Helios is a well-developed planet. Or was. Industrial output peaked well before Heirotus came along. While the recent surge in manufacturing has been good for the economy, output has been curtailed by sudden geologic instability.
Major planet-side industries and resources include electronics, aquaculture, hydrocarbons and whatever the extraterrestrial equivalent of Lava (the soap) is. While a good amount of Heirotus hardware is still manufactured on the surface, the major shipyards and BTS production lines are scattered throughout the cluster.
Some of the lights are man-made, some of them are volcanic. The profusion of volcanic activity is Alias’s fault, and that’s a story that might get told some day. The kid did something nasty to a tectonic plate. There’s just no way that isn’t going to come up again at some point.
2012 10 24, 04:58 – The wide shot of Helios was last modified on September 16th. Almost six weeks ago. I just finished lettering, and still need to cook up the reference dummy for this page and the previous one… plus renders. I should probably draw and shade and post pages four and five before that, honestly. Hopefully I will. It’s been one of those months – if I don’t free up until very late at night I’ll work on digital assets; if I know I’m going to have an afternoon (for drawing) and evening (for cleanup) free, I draw.
Hooray for build logs!
20121113, 01:51 – Ready for shading as of the 10th or 11th; just finished shading on the previous page and am about to bang out this one. Today’s the three-year (was it really 2009?!) anniversary of getting laid off from a ten year day job – shortly after that happened I rammed out expulsion, so it makes sense to mark the date with another space scene.
02:37 – Shading only took a few minutes. Type adjustments took longer – the line of dialogue in panel two tilts against the typical line of action and while that rubs me the wrong way it looks good. It also sticks an indicator on Greg’s to-scale position – he’s a wee little speck that looks like a smudge on the monitor at 25%. A smudge that’ll be obliterated at webscale.
The point of the shot isn’t Greg’s ass, it’s Space Porn of the Hemera in orbit around Helios. So everything else fits around that.
14:45 – Ready to post. Greg’s appearance in the second panel is (fortunately!) visible at webscale.
