Whitehouse is single-pass instead of dual-pass inks in panels 1-5. Artistic license (it is ‘astral’), and the difference between getting the page done now or some three or four hours from now. A second pass over the guitar would have been murder – as it is, I think it looks pretty good. Mental health had its say in the decision-making process – for financial reasons I picked up some Purple Venom instead of the usual Blue Monster, and man – that shit is murder. Sucralose anxiety overload. Gonna pump it out of my system with a healthy wholloping of whiskey after the page is up, then deal with the comedown for a few days as I make a second – hopefully permanent – attempt to take energy drinks off the field.

Seriously. Aside from the turbo-anxiety from Venom, all these things do for me is make me feel like shit when I’m not drinking them. I know that’s withdrawal and I know roughly how long it lasts. That’s what the No-Doz is for.

Blockquoting strip commentary from here on out. I may retcon this tomorrow or at some point in the future…. you’ll know if you’re reading through the archive, hit this line and think “uh… what?”

Strip 175 – The mess I made out of 3d files on the last page really bit me in the ass on this one. Still, turned out pretty good, all things considered.

Strip 176 – This strip (and several in the fyoojer) brought to you by an hour spent creating a dummy Stratocaster two days ago. Reference from the internet, path traced components in photoshop, export as illustrator, import splines into 3d (no Jason, not Rhino – I’m not there yet!), extrude to various heights. It’s not 100% accurate, but it doesn’t need to be. First time we’ve seen Whitehouse’s guitar in awhile – the only real change for “astral viewing” is the inversion of the strings, which works well with the rest of the environment.

Strip 177 – Plink! O_O!

Strip 178 – Were she thinking straight, Jesse would have hopped on the phone to Greymalkin and reported the scan “results” immediately. Of course, if that had happened, well… yeah. We’d have a completely different story. One that isn’t nearly as much fun.

Spagnola strikes again!

Also, previous anal-retentive attention to detail paid off here – had the hallway and studio apartments been modeled “just in time” (like the guitar, or the basic detail of Jesse’s furnishings), this page would have taken longer to create. A lot longer. Fortunately, for the remainder of the scene, all I have to worry about is a bottle label and making sure the lighting in Whitehouse’s apartment actually looks like a night scene. So far, so good.

Also, fairly happy with how Jesse turned out. I hope to have her down by the end of the chapter – in time to introduce even more characters!

Right. Two pages left of the scene, then back to freelance and modeling after my sister pays me a visit and I’ve had a chance to clear my head. Huzzah!

Oh, AND.

Chapter’s at the halfway point. Fifteen pages left!

Also, looks like I have some CSS debugging to do – MT never wraps the first line after a blockquote in a paragraph tag. Better to fix that using a method that doesn’t involve editing entries.