< Piro >

For Anime Expo a few weeks ago I pulled together two new shirt designs to bring to the show - the Endgames design and the 3D Largo design, which people seemed to respond to pretty well at the show. These two designs are now available in the MegaGear store, as well as two more new shirt designs: Zom-Zom and Junpei, just to flesh out our fall back-to-school collection.





The first design is from one of the sketches I did for the short story sample I worked on with Thomas Knapp called “Endgames: Behind the Masque”. It’s part of an effort to write a series of light novels covering the events in the Endgames world from within Endgames itself. You can find the e-book in the Amazon Kindle store (which does not require owning a kindle to purchase - you can read it from your PC or smart phone too). Called “Behind the Cask” it depicts a scene in the story where Largo has discovered that the inn sells it’s Black Mead in Man-Sized while Pirogoeth and M0h attempt to have a quiet glass of wine. Image is colored and tinted to print on a Tan 100% pre-shrunk cotton shirt. (Note: 4XL and 5XL shirts are printed on Light Grey). Go get one.





The next design comes from tinkering around with 3d Anaglyphs and a challenge from Seraphim. I seriously doubted that I could make a 3d anaglyph that worked (I tend to have trouble seeing 3D stuff) so I was more than a little surprised when I actually was able to make one that worked. I suppose that it helped that Largo is almost 3D anyways so maybe I cheated a little. The real trick was getting the Red/Cyan color balance to work on the shirts but success was achieved. Also available as a fine art print, these 3D Largo delivery devices (shirt, print) come with a pair of Red/Cyan 3D glasses. Experiences 3D Ph33r Here.

I’ve been wanting to create a simple 3D Junpei shirt for a while, the only problem being I had trouble creating an image of Junpei that was awesoem enough for a t-shirt. Also, there is that small problem of how do you represent an awesome Ninja on a shirt who you technically aren’t supposed to see? Junpei was nice enough to stand still long enough for me to pull this shirt together. Printed using black inks on a charcoal grey 100% preshrunk cotton shirt. (Note: 4XL and 5XL shirts are printed on Light Grey shirt which DOES make him more visible, but we asked, he’s OK with it.) Get your Junpei shirt today.





Finally, here’s a shirt design that I think actually came out pretty well. I’m not good at drawing monsters, really. Drawing Rent-a-zilla was always difficult - drawing a putrescent, rotting, shrunken Chibi-Zombie-Rent-a-zilla was even more daunting. Taking heart (and some inspiration from the awesome work of Mike Mignola) I think I’ve actually managed to capture Zom-Zom as being disgusting and horrifying yet amusing and adorable in this image.



You gotta feel for him. It’s not easy being a huge powerful Rent-a-zilla who has been turned into a Zombie by an intense onslaught of Zombie Ranger Hordes while helping out this really nice (if somewhat annoying) magical girl who fed him lots of Pork Rinds. Shrunk to a more manageable, indoor-pet size by one of the Magical Girl’s mom’s friends, covered in bandages, duct tape and ribbons to hold his rotting zombie flesh together, it’s all a little embarrassing. But it doesn’t mean that his awesome undead roar and his lumbering rotting carcass can’t put the fear of the living into tiny pitiful humans (even if he is smaller than they are)... now if only his tail wouldn’t keep falling off. Full color image printed on Sand 100% preshrunk cotton t-shirt. No zombies or zillas were harmed in the production of this shirt - we just taped the tail back on. (Note: 4XL and 5XL shirts are printed on Light Grey) GNRAWWW! (Go get one).



Ok, that covers the new stuff in the MegaGear store. I know a lot of you are still waiting for me to finish your sketches, I’ve been trying to get through them as fast as I can, so thank you for your patience (i’m sort of doing too nice a job on them - on the whole they tend to be a lot nicer than the sketches I do at conventions, so I hope you will think the wait worthwhile). The fun thing about sketches is a lot of them are actually kinda fun. After I got back from Anime Expo I started to scan every sketch with the idea that I’d post them so that others can see what the whole range of them looks like. I’ve started posting them to my new pirorant tumblr blog which I’ll be updating with scans in batches over the next few weeks or so.



Going back to pencil drawing has really been a bit of a boon for me, lately. Odd how much more creative my sketching has been (and how much faster I seem to be able to draw stuffs). The time sink on the last comic was, oddly enough, the hatching (which I have done by computer for the last few comics). This next comic I’m going to try just hatching by hand again because it can’t possibly take as long as the computer hatching did. ^^;;; (The plan is to scan the drawings before I hand-hatch so I have a clean version and a hatched final drawing when all is said and done). With luck, I might be able to have this comic up by tomorrow, which would be awesome. 2 comics per week is my goal, and maybe I can hit it this week.



In other miscellaneous stuffs... got this nice postcard in the mail the other day with a note that said “I found this Sad Girl in Snow at EPCOT Japan and I wanted to send her to the Master of the Genre.” This drawing/image is by an artist named Eri Kamijo, who’s works really are awesome. Thank’s Roger!



Speaking of artists, a came across the work of a talented young lady named Jo - I was particularly impressed by her pencil drawings in her sketchbook, like this one... man, i wish i could sketch so clean (i note she uses the same mechanical pencils i use, Pilot S5, but i only go down to .04mm). Yes, yet another artist who’d delightful work makes me feel like my fingers could lopped off and put to more useful tasks like holding doors open. :P Beautiful stuff, Jo.