GNOMES – Gauge-Neutral Obliterative Matter-Energy System.
A considerable number of spacecraft are powered by GNOMES.
Produced at a breakneck pace compared to the rest of the chapter – line art and cleanup yesterday after posting the previous two pages, shading and post today after I woke up. I plan on taking the rest of the night off of ATC (well, DCR.5 specifically), so that leaves 26 days to produce the remaining three pages. Right now that ain’t no thing – I should have a better idea as to what I’m in for in terms of time and effort by this time next week… hopefully by then I’ll have made some progress on 5.18.
I’d go on, but… spoilers! Sufficed to say, this leg of the chapter is very much complete and the remaining three pages present fresh challenges. Challenges I’m looking forward to – a nice change of pace after a couple of months noodling away at a mall parking lot.
2012 07 18, 01:43 – Rewritten. Tossed the original script for the page, kept the basic chain of events and rewrote the dialogue more or less from scratch. The fact I was able to work in GNOMES makes me happy – xeno and I backronymed it back in May as a means of finally putting a name to the “really, really efficient” engines of the Daedalus. Now it’s effectively canon!
2012 07 18, 06:27 – It has occurred to me that my revisions have probably stirred up a few continuity problems with The Dualist and Transitional Voices – while I’m still planning a continuity pass in Q4 2012, I’m hoping it doesn’t sprawl into the fullblown redux that sucked up 2008-10.
2012 07 19, 08:15 – Going slightly off script with the layouts. Greg has to get his knives sheathed and Jason has to get the gun out of his left hand – while I’m not orgasmically enthused with the results, the tweaks fit the framework fairly well.
11:07 – Rendering complete. Retooling of panels one and two and a somewhat sloppy approach to visual cohesion to accommodate a Left Handshake, setting up a Dualist-style transition to the next page. West normally doesn’t wear a watch – it’s a wee little Chekhov’s Gun, written into the script specifically as a means of linking this scene with the next one.
Which I still need to model. And that’s fine – I now have seven pages that are ready (or nearly ready) to draw. If I can grind out at least five in the next eleven days I’ll be on schedule – if I can bite off the entire lot I’ll be ahead of schedule.
That’s not going to happen, of course. But sometimes it’s fun to dream.
While there’s still a hell of a lot of work to do, it feels like I’ve just hit a pretty significant milestone! :D
14:46 – Redoing panel five – back to the original layout, Jason facing to the left. Works better etc.
16:04 – Ready for line art. And I’m ready for bed!
2012 08 05, 04:57 – Pencilled and inked a couple of hours after posting 5.16. Just finished slotting the line art into the page. Need to do a good amount of cleanup prior to shading… and I need to sleep before that. Will resume this afternoon.
13:48 – Dialogue tailed, art tweaked a bit more. Page is ready for shading and it’s the only major thing on my to-do list for the day. Woohoo!
15:33 – FINGERNAILS. Typically I just indicate them and move on – this is a rare instance of separate coloration. Given the Extreme Closeup this makes sense. See also Jesse’s lips back in DCR.2.
Also, shading out of order – panels one, six and seven are done; panel eight preliminary pass is complete. Still need to add watch readout and transition effects – I’ll do that after I finish shading panels two through five.
16:21 – Shading is down to panels two and three.
16:56 – s/two//. Home stretch!
18:22 – Primary shading has been complete for a bit – noodling away at post production effects.
