Blog : last 10 entries
Dead City Radio : Go, but carefully. This pit is slow.
posted 2012.05.04 at 20:25 | comment
DCR.5 primary assets are 90% complete as of this writing. I still have some plot- and cover-critical assets to develop - these don't otherwise appear until a few pages into the chapter, so I've taken the {!un}usual step of starting rendering work. At the moment, pages 5.01, 5.02 and 5.03 have been rendered and are ready for line art, and panel one of 5.04 is 89.3% of the way through the reference render. I don't need the cover assets until 5.05, so there'll be a natural production break after the renders for 5.04 have been generated.
I haven't drawn any of the rendered pages yet - my head has been elsewhere with Work-work, I have other drawing obligations, and I'm mentally hung up on starting work on a chapter that doesn't have a cover. So, what's probably going to happen is this:
I'll render 5.04, not work on the comic for a few days, prep the assets required for 5.05-5.17 and the cover, render the cover, then draw the cover and get it prepped while 5.05 through 5.whatever are rendering. Either the cover will go up and a few pages will follow in a batch allotment a few days or weeks after that, or the cover and the first batch of pages will hit all at once. I like working and posting in batches - drawing and processing a few pages in parallel makes much better use of my time, and as to posting them... I know there are a few readers who'd prefer regular updates, but I don't live that kind of life and this isn't that kind of comic. If I could clockwork it I would - as it stands, I'm uploading pages as soon as I consider them finished. I'd rather produce DCR.5 as four or five (probably six or eight) big updates as opposed to 20 individual page dumps.
So. Pages are in the pipeline, though it'll be at least a week before any of them are ready to post. Probably two or three, as I want to get the cover done first and a couple of pages in the first batch are fairly complex.
All told!
Dead City Radio : Test Department
posted 2012.04.28 at 19:57 | comment
Spoiler-heavy screenshot of various DCR.5 development efforts below the fold. The environment geometry is pretty much done - I need to do some more work on textures and tweak the lights a bit more. Things are shaping up nicely. Time permitting, the environment and character reference props should be done within the next week, with production renders to follow.
Read the rest of Test Department.
Dead City Radio : And for my next trick...
posted 2012.04.22 at 16:09 | comment
As I've mentioned previously, planning and pre-production for DCR.5 is well advanced. The script and layouts were finished months ago, all page files have been created, and several pages have been "framed" (initial panel layouts nailed down). I started prep-work on one of the major CG assets a couple of weeks ago and it's nearly ready for primetime.
The majority of the chapter takes place in a single environment with fixed assets - this environment technically already exists, though like other key assets I'll probably spend several hours (or days) updating it in order to make sure that it renders with minimal effort. As the source environment is roughly six years old I expect some degree of work to be necessary. DCR is a higher resolutio[Power blinked. First time MT's spastic-by-default autosave has come in handy!]n than The Dualist, so there's a good possibility that several support assets may prove insufficient.
I'm mentally budgeting two to three weeks for asset creation and updates - I'll need just about everything the chapter requires to get the cover and first few pages out the door. Once assets have reached that point the major bottlenecks will be rendering and drawing.
So. DCR.5 is at roughly the same point as any previous scene of a chapter in production - the key difference is that with a couple of minor exceptions the scene is the chapter.
Cars, guns, paramilitary hardware - I should have it sorted and started at some point in May.
Big emphasis on hopefully. I'm presently working on two separate freelance contracts and am loosely attached to two more. Shoving Provision out the door has had a measurable impact on my ability to handle my paid workload, so to keep everyone happy (and to free up some time down the road), ATC will need to take a back seat to fulfilling contracts for the next several weeks.
On the upside, I've gone to rather a lot of effort to make DCR.5 the easiest-to-produce ATC installment to date, and that prep work should pay off handsomely over the course of the next few months.
< xeno> EXTRA POINTS FOR LOUD NOISY SLOBBERING
Website : Website v. 2012.01
posted 2012.04.20 at 19:48 | comment
As detailed in an earlier blog post: Commenting capability has been overhauled; comments have been upgraded for the blog and re-enabled for all three books.
As mentioned in the FAQ:
Supported authentication methods include OpenID, LiveJournal, Google, Yahoo! and Wordpress.com. At this point anonymous commenting capability is disabled, though it may be re-enabled at a future date.
Pretty much everything else that needs doing is gonna be work, and at this point all work is focused on DCR.5. And, yanno. Paying work.
Props to Eric for updating the MT install and pointing me in the right direction re: fixes and debug.
Oh, and!
Process Tags stopped working, and the "replacement" method, mteval, doesn't even pretend to work in the context that Process Tags used to.* Fortunately the metadata audit got rid of the one regular instance of an MT tag in post data, and the book indexes (ex: dcr) - the only place that in-post tags were used otherwise - have been hacked back into shape with minimal effort. I'll need to do some template fiddling to get DCR.5 to list in the index As Intended, but that's relatively minor - and work that'll be done in a week or three, when DCR.5 is ready for launch.
20120421, 15:01 : Corrected a minor display glitch in entries with comments turned off. It kinda helps to have the div for the comments container inside the mt:if.
20120422, 15:54 : Sucked it up and added tooltips to all graphical links. This includes the left-hand menu bar, the next/archive links on comic pages, comic navigation, and the images in the book indexes. This completes the to-do list laid out in the previous blog entry.
20120515, 19:39 : Updated chapter graphics for the DCR index. Prior to today, 1-3 used photos, now they use the actual covers like 4 and 5. The header graphic will be changed to the book cover once a book cover has been generated.
* Using it in a Utility blog entry to pull the last entry date and category page count from a category in the DCR blog. mteval could quite possibly work internal to the blog calling it but that's not a functionality that current ATC information design can really capitalize on. The work-around is a bit less elegant under the hood but will look visually identical to the previous processtags.pl functionality.
Development : CONCRETE INSPECTOR
posted 2012.04.20 at 14:13 | comment
Between chapters I typically think about doing some work on the website. Outside of page posting and near-permanent browser tab residence I never monkey with the thing otherwise. Presently, I'm planning a couple of minor updates to templates and whatnot before I get serious about DCR.5 pre-production. DCR.5 already has a script, has layouts, has several key assets created, and is generally chomping at the bit in ways that previous chapters never have. Downtime will be shorter than usual, and during that downtime I intend to accomplish the following:
1. Comments overhaul. The CAPTCHA thing that made the current commenting system work appears to have died in its sleep some time ago. The comment system will be upgraded to what dcr.org is presently using, as foreshadowed previously.
2. In line with that, once comments have been debugged to my satisfaction they will again be enabled on all three books as well as the blog. Some future version of the site may expand this to Universe.
3. "Tool tips" will be implemented for all graphical links. Main left column navigation and the previous/next bars - and possibly the book root menus as well. Book roots will probably get a bit of CSS love as well - a background color declaration on the graphics is long overdue.
So, that's it. It's a short list and I should be able to bang it out in short order. Possibly this weekend, definitely before the end of April. With the exception of transplanting comment logic this is all extremely trivial stuff - the real update-and-overhaul will take place between DCR.5 and Transitional Voices 2.
As with past website updates, the changes will be announced in a future blog post.
18:48 : Comments are GO!. Tool tips are NOT! Due to poor interface design choices during the 2010 site build and a total derp on what to do/say in the first test instance, work on the site is presently half done. I'm presently learning towards shelving them for the moment, and doing it up all Right And Proper after DCR.5 wraps.
Dead City Radio : Leap Year Update!
posted 2012.02.29 at 02:57 | comment
Provision 15 and 16 are up. Worked a piece at a time, a few minutes here a few minutes there over the past couple of weeks. The past month if you include modeling and rendering time. I could have uploaded them a couple of days ago but I figured I'd wait for the 29th. Mark the occasion, etc.
Five more pages are ready for line art, and I'll bust 'em out whenever I have the time. The last month or so has been nuts. Point of fact the reason the new pages are up now and not this afternoon or close to midnight tonight is thanks to a 9am meeting. My internal clock is currently a good fit for a 9-to-5 in Hawaii and the relevant time zone is in the other direction, so it's either stretch it a couple of hours (my relative 2am, their actual 2pm) and get some less critical stuff done, or try to sleep and run the risk of missing out. I could have page time this weekend, I could have page time in August. I have no idea - even less of one than I usually do.
I have managed to get rather a lot of the hands-off bits taken care of, though. 22 2/3 pages of DCR left to render, 28 left to draw!
Development : Goals for 2012
posted 2011.12.30 at 15:38 | comment
In brief:
1. Finish DCR.
2. Website tweaks/overhaul/etc.
3. Get back up to speed on Transitional Voices.
Expanded:
1.A. 4.12 has been rendered and I have draft renders for 4.13. Draft as they were generated under rushed circumstances and may require either a significant amount of work or a fresh approach to make them acceptable.
1.B. While 4.12 has been ready for Photoshop ops for roughly a week, I haven't - and won't - have the time to work on it for awhile. Hopefully early this coming week, probably longer. 4.14 will require fresh CGI and I have other 3d modeling obligations to see to before I can start on that, so the "back end" of Chapter Four is going to take awhile.
1.C. The chapter five script is done. Transcribed, too. Several pages have layouts. I plan to have the script for this chapter fully developed before chapter four wraps so that production continues without a break. CG requirements are minimal, the panel count is relatively low (compared to Whitehouse, anyway), and it's short. Bit of a Stephenson ending but avoids a lot of repetition - most of what isn't in the script is filled in over the course of The Dualist.
I'd like to have DCR wrapped by June if possible.
2.A. While it's tempting to apply the current state of web fu to the ATC site, if I hold off until after DCR wraps, my fu will be even stronger. I'd sooner do one overhaul than two.
2.B. Given that, any mutterings about possible changes now would be moot, as where my head will be in a few months and where it is at the moment will hopefully be two very different things.
I'll probably stick with the current aesthetics - major aesthetic changes will hopefully be limited to improvements to the existing CSS.
3.A. TV.2 (Water) has been percolating in my head since 2008. I'd be lying if I said it was ready to fall out, but I do have a pretty good idea of what the chapter is going to look like and what kind of work it's going to entail.
3.B. Hopefully my experience with DCR will pay off and Water will be a 28-36 page jaunt instead of a 40+ page production slog. We'll see!
Item one - finishing DCR - is priority. With 32 pages left as of this writing, one of them rendered, another probably rendered, ten more laid out and the remaining 20 already existing in script form, and the fact that I managed 48 pages this year... it's looking doable.
Idle : Eight years on 2.
posted 2011.11.23 at 12:36 | comment
16:08 <xeno> Heinlein's rules for getting published: 1. Write it. 2. Finish it. 3. Send it out. 4. Keep sending it out until someone sends you a check.
16:09 * xeno errors out on 2
16:09 <xeno> and most of the time, 1
Website : There's something on the wing. Some... THING!
posted 2011.11.14 at 18:03 | comment
Some recent developments over at dcr.org will be leading to eventual developments here at atc.com. Initially I plan to overhaul the commenting system to bring it in line with how dcr.org works and displays. The upside of that is it'll get rid of the CAPTCHA. The downside is I can't yet predict what that'll do to existing comments - they may Disappear from display and stay in the CMS, they may list properly, they may turn into radioactive hamsters. Who can tell.
I've also been contemplating the value of asset (read: comic page) thumbnails in the context of comic navigation - while displaying them "forward" is certainly spoiler-ish, "previous" is a bit less of a zinger. The implementation could range from something as simple as thumbnails of the previous page or two appearing on the front page only, to something as complex as thumbnail galleries for each comic and comic chapter, to (possibly, eventually) adding in a visual previous/next to the comic archive.
All of this was always possible with the current CMS - I never thought along these lines until I started playing with the dcr.org data model. ATC will eventually benefit in some capacity - hopefully without a fullblown site redesign.
Regardless of what happens with templates and comments and thumbnails (oh my), I'm totally doing Page 500 (dcr 4.10) first. And that's still a few days to a couple of weeks away at this point.
Transitional Voices : SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!
posted 2011.10.20 at 14:59 | comment
11:48 < solios> fagbot: spacebot?
11:48 < fagbot> SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!
11:48 < xeno> i love just letting that scene on for a while
11:48 < solios> :D
11:48 < xeno> and watching him whizzing by
11:49 < xeno> Star.
11:49 < xeno> Star.
11:49 < xeno> Star.
11:49 < xeno> 'Nother Star.
11:49 < solios> There's another one!
11:49 < xeno> Grandma!. I'm in space.
11:49 < xeno> Getting bored of space...
11:49 < solios> Wanna go to earth.
11:49 < xeno> valve++
11:49 < solios> valve++
11:49 < solios> need to work something like that into TV
11:50 < solios> < thad> god DAMN this is BORING
11:50 < solios> < ornix> SPAAAAAAAAACE!
11:50 < solios> < thad> BORING.
11:50 < solios> < ornix> your mom.
11:50 < solios> or something
11:50 * solios very much wants to be back in TV production this time next year
11:54 < xeno> Panel one: [ship in the vasty black] speech line thingy / < thornix> SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!
11:55 < xeno> Panel two: [ship in the vasty black] DAY 2 speech line thingy / < thornix> OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGHEHEHEHEHEHEHE WE'RE IN SPACE!
11:55 < solios> panel three: (daedalus bridge, West covering his ears) < west> Make it stop. :|
11:56 < xeno> Panel four: [ship in the vasty black] DAY 9 < thad> Getting bored of space. < ornix> SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-
11:56 < solios> XD
11:56 < xeno> Panel five: [ship interior, west's bunk] *book over head* **groaning** < ornix> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-
11:57 < xeno> Panel six: [ship in the vasty black] DAY 47 *gunshot* *gunshot* < ornix> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!
11:58 < solios> I think you just cut TV production down considerably.
11:58 < solios> xeno++
11:58 < xeno> :D