20140202, 14:50 – Page SIX HUNDRED if you count all of the cover art. Story page 577. Story page 600 should be up later this year, as part of the “back half” of this chapter. I’ll make louder noise about hitting that 600, as it’s the one that really counts!

ELG-2623 is more space-colored than GAC-5623. There’s no particular reason for this. When Water was easing into production I was still in the process of kicking my EVE Online addiction, so it’s entirely likely that GAC picked up some of that, whereas ELG is a year removed from the disease and is consequently a bit more grounded in something resembling reality.

I quit smoking in January of 2013, I haven’t had a drink since April of 2013, and I quit EVE Online somewhere in between. It’s a huge chunk of my life I’m never getting back and I’d prefer to move on rather than dwell on it. It’s no coincidence that ATC didn’t really get back into space until after I’d kicked my MMO habit – it took awhile, but it finally sunk in that if I’m going to spend four to sixteen hours a day “in space” I’m better off going there with my own creations.

This page is the first big instance of a new bearding technique. I’m handling it a bit like static in this scene – the stubble layer is a good-sized pattern fill masked above the line art and merged for page assembly. It’s the most efficient method of five o’clock shadowing that I’ve found to date, though I may tinker with it a bit between scenes, as it doesn’t quite downsample to the desired density.

Orbital mechanics spinning FTL physics into a punchline about male sexuality. If you’re new here, fair warning: this page is par for the course for both complexity and humor!

Next week: The rest of the funny!