The call Greymalkin’s been waiting for finally came in.

Panel two is a callback to Jason Whitehouse’s mention of Templar Assistance Commands a few pages ago – TACT being the acronym of Templar Assistance Command, Terra. Think MACV only with better technology and far fewer personnel. Greymalkin filled in “Terra” on the requisite paperwork for obvious reasons – “TACT” sounds a hell of a lot better than “TACE.” The barely-visible “TACKS” above the 79 on the port engine pod of the Pollux in the last pane of the previous page is short for Templar Assistance Command Kolg Saerai.

Panel one is a continued zoom and dolly from panel four of Fire -18- – from a medium shot of the Pollux to a medium shot of the Oberon and its Valkyrie escort. From there the scene dissolves to panel two and the camera pans down and then cuts.

The Oberon is a re-use of the old “stealth” maps of the Daedalus – I blew the dust off of those, tweaked them a bit, and added orange highlights. It’s about as not-the-Daedalus as it can get while using the same geometry – a thing done for plot purposes. You’ll see what I mean in a few pages! :D

While it lacks the crepuscular depth of Water -16-, I feel that the shot comprising panels two and three is stronger than its Lighting Porn counterpart – the camera field of view is much narrower so the trucks are almost an orthographic projection. The grass/shadow integration is a lot tighter than it was in the previous exterior shot, and marks my first use of a displacement map in years – possibly this century. It’s also the final planned appearance of Michael King, who’s trying to get Beef Knuckleback to smoke weed with him.

I have no idea when the next page will be up. It’s the start of a new scene – it doesn’t need any environment modeling but it will need reference model detailing and more information design before I can really roll on production. Hopefully pages will start flowing again later this month!

Mastering notes, 2016.12.07 – Tweaked Greymalkin’s last line in panel three.