Fred Gallagher (cartoonist)

Fred Gallagher (born 1969) is an illustrator who has become a full-time web cartoonist. He is best known as the artist and co-creator of Megatokyo (Gallagher now has full ownership of the property). He also goes by the name of Piro, the main character of Megatokyo, whom he created as an alter ego of himself. He took this name from the name of the cat in the ren'ai game Kanon. His wife goes by the name Seraphim, a supporting character in Megatokyo. Her real name is Sarah. Gallagher resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He has traveled to Japan several times but, contrary to popular belief, is not fluent in Japanese. [1]

Projects

The Fine Red Cat

The Fine Red Cat (1993) is a children's book by Jennifer Ann Gallagher, Fred's sister. It is notable as the first published work he illustrated. [2]

Megatokyo

The webcomic Megatokyo started its run on August 14, 2000 in collaboration with Rodney Caston, who owned the domain and wrote most of the scripts for the first year and a half, while Gallagher was responsible for the artwork. Due to creative differences, Caston agreed to sell his share in the venture to Gallagher in May 2002. (Please see Megatokyo for further detail)

MegaTokyo's success has allowed Gallagher to pursue it as a full time occupation since October 2002 after being laid off from the architectural firm where he worked as an architect. All strips can be seen at the MegaTokyo website [3] paired with comments from Gallagher. Gallagher's income from the strip comes solely from advertising and merchandise sold through the Megagear store website which he owns.

Since Gallagher attained full control over the strip, it has now reflected his vision, with an increasingly complex cast of characters, and a slow pace, with each recent 100 page chapter covering the events of a single day. The influence of Japanese manga and computer dating sims can be seen in both the character design, plotline and storytelling. While this has earned praise from some critics, it has also alienated some fans of the earlier strips, which were more comical, relying more on humor, slapstick, gags, and simpler storylines.

None of the Megatokyo strips are inked, but rather drawn in pencil, and scanned. Gallagher's attention to detail extends to the frames, which he hand-draws for each strip.

Fredart

[4] This is a collection of Gallagher's works going back several years. It includes development sketches from other projects such as Warmth. Since MegaToyko began most of the content has been focused on charaters from that project.

Envelop(e)

This is an earlier work of Gallagher's from 1999. As he describes it:

Using the format of an illustrated story, 'envelop(e)' tells the story of how a misplaced envelope and love letter causes confusion between childhood friends who never really understood how much they meant to each other before.

Warmth

Warmth is a more serious love story on which Gallagher was working on before Megatokyo, but it was pushed aside when Megatokyo took off. He has stated many times that he has plans to finally get it started soon, though nothing has come of it yet.

Blurred

Blurred was an adult website of unknown content, created by Gallagher in 1998 under the pen name "blurri". There is a wide-ranging dispute over the true content of the website, with some users on 4chan and related anime websites claiming that Blurred contained a lolicon doujinshi of Gallagher's production [5]. Gallagher's friends and online relations deny this, saying that it was only a small gallery of slightly salacious pictures. The subject is controversial because Gallagher has a strong stance against hentai, and depending on the content of Blurred, that view could be considered hypocritical. Since Blurred has since been taken down and Gallagher wishes to keep the images private [6], the dispute is currently unresolved.

Achievements

One of the most popular artists at US anime conventions, he has appeared at Otakon every year from 2001 to 2005 (except for 2004), and also has appeared frequently at A-Kon and Sakura-Con. Anime Central is his favorite and most frequent convention. Anime Central was the first anime convention Fred Gallagher did a panel for. He is also credited with being the first American manga artist to be a guest at Anime Expo Tokyo. At conventions, Fred Gallagher hosts a panel based on the "Naze Nani Megatokyo" omake comic strips (this is actually borrowed from an anime series, "Martian Successor Nadesico" -- it translates out into "The Hows and Whys of Megatokyo"). The panel contained Fred ("Piro") and Rodney Caston ("Largo" -- back before Caston left the project at Gallagher's request), and was also known to contain Dominic Nguyen ("Dom"). Fred also attended Aya Again, an anime convention located in Northampton, UK, at the start of November 2003.

External links

Fredart (Gallagher's personal art website)
Megatokyo (online comic)
list of conventions anime-cons.com
Anime Convention Personality of the Week (March 9 2003)