guide -6-
posted 2009.04.18 at 18:33
The new pi page* has BOOBS. Yay!
Like the previous page - the usual rigamarole of scaling, cropping, etceteras - trying to retain emphasis on the panels one and eight, so two through seven lost a bit for width. Content hasn't been compromised, fortunately.
* Chapter three page fourteen in this case (atc_d2_314), not page three hundred and fourteen. Though I'll probably call that one a pi page too. The old pi page is horrible. One I should probably redraw.
First Edition Metadata
Edited 20050602 : Man, does this ever not suck compared to the original page. It has boobs, and it has (gasp!) continuity. Both of which are qualities the original sorely lacked.
Polarity was originally billed as an "experiment", which was a convenient way of saying that I was completely fucking burned out and was basically slapping my limp, pretentous cock all over the keyboard in the hopes that something AWESOME would manifest.
I was totally fucking wrong and eighteen months (give or take) later, I'm correcting that mistake. With tits.
Awesome, isn't it?
As for the piece of shit below, well... I wouldn't mind reaching back a few months and smacking myself upside the head with a brick. After which I'd jump up and down on the unconscious chunk of biomass screaming YOU ARE NOT AS COOL AS YOU THINK YOU ARE.
The minute you find yourself struggling to justify gross deviations in How You Actually Want The Story To Be Told, you are, as they say, fucked. I'd be halfway through Chapter Four if it wasn't for stupid shit like this. :P
Live, learn, and publically berate yourself for past mistakes. Or something.
The moral of the story? A look that's all over the place on a page-by-page basis does. Not. Work. At least not for this story. The scene still has an atypical flavor, and it's still supposed to, and I'll be revisiting that look and feel at the appropriate time. "Spastic" is not the look.
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Original "I JUST READ A SHITLOAD OF SANDMAN HOLY SHIT I'M AWESOME"* image:
Original post, which is so totally wanky it makes my face burn:
As I write this, it is six minutes after midnight, black Friday- the twenty-eighth of November, and I have just finished the web optimization for the fourteenth page of the second chapter. I am sitting in the South Side Beehive, listening to Pulse by Front 242. I am here specifically for this, though I had thought it otherwise, as my original intent was to come to this place and pencil what would have been the thirteenth page, which will now be the fifteenth. This page- the fourteenth- formalizes my growing intent for a total diversion from the story as scripted, for the purposes of narrative. I am, as it were, cheating my pre-established structure in favor of something that will, I hope, become a superior product.
I need to do experiments like this, and these specific sections of the story- Hammering on the Gates of Nothing, the dream at the end of the first chapter, Polarity and scenes yet to come- offer me, within the established outline of The Dualist, to break out of the mold. Within these scenes, it is viable for me to experiment, push myself, and learn new techniques of narrative and composition without sacrificing the structural integrity of The Dualist- though the sudden shifts in style may be a bit jarring to those who are familiar with the output of the past few dozen pages.
The story of The Dualist allows for these experiments, under the auspices of the plot as constructed, and the intent for the quality of the final chapter to outshine the quality of the first, both by the inevitable growth of my skills, and because it makes for a better story (in theory) if the artwork and storytelling improves with a logic, rather than the certain inevitability of progress. There remains as always an ulterior motive, one that periodically leaks out into my consciousness at what would otherwise be inopportune moments- the congealing of creative works I've exposed myself to and consumed collide against the formula of how the story stands now. The totality of consumed entertainment then proceeds to slip sedatives or hallucinagens into whatever it is The Dualist is drinking, then takes it out behind the bar, beats it senseless, steals its clothing and its notebooks and proceeds to make its way into my mind, disguised as the work in progress.
I am of a mind to consider any such an event to be a boon, as such exposures and muggings of the aesthetic and narrative have happened multiple times, always to the benefit of myself and the project as a whole.
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* I have, I'd like to think, the fortunate distinction to have started reading up on my "history of non-shitty english language comics" well after starting on ATC. The benefit of this is I'm well past my "ooooh, SHINY!" stage, so kit-bashing is, in theory, a hell of a lot less obvious than it would be if I'd, say, read Sandman in my inarticulate, non-productive "formative period". At that point I was reading Appleseed, a fact that is painfully obvious at points.