And thus endeth the life of a very special teacup.

School started yesterday!  I am super stoked for my second year; all signs point to this semestre being really fun and tough.  Unfortunately, me being at school may also mean that the comic will be posted less regularly (if the haven't been already ;__;), but I'm going to try my best to churn out a comic each week!

Here's how my semestre's looking: Animation Layout, Sound Design, Acting for Animators, Storyboarding, and Contemporary Vocal Ensemble.  I have a handful of other classes, but these are the ones that have got me excited, especially since they're totally applicable for TaffyGunn work.  I'm also looking forward to my Film Workshop class, and hopefully my film this year will not suck as hard.

On a totally unrelated subject, I found a sweet groove spot for working in listening to FFVI, Ogre Battle, and Chrono Trigger OSTs.  I guess that's not inherently a big deal, but Gideon installed an .SPC music player on my computer so I could listen to them in full quality, on my stupid Lion-running laptop  (it's called Vox).  It's even better than playing songs right through the emulator because I can organize them into playlists.  Needless to say, I'm one happy panda hard at work now.

- Megan Ruiz

One Semester of Spanish - Love Song (Animated)

This is definitely one of the greatest birthday gifts anyone has ever given me. I had asked Gideon to sing me THIS SONG live for my birthday, open-shirted and all, but he decided to animate himself doing it instead to avoid that fate. Arguably the more difficult option of the two.

Today was our first day at San Diego Comic Con!  We got into the city way too early but were not able to start our rounds at the convention until a bit after opening.  For me, it felt weird not having gotten off a plane prior to a convention.

Among our several booth visits was one to Penny Arcade, at which Gideon bought himself some DVDs and earned himself a free mug. And then Gideon was quietly beside himself with bashfulness as we got Mike to doodle and sign something for him. We also hit up Meredith Gran from Octopus Pie to pick up some things for me, said hi to a bunch of artist friends from all the past comic cons, became discomforted by the numerous costumed ladies, and wandered around looking at some cool artisan crafts.

Eventually we made our way to the some of the panels we had planned to attend today. The first was a spotlight on Kate Beaton, one of my favorite webcomic artists. It was really interesting to hear why she does what she does,  how her family responds to her work, and where she gets a lot of her inspiration from. The second panel we went to was on the "art of story" for the new Disney animated film, Wreck-It Ralph.  It was honestly not very interesting, and felt most like a PR presentation.  Gideon and I fell asleep.  Which was great because we were well-rested for the panel we had been waiting all day for, "The Business of Webcomics," hosted by Robert Khoo of Penny Arcade.  As it was relevant with our current interests, the Q&A section was really engaging and helpful.  Some of the information was pretty intuitive, but it was reassuring to hear some validation by people who have been in the business for nearly two decades.  There were even some questions asked that gave us interesting story ideas, so we're looking forward to working off of those pretty soon!

It has been an exhausting day; I can only imagine Saturday will be draining, as well.

~ Megan Ruiz