One of those stealth copyright problems I’d completely forgotten about – the Seagram’s logo has been changed out for something a bit less… well known. The label for “Spagnola Dry Gin With Orange” was whipped up in a few minutes. Unless I throw in a scene of someone picking up trash in book six, this is probably the only time …
Panels five and six got a bit taller; everything else is pretty much the same. 20090903 (5) – Lettered. Initial – and hopefully final – placement of Chapter Five title thingy. Mastering notes, 2016.12.07 – Minor dialogue adjustments.
Scaled six and seven to match; dropped in one through five and scaled, trimming plenty off of 2-5. All of my wide shots are narrowing! Oh noes! 20090903 (7) – Lettered. Mastering notes, 2016.12.07 – Made Raven’s expression in panel seven a lot less lop-sided.
The crop-o-tron strikes again., sipping bits off of all panels. Xand is her own layer group for panel one, which allows me to move her around… getting the horrible perspective bits offscreen for the time being. She may yet get a redraw – it depends on how the rescript turns out. 20090903 (8) – Lettered. Mastering notes, 2016.12.07 – Minor …
Croppity crop crop. Fun fact: Even scaled down, the gutters on the old version are still bigger than they are for the second edition. 20090904 (9) – Lettered. Mastering notes, 2016.12.07 – Made a valiant effort to salvage panel four.
The usual cropping and scaling, plus a background correction for panel two. Same as the previous page – the Loki (what you can see of it) is now more or less properly aligned. 20090904 (11) – Lettered. Mastering notes, 2016.12.07 – Minor dialogue adjustments.
It was right around here that I’d originally written a big chunky rant about how I’d made an Executive Decision to not replace the Daedalus on account of it being Too Much Work. While I was somewhere in the middle of chewing up my verb quota, I figured I’d check, just to see. It turned out to be a lot …
Panel one – Daedalus replaced. Keeping the center of panel six aligned is one thing – consistency, etceteras – but having held to that in this case would have meant that Greymalkin wouldn’t have been staring at Xand’s butt anymore. And that just can’t happen. 20090904 (15) – Lettered. Mastering notes, 2016.12.07 – Minor dialogue adjustments.
Unlike the next page (produced before this one), which was scaled and cropped, the top panel was re-rendered at 2500×2400, up from the original 2500×990… which was then scaled back down to the in-pace 2200-something-by-whatever. The end result is more headspace for Raven and Tantek in panel one, which preserves the rest of the composition. There’s a good chance I’ll …
Crop-tastic! Whittled a bit off of the sides of… well, everything. Oh, and I shopped in Brand’s junk in panel four. Mustn’t forget that. 20090906 (25) – Lettered. Mastering notes, 2016.12.07 – Minor dialogue adjustments. Worked in Hrazny mrDat. Foreshadowing!
Fresh raising-the-roof renders for panels four and six – everything else is pretty much unchanged. 20090906 (26) – Lettered. Mastering notes, 2016.12.07 – Minor dialogue adjustments.
Another relatively easy trim job, with panel four losing a smidge off the left side. 20090906 (27) – Lettered. Book Six massively foreshadowed. Mastering notes, 2016.12.07 – Minor dialogue adjustments.
Man, the art in this scene is really, really inconsistent. I’d like to think that’s something I’ve gotten better at over the years… but we won’t really know for sure until I start doing new pages again. Managed to transfer this one with minor cropping – mostly to panels three, four, five, and seven. 20090906 (28) – Lettered. Mastering notes, …
Easiest. Reformat. Ever. 20090906 (29) – Lettered. Mastering notes, 2016.12.07 – Centered the dialogue in panel two.
Raised the roof of the first panel, cropped the middle and scaled the seventh (and first on the next page, as they’re a matched set). Also dug back to an older version of the original page to fix a weird glitch with Grij’s shading in panel one… which then spiraled into a few more tweaks to position and whatnot. 20090906 …
Turns out panel three was seriously over-rendered – one and two were cropped; three got a bit of a ceiling boost. 20090907 (32) – Lettered. Mastering notes, 2016.12.07 – Minor dialogue adjustments.
In between this page and the last one: I killed another roach, dusted several cracks in the kitchen, bathroom, and hallway with borax, swept the roach out the back door, did some googling, freaked at tomorrow’s high temp (91! WHAT THE FUCK?!), and I’m so full of sucralose that the jolt from the bug on the carpet has blasted me …
Crop-diddley-umptious. Wee snips to the left, big snips to the right. If this winds up cramping the dialogue than I’ll re-render the right-hand panels to get whatever space I need, but at this point I don’t think it’ll be necessary. Of course, this point is August 9th, 2009. Things could be different come September or whenever I actually make the …
SMACK! Cropped everything so panel five would fit correctly. Wound up skewing panel four a bit – it’s still screwy… just not as screwy. 20090907 (43) – TALKING CLEAVAGE. Also, used the word bubble in panel one to cover a missing chunk of shade – it’s been awhile since I’ve done that! Mastering notes, 2016.12.07 – Extensively rewrote panels one, …
Did you know that Rayne is in panel three? I didn’t, and I made the page! No, really. Just noticed now, while jockeying the panel into position. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read over this one and not even noticed him. Kinda like previously-uncaught glitches in other pages, I suppose. Crop, crop, scalencrop, scale, scale. Plenty of …