20141205, 09:03 – Prepping for fresh renders and a redraw of this page and the next. As the most current metadata for this page is WordPress resident I’ll be starting a fresh blurb file for documentation purposes. I’ll drop it on top of the WordPress text when it’s time to post. As announced in a blog post earlier this week I’m tweaking a few pages – in part because I feel they need it, in part because stress is compelling me to avoid the universe even harder than usual.

This scene is a rendering clusterfuck. 3d files exist for the orbital shots; Vue shots exist for the far background, and the texture used for the road surface exists. As does the 3d file for the Lincoln, which is fortunately irrelevant to this reconstruction. I was able to piece together vehicle-free shots of panel four and the first two panels of the next page easily enough; I wound up creating a clean slate for panel two using the CS6 Patch Tool. It’s the first I’ve used it for anything and it worked swimmingly.

Next is redoing the base lettering (I’m NOT changing the script or word distribution, but I *am* re-bubbling) and setting up for 3d ops. Rendering may follow after that; probably during the next work session.

10:01 – Ready for CG work. I’m so used to CG files starting with v_ (for transitional voices) that I spun out a few placement files for a mythical TV chapter five. Oops!

20141206, 01:20 – Rendered. Setup took longer than I would have liked and ultimately lurched into production thanks to blind luck – long story short EXPOSURE CONTROL, which I don’t think was a thing back when this scene was on the drawing board. Now that it’s on the redrawing board, anything goes and the goal is to get this done as quickly and cleanly as possible. Ready for assembly though I’m going to enjoy a mug of tea first.

02:23 – Assembled; ready for line art prep. Patch Tooled some repairs into the Charger – straightened out some minor geometry flaws and removed the “Charger” badge. The glass in 5.22b was a stone mess and that required a bit of shooping to straighten out.

04:51 – I diverged a bit – went back to 4.49 to check the drawn version of the car and fell down the patch well. Wound up editing a ten year old .psd to correct that to a two-doored vehicle, then edits to 4.51 to correct for the current state of window glass and an extensive edit to get Ornix’s gun reasonably on-model… then edits to 4.50 to correct the windows.

05:44 – After the “suction” edits, I got the impact -4- edit taken care of, then prepped 5.21 and 5.22 for line art.

09:47 – After a walk and groceries and a cup of tea the Challenger Edit went a bit off the rails and I patched an unplanned page instead of continuing work on this one. Technically the chapter four edits were also unplanned but those could be excused as visual continuity; the unplanned patch job was also viscon but of Ornix’s gun, which I chained off of while patching chapter four.

10:28 – That’s supposed to be Charger, not Challenger. I slipped while logging another page; think I’ll leave this one. It gives me an idea, see – I can break the work into three chunks and move the whole project as the “Challenger Edit.”

• Chunk One – “The Charger Edit” – Replaced Lincoln with Charger; sprawled into editing the drawn vehicle for continuity. Sprawled into editing Ornix’s revolver as well. Still need to redraw and shade Beef in this page and the next.
• Chunk Two – “Poor Impulse Control” – Clean up a number of Naomi shots. Includes the proposed re-render of reentry -10- and may stop there if self control and general awareness assert themselves any time soon. Could expand to cover a couple of stinkers.
• Chunk Three – Incursion and at least one other Grij-related edit. Which is a fairly non-trivial amount of work, all things considered.

Maybe move ’em and post ’em in three blocks, as listed above.

The best part is it’s the entire proposed edit with extra OCD Fun Time.

23:51 – Pencilled. I’ll do the now-usual thin inks instead of the old dual-pass technique, adding thicker lines (with better control over the results) in Photoshop.

01:03 – Base inks complete; should only need minor cleanup.

03:13 – Ready for shading. BURRITOS FIRST!

03:25 – “Simulated” the second pass of inks by selecting the line art and stroking it 3px center on a new layer behind the line art layer group, then touching it up with another layer on top of the layer group. Looks like it could work, and if it doesn’t, well… I didn’t spend much time on it. FOOD THEN SHADE.

03:50 – Food’s over TIME FOR SHADING!

05:04 – Right, time to figure out if I’m shipping this thing or doing more edits.

06:03 – I’m probably shipping after my walk. Or deciding otherwise during. Posting an eight page edit is going to be a bit of paperwork.

Second Edition Metadata

Beef panels scaled and cropped. And finally given proper page numbers, to boot. These two pages were integrated into the first edition during “post production,” and as such were atc_d_419_bb1 and atc_d_419_bb2 so they’d list between 419 (details -19-) and 420 (priorities -1-). “bb” being “Beef Bonus,” of course – the only proper dialogue the guy has in this book.

20090905 (21) – Lettered.