Megatokyo
is now a larger part of the life of architect-turned-artist Fred
Gallagher, who spends more of his time creating the online adventures
of Piro and Largo. "Even when I started doing it full time last year,
there was so much going on," Gallagher said. "When I did get laid off
from my job, that was linked to the cyclical nature of the architecture
business. It was a relief, but when I had crises go away, I replaced
them with crises of my own making." One of those crises was the
publishing flap over the collected Megatokyo comics, which saw Dark
Horse end up with the series. Dark Horse has published two volumes so
far, and Gallagher is happy with the results. "Dark Horse has been
really great to work with," he said, noting that it was easy to work
out the transfer of the art to print and the paper to use. Dark Horse
issued the second volume of the collected Megatokyo before the first
volume, and Gallagher decided to make the reprinted first volume
different from the IC original, so he dug out 16 pages of work from old
sketch books. "It still boggles me that some of the drawings that I did
4-5 years ago would end up in an actual Dark Horse book," he said.
In
January, Gallagher finally got a chance to go to Tokyo as a guest of
honor at Anime Expo Tokyo. Gallagher's art is clearly inspired by manga
artists, and he met with the people he admired. "I've been reading
manga so long that it's the way I do it. That's what influenced me and
my art reflects it." While Gallagher enjoyed meeting Japanese artists,
he wished he had a chance to get closer to them. "The language barrier
is a problem. It's hard to talk casually through a translator. Being in
Tokyo, it was a flip flop on what Japanese guests face in the United
States. I would give anything to speak conversationally in Japanese -
there's a formality when you speak through a translator." Gallagher
said he managed to overcome that when he dealt with character designer Hiroshi Nagahama at Sakura Con in 2003, where they communicated through each other's sketchpad art.
So
what about the beard? That was a legacy of the Anime Expo Tokyo trip,
where an exhausted Gallagher didn't shave for several days, and his
wife Sarah got him to trim what was left into a beard. "Sarah likes
beards, and she's been trying to get me to grow one for years....she
hasn't let me shave it off. People said it looks great. I also noted
that Gabe (the Penny Arcade artist) is also sporting a goatee - maybe
it's a fashion among web comic artists. I've had one or two people say
they hate it, and Sarah's response was that `they have no taste.'" As a
joke, once the goatee was known among fans, "Someone asked me to draw
an evil Piro with a goatee - he looked positively wicked."
Megatokyo
is now a larger part of the life of architect-turned-artist Fred
Gallagher, who spends more of his time creating the online adventures
of Piro and Largo. "Even when I started doing it full time last year,
there was so much going on," Gallagher said. "When I did get laid off
from my job, that was linked to the cyclical nature of the architecture
business. It was a relief, but when I had crises go away, I replaced
them with crises of my own making." One of those crises was the
publishing flap over the collected Megatokyo comics, which saw Dark
Horse end up with the series. Dark Horse has published two volumes so
far, and Gallagher is happy with the results. "Dark Horse has been
really great to work with," he said, noting that it was easy to work
out the transfer of the art to print and the paper to use. Dark Horse
issued the second volume of the collected Megatokyo before the first
volume, and Gallagher decided to make the reprinted first volume
different from the IC original, so he dug out 16 pages of work from old
sketch books. "It still boggles me that some of the drawings that I did
4-5 years ago would end up in an actual Dark Horse book," he said.
In
January, Gallagher finally got a chance to go to Tokyo as a guest of
honor at Anime Expo Tokyo. Gallagher's art is clearly inspired by manga
artists, and he met with the people he admired. "I've been reading
manga so long that it's the way I do it. That's what influenced me and
my art reflects it." While Gallagher enjoyed meeting Japanese artists,
he wished he had a chance to get closer to them. "The language barrier
is a problem. It's hard to talk casually through a translator. Being in
Tokyo, it was a flip flop on what Japanese guests face in the United
States. I would give anything to speak conversationally in Japanese -
there's a formality when you speak through a translator." Gallagher
said he managed to overcome that when he dealt with character designer Hiroshi Nagahama at Sakura Con in 2003, where they communicated through each other's sketchpad art.
So
what about the beard? That was a legacy of the Anime Expo Tokyo trip,
where an exhausted Gallagher didn't shave for several days, and his
wife Sarah got him to trim what was left into a beard. "Sarah likes
beards, and she's been trying to get me to grow one for years....she
hasn't let me shave it off. People said it looks great. I also noted
that Gabe (the Penny Arcade artist) is also sporting a goatee - maybe
it's a fashion among web comic artists. I've had one or two people say
they hate it, and Sarah's response was that `they have no taste.'" As a
joke, once the goatee was known among fans, "Someone asked me to draw
an evil Piro with a goatee - he looked positively wicked."
