As I’ve mentioned previously, planning and pre-production for DCR.5 is well advanced. The script and layouts were finished months ago, all page files have been created, and several pages have been “framed” (initial panel layouts nailed down). I started prep-work on one of the major CG assets a couple of weeks ago and it’s nearly ready for primetime.

The majority of the chapter takes place in a single environment with fixed assets – this environment technically already exists, though like other key assets I’ll probably spend several hours (or days) updating it in order to make sure that it renders with minimal effort. As the source environment is roughly six years old I expect some degree of work to be necessary. DCR is a higher resolutio[Power blinked. First time MT’s spastic-by-default autosave has come in handy!]n than The Dualist, so there’s a good possibility that several support assets may prove insufficient.

I’m mentally budgeting two to three weeks for asset creation and updates – I’ll need just about everything the chapter requires to get the cover and first few pages out the door. Once assets have reached that point the major bottlenecks will be rendering and drawing.

So. DCR.5 is at roughly the same point as any previous scene of a chapter in production – the key difference is that with a couple of minor exceptions the scene is the chapter.

Cars, guns, paramilitary hardware – I should have it sorted and started at some point in May.

Big emphasis on hopefully. I’m presently working on two separate freelance contracts and am loosely attached to two more. Shoving Provision out the door has had a measurable impact on my ability to handle my paid workload, so to keep everyone happy (and to free up some time down the road), ATC will need to take a back seat to fulfilling contracts for the next several weeks.

On the upside, I’ve gone to rather a lot of effort to make DCR.5 the easiest-to-produce ATC installment to date, and that prep work should pay off handsomely over the course of the next few months.

< xeno> EXTRA POINTS FOR LOUD NOISY SLOBBERING

Provision 15 and 16 are up. Worked a piece at a time, a few minutes here a few minutes there over the past couple of weeks. The past month if you include modeling and rendering time. I could have uploaded them a couple of days ago but I figured I’d wait for the 29th. Mark the occasion, etc.

Five more pages are ready for line art, and I’ll bust ’em out whenever I have the time. The last month or so has been nuts. Point of fact the reason the new pages are up now and not this afternoon or close to midnight tonight is thanks to a 9am meeting. My internal clock is currently a good fit for a 9-to-5 in Hawaii and the relevant time zone is in the other direction, so it’s either stretch it a couple of hours (my relative 2am, their actual 2pm) and get some less critical stuff done, or try to sleep and run the risk of missing out. I could have page time this weekend, I could have page time in August. I have no idea – even less of one than I usually do.

I have managed to get rather a lot of the hands-off bits taken care of, though. 22 2/3 pages of DCR left to render, 28 left to draw!