Chapter three of TD2E is almost done. The art is there - if it were a silent scene I'd be trumpeting three down, five (and a half*) left. The writing is jamming me up a bit - fitting it in, and making it not suck horribly.

I've muttered about hardcopy in the past - mild threats that have never materialized. Funds, dissatisfaction, and a single-digit readership are all contributing factors. Hardcopy is expensive, time consuming, and just ain't worth it yet. Which doesn't mean I'm not going to continue to prepare for it, mind you. It just means it's been knocked out of the production pipeline for the foreseeable future.

After the current chapter is out the door, I'll goad xeno into catching up on proofing. That'll lock things in, make the first three chapters ready for hardcopy, and give me a really good reason not to go back and screw with them for the third, fourth, fifth, tenth time. I'll probably compile everything for hardcopy and sit on it until a later date, like I've been doing with the first issue of DCR.

On deck, then, would be: Concluding chapter three, editing of chapters one through three, hardcopy prep of same, the new chapter covers I've threatened previously... and probably another version of the website.

Again, the website. The main reason for wanting a change is the wiki section. The wiki hasn't happened and probably won't - from my current vantage point it seems a lot more efficient to simply create a few more blog categories and start throwing stuff in there... or create another blog ("universe" or whatever) that'll contain the cast, lexicon, planets, vehicles, technology, etceteras. Stuff that would be bound for a wiki, if I had the time to put into one.

Also, aesthetics. I keep thinking of the site as being grayscale with yellow/orange links or hotspots - not the murky sepia that it has been for the past few revisions.

If I'm SMRAT about this, I'll do the covers for 1-4, then either edit 1-3 and then do 4, or do 4 and then edit 1-4, then redo the website in preparation for the home stretch.

Ultimately, the order things get done in depends on how badly I'm blocking on rewrites.**

* The first four chapters (aka "Incursion") had a short eponymous intro scene. The last four ("expulsion") has one as well, plus there's that few pages of aftermath. So while there are five chapters left, there are a total of seven sections remaining. Fortunately two of those are really, really short. And chapter six is also short. So plowing through four really will put this thing on the home stretch.

** You'll be happy to know that the second half needs more rephrasing and continuity correction than it does a burn-it-down-and-do-it-over rewrite. With any luck, production of the second half should go faster than the first half has, if for no other reason than I'm getting deeply impatient and really want to be making new pages instead of gaping in horror at old ones.

You'll pay for the whole seat, but you'll only need... the edge!

No, really.

Taking a temporary dump on tradition here, uploading two scenes instead of one. I started on reentry (which used to be "velocity") right after I finished work on callback. I figured it might be a good idea to do all of the Daedalus and Sabrosa renders for the chapter in one swell foop - after that, I took a short breather and then over the past few days hacked out guide, which used to be "polarity."

Both scenes have been rewritten. Both scenes have been reformatted - a few new panels here and there, but mostly a lot of strategic cropping. Brand new renders for all of the exterior shots in reentry. Velocity never fit well as a name... and with an eponymous scene, this chapter is now in line with the rest.

This upload also tips the page count over the one-third mark.

Hooray!

Four more pages for this chapter - I have some freelance to take care of before I get rolling on that, though. So... another gap, another upload. Hopefully I'll be able to wrap this chapter shortly... and hopefully the next one proceeds as easily.

I figured I'd chew on Reentry (which was Velocity) a bit to iron out some consistency issues (between this scene and that one) before launching td2e c3. That chewing - intended to be a well-intentioned gumming, I suppose - turned into a rottweiler-styled flossing. The core of Reentry - all of the Daedalus bits - is visually complete. Some of those pages still need type and the bookends of that scene still need attention. I'm not out of the rendering woods yet.

I have, however, been sitting on a completed Callback for a good four days longer than ultimately necessary.*

The pre-canned bit, written last week:

Done, at least this time around. I feel good enough about it to let it be for awhile - nothing's screaming SUCK! SUCK! at me anymore. Well, the linework... but there's no shutting that up ever and I'm not about to spend five years redrawing the entire comic. The time spent on the rewrite and reformat is more than enough, thanks.

All CG in this scene has been replaced. The Daedalus has lost the Darth Vader binary paint job; the Sabrosa has a little more screen time, some old shots have been thrown out for new renders, the color scheme is a little more consistent. It's also a little more colorful - red shift, new dialogue, and a couple of tweaks here and there and the scene is now much less monochromatic. Also more monochromatic, where it matters.

Rewrite-wise, the seventh page feels a bit cramped... otherwise, it's a hell of a lot less pretentious than the previous edition. It fits the overall story better, touching on some previous points and foreshadowing others. The new version also fixes a plot pothole - in the first edition, Grij ordered a Majestic prepped... then camped the Daedalus. This time around, Majestic prep orders aren't given until they should be (read: in a scene that isn't this one).

Very little linework cleanup for this scene - most of the work went into background rebuilds and extensions. In many respects, this scene has changed a lot more than previous second edition pages.... and I've been doing this long enough that my attitude towards cleanup has changed as well. Point of fact, I'm aiming more for a reasonably quick mashup with an eye towards "better" than I am towards scrubbing down every single stray hair, loose vector and squiggle like I was with the first couple of chapters.

Though admittedly, the first couple of chapters needed it, and there are some bits further down the road that'll need it as well. This just isn't one of those scenes, fortunately!

(end pre-canned bit)

I think the biggest bit of awesome to come out of the second edition is this: Greg finally has a last name. Finally. The bastard came to life in my tenth grade history class notebook and fifteen years later he finally has a last name.

Now to figure out one for Xand...

Most of Reentry (which used to be Velocity) is in the bag. Eventually I'll get around to working over Guide (which used to be Polarity)... at which point, WHANGO!

Plainly speaking... there's going to be a big fat pause. Followed by a 29 page update.

Hooah!

* That being the number of days between finally getting the intertub back and actually doing something ATC-related with it.