Right! I felt like writing an update-y journal, and now may as well be the time.

Firstly, MOCs. I have finally begun updating Overheat. Any guesses as to when I first said 'Overheat needs an update'? That's right, August 2011. Man, is this overdue.
One reason why I am doing this now is because I've got the tangible projects out the way (Fissure); another is that there is a contest in the Piece Out group, in which I plan to enter the newly updated Overheat. The deadline is June 17th, so I'd better get cracking.
The main purpose for the update is to sort out the colours. As in, I've gone on about her wonderful colour gradient before, but to be frank everything above her waist is just a mishmash of red, orange and yellow. This will hopefully be fixed, with the aid of trans-coloured pieces too. Thanks very much to everyone who commented on the poll about the colour of her arms - the feedback was very helpful.
So far she has new hands and a new head. Even though I like the new head far more than the old one, the new one seems too nice... like a mermaid crossed with an anime girl and an alien, rather than a fire demon. This put me into a deep sense of insecurity - could I change the character entirely? I mean, the only Faffory reference I've made to her is in Panel 4 of Page 7: Heart Swap, so there's nothing stopping me from making her more slender and shy as opposed to sassy and short-fused. It'd certainly make more sense storyline-wise. I could even rename her Ember, and then I wouldn't have to worry about ugly phrases like 'version 3' appearing in the deviation title. The name Overheat doesn't sound very feminine anyway. I don't know, I guess we'll see.

I have, however, been distracted recently by a second MOC idea. And by recently, I literally mean about half an hour ago. It seems like I'm still in Dodo mood, because this one's another spur-of-the-moment goofy Rahi... hell, if I finish it on time I might enter it for the PO contest instead. Whatever happens, I have to take the semiannual June 2013 groupshot before the end of the month, so hopefully both projects will be done by then.

Did someone mention dodos? In my most voted-on poll yet, it seems that cheetahs are beating dodos 60 to 56. I had a suspicion that the bird would come out on top (which is why one of the cheetah votes is mine), but it looks like this is not the case. Nevertheless, the poll is only officially closed when I take the pictures for Faffory Page 47, so in case you have yet to make your contribution to the future of Faffory, vote vote vote! A couple more could make the difference!

Speaking of Faffory, you may have noticed that I have upped the frequency of pages to one a week. I plan to maintain this rate for the rest of the summer (until the series' finale...), but for a couple of reasons, I may have to drop back down to one a fortnight. Which doesn't really affect you readers at all, but I thought I'd write it down somewhere just to make it official.

The first reason for this is that I have exams coming up, woohoo. Starting on June 10th and going on until June 25th, I have seven exams, including one optional Maths paper that lasts 3 hours, plus an additional driving test about halfway through (wonderful timing, I'm sure you'll agree). It's probably about time to stop playing Mario Kart Wii so often.

The second reason is that, once again, I'm going on holiday. Firstly to Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong (on the evening of the 3-hour Maths paper, no less) for two weeks, during which I will miss two orchestra rehearsals and will arrive back in the UK in time for the third. (While I insist on attending this rehearsal, my body will think that it will begin at 2:30 in the morning. Should be fun.) Then in late July it's off to Vienna for a week on tour with the orchestra, and I'm sure it'll be amazing.

I suspect that the KL/HK trip will prompt a journal about the perks of the Chinese language. For a change it'll be a happy blog, so you can keep an eye out for that. By the way, thanks very much for the comments on That alcohol journal; your perspectives are always well worth the read.

Whew. That was a lot more than I'd planned to write. Ah well, I shan't waste any more of your time. Have a nice day, and thanks for reading.