The Operative -7-

Rendered Monday, drawn Tuesday, shaded Wednesday. I’ll probably process most of the next page the same way, in order to iron out text and visual consistency issues prior to committing the strips. The idea is that this will make for less cleanup and readjustment of the proper DCR Pages.

In a change from previous practice, this is the writeup. Strip blurbs will be pasted into CMS entries when I load the strips into the DCR site, and this will be pasted into the ATC site the same way. End result – near-simultaneous uploads of Strips and Page.

It won’t always be like this – point of fact, it’s not supposed to be like this at all. The idea was always A Strip Or Two Per Day to be stacked into Pages twice a week. Under ideal circumstances. Given my long-standing Valve attitude towards page creation and publication, I figure I’ll keep going like this for the immediate future, and shift to “trickling” posts after I’ve kicked my life into shape.

Strip 149 – Those clip-on sunglasses had to come off at some point. Whitehouse wouldn’t be doing much of anything otherwise.

In the initial layouts this was a single shot, similar to Strip 146 with the camera at a steeper angle to include the parking lot. The revised layout conveys more action and works better with the (also revised) layouts for Strip 150. Panels one, three and four were done as a single shot in order to save some production time, though matching Whitehouse into panel three turned out to be a micro-timesink anyway.

Strip 150 – Like Strip 149, the initial layout for 150 was a bit different – originally, Whitehouse went into the Studio, powered on the equipment, and picked up a sheaf of flyers from the desk. As the studio doesn’t seriously service the story until much later in the chapter, I reworked the layouts to cut it out completely. The end result is this set of strips hitting the web a good two or three days before they would have otherwise.

Yay flyer.

While the main reason for tweaking the layouts of 149 and 150 was to carefully tweeze the need for the studio out of this page, the new layouts also serve another purpose – they work well with the radio monologue.

This is the first time DCR is actually heard, and while it’s broadcast-only, integrating the pre-recorded bit not only gives context for Whitehouse’s actions, it also builds in a fashion that aesthetically services the narrative.

Strip 151 – OMG ITS DYNAMIC!

And, in my opinion, one of the few points in the story in which a canted camera (AKA a Dutch Angle) is entirely appropriate.

Strip 152 – BLAM.

I wasn’t sure the radio monologue would work until I wrote the last line and cut it up to fit the layouts. It works. I like it. It’s incredibly more effective than Another Silent Page would have been, and foreshadows the context of the impending flashback.

Yes, flashback – another one! Hang on to your seats, folks – HERE COMES THE PLOT!