20080709 – I’m not all that happy with the new linework for panel one, but it’s better than the previous version. As is the explosion. Admittedly, I spent more time on that than I did with my pencil and microns. I think it looks quite a bit spiffier than the old version.

It’s all anime ‘n shit.

==========================

Explosions are hard.

That said, I’m currently recovering from Front Mission induced RSI, and the entire chapter is finally layed out, weighing in at 40 pages – about 12 more pages than I would’ve liked, but them’s the breaks. This is Earth – and earth is all about inertia.

Now I get to beat on an Epson 1400 until it prints ATC pages at the same quality as an Epson 1280. I get to organize all of the 3d bits that are to be mothballed and then I get to mothball them. I get to do backups. I get to clean up the data structure for all of ATC and hopefully hammer it into something that’s easier to work with. I get to burn 13 vacation days I have no other use for. I get to upgrade my workstation to Leopard and start dealing with life under either Photoshop CS or Photoshop CS2. I get to write comixpress a hopefully nice letter asking why it’s been over three months since I submitted ATC for hardcopy and I haven’t heard anything.

Ultimately, I get to spend the next week cleaning up the mess of the last five years and the six weeks after that figuring out how to move forward. I can do the next seven pages with one environment, the three after that with two more – and two of those three are one-offs that’ll probably only appear in this chapter. There’s a chance that after all of the modeling is done, I may actually begin to enjoy this again.

Fortunately, I have a stash of anti-depressants that should help enormously in that respect.