the dualist : all entries
The Dualist - covers complete.
posted 2010.01.14 at 15:09 | comment
Very anime. Blame bda for liking the original-original cover, circa 2003.
All of the TD2E covers are art complete, but not formatting complete - that'll happen when I get the book formatted for publication and squeeze out a test chapter or act. I really have no idea when that will happen - it's a ton of work and not a very high priority at the moment. The book requires a lot of supplemental material for context - a big ole' Shirow-style Appendix, the kind of thing that would be brewed from the website's Cast and Lexicon and whatnot.
If this version of the site had a Cast page, Lexicon page, Shipyard, etceteras.
All bits missing from the current version of the site, all bits needed in some form for hardcopy, all bits that are planned for the next version of the website, all stuff that'll be formatted into hardcopy after they've been banged out on the interweb.
The sv.2010 data structure and layout exist on paper - I haven't done anything digital yet. I'll fix that over the next few days, and start implementing stuff over the next couple of weeks.
The Dualist (second edition) web copy is as complete and as redone as it's going to get for the time being - enjoy! Read! Find a typo!
Next up - belt-sanding as much of the bullshit as I can out of Dead City Radio : Whitehouse, then the new website, then content for that and DCR.2.
Fasten your seatbelts!
Subversion, Interstitial
posted 2010.01.07 at 19:37 | comment
Subversion and Interstitial have been re-covered and covered. Layout similarity is unintentional - I could have flipped Subversion, but really - I prefer the composition as-is.
Covering Interstitial is technically a retcon - more about the why of it in the page metadata.
Next up : the main cover!
Actually shower, dinner, bar, some work on DCR plot/script. Main cover work starts tomorrow.
impact impacting
posted 2010.01.05 at 04:41 | comment
Impact has been re-covered, and this repetition thing isn't going to hold for Subversion, which I'll be starting on either Wednesday or Thursday.
Health-wise, I'm in better shape - my present bit of ennui may be due more to my sleep schedule than anything else... and that's about to get whacked upside the head. That should change things for the better!
descent; descending
posted 2010.01.04 at 08:12 | 2 comments
Descent has been re-covered. Effectively finished at some point Saturday, it sat in RAM until a few minutes ago as a result of health issues - I'm still drained, still sick of being sick, but seem to be on the bounce-back. Slowly.
Will be moving on the c7 cover in a few minutes - I may be able to bust that out by tomorrow afternoon. If I don't, then there'll be a bit of a wait, as I'll be offline for a couple of days. More on that when or after it happens.
< porkins> aaaaaaaallllmost there....
Motion, Motion
posted 2010.01.01 at 21:59 | comment
After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, Motion has been re-covered.
Rather than rest on my laurels, I'm hauling ass - Descent is in test rendering as I write this. If the test works out, it'll make Descent the only chapter cover to be re-interpreted for the new aspect ratio. I expect to have it done this weekend if everything goes smoothly - early to middle of next week if I hit the proverbial snags.
In other news, it's 2010. Expect the new version of the website and a status determination on DCR and TV - and progress on one of 'em - within Q1.
Expulsion, Avatar
posted 2009.12.28 at 09:35 | comment
Expulsion has been covered. Real proper-like. More production info in the page metadata.
The Earth renders took longer than expected - four hours a pass, and I wound up redoing them thanks to the clouds being more at-issue than usual. Aeon was originally facing the other way - flipping it resulted in better lighting. It also matches the Expulsion intro scene and continues to obscure the ligature on the starboard side of the boat.
Usually, longass renders means time spent doing paperwork, surfing, and otherwise being fabulously unproductive. It used to mean drawing panels, but the CG backlog still needs to be knocked down before production is ready to resume. Sunday, thanks to my friend Martin, I was watching Avatar in 3d (in a high-end-but-not-IMAX theater) while one of those passes cranked out.
Avatar is the first movie of my adult life that's lived up to the hype. Exceeded it, possibly - the 2d trailer, the 2d stills... 2d anything really doesn't do this movie justice. After the years of hype leading up to the steaming turd that was The Phantom Menace, my heart hardened and my bullshit detector started spidering the upgrade tree like the Starcraft "AI." That orgasm of hyper-hype made it easy to ignore The Matrix, its sequels, Lord of the Rings (and its relentless over-commercialization in DVD), and everything else that's made lots of noise over the past decade.
That Star Trek was muddled fun, that District 9 was the best social satire since Robocop, that The Road puts the "bleak" in bleak... I could have watched any of those on a 19" display and enjoyed them just as much. Not as big, and stereo-only, but ultimately... the same experience. The biggest home theater I've seen (Hi Greg!) isn't big enough for Avatar.
I don't know if Avatar is a "game-changer" or not - I don't care. I'm more interested in the world. I want the Director's Cut. I want to see it again.
This week, if possible.
In that respect, I suppose it is a game changer.
Eggs &
posted 2009.12.25 at 20:46 | comment
Incursion has been re-covered. Happy holiday, etc.
Also, perhaps more importantly, I have very solid ideas for the Expulsion and The Dualist covers. Lots of rendering, a good-sized chunk of line art... they'll both look AWESUM and that leaves four more cover puzzles to solve.
Finishing work remains either ahead of schedule or has fallen far behind schedule, depending on how you look at it. I've drawn three covers this week, but I've only shopped one... and that cover had only one piece of art to go with it. A piece I had to draw twice, so I'm going to count it twice. Dammit.
The Expulsion set should have either no drawings, or integrated drawings - it'll depend on the cover. The first of these should roll out at some point in the next couple of days.
Beef : He's What's For Dinner
posted 2009.12.23 at 20:28 | 1 comment
Clarity has been re-covered. I'm now out of my stock of pre-canned backgrounds - I busted out the first four in May (or thereabouts) and have been busy with other stuff since then.
The Beef, he's Beefy.
Four down, seven left... I'd say I'd have the cover for chapter five started, but the fact is that my initial flailings have been quite unproductive. Frustrating, even. Back to the drawing board and so forth - hopefully this weekend. Or sooner.
In an effort to stem the steadily rising levels of comment spam, I've changed blog comment settings for Immediately approve comments from : from Anyone to NO ONE. While I'm not happy with this, it's only temporary*. Turning comments off completely breaks existing templates (sloppy design on my part), and CAPTCHA or some other form of authentication just isn't going to be hacked into the current design. Period. When the time for Work comes, it'll be Work on a New Site, not patches to this one.
So for the time being, you can still comment - comments will be held and screened prior to publication. Any further spam won't have the opportunity to stink up the public side of the site - I hope this has the desired effect!
* For the moment. If it works super-awesome, I may stick with it.
Typornography & Cover update(s) 3
posted 2009.12.21 at 02:36 | comment
Reentry is re-covered.
Clarity soon; Motion in the early stages of rendering.
Yay!
Typornography & Cover update(s) 2
posted 2009.12.16 at 17:16 | comment
Type fixes to details -21-, priorities -1-, reflex -2- and friction -7-. Friction -7- also received a minor art correction. Thanks to xeno for all catches and recommendations.
Covers - TV.1 is re-covered. Jacket design now matches The Dualist - third version of that cover and it finally looks good and has a logo. That last bit didn't exist until late last week and wasn't shooped until yesterday. Talk about lag!
Also talking about lag, the Been Done For Awhile covers for signal and convergence are now in place, with spreads in the metadata and for the time being, wee thumbnails in the book index. Those will be replaced by the full strips with the next version of the website - my layout ideas for New And Improved Indexes would be why the new site is on hold until these bits are done.
Typornography & Cover update(s)
posted 2009.12.15 at 21:06 | comment
xeno's read over the first half (for the second or eighth time) and caught a few more-
Commitment -4-, Commitment -6-, Convergence -2- and Light -9-. There's probably some more. Lurking.
Base cover bits are down for the chapters of The Dualist and TV.1. The TV.1 cover render is grinding away; backs have been done for TD1-TD4 for awhile. TD5-TD8 have been sketched and I'll get rolling on those after the TV.1 render is done - I've been busy supervising that instead of drawing. Drawing is hard.
You have found this post informative.
Oops.
posted 2009.12.09 at 16:06 | comment
For a few days (closer to two weeks, actually), the first seven pages of chapter two had been overwritten by the first seven pages of chapter six. Whoops.
I've temporarily fixed this by changing the basenames of the first seven pages of chapter six. The best permanent fix will be to re-change those names back to normal while changing the name of the first scene of chapter two.
The trick is finding an applicable scene title that isn't used somewhere else in the story. Commitment works, at least for the time being. It happens to have the same number of letters as convergence, which is a bit visually confusing.
For purposes of hardcopy, unless I go all Delany - adding scene names and chapter names above as well as page numbers below - the only function that chapter scene names provide is an indication to web readers that they're coming up on a shift in plot focus.
Also, fun (unrelated) fact : Counting all covers, counting all posted pages of all projects, not counting the small number of reasonably ready-to-go DCR.2 strips, ATC presently stands at 438 pages (424 actual).
Proofreaders, start your engines!
posted 2009.12.04 at 15:13 | comment
Subversion is up, and so is Interstitial. The second edition is content complete. For now, the only things likely to change are typos and - possibly - nixing that Fridge Logic pointed out in the TVTropes entry.
TD2E is functionally complete. Start here and read till you hit the end - if your nick isn't xeno and you find a typo, feel free to email me or comment on this blog post, pasting a link to the relevant page with your comment.
Done for words (I hope), but not aesthetics - I still have to implement my ideas for the reworked covers for TD2E and TV and implement the TV.1 rewrite. Then comes the website re-work, which will (FINALLY!) bring the last of the missing bits back, hopefully in a more navigable format. Think cast, lexicon, shipyard, etceteras.
Far from finished, but the visual re-working should be complete. I'll know for sure when I get around to re-reading DCR, and I don't plan on doing that until TV.1 is brought up to plot spec. There's no way in hell 28 (closer to 32-34 counting the bits of DCR.2 that are done) pages could possibly take as long as the 350+ of TD2E. That was over a year in the doing - a year and a bit of change after the covers are completed and wired in.
I'm still meditating on which project is going to resume first - DCR or Transitional Voices. I'll have a better idea after I've knocked the to-do list down to "pick one." That's still a few weeks away, at the earliest.
7 Up - The Difference is Clear.
posted 2009.12.03 at 14:44 | comment
Starting with two new pages here and here, the rest of TD2E Chapter Seven has been uploaded.
I'd plow straight into the once-over and upload of Eight and Interstitial, but I have a social event tonight to get ready for, followed by lunch tomorrow and (hopefully!) a trip to Ralph's. While I'll be able to proof the pages, I may not have time to put together a mass upload until Saturday. Before then, with any luck.
42 pages remaining - 43 counting the C8 cover. All processed, all documented, all pretty much ready to go.
Also. Holy crap, ATC's made it into TVTropes! SQUEEE!!!!
Side note - many years ago, a fan contacted me about creating a wikipedia article for ATC. I gave enthusiastic permission; the article was written and promptly deleted by the site editors due to a lack of "notability." That article later surfaced on Comixpedia (which is offline or no longer extant as of this writing). Fortunately, TVTropes has a much more admirable stance on notability, so with any luck this entry will stick around. Hopefully other tropers read the article and build on Puffenstuff's work! :)
As for me... after the SQUEEE!! wears off, I gotta figure out what (if anything) to do about that Fridge Logic.
While you were shopping...
posted 2009.11.27 at 15:41 | comment
...38 pages of impact were uploaded. 37 if you don't count the chapter cover.
13:20 <solios> massive amounts of ATC uploaded.
13:20 <xeno> yeah, i saw
13:20 <solios> no point in a final typornograph until it's ALL done, though.
13:20 <xeno> it shat all over my reader :P
13:20 <solios> :>
13:20 <solios> FLORP!
13:21 <xeno> more like bllloOROROODOPPOIPPPPPIIPUPUIPUP[PODGPAIU ADRPRPRRRPOROPROROROPORIIRTUPIROURIRORPOROPRROPROPRPROPR ORORPERRPOOM
13:21 <solios> :D
As with the previous Big Big Uploads of chapters five and six, all of these pages were Done months ago, and are expanding onto the website following the completion of Expulsion.
The upload stops here for one reason - there are two more NEW pages to create. The last new pages of the book. When those are done, all remaining pages will be uploaded.
This particular chapter is more than just a reformat and re-write. Several pages have new panels, adding a sub-arc that fleshes out part of the story. The plot hasn't changed - it's more like an Obvious Gap has finally been filled in.
The pages with new panels are:
friction -1-
friction -2-
friction -3-
friction -4-
impact -1-
impact -2-
All told it's roughly a page of new content, spread across six. While new pages have been added here and there, some artwork cleaned up, the entire story rewritten... these are the only "invasive" edits of the Second Edition - the only time new line art is injected into the same page as old, the only time the pacing has been tinkered with.
A breather, then I figure out how I'll be going about rendering the next two pages. I expect to have them completed within a week - which means The Dualist should be finished within a week.
For the record, the two-day upload total is 117 pages.
Happy holidays!
While you were sleeping.
posted 2009.11.27 at 04:53 | 2 comments
All of Expulsion was uploaded yesterday afternoon. The new pages start here. After that, I once-overed Motion, caught a few typos, and left the house for a bit.
Then came my first proper Thanksgiving dinner in approximately 13 years (thanks, Chris and Laura!). Then an attempted phone home followed by a four hour "nap."
Then Motion was uploaded in its entirety. Following that, Descent was given a once-over. One error that I'm aware of, followed by upload.
That's 77 pages in less than 24 hours. Months of No Updates exploding like some kind of Big Bang With Boobs.
I'm going to take another nap (or loaf around for a bit and then take one, I haven't decided yet), then upload 38 more TD2E pages when I wake up. The Adult Stuff I'd planned to deal with today (and should have dealt with two weeks ago) can wait till Monday. Today, I am Ahab.
the DISSERPLINN
posted 2009.11.26 at 13:43 | comment
Expulsion is done. Unlike incursion, this is All New Material. Lots of firsts, the biggest of which is a clear glimpse at The Overplot. Unlike (most) of the other actors in this drama, Yang and Aeon are in possession of most of the facts. Unlike previous posts, I'm comfortable divulging this information.
Seven new pages worked over the past couple of weeks, uploaded in one swat. You'd think being laid off from my day job 12 days ago would have been a big kick in the ass, and it was - just not necessarily in the way I'd expected. I'm still just as Deeply Unmotivated as I have been for the past two years - the difference now is I've got plenty of paperwork and other stuff to keep me busy. I'm also FINALLY catching up on sleep. Eighteen months of five to six hours a night (eight, rarely) has left me Truly, Madly, Deeply burned out. Finally having a PC that can run games and do ATC renders in 1/10th the time of previous setups has turned out to mean hours of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : Shadow of Chernobyl, finding out what the big deal with The Orange Box was,* and Team Fortress 2. So much Team Fortress 2. Production has suffered accordingly. As of the 13th, I'm out of excuses, and I'm out of real-world roadblocks - for a couple of weeks, anyway.
If I felt any less motivated - if I had any less energy - I'd be violating a few laws of physics. More than a few. That doesn't change what needs doing, where things are, how much has been done, and the massive amount of uploading I'll be doing over the next few days. Chapters Five and Six have been done for awhile - my next task will be Once Over-ing both of them while setting up renders for the two remaining pages of Chapter Seven.
Then seven and eight go up. Then it's on to a wealth of other Things That Need Doing - some of it's is ATC related, some of it's Finding A Job related. There is some overlap. There is potentially a lot of overlap. The lack of energy is most likely a combination of seasonal and layoff factors, as well as all the fear and uncertainty that comes with the latter. Part of my slate has been cleared for me - I figure it's on me to clear the rest of it as quickly as possible, making the beginning of 2010 the start of Life 2.0.
This is, perhaps, one of the most critical scenes in The Dualist. It's also Yang's first color appearance, the first appearance of Aeon's "avatar" (given the present Definite Shape of the pre-Dualist outline), my first animal, the first bit of Non-Crazy Astral Space** in the book, the first instance of the ligature to appear inside the story... and the whole thing's orange enough to counteract the overabundance of blue elsewhere.
Forty Orange.
Forty Orange and the first blatant statement of what this whole damned thing - what these years of effort - might actually be leading to. It's... unnerving. Like you're in the middle of a meeting and you suddenly realize your zipper might be down.
Motion in a couple of days - and hopefully some motivation to go with it. Inertia will carry this thing through - I'd prefer some ZIP! and some ZING! and preferably some :D and some ^_^ to go with it. If they show up for the party, awesome. If they don't... well, so be it.
* Portal? Five hours of awesome. Half-Life 2 and episodes? There's quite a bit of goodness there, but it's ultimately A Shooter With An Interesting Story. Emphasis on A Shooter. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is the kind of FPS single-player I've always wanted to play, and as such my opinion of HL2 boils down to "It's the best Doom since Doom 3." One of these days FPS games that aren't Halo will implement per-weapon melee attacks and - holy of holies - bayonets. Optional breakable bayonets if my trusty AKM/74 with optional scope and grenade launcher (and in Clear Sky, silencer and accuracy mod) in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. are anything to go by. Did Bungee patent pistol whipping? Is that why every FPS I've played since hasn't implemented it?
Rounding out the "review," TF2 is the most online fun I've had since Wolfenstein : Enemy Territory. It's basically WET (or Counter Strike or Team Fortress or Quake 3 or, yanno... whatever) with a hell of a lot more fine-tuning, beautiful art direction, a great sense of humor, and the same problem every online multiplayer game has - finding a good server can be a real pain in the trigger finger. You get over that hurdle, and the fun... the fun rolls on for hours. If you're wondering why this scene wasn't up sooner, don't blame my former employer and the last week of craziness - blame Valve. Or if I do an ATC-themed game model (like I've been not-very-seriously considering on occasion), thank them.
** Strictly speaking, this isn't quite Astral. The Aeon's AI has organic components - it's technically a sentient life form and as such, it has an astral form. That said form happens to be a dog is in keeping with the ship's present mental state - it's been lost, sniffing around the galaxy for its masters for the past forever-and-a-half. While this is technically some kind of Super Holodeck, there's no actual interface hardware - this entire scene occurs as a psychic communication between Aeon and Yang.
BOO!
posted 2009.10.31 at 17:38 | comment
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!
Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
posted 2009.10.30 at 16:40 | comment
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.
It flies at 30,000 feet, carrying 27 tons of bombs.
posted 2009.10.10 at 20:41 | comment
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.
141, 13, 10, 168... HUT!
posted 2009.09.17 at 11:36 | comment
141 : Completed second edition pages*.
17 : Pages that need to be rewritten.
10 : New pages (all scripted and thumbnailed)
168 : Total pages of The Dualist (second edition) that are not on the website.
The numbers have been stable for a few days - I've been taking an ATC breather and have instead been spending my time on other kinds of art, brushing up rusty skills and getting my artmeats ready for the new pages.
The rewrite could be finished this weekend.
PC brain in the next few days, CG texturing after that... new work in October, with any luck.
To reiterate, for those of you who haven't read the previous blog posts : despite having a massive, massive wad of pages completed, the logjam is the eight new pages that kick off the last four chapters. I could retcon those in by editing timestamps, but I'm going another way.
* Barring a final cleanup pass, typo pass, etc.
More stuff you won't see for awhile.
posted 2009.09.09 at 15:13 | comment
Chapters Five and Six are bagged.
When the current bottleneck clears, I'm sitting on a massive 70 page up{date|grade}. A stack that'll get bigger tonight. And tomorrow night.
Dig it.
Seven is rewritten and I'll be starting on the lettering tonight. I still need to create two new pages for the tweaked climax, so that could be where things Stop when updates start rolling again.
Eight is about 4/5 complete. One scene left to re-write, though the smoking crater that is my bank account means this won't be worked on until... uh...
October. :-|
This weekend is lettering and (hopefully) commission work. Xeno's in town from the 17th through the 20th or 21rst, during which time my finances will be further annihilated by the purchase of the PC brain and the usual round or three of bills. Also, food. Not entirely sure if my food supply will last until the 17th, which means a bigger than usual chunk of my paycheck will be going into restocking the pantry.*
With the PC up and running in time for the G-20 Shutdown Of Pittsburgh, I'll have something to do at home and nowhere else to go. Work on the next 10 pages will start that week.
At present the breakdown looks like this:
September : Lettering of existing rewrite.
October : Texturing and environment for the new pages, setup for the new pages, finish rewrite and lettering of the old pages.
November : Production of new pages.
November or early December : One hell of a MASSIVE update.
December : Covers and new version of website, integrating everything still missing from the previous version. Possible rewrite of TV.1 and/or DCR.1, assuming DCR.1 can be improved any further.
January : Rolling on TV.2 and DCR.1 CG. This'll happen during November and December as well, though as a back seat to finishing the second edition of The Dualist.
February or March (possibly earlier) : New pages of Transitional Voices or new DCR strips.
* "What the bloody hell does that have to do with writing?!," you ask? Plenty. I'm a big fan of per-project consistency, and while DCR and TV have been written all around town, The Dualist is strictly a Bar Project. Which means I need money for booze. A typical writing session costs about $30 and produces anywhere from Script Review to A Scene to (in the case of Chapter Six this weekend) a complete chapter rewrite. Cheap in the scheme of things, but painfully expensive at the moment. Of course, I nuked my bank account by going out and rewriting on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Combined with the sessions from early last week, I managed to rewrite about 15/16ths of The Back Four in about a week.
The problem is I was expecting lettering to take a lot longer than it has. :P
CAN'T STOP THE CHUNGING
posted 2009.08.30 at 00:51 | comment
Bits You Won't See For Quite Awhile continue to build up.
II has been swatted, and I've finished processing and inserting the ten new panels that augment the existing pages of what will eventually be Chapter Seven. I've started CG work on the bit of geometry I'll need for two of the ten remaining pages, and I've been doing some here-and-there work on the Big CG that's holding up the other eight.
Unless I catch a visual gaffe during future lettering, this thing is done for visual re-processing.
Down to the rewrite, new pages, and new material.
Logjams include but are not limited to:
1. Ten pages of new stuff. Eight to launch the Back Four, two to finish Chapter Seven.
2. 3d bits for said, which are also needed to progress Dead City Radio. DCR needs more than that, but it's been needing the more than that and these bits since this time last year, so knocking the DCR CG to-do down to two (enormous) items will make the idea of progressing it a lot less... icky. Processing the panel inserts for the existing chapter seven pages was a cinch - the modeling was already done. This won't be as easy.... but the required material is much more significant. We're not talking a few pipes and a crank. We're talking the story equivalent of System Level bits.
3. Writing. I've chewed on a lot of plot stuff over the past few weeks, but Chapter Five isn't on that list. I have a feeling that given my work flow, my money flow, my life in general... this will probably be the last thing knocked off the immediate TDL. Writing's the thing I do when computers are out of reach - and being cripplingly, criminally destitute means no going out... which means the keyboard remains closer than the pen. Which means photoshop etc. take priority over writing.
Fortunately, the back half is more cleanup and tweaking than it is Starting Over. It's the same amount of work, mind you - but creatively, reading an old scene and rewording it for The Now is a lot easier than throwing out an old steamer and replacing it with something that fits. I've learned a thing or two about retroscripting with the first half.... though maybe not in the Stan Lee sense of the term- stylistically, I've no Claremontian Prose Obelisks to fall back on.
4. Covers. Progress on the back four has been so rapid that I'm now questioning the idea of chapter covers. I've been questioning them for awhile, really - I generated the backgrounds for the first four quickly enough... as planned, I still have seven (eight if you count TV) backgrounds to figure out, and - counting those - nine that need art. I could cheap out and cut that to one. The thought of it, it's tempting. Reduction of workload, elimination of nonessential material, etc. No ideas for any of those seven (eight) given the pattern I've established for the first four. Not a good sign.
Well... ideas. But they all involve a style shift - one that implies either a rework of existing covers (see the previous blog post with the previews) or some clear indicator that Change Is Merited. II does that all by itself, really... so it's a question of choice of II cover, and manufacture of 5-8 backs. And linework, etc.
The big icky is that in terms of where things are and how I'll likely be able to work on them, I'd vastly prefer to bust this thing out, then do the covers. Which is a massive, massive departure from How Things Have Been Done.
You'd think the repeated cover drafts would have been a clear indicator, but it's only now - when I've decided that drawing will be involved - that I start to rethink production priorities.
I needs me a drafting table.
Something er-go-nomic.
47 : Not just a Trek number.
posted 2009.08.17 at 18:59 | comment
Also, the number of pages that still need to be pre-formatted.
That's (still) the one page of chapter four, and all of chapter six.
The rest is in the bag and ready for dialogue.
All the remaining holdups (texturing, the eight pages of Expulsion, etc) that I've blogged about previously still need to be dealt with. But hey, 111 out of 158 pages pre-formatted.
That's something to be happy about!
Progress (not the lack of it)
posted 2009.08.13 at 17:54 | comment
It's time for numbers!
166 : number of pages remaining (not counting covers and supplemental material)
08 : number of pages that are Brand New For Sure.
158 : number of pages remaining in the First Edition.
That 158? That's the important part. For this post, anyway.
73 : number of pages pre-formatted as of this post.
85 : number of pages that still need to be pre-formatted.
Pre-formatting in this case means that the page has been transferred from the first edition 3:4 aspect ratio to the second edition 6:9. So far this has largely been a matter of cropping and scaling, though there's also been a good amount of "raising the roof" (that is, extending the sky or digging up the original 3d file and over-rendering the top of it to fill space), a few replacement renders, and some minor photoshop cleanup.
While I could go nuts and spend time scrubbing every page, I've kept the amount of photoshop editing as minimal as possible, restricting myself to Ornix's shirt and the most egregious of otherwise-unrepairable panels. I did more cleanup work for any three pages of the first two chapters than I have for the last 73 pages I've crunched. Which is how I've managed to pre-format 73 pages in a fortnight.
I call it "pre-formatting" instead of "formatting" for one simple reason - I don't know if these pages have been formatted or not, and I won't know until I've started to lay down the dialogue. As no part of Expulsion (the last four chapters) has been re-written yet, any one of these pages could be a potential land mine - I may have to rework panels, pages, maybe even scenes. So I'm not formatting - I'm pre-formatting. Odds are most of these pages won't need to be touched - but some of them probably will.
Those 73 pages? I ignored the first page of Chapter Four and have been going from there. Hunt and peck, bits and pieces, here and there. Working my way through some easy pages, some tough pages, some time consuming pages, then some easy pages again. With the one exception, all of Chapters Five and Six have been pre-formatted. Six is the short one (22 pages!), which is why the number is 73 and not, say... 79 - a number I hope to hit tonight or tomorrow. The halfway point on pre-formatting.
I'm probably tackling chapter Eight next. It's straightforward and like chapter Seven will require a good amount of rendering correction and a good amount of Ornix Shirt Replacement. I'm heading for Eight instead of Seven in order to buy time for the PC components to arrive - Seven is going to be a problem chapter. While Eight will certainly have its hurdles, the story is solid and the corrections will be aesthetic. Roof raising, mostly.
Seven is a different animal. The first sub-scene ("insertion") will be a straight-forward pre-format. The rest of the chapter... not so much. I'm going to be adding stuff. Right now I'm thinking a couple of pages and several panels to pages - the former to give the story the Crazy Visual Near-Climax that it completely lacks, and the latter to flesh out a narrative thread - a point b - that is implied to exist but that as yet does not. Those of you who read my IRC prattling know what I'm talking about - if this thing is new to you than I'm not going to spoil it for you.
So Eight is straight forward and the first third of Seven is as well. I'm going to bust those bits out as fast as I can. The goal here is to get as much of the second edition pre-formatted as possible, so that when pages start showing up again they'll be doing so en masse. This is the boring part - final tweaks and laying down the type is much more enjoyable.
I've been working like this for awhile now - stripping pages, pre-formatting them, cleaning them up, then adding the dialogue. Until now I've been doing it a scene at a time, dragging my feet on each little bit, stumbling around, letting the rewrite hold me up. Things have changed a bit - the order of operations at this point in time is to get as much of what I can do done as fast as I can do it. Any mistakes made now can be fixed when the page comes 'round to dialogue.
Of the remaining 85 pages, I can pre-format 51 of them now without having to worry about adding panels or pages. Adding pages mucks up the numbering something fierce.
So that's what I'm going to do. That's where my head is right now.
Later for everything else.
Progress (and the lack of it)
posted 2009.08.07 at 19:32 | comment
Sitrep:
1. Everything I've threatened previously. The new version of the website, mainly - no progress on that front. Yet. I figure I'll get to it when Expulsion is closer to being actualized.
2. "Expulsion" has been re-scripted and laid out. At eight pages or so, it's going to be lot of work.* Still gotta do texture mapping (a lot of work for three shots), environment development, etc. See 4. for why this isn't going anywhere right now. Chapter covers have stalled out - that has nothing to do with 4 and more to do with the fact that 3 is a heck of a lot easier to work on at the moment.
3. Of the 48 pages of Chapter Five, 22 have been pre-prepped. Some new renders and cleanup work, the usual reformatting, all ready for dialogue. So whenever Expulsion is finished, there'll be a BIG load of pages following.
4. The PC I've been using for 3d work kicked the bucket. It works intermittently - signs point to repeated processor overheating. I could fix it, but it's a loaner and it's a P4 2.4 with 2 gigs of ram. I'm presently doing rendering work in a VM on my primary machine. While it works fairly well, there are some major quirks that prevent it from being a viable texturing solution. I've already ordered the first few parts for the replacement PC, which will be a quad-core something or other with comparatively kick-ass specs. The holdup, as always, is finances. Barring a massive windfall or a sudden transformation into a life form that doesn't need to eat, we're looking at a good six to eight weeks before I have all the components.
So, there it is. Nothing hits the website until the PC problem is solved, though that hasn't stopped work on reformatting. With any luck I'll have all of four and a good chunk of five reformatted and ready for dialogue (and maybe actually dialogued) by the time the all of the parts are in.
It may not look like it, but work is being done. Expect another month or two of silence, followed by a massive, massive update.
* The basics are pretty basic on paper, but are going to be difficult to adequately actualize. Fortunately the scene will be very good practice for a variety of techniques I'll need to master for Water and everything that follows. The more of TD2E 5-8 I can get bagged in the meantime, the smaller the gap between Expulsion and New Story Pages.
Incursion edits & Chapter cover previews
posted 2009.07.20 at 18:42 | comment
xeno has made his first editing pass, finding typos in the following pages:
signal -5-
convergence -9-
convergence -10-
zoo -5-
briefing -1-
recon -3-
recon -6-
19:27 <xeno> and done.
19:28 <xeno> well, up to suction -4- anyway, which appears to be all the further your rerererererererere-edit has made it
Convergence -9- is typo-free. The problem with it? It was NEVER UPLOADED. I didn't notice, you didn't notice (or if you did, you didn't email me!). xeno noticed.
Unlike the first edition, in which any and all page changes were line-itemed into the metadata and the page was versioned, I made all changes to the original files and did a mass upload of all pages. The end result is that typos are magically Fixed, and I only have to muck with the CMS for this piece of paperwork. Efficient!
No offense to the man, but it's possible there are still typos lurking around somewhere.* If you find one, contact me ASAP.
In other news, covers for Chapter One and Chapter Two are done; the cover characters for Chapter Three have gone back to the drawing board, while Chapter Four has a background and Incursion still needs to be produced.
These are wraparound covers, in the style of the first version of the first edition cover. I still need to work out the bleed space - whenever this thing gets to hardcopy, the first couple of issues (Chapters) might be a bit weird at the spine. Since it's all textural instead of a flat color, the bleed/trim will be a bit more obvious. The cover for Incursion is going to need some thought, as 190-odd pages means a spine, not staples.
Here's Chapter One - Captains Andreissen and Polaski on the back, Thad and Alias on the front:
And here's Chapter Two - Tantek and Xand on the back, Raven and West on the front:
All linework has been digitally re-inked. It's a technique I've used on bits and pieces of comic work for cleanup purposes - while was perfected on other projects, this is the first use of the technique for ATC. Given how much of a timesink it is, I'll be using it for Covers Only.
Three more covers (9 more bits of linework), the web redesign (which could include a Mobile version, as ATC looks like poop on the iPhone), some CG work... and then things will get rolling again.
20090801 - on additional "edit." -I- has been peeled out of the first scene of Chapter One. It's -I- again. This matches with the impending -II-, which doesn't fit with the scene next to it at all.
* xeno is very good at what he does. What makes me suspicious is the idea that I could bust out over 180 pages without screwing up more. I don't recall the first edition flowing out this easily.
Chapter Four is done.
posted 2009.07.04 at 18:42 | comment
Recon has four new pages and new CG. What used to be suction has been split into Light (a bit of new stuff) and Suction (minor new stuff).
Right, that took long enough.
Recon was the bottleneck - while all the formatting on everything was done awhile back, the new CG and the new illustrations just kind of sat there on the "to do" list for a good long time while I worked the kinks out of everything else. The new linework and new panels of recon -3- - the biggest whack of new art for the chapter - didn't manifest until last weekend. This past week was spent working on a commission and doing the final once-over, with recon -9- finally succumbing late wednesday.
186 pages complete, with at least 158 remaining. I say "at least," as that's the number of first edition pages that still need to be reformatted. There's still the introduction to the second half ("Expulsion"), which will be 6-10 pages, and I may yet decide to add a couple of pages to what'll be chapter Seven (was six) to clear up some storytelling problems. So 158 + 6-14 == 164-172 pages remaining.
Either way, the second edition is over the hump for page count, but not for drama - not by a long shot. While grinding out the first half was a matter of "nose to the grindstone" with a move thrown in for flavor, the second half has some serious crazy lurking on the horizon. More on that when it breaks - things are a strained status quo at the moment, and I intend to make the most of it.
To that end, it's on to covers, editing, assembley, a new version of the website, and population of that new version - then some CG work - before I get back to pages.
It's quite a workload!
Briefing is up.
posted 2009.06.05 at 00:15 | comment
Eight pages of yammering, starting here. A couple of new renders, a little bit of cleanup, and some (hopefully funny) jokes. Jokes of DOOM.
Also backstory. More backstory than EVER BEFORE. Bits of the WGP, Dead City Radio, whatever Book One will be called... briefing is practically an outline of The Story To Date.
It makes my brain itch, but I'm happy it's over and done with. i actually get to do a couple of drawings for the new pages of the next scene - hopefully my drawing skills haven't atrophied to stick figure levels.
If it turns out they have, I can always do a comedy series...
Still Around 200 Pages Left. 185 plus the new intro for the second half - I still don't know how many pages it'll run yet.
So. ALMOST halfway. I hope I can cover the second half in less than seven months!
In unrelated news, a quarter pound of beef is TINY.
Chapter Four is go.
posted 2009.05.28 at 03:11 | 4 comments
Can't sleep, clown will eat me.
Clarity, transition, control (chapter four edition) and speculation are all done and up. 20 pages counting the cover, putting the book at around 180 remaining.
There's some new stuff. Not as much as previous updates. Some new linework for clarity; some extensive CG work for transition.
Like, really extensive.
In other news, I really wish deli lunchmeat kept as long as the processed stuff does. I never seem to be able to use it up before it starts to go bad. You'd think buying it in smaller amounts would be a viable answer, but I never seem to be able to use up half a pound in the same amount of time I never seem to be able to use up a pound. Call it The Law of Conservation of Lunchmeat Spoilage.
Refridgerating bread will extend its shelf life (at the expense of its yumminess). Maybe freezing the beef is in order.
In other news, there is never, ever enough time.
Zoo up, Reentry done.
posted 2009.05.02 at 20:21 | comment
Zoo is up. Five pages. One new shot, one shot replacement, and a bunch of tweaks and adjustments. Five pages feels like a sneeze after the 29 page slog that preceded Zoo, though it's a sneeze that's been bogged down with its own issues. A family visit (yay!), sleep problems sapping the hell out of my energy and creativity (boo!), and some freelance work - also slowed by the aforementioned. And the rescript went through a couple of revisions. The whole thing is finally at a point where I consider it a resounding improvement over the previous revision, so. Up it goes!
It'll be at least a couple of weeks before anything related to Chapter Four shows up. The next item on the to-do list will probably be the cover re-implementaitons I've been thinking on for the past few months, followed by TD2EC4 pre-prep, then actual production. Chapter four is a far stickier mess than chapter three was - I'll be adding some pages, redoing a scene, redrawing a couple of panels, jinking some page comps, and (again) re-rendering the Daedalus. A broader variety of re-work than this chapter, and probably more time consuming.
I'll be 30 in about six weeks. If I'm not well into the next chapter by then, I hope to at least be started on it.
Super Mega Upload : Guide & Reentry
posted 2009.04.18 at 19:21 | comment
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.
Callback up; Reentry rolling.
posted 2009.04.05 at 22:49 | comment
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.
Gate up. C2 done, moving.
posted 2009.02.27 at 21:44 | comment
Gate, which used to be Distortion - a "problem scene" if ever there was - is done and up. Everything that needed cleaning got cleaned last week or earlier - after polishing up some freelance, I slapped on the finishing touches and called it good.
It's fitting to stop here - I have to move again. This week or next, I don't know where yet. The last six months will make a great chapter in the autobiography, or maybe a stand-alone comic. Possibly a sitcom.
After that's over and done with, the plan is to rework the covers (and a small bit of the website), then start reproduction of Chapter Three.
Oh, and after Xeno (who's stuck in the fun place this weekend) commits typornography, I'll start processing One and Two as issues.
Hardcopy. It's gotta happen sometime, right?
incoming up; breather relocated.
posted 2009.02.10 at 18:41 | 8 comments
So it turns out that when you have an entire scene written, rendered, set up, and penciled... inking and shading go fast. Damned fast.
I like doing scenes this way - all renders, all pencils, all inks, all colors and cleanup, all shading, all tweaks... but I couldn't imagine sustaining it for anything longer than a couple of pages. This shit is work, yo.
Literally. Lots of work - the renders were done in December and early January, while I was still plugging away on other stages of the reformat.... and I didn't have to throw at the inks until Sunday.
"Fortunately" (har, har) I've been sick the past couple of days - when I haven't been shitting my ass off or doing the freezing-hot fever thing, I've been experiencing the joys of Bourbon-and-Tea (Chai, specifically - try it sometime!), doing the Jedi Healing Trance thing, and working on shading the new pages.
And now that all of the in-progress comic pages have been done* , it's back to the Plate O Freelance for a bit.
POF and work, assuming I don't poo my brains out tonight.
* DCR doesn't count. The next several DCR strips are ready for pencils. Thinking about it makes my brain whine like a puppy that's been kicked too many times. I'll get to it eventually, but for the time being the effort-to-reward is unfavorably disproportionate.
Convergence (part 3) up; breather.
posted 2009.02.07 at 18:38 | comment
Pages 13-19 are up. The scene is finally complete!
No fundamentally massive changes - to the artwork, that is. Some details have been cleaned up, a smidge of pretty added here and there... a pile of the usual cleanup scrubbing has been done. You know the drill.
Next up is "incoming," a new four page insert featuring Heirotus. It isn't strictly necessary, but the story flows so much better with it that I've decided to keep it in. Despite the work involved, which will be fairly non-trivial.
Not only are the next four pages going to be some non-trivial work, I'm also way behind on commission work - which means I'm going to have to bow out of production for a few days (or weeks) so I can tend to things like bills and whatnot.
So, enjoy The Running Xand. She'll be on top for awhile.
So to speak!
Convergence (part 2) up.
posted 2009.01.30 at 21:00 | 2 comments
7-12 : Go.
Seriously committed to both the rewrite and the reformat now. This is one of the bits I'm still uncertain about... and I'm not sure how well it will work in the long run. Or rather, until there is a long run for context.
Monkeys.
Less total cleanup, more emphasis on creating headspace. Some reworking - the Eye Of Sauron became a Meaningful Stare became gone, covered by table. Other minor adjustments, but only the one major-major change.
Six more, probably same time next week. Then a redraw, which'll probably take longer.
Convergence (part 1) up; such high hopes.
posted 2009.01.24 at 19:54 | comment
The first third of Convergence is up. The second third will follow as soon as possible.
The first mass upload of the year contains the oldest pages - not quite the first pages, but the oldest to survive without a redraw and/or a reshuffle.
These would have been up nearly a month ago, but I've been grappling with a seemingly hopeless addiction to Disgaea DS (great game!), commissions, and a host of personal issues. I could have kept my head buried in the freelance sand - gladly, as unlike this it pays - but then it would be next week, next month, next year and this scene would still need redoing.
Rereading the original metadata... I seemed happier, and was certainly more sociable in 2003. Five years ago this was a fresh project, I was still excited and high as a kite huffing the new car smell. I thought my stamina was limitless, my imagination bottomless, and I figured people would read it because it was something different and it was on the internet.
Wrong on all counts, I persist.
To wit - my stamina's fine, at the expense of my imagination... which is really more of a petri dish than an ocean, or even a swimming pool. Oh, and all the forces that get your work noticed in meatspace apply to the interwebs as well - you want eyeballs, you gotta go and get 'em yourself.
It's that last skill that remains the least developed - in part because the rest of the fu you need to grow to create a comic has nothing to do with it.
Marketing.
Let's target that for 2010, shall we?
Descent up, metadata notes, breather.
posted 2008.12.20 at 16:19 | comment
I should probably note that the new page metadata is generated as I'm cleaning up the page - typically in one or two sessions - and is pasted in during the mass upload. The mass uploads have a creation period of a few minutes, compared to the days that a scene rework takes. I've been uploading in batches instead of one at a time for a few reasons - the big one is that it's just easier. Between the straight-html archives requiring a full rebuild to keep their shit straight and the tedium of ganking the original metadata and post timing out of the old db... it's better to do it all in one crunch.
That and unless I'm grinding out Brand New Pages, this means every update is several pages, instead of one every few days or weeks.
That said, Descent is up. I took a pass on the idea of nixing Tantek's "fifth eye," and sniped the first two pages of Convergence - they're now descent -6- and -7- respectively. This means Descent will be 19 pages instead of 21. Unlike previous scenes, it won't be One Big Upload - I'll rewrite it as one big scene, but I'll be breaking it into two or three chunks to make it more manageable.
Oh, and I don't intend to get started on the reformatting until next weekend. I've slacked enough on some freelance obligations... time to pull my head out of this thing for a few days.
Well, the Photoshop end, anyway. I still gotta do the rewrite.
Convergence primed.
posted 2008.12.18 at 16:43 | comment
The again-temp cover has been reformatted, the synopsis and production data have been ported over, and Convergence - Chapter Two of the second edition, Chapter One of the first - is ready for pages.
This won't be a straight crop-clean-and-dump a la Signal. Most of the original pages will be given the same treatment - I'm currently leaning towards redrawing one of them. Yeah, just one.
I'm learning, see.
So 35 reworks, one probable redraw, four new pages (which I'm pre-pre-rendering now)... all of it taken at a slightly more sedate pace than the previous chapter. It still needs a complete scene-by-scene rewrite... and I haven't officially started on that yet. The draft of Raven and West chatting doesn't count, at least not yet - the first draft is too much exposition with little in the way of impact on the story.
Reworks and cleanup have so far been fairly easy - the issue I'm toying with now is the idea of removing the O from Tantek's 8O8 optics - covering it over with the same gunmetal green as the rest of his armor. Redrawing the helmet completely is out of the question, but plugging the center could make the suit look more "Inspired By Briareos" and less "Badly Drawn Briareos." In theory, anyway. In practice, such a change would be a whole lotta work with very minimal payoff.
There's a lot of that helmet in this chapter, so I'm going to futz around a bit and see if I can come up with a viable solution. If I can't, no biggie - it'll be one less item on the to-do list.
And if THAT isn't fun enough... the core scene of the chapter - some 18 pages - is going for its second adjustment - first 1800x2400 to 2250x3000; now 1800x2400 to 1850x2774 (live area of 1800x2700). That's gonna be FUN! :D
Actually, it won't be. But appearances are important, or so I've been told.
Cage up; chapter complete.
posted 2008.12.17 at 12:47 | comment
Cage, which used to be Animal and Hammering before that, has been cleaned up, tweaked, or otherwise reformatted to spec. This completes the chapter - at 42 pages (actual), it's two pages shorter than the first edition version, thanks to the relocation of the "introduction" pages into Incursion.
It's taken just under a month from start to finish - and that's with stupidly enormous amounts of vacation time thrown at the project. The next few chapters will take longer.
Work on Convergence will start in a week or so - I have some commission work to take care of, and xeno still needs to typornograph Signal. It isn't actually done-Done until he gives it a thumbs up, so.
Speaking of Convergence.... I'll be adding four pages.* Four pages of badly needed context that fills in a pretty friggin' enormous plot hole. That happens near the end of the chapter, so I don't know how getting that done will effect deployment of reformatted pages.
I should also note that after this chapter passes typorno and I've had time to mull over any further changes or adjustments, I'll be proceeding with print formatting (grayscale and color) and, whenever I get around to generating a proper cover (front, back, insides)... hardcopy. Get this thing locked into something resembling CANON! before I succumb to changing it any further.
I've been threatening hardcopy for quite awhile now, and really, what I'm doing to The Dualist now is what Needs To Be Done in order to get it there.
Trust me on this, mmmkay?
* The Plan - which is much more coherent than the Cylon Plan, really - is to add four pages to Convergence, four to Clarity, and another eight-to-ten page wad ("expulsion") between Clarity and Motion. The additions to Convergence will patch a gaping plot hole; the extra pages for Clarity will sort of restore a scene that was cut, and Expulsion will just confuse the hell out of everything until I finish Dead City Radio.
Control cleaned up.
posted 2008.12.14 at 20:17 | comment
The eight pages of Control are up. See the individual pages for major changes - there's too many to recall offhand... though I think I can say with certainty that the story is finally cleansed of infringing copyrights, trademarks, etcetera.
Finally. Took me long enough.
Right. That thing in the nuthatch is up next, later this week. Then I might just take the rest of the month OFF.
Reaction uploaded.
posted 2008.12.11 at 18:17 | comment
Reaction is up, and has been nickel-and-dimed quite a bit more than either of the previous scenes in terms of cleanup. Like the chapter to date, this scene has also been retroscripted - a bit of a tradeoff, really - ejecting one exposition-and-drugs structure for another.
While the original text revealed more about the immediate story, the rewrite gives a broader idea of the whole story, hinting at various events that have happened over the past forty years of the ATC timeline.
The remainder of the chapter should survive intact, at least story-wise. There's still plenty of cleanup and tweaking to be done before I can stick a fork in Signal, hopefully for good.
Distortion uploaded
posted 2008.12.07 at 20:07 | comment
TD2E Chapter one scene two has been uploaded. It starts here and runs for nine pages.
Re-production wise, the chapter is over the hump - signal seems to have required the majority of the cleanup work so far. Distortion got its fair share of reformatting, and some cleanup ranging from continuity and emprettyment to some more serious heavy lifting, but overall the changes are more to the dialogue than anything else.
22 of 42 pages reprocessed - 20 left, and only six of those have any meaningful dialogue. Not only that, most of the "quality control" issues I had (a la Dead City Radio) were already fixed during the First Edition hardcopy assembly. In plain english : Signal should be re-completed this month. On schedule!
With the next scene I'll finally - finally! - be working on "normal" pages: the kind of composition that makes up the bulk of the second half of the story - the kind of stuff I "cleverly" worked my ass off to avoid until I got 3d backgrounds rolling.
So... this week looks to be Reaction, and possibly Control as well.
First batch uploaded.
posted 2008.12.06 at 01:57 | comment
The first reformatted pages are up. The Dualist, second edition, Chapter One, scene one. Signal on both counts (scene, chapter).
Think you've read it before? You haven't.
This isn't just a reformat (3x4 to 6x9), it's also a cleanup, a rewrite, and in some cases a retroscript, complete rebuild, or some other form of major surgery. These pages are, by and large, not the original pages.
If you thought the Second Edition was a giant waste of time (and some days, I'd agree with you), well... read the scene. Compare it to the original version. Look at the differences and tell me this isn't a big improvement.
The nine pages of distortion are up next. I have no idea how long they'll take to produce - Incursion is a formatting minefield and so far, everything's been Just Different Enough that I really have no idea what to expect in terms of time consumption.
As usual, you'll know when I do.