There. My first image in the gallery. It's a quick airbrush-coloured version of the concept sketch I drew for the CG of Tomoko-chan I'm working on at the moment. The Tomoko-chan graphic at the top of this page is taken from a preliminary version of the CG image.

Okay, so it's not great, but I feel better now that I have something in the gallery. ^^ Hopefully I can increase the number of images in there over time.

Well, there we are. I've finally managed to get BBI online. And it's only taken... how long now? -_-;;;;

Anyway, it's done. I'm sure over the next few days or weeks, there will be a couple of bugfixes that need to be made and the odd typo rectified, but the core of the site is more or less complete. As it stands, the front page is complete, as is the FAQ (although I plan on extending it), the gallery (except that it's imageless right now), the contact/feedback page and the links section. The next thing I plan to work on is the Osaka Shopping Guide which is still lying on my hard disk half-written. Other things that I'll try and do over the coming weeks include tidying up the FAQ and adding a few more links to the links page.

In the long term, I hope to populate the gallery with a reasonable number of my pictures, although that's rather dependent on me finding the time to draw them. I'd also like to put up a few pages on learning the Japanese language, with a list of links to various useful resources and recommended reading materials. I'll also include a special section on practicing Japanese through reading manga, again with a list of recommended books (or in this case, series) to read. The links section too is something I hope to expand upon. I've been toying with the idea of making a link list, much like HML, but in English, to compile a huge list of sites, not just of artists and mangaka, but also of anime/game music composers, anime studios, etc. It would take a while to do, but is something that I personally would find useful and believe many others might too. If successful, it would also help to boost BBI as a site.

The front page of BBI is designed function in a similar manner to a blog. That doesn't mean I promise to update it regularly, but it will be more than just a list of site updates. Currently, it will only display the last three entries, but I plan on adding a history function sometime in the near future.

Lastly, there's Tomoko-chan, the BBI mascot. You can see currently see her at the top of the front page and also standing next to the menu bar. You may have already noticed that I only have one picture of Tomoko-chan at present, hastily CG'd for the site launch. I hope to draw a few more Tomoko-chan images and scatter them around the site in appropriate places. The one by the menu bar will probably be the next one I change - perhaps to have her leaning against the side of it... Anyway, I'll work on that later. In the longer term, I have a few ideas for things to do with Tomoko-chan. There will doubtless be images in the gallery, but I also forsee the possibility of a Tomoko-chan doujinshi at a future MinamiCon. I'm not sure if anyone would buy it though. Being a catgirl, it would have been nice if I could get one ready for MC9, but I've been sooo busy as of late, it just hasn't been possible.

So, I think that pretty much sums up what I see as the purpose of BBI, both now and in the future. My ideas are continually changing though, so don't be surprised if I forget everything I've just talked about here and do something completely different two months down the line. Whatever happens, I hope that I can contribute something through this website that others may find useful. If you have any amazing ideas for things to do with the site, why not let me know. *points to 'Contact' on the menu* ^^

That's all for now. Thanks for reading and take care. =^^=