20130526, 07:50 – The other half of the tenth anniversary weekend – Return To The QAR! Built in Q4 of 2005, the QAR is the oldest CG interior in ATC. It’s actually my first CG interior ever – my classwork in the 97-99 AIP CAM program wasn’t exactly location-centric. The hangars in John West’s Australian airstrip are (very) open to the outside and first appear hand drawn. The Daedalus interior started off shoopin’ and didn’t go CG until Transitional Voices. This makes the QAR the first fully CG environment with no drawn or digitally created predecessor. I did tweak the lights for this scene (and ditch the Latin – see 20121221 in the changelog) so the environment would render in a sane amount of time with the desired tone, but otherwise this is eight year old geometry you’re looking at here. I think it’s held up fairly well, all things considered!
Would-be-obvious-on-television: That’s Xand yelling “Hey! CLOTHES!” across panels five and six.
Background details: The QAR status panel reads all green in panel one. In panel three the Psionic Transfer element is reading red, with a major disruption on Grij’s end of the connection. This should be obvious even without the instrumentation. Though both shots were deliberately framed to show the displays, with the “blown gasket” placed deliberately on James’ side of panel three For Plot Reasonsâ„¢. The chapter to date is full of symptoms and there’ll be a bit more of that before Transitional Voices is complete. The cause (or effect) will be detailed in book four or five.
20130517 – Boobs, bad words and SCIENCE!. James’ doctorate is relevant in that one of the biggest questions the human diaspora has is their point of origin. Space humans have 26 pairs of chromosomes, metahumans have either more then 26 or extensive edits to the “bottom” three of the 26. Nobody with a mailing address west of the moon has less than 26, so while Thad’s genetic work coming up short is a surprise, James knows exactly what it signifies. Hence the impatience.
Fun fact: I cut about a dozen pages off of this scene over the course of development. The discussion going on in the QAR was originally much longer, and at one point the Daedalus bathroom had at least two pages complete with towels and Xand. All of which ultimately just slows down the story, and would have added weeks or months to rendering and development. As stated elsewhere, this chapter needs to be a quick read – and cutting the sole appearance of the bathroom out of the script (or down to one panel) helps accomplish that goal. Point of fact the way the plot stands right now I can probably do the book with only four more interiors!
