proposed Sushi. Dan had recommended a fairly-priced tasty place nearby, and after some prodding, even got my sick husband to tag along. This is a feat, because he's A) mildly allergic to all things that breathe water, and B) kinda sick right now, and thus, pissy.

But we went for sushi, and the first round we got him some potato Katsu (breaded-fried potato chunks. nom!) and we all got a different kind of sushi and drink (Plum wine for me, Whiskey for Tech and Nick) At first I tried the tuna roll I ordered, and was kinda underimpressed. I tried the Kin Shi (mixed tuna/crab/ something?) And was still underimpressed. It was good but bland.

But Nick had ordered something called Red Dragon rolls. Tuna with spice, over snow crab (not the immitation crab they'd placed in mine!), shrimp, and cucumber. I asked if I could try, and I did. And wow.

My life has been changed forever!

I mean it! It was like, a tiny gentle explosion of flavor in my mouth. And the texture brought it all together. And then I tried another one in soy sauce, and it was a hundred times better YET!

Oh yes. I think I have a new vice. And it involves raw fish. But the vice only came up to 60 dollars for 3 people, which included two round of drinks for everyone, and a split on a green tea ice cream plate. Well worth it in my mind. We also all divied up around 26 individual rolls of sushi.

So... Kanpai?