20140112, 11:12 – The tracking shot I mentioned last week – a jump cut between panels one and two followed by a dolly down the central corridor. During shooting (or rather, rendering) I discovered that the rec area table and the bridge can actually fit in the same quarter-page shot. I hadn’t expected that and hadn’t planned for it, though now that I know it’ll fit and have software that can handle the render without falling over I may do something with that knowledge in the future. In the meantime, exposition-over-transition! Long- and short-term Foreshadowing! PLOT!!

This is also the only page of the scenelet that really shows off the display reflections. Every chapter I relight the bridge and try the scene with proper glass – for once it looks good enough to keep, though only in Am and only for a couple of pages.

The chapter is rendered through 3.11 and presently drawn and shaded through 3.08. The last three pages of the production block will be drawn this week and the first of those is the “first” 600. The actual 600 – story page 600, the 600 the comic count hits when it doesn’t count the covers – will hit later this year. Fingers crossed and all that – at this point my plan is to secure ATC through February as quickly as possible, then spend the rest of January on to infinity or however long it takes procuring a non-zero income in the form of commissions, contracts, or possibly leasing out a third of my life and 3/4 of my cognition to a job. For which ATC certainly qualifies as product – or a thorough project management, writing, 3d modeling, lighting, and illustration portfolio. :D

I may have my priorities out of order, but ATC production is a known, fixed thing that’ll take X amount of time and then post over Y amount of weeks. Income procurement is presently an unknown and regardless of what the 2014 solution turns out to be it’s a process that never ends, and it’s a process that I need to work ATC into. That’s a forever thing, and given the PTSD-inducing work abuses I waded through this time last year I’ve become firmly convinced that I’d rather go down fighting than take another shit gig or work for anyone who considers my passion an inconvenience. The bank account will last for a fixed amount of time, and I can use that time to produce several weeks of comic updates that will play out while I work through this leg of the income thing – I’d rather do that than shelve ATC until the distraction subsides. It won’t – not for awhile, not this time – and all of the planning and buffering and so forth has been developed for this reason. I’d love to have a David Willis sized buffer but at this point I’m just happy to have a buffer.

On that note!

Next week: back… to the bridge!

Cast

  • A traumatic Awakening in the summer of 1997 was just the beginning of Thad’s emotional problems. The disappearance of most of his Pittsburgh friends a few weeks later compounded his issues and, while he...

  • Ornix doesn’t let trivial things like ethics and morality get in the way of his loyalties or sense of reality. A longtime friend of Thad and a fellow “victim” of the Templar Waking God...

  • A South Jersey punk with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a Templar-forged Master’s degree for field work, Raven posed as a high school guidance councillor during the early stages of the Waking God...

Glossary Articles

  • Am

    Am is the colloquial (and technically incorrect) term for a “condensed” quad-axial space, accessible by certain life forms and organic technologies. Am is a form of “hyperspace,” in which travel and communication circumvent general...