my character has climbed some ledges and stands on a small plateau. In the far distance, the Eye of Sauron is barely visible

Same location. After walking a few steps, the silhouette of the eye is fully visible, looming over the mountains

locations are spaced perfectly w.r.t. draw distance such that the eye pops-in when you climb the seat at Amon Hen (where Frodo flees from Boromir and has the ring on)

totally on purpose. definitely not a minor ominous miracle

as promised,
motion-activated Eye of Sauron in Mordor (listen for the click of the chain of hatch windows as I pass those final rocks)

Rest of the tower to come later, including an interior w/elevator, reception, cubicle floor, cafeteria, server room, etc.

the cover of volume 1 of the aforementioned manga. A tall grim-faced woman with pendulous breasts stands in a doorway, looming over the reader's POV

I started TLing "My Fave VTuber is Scary IRL" around the same time, which is basically "Can an Otaku be Sweet to an Agoraphobic VTuber w/Colossal Naturals?"

(the answer is yes, obviously! Despite being blatant wish fulfillment for the creep/incel demo, this one is cute/full of heart)

I TL the Otaku x Gal manga and even this author goes meta and waxes philosophical re: this ankle-deep sub-sub-genre

(the gal see a "Gal x Otaku" manga and ask if linking arms counts as being "sweet" to someone, and otaku MC is like don't roast this premise pls, and the crowd is meme-savvy about it)

Dragon Ball Super vo

It's #portfolioday! I'm a freelance manga letterer who has lent his design skills to the art of localization on close to 300 books. You might recognize a few of the things I've worked on!

"The Ring Goes South" snippet is done! Will play right after Lothlorien, on the way to the Argonath

Didn't have much room to work with since I didn't want a bunch of switchbacks (already had to do 1 unit = 1/16th note, vs. 1/32nd with Hobbit theme), but this gets the job done

dynamic laser-activated Eye of Sauron is a go.

Now I just have to construct it hundreds of feet in the air at the top of Barad-dur, triggered by a laser chain starting near the exit of Cirith Ungol, on the other side of Mordor

game looks great
but them giving Mademoiselle d'Arc the first name treatment somehow reminds me of weebs being like "my GOAT Akira really cooked with the Namek saga"

Portland too! off-leashers, shit-leavers, bring-poopsie-in-the-cafe-ers

my first thought!
"of" sounds like they waltz in, have a quaint battle, leave.
"for" suggests a lengthy affair. one battle after another.

Aerial view of my pokopia hobbiton. The mill and lake are essentially done; the rest is vacant green hills and the skeleton of Bag End

Similar aerial view, from a different angle, to the right

Official map of Hobbiton, showing the lake, mill, party tree, Green Dragon, Bag End and other major landmarks

placement in the town (lake is abbreviated, to make more room for party tree grounds)

first finished chunk: the Hobbiton mill

my kingdom for a thatched roof option!

actually really lucked out with this townhouse cluster.
six units, shared driveway, group chat, nobody's a weird racist, we fetch packages/lend butter/swap baked goods, and one lady (who had a "This isn't a whorehouse, it's a whoreHOME" doormat before it got stolen) has a garage gym for communal use

A half-finished box of 3 large choco chip + almond cookies, nestled in parchment paper. You can tell at a glance that the crispy exterior belies a chewy middle

one whiff and I KNEW that butter was browned, those almonds were smoked

>put packages inside neighbor's place, using her door code, for 3 years, mostly w/o being asked, often multiple per day, b/c I'm home all the time and she never is
>do this b/c I know the misery of a stolen package
>receive box of artisan cookies from her today
>fetch quests are real, and rewarding

book weight!
tax-write-off-able tool of the trade, many of which I've gone through over the years. YP alone has probably destroyed 2 or 3

in this case, Makishima isn't even racing!
senpai graduated and is making a guest appearance as a motivational ghost. his "back" is a metaphor, which demands figurative phrasing in English

more word association: benchmark, goalpost, inspiration, aspirational, role model
never a physical body part!

a Yowmushi Pedal spread. The MC is cycling and his senpai is shouting encouragement. The chapter title is shown in Japanese, as described in my post.

"senpai's back" is a ubiquitous trope in battle/sports shonen and shouldn't be translated literally b/c the gist is not intuitive and it makes for wonky phrasing in English

ex: this chapter title
"A Back I Want to Overcome"
>"A Mentor to Surpass"

mentor may not always be 1:1, but it works here!

An interstitial page from Yowamushi Pedal volume 62, showing the MC cycling. The words LOAD RACE are written in English

well fuck!
here I've been, writing "road race" for the past 40 volumes. wouldn't have happened if I'd had mangaka access... 😔

after my time in Japan spent in laundromats and/or doing stinky ineffective air-drying, oh, the daydreams I have about one day equipping a Japanese home I own with my own washer and imported American-strength dryer hooked up to electrical/exhaust infrastructure built into the house from the start

the grown adults who lived in this unit before us never emptied the dryer's lint trap, leaving the entire system gunked up with 2+ years' worth of a damp, semi-rotting, sludgy husky fur/dander mélange that triggered devastating allergies in me

hot take: lint-forgetters go straight to jail

fantasy series where I had a literal alien say [i]magick(s)[/i] (vs. the standard "magic") for funsies, but now they're on the alien planet
so I guess I've shackled myself to the magic<->magick(s) bit

excuse-in-retrospect: it's like when JPN puts a key term in all-katakana to show unfamiliarity!

ignore the 38 pokemon who were crammed into cave condos by a slumlord. They needed to be out of the way for construction but will get to live in the crafted environment when it's done in a few months, maybe years

"Concerning Hobbits" (Shire theme) is done!

Each of the 10 measures takes 32 units of track, so integrating it into the Hobbiton landscape wasn't realistic. Instead, it'll play before the cart emerges into the town.

Hard to believe this music method was intended, yet, it's used on the dev island

music proof of concept!

this is one measure's worth of Concerning Hobbits, out of a planned ~12 or so measures that will play as the cart roves about the Shire

(the game offers 8 music mats (C to high C), each can play (X), (X)#, high-(X), or high-(X)# depending on its cardinal orientation)

continent 1 (the small one!) is mostly leveled and ready for construction of the Hobbiton -> Weathertop leg.
back at my HQ, pokemon-staffed factories are busy pumping out in real-time actual mountains' worth of resources for this endeavor

(label abbreviations spelled out in alt text)

more tiny kanji, barely more than scribbles

this same page is the gift that keeps on giving choice 図s, barely discernible from ink blots

truly!
saw a snack break on the horizon, had to cut corners to save a millisecond?

a glossy red 3D-looking sphere with a white X and white ten-ten mark on the front

the third-stage evolution of the humble 図

a panel of assorted chickenscratch from YowaPeda author Wataru Watanabe

a high-polygon 図 with the corners sanded off

big fan of this 図

the Porygon2 of 図s, if you will