signal -6-
posted 2008.12.06 at 01:08
Monday. ALL of one. So much time that a redraw might well have been faster. The results... well, they speak for themselves. Admittedly, I spent a hell of a lot more time on the previous page than I did on this one... but it seriously needed it, whereas this one... well, it's cluttered enough to get away with minor cleanup. Where "minor" is "last I looked at the clock it was ten HOW IS IT TWO?" etc.
Whatever I ate for dinner - some kind of chocolate beef thing my roommate whipped up - is getting to me. The smell has stuck to my hands, the inside of my nose, and there's something quite particular about it that makes my stomach roll. Might account for the timesink.
First Edition Metadata
OPD : 2005.01.06 @ 00:55
20070723 : Tweaked the background, added a border and rewrote the dialogue. More for continuity than cleanliness.
Ph34r the CG sabrosa.
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I'm having way too much fun with two page spreads of late. Hell, this one spreads dialogue in addition to the backdrop!
See? Isn't that nice? Compare with the previous spread. It may be a fairly un-subtle way of establishing Templar and Heirotus color palettes and Domions, but hey- everything I know about Visual Communication I learned from Popular Media. Blame Hollywood. :P
Like the previous spread, the linework and highlights aren't the greatest thing ever, on account of both pages being processed at once. In this case, due to the volume of line work, the base setup was done Monday, backgrounds, lettering and command staff on Tuesday, trainees, the Sabrosa, and the backs of everyone's heads (and everything else) on Wednesday. Three days for a single page would have pissed me off, but the same amount of time spent on two has left me with sore knuckles and a vague feeling of accomplishment- this was a hell of a lot of work, and would have been more complicated if done as single pages, as there would have been additional work keeping tones and lighting consistant.
If you haven't noticed, I'm really into this "two pages at once" thing, and will be exploring what sort of creative use I can put a 15x10 canvas to over the course of the chapter. I have some ideas- one of which will form the body of the next two pages. After two full-page characters floating in space, I figure it's about time I put feet on the ground, as it were- we'll see what I can do from there.
In other news, the scene is at the halfway point.
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Oh, and this is the Command Crew Training Center. It's like a Real Bridge, except for the fact that it's not. It's a Training Bridge- completely functional, though all commands are routed to the real bridge, where officers approve or reject them. If approved, the command is routed and executed. If rejected, the command is flagged and not executed. Three flags and the trainee is removed from shift, three removals and a notation is made on the trainee's service record. This process is anonymized- combined with the staggering of bridge and trainee shifts, there's almost no chance a trainee who screws up will meet the staff member that marked her. Exercises are done around the clock against several different shifts of the bridge command crew to keep the process unbiased.
Live (that is, human) command approval slows the Sabrosa down a tad while keeping the ship out of the way of common stupidity. With trainees being tested and graded on the fly during minor maneuvers such as this one, the bridge crew are more entertained than they would be otherwise.
The Captain and Senior Staff don't need to be on the Training Bridge, obviously- however, this is a Live Exercise in a sinkhole. The hows and the whys of the XO, the Captain, and General Grij being present instead of the ship's first officer would fill up a boatload of Sabrosa-borne exposition... and it isn't time for that yet.
Training Command Crew wear standard Sabrosa uniforms with navy blue highlights and no rank insignia. They have no security clearance or un-routed access to command and control functions until late in the training cruise.
Note on Navigation: Big ships like the Sabrosa are run much like traditional Navy ships- there's none of this "shoot a pea into the eye of the giant and it ASPLODE" BULLSHIT like you've seen in Star Wars (episodes IV, VI, I). The Navigator on the bridge is issuing commands to the navigation chamber of the vehicle, where the real Ship's Navigator is connected to the entire vessel through a web of sensory amplification material (similar to the handlebars on the Daedalus, which is roughly 1/200th the size of the Sabrosa). The Ship's Navigator, with most of his job already done (the "where we're going, how deep and how fast we want to go to get there"), hypes up on whatever uppers he's into and proceeds to pull the ship down.
Fuck over the command mast or the training bridge and the Sabrosa isn't going to ram into the moon and explode. It's just going to be slightly inconvenient for whoever isn't dead to control the vessel. It doesn't take much to do that, if you're authorized- most of the crew is flight deck and comms/sensors, followed by computers/callback/navigation, then clerical/custodial/medical, then ship's mess, then command staff... add all of that up and double it for the Special Forces personnel and trainees on board.
Oh, and unlike a certain well-known sci-fi franchise, the Sabrosa has a shitload of bathrooms (dedicated plumbing staff of fifteen, three shifts of five and mister, they are never bored*), enough lifeboats to hold the entire crew**, and no transporters, replicators, or similar convenience technology.
* If you lived in a society that hadn't invented replicators, you'd need plumbers to offset the inevitable damage of Kitchen Staff and provisions gone bad. Spending six months in space means bringing six months of food, and not all of it's going to keep for six months. A certain amount of ass-blasting and spewage is expected to result, just like it does anywhere else. Consequently, it's handy to have bathrooms. Nevermind the overall lack of technological progress with regards to certain types of feminine hygene products, acne, body hair, etceteras.
** Federal Law states that the Maximum Legal Capacity of any spacefaring vessel is the sum of the capacities of the vessel's lifeboats and quick-launch vehicles. For the Daedalus this would be eight, for the Cheops this would be twenty, and for the Sabrosa this would be approximately three thousand. Vindictive dockmasters have the power to slap heavy fines on anyone violating the law, which carries penalties ranging from the tens of thousands of dollars up to imprisonment or impoundment/seizure of the vessel.