control -1-

posted 2008.12.14 at 19:47

Minor cleanup, mostly to the visible hand. Like the other single-panel "icon" pages, this one hasn't been scaled down, just bordered and tweaked a bit.

One potential hardcopy issue is that the side borders, in almost all cases, tread very closely to the maximum "trim" border. For the second edition, they're no longer full bleed pages (a la the much altered "galactic east" spread) - reformatting from 3x4 to 6x9 on a full-sized page with bleed etceteras leaves a bit of a gap at top and bottom. Not an issue with panel pages, as they live inside the "live area" - the bit that will print No Matter What, which is considerably smaller.

First Edition Metadata

OPD : 2005.03.26 @ 12:31

20070724 : Ding removal.

Yeah, I know that ding removal obviates the Big Wankish Exposition in the post below, but priorities change. The dings were misleading, and the story is complex enough without wallowing in intentional obfuscation.

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Page {31|156} starts a scene, injects some kabbalistic humor*, is the first page anyone coming in from olc will see, and I GOT IT ALL DONE BEFORE LUNCH.

Booya.

The "title" really belongs on guide -14-, which features Thad in the correct position (that page is marked as a target for The Edit. Odds are it'll remain mostly intact), and the pose, scale, page and page number positionings are all intentional. I've been thinking about the relationship of the "tarot" pages with other one-panel pages featuring the same character, and at the moment I'm thinking that the initial "manifestation" is the tag and title, while any future manifestations are instances of the theme (potentially useful in future chapters, as I have plenty of opportunities to do Thoth Deck analogues, and these deck-specific** bits are about as mainstream as the occulted elements of the story are likely to get.).

Technically, Thad's a trace of Dyluck's last appearance- I took the scan of the inks, blued it, lightened it, printed it out on a sheet of card stock, did the pencils over top of the printout, inked, erased, scanned. I TRIED to correct the hands, but wound up torn between going for technical improvements and positiional accuracy, so I wound up with crap :D. The card stock is lighter than the bristol I usually use and doesn't take ink well- it bleeds somethin' fierce. I didn't trust the stuff for a second pass- hence the line weight.

There was other stuff, but it's slipping out. I crammed all of my sleep in between 2 and 5 am, woke up without an alarm, couldn't get back to sleep, and it's catching up to me now- did the endorphin dump around 10am and am now rattling along as Captain Spacecase until the bell rings. Which is most of why this post is so long.

* depends on your source material and rather you consider "156" to be related to "56" at all. Some people do, some people don't. In the "do" case, Thad being the subject of the page is fucking hilarious. Otherwise, there's no humor in it at all. I'm in the pattern recognition camp- but then, I'm the kind of guy who snickers whenever "13" and "37" show up next to each other. :P

** Reference A.C.'s book on the subject. It's a good read, though a few of the reviews are pretty stomach-churning and/or OMFGWTF-inducing. The Thoth Deck is pretty handy for letting your subconscious and back-of-the-head data processing and pattern recognition facilities get their two cents in, but you're more likely to get laid reading Knuth in a coffee shop than you are to, say, see anything you don't want to see or already suspect in some form. I like the Thoth Deck more for the language of the artwork than anything else- the cards put Masquerade to shame in some instances.