The Dualist : Callback up; Reentry rolling.

posted 2009.04.05 at 22:49

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.