20130630, 09:19 – If all goes well I will be at Anthrocon on Friday, July 5th. Or possibly the 6th. This is strictly reconnaissance (or con-recon). Unlike the Pittsburgh Comicon it’s actually in Pittsburgh, which makes it the only con I can walk to. My ability to go hinges on money, which is in extremely short supply at the moment. As such this “announcement” may be premature.

This page features the first appearance of the new red shift look for am. I’ve never been happy with the previous instance, and it wasn’t until I was mucking around with self illumination gradient ramps in the process of creating an in-software Am “sphere” that the why finally hit me – simply put the red in the initial instance is far too bright. Here, not so much.

Also, {PLOT|SCIENCE}! For the human diaspora, gravitational variation is such a regular occurrence that it’s compensated for in fashion – in much the same way that Vietnam-era combat boots had steel plates in the soles to ward against punji stakes. While the magnets are likely fun for metal detectors (and would probably scream SHOE BOMBER! to the NTSB), commercial screening technology is sensitive enough to differentiate between standard sole magnets and anything else. For someone who’s grown up in space, Raven may as well be explaining the mechanics of doorknobs.

This has been a week with an acute free time deficiency, unless you count spending Friday on Fallout 3 (with FOOK2 and other mods). I sure don’t. Between Monday and Thursday I completed five illustration commissions and had already earmarked this weekend for paid development work on a friend’s website. Monday is going towards finishing that up and working on stuff I won’t have time for later in the week, Tuesday is meetings and chores and prep work, and Wednesday through Friday are dedicated to participating in and recovering from non-art activities. My next day “off” is next weekend, so I damned sure don’t count this past Friday as a waste.

You may have noticed that ATC didn’t get mentioned anywhere in that paragraph. With the exception of a few tweaks, this page has been done since June 13th. The page scheduled for next weekend has been done since the 14th. Maybe next weekend I’ll have some time for actual comic work – I don’t know yet. If the new upstairs neighbor turns out to be obnoxiously loud I’ll probably be spending the rest of the month burning through as much commission and client work as possible while looking for a new place. That concept lingers like a flatulent miasma over all of Transitional Voices, and while it works extremely well with the general theme of the story, it’s the kind of distraction that the work just doesn’t need. This thing’s already the F-35 of ATC – though even at maximum inconvenience the comic will almost certainly be done before that boondoggle enters IOC.

In unrelated news, earlier this week I found out that Comixpress has shuttered. As all ATC pages are sized around comixpress print standards with the eventual goal of using their services for a print run, this was very sad news. There are tons of alternatives, but none speak with the kind of technical authority that sold me on standardizing the gutters and live area of nearly the entire production run. I’ll have to batch-crop all of DCR and this chapter of TV to match the gutter specs of whatever company I wind up printing with, which is a compelling enough reason to start looking for a proper publisher.

Not much else to report this week. I arted a lot on client work, I’ll be spending the rest of the day on web development that should get me the rest of the rent money glob willing, I’m deep into negotiations for some Kinda Serious arting (read: Work For Hire), and it’s looking like July and August will be a mix of art and web development that should eventually give way to more time for the comic. In the meantime, there’s two pages left of this scene, and those pages will be posted this month!