Rendered on the fifth, drawn on the sixth, shaded on the seventh and posted on the eighth. Pretty time consuming in the drawing department – 21 character drawings plus a copious number of unique silhouettes. Only one dupe in the lot, and one bit of art cloning – Jesse’s head in panel five is a dupe of her fixed-up head from panel four. A good amount of pre-shading cleanup kept post-shading patch work to a minimum, fortunately. Tons of work, and a bit of (relatively obtuse) history to boot! Woot!
The chapter is one third complete – I’ll start prep for the middle section later this week and expect to start producing pages next week. With luck the work will go quickly – there’s no major CG assets required. It’s all drawing and photoshop, though I’m sure CG will sneak in at some point. No cg backgrounds are planned – prep work for the next phase of the chapter consists largely of setting my alarm clock and hoping the weather cooperates.
Jesse’s wearing another Foreplay Unit shirt – this one’s in support of the 1994 THRUST tour. Landing in New York, Prague, Duluth, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Baikonur, Moscow, Sydney, Brisbane, Corning, Des Moines, Brussels, Paris, London, Williamsport, State College, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Denver and Compton. The order the band toured through these cities (and how a fictional underground industrial-dance band* wound up playing a gig in Williamsport) is left as an exercise for the reader.
It would be a cheap shot to say that Pittsburgh radio sucks. It would also be technically incorrect. If you like mass market genres, badly EQed pop, think Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin produced six or seven songs apiece, if you like waking up to the same Bush, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Smashing Pumpkins tracks you woke up to in 1996, well… you’re in the demographic. Pittsburgh radio is representative of Pennsylvania radio at large – if you like music that doesn’t come out of a vending machine your radio experience is likely your alarm clock or incidental background irritation. NPR is viable vehicle listening. WRCT is a low-probability crapshoot if you can pick it up. The rest of the dial is the rest of the state, with higher production values.
In a nutshell, burgh radio is irrelevant to my interests, and my age range. The radio stations I occasionally enjoy listening to are all through iTunes – less sports, less in the way of PA-centric “classic rock.” Ten thousand variations on major genres as opposed to a maximum of two or three, distinguished by on-air “personalities.”
That Whitehouse happens to broadcast on the same frequency as WQSU and plays some of the same content as the sunday night Alternative and Metal show DJs of the 1995-97 era is something I may eventually get into at some point, as the frequency choice and broadcast material reflects my initial exposure to metal/industrial. While all writing is personal, the frequency is one of those little details that strongly associates with specific memories – it didn’t rise randomly to the surface of the compost heap. It has pedigree.
The history bit mentioned above – In the late 90s, Visual Communication (VC) and Computer Animation / Multimedia (CAM) were two of the bigger majors at the art school this unnamed institution is (loosely) based on. At some point in ’98 or ’99 (possibly earlier) VC was phased out and replaced with Graphic Design. Basically a name change, though there may have been some other curriculum tweaks.
CAM, on the other hand… oh man. CAM has since been splintered into something like five to seven separate programs – and even when I was going through Art Boot Camp, it was being splintered. CAM in 1997-99 was the trade school equivalent of Navy SEAL, Spetsnaz and Army Ranger training all at once. It was Special Forces boot camp. The burnout rate for students doing the program in the minimum possible two years was massive – practically everyone I went through the program with was a sleep-deprived zombie by graduation. A significant number of CAM students quit, failed, or transferred to VC/GD. Those of us who survived it came out needing a nap, at the very least.
I could go on, and probably will at some point.
This is it for a few days – gotta make time to shoot backgrounds for the next chunk of the story, gotta get some contract work done, gotta figure out a production flow for the shoot results… for once I don’t have to model an environment to progress the story, so I can say “late next week” for new pages and hopefully mean it for once!
* Foreplay Unit probably sounds like a cross between Leaether Strip, Birmingham 6, Spahn Ranch and Einsturzende Neubauten, with a dash of Nitzer Ebb. Sprinkle Pailhead and Public Image Limited to taste.
Mastering notes, 2016.12.05 – Removed the decal from Jesse’s shirt.
