Just in time for Halloween - it's a (mostly) dead guy and a ghost ship! Arr!

More pages to follow, probably in two to three weeks - I still have to create the ship's Avatar and figure out the basic environment for the next several pages. I know what it ought to look like - it's figuring out how to make it happen in a timely, reproducible fashion that has me puzzled at the moment. I'll need it for approximately seventeen panels, so it can't be an All Day Event.

After a long, long time in the abyss (seasons in the abyss, if you're a Slayer fan), this thing is finally lurching back into visible production. The goal is to have expulsion completed in November, leaving December for final checks, Super Upload II Turbo and the remaining two pages.

Scary!

Primary modeling of everything I need to finish TD2E is complete. There's still some work to do - some serious work - but I'm finally in a position where I can create a new page for the first time in, like, months.

Bits are done.

One thing I still need is a section cover, a la incursion. I'm probably going to Placeholduhr it until I'm in post production and working on the real covers - the existing "incursion" piece, for example, is crap and will be replaced along with the other covers. Redoing again, for The Last Time No Really I Mean It.

Book first, finishing touches second. Everything else is ready or very nearly so - I'd hate to get trainwrecked by something as pedestrian as a glorified title card.

Order of operations:

1. Expulsion -1- (this weekend)
2. Everything I need for Explulsion -2- - -8-.
3. Expulsion -2- - -8-.
4. Placeholduhr cover for Expulsion.
5. THAT'S NOT A MOON THAT'S A SPACE STATION Super Mega Upload of TONS of pages etc.
6. The two pages I need for chapter 7.
7. All remaining pages.
8. Covers.
9. Website or TV1b.
10. TV1b or Website.

The floodgates will open in late November or early December. I may upload Expulsion before then, just to prime the pump and put something new out there before The Flood.

Holy crap, the spoilers.

Plot could still change, but probably won't. So, like, don't read this. Or something.

Semi-weekly status "update" :

1. The TV.1 rewrite is plodding along and is presently at just over the half-way point. The rewrite is shaping up to be important from an exposition standpoint, though I may re-draft some of the chunkier bits before committing to it. Re-lettering will be done either after TD2E or while waiting on TD2E renders and in either case won't be uploaded until after TD2E is complete, as the rewrite now Assumes You've Read The Dualist, rather than just toddling along where it left off.

2. TD2E script is still done.

3. Texturing of remaining CG is coming along very, very slowly. The to-do list consists of two objects, an environment, and two dummies. One of the objects is done, one of the dummies is almost done, and no work has been done on the second dummy or the environment. The second object has finally heaved itself off the launch pad and, after a couple of false starts, is finally starting to shape itself into something. While I've made substantial progress over the weekend, I still have no idea how long the thing is going to take. I'd like to have the base work done by the 25th and the "flavor" done by Halloween... but I don't know how likely that is. The last vehicle I textured was the Hemera, almost a year ago... and it was considerably more forgiving.

Also, vastly less central to the story.

The single biggest hurdle of vehicle mapping - for me, anyway - has always been figuring out the final color palette. I'll know generally what I want something to look like when I start out, but getting The Exact Colors is always a lengthy period of trial and error. That part of the ordeal is over with - now it's down to refining the design and getting it Done.

Reformatting of the existing TD1E pages has long been complete. 15 minutes ago, the last of those pages was lettered.

There's still the final once-over before upload, and there's still the ten remaining New Pages. Pages that are now on deck.

Work begins the week of the 11th.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

As there's been no visible progress since my last status update a couple of weeks ago, and as it's a new month (this year is whipping by even faster than the last five!), I figure it's time for a general status update.

In no particular order:

1. The TD2E script is complete. The remaining original TD1E pages still need to be relettered - Getting the script done was a horribly expensive process and I've been doing freelance in order to eat for the past couple of weeks. It sucks, but there it is. These pages will be lettered as soon as my current list of commissions has been whittled down.

2. The TV.1 script is partially rewritten, thanks largely to writing inertia and having packed the remaining pages of TD1E in with the TV binder for portability. The TV.1 rewrite is plot-identical to the first edition, though several core bits of character personality, backstory and exposition have changed. The goal is to finish the rewrite within the next few weeks, and to start work on it as soon as The Dualist is re-completed.

3, I CAN HAS PC. Finally. No more limping along in VMWare without hardware 3d support. Still need to replace my "light table," but that's a trip to Lowes/Home Depot with the paycheck after this one. A sheet of plexi won't be expensive, but a round trip to the waterfront is three to four hours of my life. And I need that time for other things at the moment.

4. There has been no work done towards the next edition of the website. I know what I'm going to change and how I'm going to do it, I just don't see the point in stopping everything else to get it done. Webwork will hopefully happen in December or January - by then I should either know how to implement the "spoilers [on] [off]" and "devnotes [on] [off]" options I'd like to put into the new site, or I'll have figured out how to live without them.

5. DCR.2 and TV.2 plot work is back on deck. As I'm quickly coming up on finishing with TD2E and TV.1b, my imagination is lurching forward with the story. With TV.2, I'm weighing story and CG, trying to think through what needs told and what needs shown and figuring out how to balance them in a fashion that will keep new CG to an absolute minimum. With DCR the concerns are similar, though it's long been a question of "is it worth it to model the outside of 'gheny?" I hope to have that answer before the year is out.

5.B. While I'd like to keep DCR as "the thing I do when ATC is rendering," there's a very real possibility I'll be forced to Choose One in order to make meaningful progress through 2010. DCR is the likely candidate - while DCR and TV are roughly the same length, DCR has much lighter production requirements and almost all of its vehicle CG is complete.

6. Production-wise, the new pages I've mentioned previously (total : 10) are still being held up on the CG front. Fortunately at this point the geometry is effectively complete and it's a matter of texturing. How long this process will take, I don't know. Fortunately, the two objects I need to progress TD2E are also two important objects I need to progress DCR, so I'm in sort of a win-win situation here - sitting on my ass is now holding up both projects.

Fortunately, one of the two bits I need, while not necessarily complete, is at the Good Enough point and will be usable for production in TD2E. I've stuck it in the "Extended" section of the entry to keep it off the front page, as at this point it's technically a spoiler.