guide -12-

posted 2009.04.18 at 18:40

I'd like to think I've gotten at least a bit better at drawing hands since I drew this scene. Hands, and keeping faces somewhat symmetrical - The more I look at panel three, the weirder Thad's face looks.

Shit happens.

One of those pages that got pulled apart, reordered, and reassembled from the bottom up. A minute or two of work in CS2 or CS3 - I couldn't imagine how tedious this kind of construction work would have been in CS. Or worse, an earlier photoshop version without layer groups. I stuck with 5.5 for the duration of the first edition for "consistency" (and a deep hatred of the 6+ default interface and keyboard shortcuts), and used it for a few pages of Transitional Voices before finally taking the plunge into CS. Then I got the mini. 5.5 wasn't an option. The Mac version of 7 is a joke. CS ran like ass, CS2 ran like ass, and CS3 runs faster on the mini than CS does on my quad G5 at work.*

And that was when my mini had a gig of ram. Now that it's maxed out (four gigs physical... three-point-something addressable) and has a faster hard drive, the only real advantage my work machine has over this wee little thing is it's running dual head. And they've fixed that with the new ones! Holy crap!

Oh yeah - very minor cleanup; moderate re-formatting.

* Maybe Adobe's been porting the Windows code instead of the Mac code. Hell, the Mac code had 68k hooks in it for years after the transition to PPC. Windows, on the other hand, has never changed architectures and is still deeply backwards compatible. Photoshop may have been born on the Mac, but Adobe has had SEVENTEEN YEARS to optimize for X86.

Layer groups and multiple layer select are what this thing is all about now. I can't imagine going back.

First Edition Metadata

20070721 : Scaled and tweaked.

Edited 20050429 : Replaced the fishnet fill pattern with actual line art in the second panel, and added the rifle scar to Thad's shoulder in the bottom panel. It's barely visible, being under his hair... but it's there now, dammit. And that's important.

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Original image:

Original post:

Yay for a complete turnaround in under 24 hours- even though Thad came out looking like Tom Savini- a fact I attribute to my production deadlines being set by the ever-unreasonable Pittsburgh Port Authority, who, combined with my own Weapons Grade Slack, caused me to rush on the inks. I'd love to say the resemblance was intentional, but it isn't.

Never rush on the inks.

Two more pages of Polarity to go, and I'm starting prep work for the next one as soon as I get this on the front page. Go me.

Also, yay for almost pulling off three instances of Forced Perspective! :D

< ejp> he's right. needs a fucking MASSIVE amount of ritalin.
< solios> ?
< solios> oh, yeah.
< solios> that.
< ejp> my brain was not designed to parse spaceless text
< solios> mine either.
< solios> if you ever think of a way to convey talking to yourself in your head at warp factor nine, feel free to enlighten me. :D