20150316, 13:15 – Detail additions to Xand’s spacesuit in Air -21-, Air -27-, and Air -41-.
The yoke attached to the air tanks doesn’t fit over the head so I revised the design to do so. Xand’s is never seen off or being put on so the geometry didn’t need to be adjusted, just the line art. The change is barely visible, but it is visible.
20160315, 15:04 – Added the center seam to the neck of Xand’s spacesuit in Air -41-.
20160220, 15:04 – Visual continuity adjustment to panel four of Fire -17-. I think the old version looked a bit better but the new version is a much better match for the next page.
20150401, 19:34 – Fixed Tantek’s elbows in Convergence -7-. Earlier-by-reading-order appearances are vague; all later appearances are green. Technically all later appearances are wrong, as this is the first production appearance of said elbows. It’s easier to fix this page than the rest – this isn’t the first visual continuity edit to the exoskeleton, though it is the smallest!
20150315, 23:47 – Visual continuity – Thad’s mattress in Air -34-.
20141225, 12:53 – Visual continuity. Edits to Reflex -8-, Descent -15-, Descent -21-. Descent -22-, Insertion -4-, Insertion -11- and Earth -42-. The last one is the most obvious. Some corrections were 3d patch renders, some were digital paint. I patched the back passenger area of the sedan for its appearance in Dead City Radio and have now corrected it in the color comics. I also patched Thad’s gun in Descent -21-, which prompted an update of the glossary entry. While I was doing that I added the .38 tag to Control -3-.
20141224, 14:08 – Edits to Earth 27, Earth 32, and Earth 33.
20141222, 15:08 – Fuck it, I’m capitalizing all 612 story pages. Better late than never. Started 15:09. Finished at 17:15. Admin Post Navigation handled the comic custom post type alphabetically – a novel view of comic continuity!
20141222, 14:56 – Minor continuity edit to friction -2-.
20141221, 20:38 – In space, no one can hear you edit. Changes to leitmotif -26-, incursion -1-, incursion -2-, incursion -3-, incursion -4-, incursion -7-, friction -7-, friction -8-, friction -9-, and friction -10-. A few minor edits, a couple of reshoots, and a couple of rewrites that are also a thunderously huge reworking of a comparatively minor plot point. The story now transitions cleanly from greyscale and some minor characters have a bit more character.
20141216, 00:24 – Poor Impulse Control: The Naomi Edit. Changes to reentry -10-, transition -6-, briefing -2-, briefing -3-, and insertion -13-. This edit fixes Naomi’s most off-model appearances and replaces one bit of bad cinematography with one bit of better cinematography.
20141207, 19:35 – Corrected panel three of impact -19-.
20141207, 08:57 – The “Charger” Edit: Changes to suction -1-, suction -2-, suction -3-, details -20-, details -21-, reflex -15-, impact -4- and impact -7-. This edit consistently sets Ornix’s car as a rusty green Charger, mostly corrects his revolver and tracks his brass. It also replaces horrible art of Beef Knuckleback with better art of Beef Knuckleback. The edit started off focused on Beef; editing the car for continuity in suction spiraled into editing editing the gun as well. Weapon anatomy is still inconsistent and inaccurate though I didn’t notice how inconsistent until this writeup. The brass and cylinder are more accurate than the rest of it; technically the weapon was loaded with 12 gauge shotgun shells for two panels and that’s finally been dealt with. Huzzah!
I stuck the comparison shots in a blog post.
20140518, 20:49 – Fixed the spelling of Aleksis in panel three of earth -41-.
20131213, 15:37 – Fixed cheekbone indicators in panel three of water -7-. Yes, I fixed them by removing them.
20131118, 19:52 – Re-applied all fixes made this year between May and August. When I migrated the site from Movable Type to WordPress I blindly used what I thought was a contiguous current dataset – it turned out I was wrong. BUT NOW I AM NOT WRONG. NOW I AM RIGHT!
20131114, 23:22 – Corrected the order of elemental symbols on the Transitional Voices cover.
20131108, 16:03: Removed leading space before colon of chapter titles. Minor changes to clarity -1-, commitment -1-, descent -3-, insertion -9-, details -4-, callback -1-, signal -2-, subversion -5-, earth -1- and water -1-. I still have to fix the back page of all relevant covers, but I’ll be doing that to the full-size files only, not the web instances of the chapter spreads. Also standardized the Dead City Radio cover.
20130820, 11:51: Fixed the shit out of the first and last panels of target -7-. The last panel now sucks 20% less and is probably as good as it’s going to get without more extensive surgery. The first panel was a tradeoff – Jason looking awkward was more effective and appropriate than Jason with his arms at his sides but Jason looking awkward turned out so badly – even after extensive digital reconstruction – that the sheer awfulness of the shot detracted from the effectiveness of the pose. Hence the change. I also made a minor adjustment to provision -5- panel one – Jason’s upper arm now looks almost right instead of completely wrong.
20130807, 23:48: Minor visual fix to Earth -18- – Raven’s right hip is now behind the stanchion instead of in front of it. This needed to be done, as Raven is behind Thad and the stanchion is technically in front of him.
20130718, 23:04: Control -3- hit me during my walk last night, and again during my walk this evening. The contents of the note in panel five have been changed from “We can help! -R” to “This should help! -WBH,” thus pointing the pills and other bits in the ammo can away from an implied encounter between Thad and Raven. WBH would be Willenford Billius Hashfender III. a pharmacologist friend of Jason’s. Jason and Thad had an encounter of some sort between Leitmotif and Target – it stands to reason that at some point either Whitehouse made an introduction or Thad met Hashfender later on. This gets the possibility of prior direct interference on the part of Raven safely out of the way while throwing another tow line from DCR to The Dualist.
20130502, 15:18: reentry -8- – “tordpeos.”
20130317, 06:57: Book changelogs unified into a single document for ATC v10. One of the biggest changes of v10 is considering ATC as a single entity as opposed to four separate objects, so this makes a good amount of sense!
20121221: The Dualist : Mayan Calendar Update! Photoshop edit from hell! All Latin removed from the QAR! Edits to incoming -2- (Panel three, behind the screen, rendered patch – wasn’t visible at webscale, really isn’t visible now!), priorities -1- (Panel six, shopped out), priorities -2- (Went back to the very original first edition background for panel one, shopped panels three and seven in the second edition document), priorities -3- (Back to the source, shopped the hell out of panels two and four), priorities -4- (Rubber stamped the crap out of panels three, five and six), priorities -5- (Quick fix to panel three), priorities -6- (Quick fix to panel six), priorities -7- (Quick fixes to panels one and two), and priorities -8- (Quick fixes to panels three and five). Started around 1300 EST, finished editing at 14:10.
20120929: The Dualist : commitment -4- – Tweaked Raven’s jacket in panel two. Shoulder piping is now outside the straps where it belongs.
20120904: Dead City Radio : xeno finally typornographs. whitehouse -2- – was (not was was). operative -16- – “Suing” is now spelled correctly. operative -22- – know know. operative -23- – changed wording of panel four line one. leitmotif -24- – Emily no longer dops Thad, she drops him.
20120901: Dead City Radio : DCR temp cover in full effect.
20120821 F: The Dualist : Reworked the logo in the early evening, then did the requisite surgery to the covers. I like the replacement logo – it’s sleek. And slightly mean.
20120821 E: The Dualist : Continuity pass completed at 16:15. A few art tweaks, a few wording tweaks, a minor complexity reduction and a little bit of this and that. Managed to slam through the re-read and edits without getting sucked into a Third Edition Swamp, which was something I was freaking out about at the top of the edit. If xeno doesn’t find anything, there’s only one edit remaining – cover logos. The continuity pass is complete! In three days instead of thirteen months!
Let this be the last major edit.
20120821 D: The Dualist : Post-sleep. expulsion -6- – minor continuity fix. priorities -7- : wording tweak. The rest of TD2E.5 passed without incident. There’s a few small rough patches but they’re the kind of bumps a writer intentionally leaves in the work for an editor to find. descent -7- – added a missing space to dialogue in panel three. friction -2- – minor dialogue tweak, minor art tweak. interstitial -1- – art tweak.
20120821 C: The Dualist : TD2E.4 read-through, after a break. I’ve already covered some of this, so it should go quickly. The fact that NBE are a feature of Annexed physics needs to be mentioned at some point. Not relevant here. May cause confusion with the “river guardian,” etc. NOTE TO SELF – “Gant” (clarity -3-) gets mentioned explicitly in light. Anomalous otherwise. Explain via Cast entry, possible appearance in TV.3 or TV.4. briefing -4- – smoothed out some clunky wording in the last panel. briefing -5- – revised a continuity issue. briefing -6- – revised a continuity issue. Issues later in the chapter fixed yesterday. Read-through of Incursion complete. Expect fewer issues with Expulsion.
Funny hah-hah or funny peculiar: the read-through of the first half of The Dualist was just as disjointed as the production of the work itself. If that little “habit” holds then the read-through of Expulsion should be comparatively linear.
20120821 B: The Dualist : TDE2E.3 read-through. callback -5- – added a word, made a few dialogue tweaks. callback -7- – revised dialogue to reflect changes to earlier pages. guide -12- – brief panic, disremembered the exact location of the scar on Thad’s back. Thought it was closer to the spine, it’s below the deltoid. reentry -3- : reworded a couple of lines.
20210821 A: The Dualist : Drunken highly agitated but running out the string read-through of TD2E.1. distortion -2- : clunkiness revision. distortion -7- – continuity revision. distortion -8- – gave the dialogue the equivalent of a neck. reaction -3- – extensive, subtle, and more accurate rewording. control -2- – re-edit. Turned off type and patch layers during corrections, forgot to re-enable them. Fixed. Chapters 0.5, 1 and 2 have been effectively proofed. Or continuity re-read, at any rate.
20120820: Transitional Voices : Continuity read. earth -13- – Continuity tweaks. earth -20- – slight tweak to wording in panel one. earth -22- – fixed a non-critical continuity issue. earth -40- : Changed “fucking whiner” to “what a whiner.” earth -42- – removed another four-legged word. Continuity read complete at 01:28. Combined with previous visual fixes TV.1 is ready for hardcopy prep.
20120820 B: The Dualist : incursion -6- – “code 7” is now “executive order.” This cuts down the complexity a bit while achieving the same results. incursion -1- – GSD replaced with Gregorian date. signal -2- – appended year to date. signal -5- – continuity revision. signal -6- – technical revision. signal -10- – continuity revision.
20120820 A: The Dualist : Spot re-read, out of sequence. convergence -18- – tweaked wording. Currently mulling over some relatively critical changes to captions – the general timeframe needs to be clearer than it is. incoming -3- – changed the wording of panel four. More technical, less vain. Strictly speaking not the sort of edit I’m looking to do with the continuity pass, but replacing completely useless dialogue with something more relevant is justified. light -3- – minor wording change. light -11- – repositioned dialogue for better readability. suction -1- – wording change, visual continuity tweak: removed the dome light from the car, as it conflicts with the later CG instance. The drawn vehicle is never going to match the CG instance, but I can cut down on the number of obvious differences. commitment -4- – forced exposition is now less forced exposition. convergence -12- – continuity revisions. convergence -15- – minor wording change. While I bopped around out of sequence this should cover chapter two for continuity.
20120819 E: Dead City Radio : 22:30 – DCR.5 re-read. target -7- – fixed a possible continuity error. Edit complete at 22:34.
20120819 D: Dead City Radio : 22:17 – MikeS will be here shortly. Reread of DCR.4 in progress. provision -13- : Small art tweak to panel four. This is the only edit performed on DCR.4.
20120819 C: Dead City Radio : Reread of DCR.3, begun 21:04. leitmotif -4- – Artifact. And a couple of other words. leitmotif -6- – Artifact. Minor wording change, minor art tweak. leitmotif -8- – changed a word in panel two. leitmotif -9- – reduced a glaring art issue in panel one. leitmotif -14- – minor wording change in panel three. leitmotif -20- – great shot became great view, which reads better. leitmotif -21- – tweaked Jesse’s word balloon in the last panel. 21:41 – dinner break. leitmotif -34- – Changed EWO to Bill. Bill the Addicaine. leitmotif -35- – tweaked the dialogue in the last panel. The second line always rankled me – now it’s a clear statement of mission orders. leitmotif -36- – added a line of dialogue to panel three, moved the original line to panel four. Edit concluded at 22:00 on the nose – an encouraging sign!
20120819 B: Transitional Voices : Gave myself a little treat – rebuilt Raven’s shoulder, neck, jaw, ear and mouth in panel one of earth -19-, and gave John’s right eye a little tweak to boot. There are quite a few jaw issues in this chapter – this page and the previous fix were the two I found the most offensive, so they’ve been dealt with.
20120819 B: Dead City Radio : Reread of DCR.2, begun around 8pm. operative -1- – reworded a line of dialogue in panel four. operative -2- – Fixed Sean’s hairline in panel four. Would have let it slide but this is his Reference Shot. operative -6- – repositioned dialogue in panel five so that it reads cleanly. operative -16- : tweaked some dialogue in the last panel. operative -18- – Turned off an old word balloon that had been left on in panel four. operative -19- – Minor rewording to tone down expletives. operative -22- – artifact. operative -23- – artifact. Brief break. operative -30- : replaced lame SPORT walkman cover text with Criterion Logic Industrial Technologies TYR portable am/fm|cassette. Branding is consistent with DCR.5. Editing pass of DCR.2 finished at 21:00 on the nose, no interruptions.
20120819 A: Transitional Voices : Visual continuity edit to earth -27-. This is the only zinger I’m aware of in terms of vizcon – while I don’t discount the possibility of stumbling onto something else, this is the only one that’s been On The List for awhile. I’m about to execute another edit, but that one is a matter of taste as opposed to continuity.
20120819 A: Dead City Radio : Re-read of DCR.1 with on-the-fly corrections, begun around 7:30 pm and concluding at around 7:50. whitehouse -14- : Language, minor art fixes. whitehouse -15- – Fixed what was either a typo or a continuity error. They’re on Helios, not Helia. whitehouse -16- – minor language tweaks. whitehouse -24- – minor art tweaks to panel 7 (lopsided hairline). whitehouse -26- – minor art fix to panel seven. As an edit I give this effort a A- – I found and corrected a typo and some language issues, which is the point. I also wound up getting tempted by a few line art tweaks – points off for that!
20120818: Transitional Voices : As Transitional Voices is still technically In Production, the changelog currently applies to any adjustments made to the first chapter following the production of Dead City Radio. There will be a few – TV.1 is four years old art at this point and a linear read of ATC beginning with DCR.1 is extremely jarring in terms of visual quality. While there’s a lot I’ll need to be willing to live with if I want to avoid another lengthy detour a la The Dualist, one or two bits may be tweaked or replaced. The primary focus is the continuity pass, which puts TV.1 last on the list after DCR and TD2E. At this point opening the changelog is a formality – I don’t expect to be chewing on TV.1 edits until September or October, and at that point I’ll hopefully be rushing to push through them so I can get to work on executing the TV.2 script.
20120818 D: The Dualist : Worth noting, given the anxiety expressed below: The decision to create the second edition set production back a ways, and the ascending necessity of DCR set forward motion on the story back even further. While DCR definitely moves things forward, it’s also a prequel to The Dualist. Having just completed the last of the story pages I’m torn between the desire to move forward, the need for the continuity edits, the urge to do a comic that isn’t ATC, and the stress of the rest of my life. Digging into old art – going against the current – triggered symptoms akin to PTSD.
While the second edition was an interesting problem to solve, the continuity pass started off as a deeply unpleasant experience. The sooner it’s wrapped the sooner I can get back to kicking ass. Asses that aren’t, yanno… my ass.
I’m done re-mangling line art for this book unless something pops on a re-read. The four pages I tweaked earlier are the majority of a very short list of necessary visual continuity edits – the last one that I have in mind is in Transitional Voices and I plan to start work on that after I post this.
Correction: after I revise control -3- one more time. Killed the glow on the pills, as glowing pills raise a hell of a lot more questions than they could ever possibly hope to answer. The point of this scene is that Thad can’t handle his shit and self-medicates with whatever he can get his hands on. Realistic pills make that point, no questions asked.
20120818 C: The Dualist : Three pages on deck: control -1-, -2-, and -3-. Aside from the visual continuity errors in suction -4-, this was the major fix I had in mind when I started prattling about an editing pass a ways back. This morning Thad’s shirt was still technically a copyright issue.
control -3- : Swapped out Thad’s shirt, added text to the ammo can. Thus flatly contradicting the metadata. Also straightened out the shadow cast inside the can in panel five and tweaked the bottle in panel seven to add some actual booze to it.
control -2- : Shirt swap performed in the original page file, re-integrated into the second edition page file. There are some minor differences in scaling.
control -1- : Shirt swap and some minor cleanup.
20120818 B: The Dualist : suction -4- kicks off the editing with an anxiety attack. Two major repairs here – the first is a major continuity fix to the car door, bringing it effectively in line with the established Beefmobile. The second, done after the attack and a nice long walk with my sister, is a few visual fixes to Thad, straightening out his goatee and tweaking shading a bit. Far from perfect, but if I go overboard bringing my 2009 treatment of 2004 line art up to spec I’m going to be spending the rest of the weekend in Western Psych.
Earlier:
13:48 < solios> hoo.
13:48 < solios> ramming through a major continuity fix on the dualist and I feel like I’m going to fucking barf.
13:49 < solios> massive bone-shattering OH SHIT GODDAMMIT NOT THIS AGAIN ANYTHING BUT THIS FUCK FUCK FUCK GODDAMN anxiety.
13:49 < solios> good thing it’s a small fix.
That car door is what I had in mind in terms of a continuity pass. The goatee is just one of those things that needed fixing and wasn’t much effort.
Self-control, on the other hand, IS going to be some effort. Page was revised twice after the initial upload – fixed car door shadow so it falls sensibly, fixed Ornix’s right eye.
20120818 A: The Dualist : This changelog contains a list of all adjustments and alterations made to The Dualist beginning August, 2012. As The Dualist has had a long and unusually convoluted production history it makes sense to keep future edits in a single file. While the Second Edition (the current “stage” of the work) was a series of 366 manual uploads into the CMS, future edits will be executed in the same fashion as Dead City Radio and Transitional Voices edits – the pages will be prepared and the webscale versions will be SCP’ed to the server as batch uploads.
While this document may eventually expand to provide an account of the production history of The Dualist prior to August of 2012, the intended purpose of this file is to serve as a log of alterations made in the wake of Dead City Radio.
20120818: Dead City Radio : Production of the Dead City Radio story pages completed at 04:03 this morning. The book still needs a cover, and the book still needs an edit.
It’s worth noting here that all story pages have been tagged. DCR.5 pages were tagged as they came off the production line – at some point in July I snapped and spent an entire Sunday tagging the rest of the book. While this has no bearing on the story or future edits, it should have a fairly big impact on the next version of the website, due to start production during/after the Great Q3 of 2012 Editing Pass.
20120723: Transitional Voices : Initial tagging pass. See The Dualist change log for more details. Global tag search testing returned results on a per-date basis and the search template may or may not have provisions to stack or re-order results on a per-book basis. As it stands now TV.1 results return before the completed books, as an artifact of TV.1 being the first comic loaded into the CMS after the 2008 website relaunch.
20120723: The Dualist : Initial tagging pass. All characters, most vehicles, some technology and a few locations have been tagged. Tags are presently viewable in page source, written out into the “Keywords” meta tag. The next major revision of the website will include some form of tag search functionality, hopefully global rather than per-book.