Back from Haitus
It’s been a while since I’ve made a formal post. Here’s what’s been happening…
- Went to Japan
- Enjoyed turkey via Thanksgiving
- Added 20 more notecards to the Oyasumi Yumiko story/outline
- Wake up to my Mac Pro being out of commission
- Planned revival of my personal blog
The first thing, Japan was great – it’s a wonderful, safe country that I recommend everyone travel to at least once in their lifetime. The trip marks my second time over there, and we’re already trying to plan to go back again. (though at some point I want to travel to Ireland, Italy, Machu Picchu, etc too… ^^;) I took 1000 photos, and that is no exaggeration… Though only about 500 were print worthy. If you’re ever curious about my trip send me a note, I’d be happy to answer any questions or give insight from a southern-gajin’s point of view.
Second thing, Thanksgiving was good. I got to eat turkey, dressing and try to catch up on sleep due to jetlag.
Third thing, I’m still working on the story! Yay! I’ve been steadily adding/deleting/changing/adapting plot points in the story, and what was once set up to be 3 major arcs has morphed from 4 to now 5. The addition of other arcs came really due to character development, each arc focusing on a specific character. During the process I realized I even had some characters I needed to just take out, as they were not necessary to drive the overall story along.
With Oyasumi Yumiko I want to seriously avoid some of the pitfalls other mangas have, especially Magical Girl stories. I want the story to move significantly along with every chapter – no random filler episodes… (okay.. maybe for holidays there might be a side story.. but it will be outside of the main story ;D)
Now on to the fourth thing – this was rather sudden and put a big kink into my plans. Last week I went out with a friend, came back home, checked my email then turned my monitor off and went to sleep. After a quiet, peaceful night I wake up and realize my computer isn’t working, and with every attempt at a restart I get… the dreaded… Gray Screen of Death/Kernel Panic on Startup. My Mac Pro is my baby, and a computer that is still great even for being 3 years old… (and really the reason I got it was so I could upgrade it over the years instead of buying a new one). After removing 3rd party ram, the harddrive, and doing many tests the realization is that it is a hardware issue and it will have to be serviced… Of course, its past 3 years, so I don’t have AppleCare, and this will be an out of pocket expense.
Apart from the expense, it’s also just a major blow to my creative work. While it can’t stop me from drawing, it will impede my design/planning work a little… still, I’m not entirely dismal… I have my harddrive backed up, so all my files are safe, and I can always plug my wacom and scanner into my laptop to do work.
Fifth thing! I will be regularly posting again on my design blog. It’s been dormant ever since I graduated, but lately I’ve realized I get a lot of nerdy things – and I just want to talk about them! Maybe you’ll find it interesting: Click here to visit!
As always, thanks for the support… I want to talk about the story, but I can’t do that just yet… don’t want to spoil any story before its done! However, I will be adding some character sketches soon once I install my scanner driver on my laptop- so stay tuned! 
Yume ni nare! (Become a dream!)
-Emily