slr2moons

I've really flaked on the posting more often, huh? Sorry to say I lost an LJ friend recently, but I gained a new one. C: Can't really complain! Thank you to everyone who has kept me on their reading/friends list, even though I don't talk much here these days. :P

Work-wise, things are...interesting. I finished Natsume 17's first draft a few days early. Now I'm waiting on corrections. Voice 7 is almost done, nicely on time. For Seraph, the mad dash of all those chapters in a row is finally over this Monday with chapter 21--OMGYAY--and now I have a week off before it's time to letter the first of the now-monthly chapters, with #22. (Seraph is monthly in Japan, so it's monthly here now that we've caught up on all the previously published-in-Japan chapters.)

Sounds like things are in pretty good shape, right? Welp, now let me tell you about Clay. Clay 25 is running behind. The constant Seraph chapters were a real drain on my time, and now I'm paying for it. This volume of Clay is due on June 2nd, and it's going to be interesting meeting that. Particularly since I'm trying to have a life and see IRL friends more than twice a month. ^^;;

I have made one big change with Clay: in all the previous volumes, hand-drawn "organic" sound effects were original to every page. With all my other titles--all the way back to Nana--I save FX and reuse them where I can. It's a big time-saver. I figured Clay was too varied to try that, but the opposite is true. I've always said Clay is like busywork. When it comes to creating the English FX and retouching the artwork, Clay rarely makes me stop and think. It's straight-forward, and I have it down to a science. (Granted, a slow science, but yeah.) And thus, I've begun saving my organic Clay FX for use on more than one page. It's already saved me some good time, even in the ~20 pages I've done so far.

The vast majority of readers won't notice the reusing. For one thing, I don't reuse an FX within 50 pages of a previous use. In fact, I doubt anyone but me would ever know I started this, if I hadn't said it here! Heh. When 25 is released, feel free to play "spot the duplicate FX" and ask me if you're right. ^^V

But when Clay 25 is done, I have to scramble to finish Seraph volume 3, which is when I add FX for the GN version. Fun times.

I'm still hoping this summer will be good for me, since the previous three sucked.

This weekend, I saw two IRL friends! On Saturday, knastymike and I went to a German restaurant. It was DELICIOUS! I must go back, even though it's a little pricey, and a drive! YUM. Then today, I drove to mab's house and we walked around her neighborhood and talked fandom, and house buying, and all sorts of fun stuff. ^^

A satisfying weekend, all around! And now, back to Clay 25. Wheeee!