cage -1-

posted 2008.12.17 at 12:34

Was animal -1- in its previous life. The major-major change is to panel two - a Chris Smith photograph of the boiler system at work has been swapped out for an actual Bedlam establishing shot. Also, "Bedlam MF 6656" is now the vastly more accurate "BMCP" - Bedlam Medical Facility is now Bethlehem Medical Centre Psychiatric... which is, yanno.... consistent. And ditching the serial number seems a bit more realistic. Because really, ID numbers don't get decaled on shirt. Maybe in prison, but this isn't prison. It's the NUTHATCH.

That and BMCP has a spiffy Tron ring to it.

First Edition Metadata

OPD : 2005.04.19 @ 23:58

MINOR EDIT : Cleaned up the nasty areas that I didn't notice until the hardcopy came out. Minor things, nothing super-noticeable on the net, but there were flaws, dammit. And I FIXED THEM. If there are any more, they can wait for lunch. // Or slightly before lunch - pages retitled 20050420.11:06.

Hooray for a vertical splash page.

Well, it's not quite a splash, even though the background of the center panel is one uninterrupted piece under the "border." Hardcopy will obviously be side-by-side, so I'm happy the layout works (more or less) both ways.

If you've read the first five pages published Back In The Day, you know what's coming up - the rest of the chapter will be a redux of that scene, blending it into this Chapter, which is where it actually belongs. I got my hands wet with 3d software last night and today as I polished up the Panzer Ruin background and expanded it into a fullblown environment which I'll be using for the redux. Nice to get down and dirty with 3d again- it's been something like five years since I've done any modelling. Love the control, hate waiting on renders, etc, etc. Everything I remember it to be- which is a bonus, really- nothing I knew how to use has moved. The fact I can still use the app - albeit badly - is a source of immense relief for me. I'll be needing it to model some environments before the story is through.

So! This was quite a bit of fun to put together, after the how and the what of it finally came together. I'm pleased with the way it turned out... and I'll be starting The Edit ASAP.

Oh, and despite the fact that I still suck at hands (and other bits), I have come a long way since I started this thing:

The scary thing (for me, anyway) is that the 2003 image looks a lot like my work circa 1997. Even though I'd improved orders of magnitude between '97 and '03. Line weight is a bigger factor than antomy, even if the shirt is some kind of heavily starched cardboard in the original instance: my pencils are still quite a bit more fun to look at than finished first-pass inks- ink control is, in my opinion, about as weak as my anatomy- fortunately both are getting a pretty thorough workout. :)

I'll be doing comparison/contrast shots as part of The Edit - the old pages will be displayed in the extended entries along with the descriptive text- so there will be several more colorful instances cropping up in the days ahead.