Straight From My Butt

I’m embarrassed to say that I did the final two-thirds of page 18 on Sunday afternoon and evening (the day I posted it to the website). I did the middle three panels on Friday, and then tried doing the top panel on Saturday, but I didn’t like it very much (the top panel that is). So, I basically did the top and the bottom of the page all on Sunday.

Of course, all of Thursday and much of Saturday were taken up with Thanksgiving festivities. Earlier in the week, I was doing other things that have perked my imagination more of late. One was my pen and paper RPG, which is coming along pretty well (all the skills are done and now I’m going to work on the abilities). Also, I downloaded a game builder from Garage Games. It has a 30-day free trial, so I was playing around with that.

This all means I was left with hardly any time to work on my comic, and I feel in some way guilty for it. I feel like I pulled much of page 18 out of my ass at the last minute, and perhaps that shows in the final product of the page. Not sure if that’s true, but that’s how I felt about.

I was happy about one of the panels I did Sunday, however. It shows Magnus looking down at the Gordian he had just killed, along with a quote from Sgt. Black, “Don’t pity the men you kill; they’re the lucky ones.” I made the panel by first rendering Magnus and the Gordian, and then rendering the ground. That allowed me to add extra shadow to Magnus and the Gordian. I like how it looks. It seems a little more 3D to me. Judge for yourself:

Agents of Death

I’ve just posted page 17 online. I’m happy with how it came out, although it ended up having one less panel than I had originally planned.

In a previous page, I mention that the recruits call the planet where they get their training Hell, since it lacks a real name. Page 17 refers twice to hell by making reference to Dante’s the Inferno (“abandon all hope”) and Satan from Milton’s Paradise Lost. For the latter, one of my favorite parts of the story is when Satan says he is Hell and where he walks, so goes Hell. I paraphrase this somewhat by saying the recruits will become agents of death and where they walk, death will follow.

The first panel on the page was originally the second, but I decided to switch the first and second since they seemed to fit better that way with the third panel. The first panel shows the reflection of Magnus in Sgt. Black’s sunglasses. To create this effect, I tried to create a reflection map which I could than add directly to the sunglass model in Poser. However, I was not at all happy with the result and decided that I could do the same thing in Photoshop. After creating a separate render of Magnus and another recruit in Poser, and then creating a composite of that and the background, I applied the spherize filter in Photoshop. This gave the image a curved look. I then added another layer with a light effect to imitate glare off the sunglasses. Lastly, I took a Poser render of Sgt. Black’s sunglasses and superimposed the other image I had created of the reflection. After some additional tweaks (an hour or so total work), I had the panel where I wanted it (appearance-wise). Here’s how it turned out:

It's Full of Stars!

I finished the renders for page 15 today, but I still have the narration to complete. Since I will be out most of Friday, I doubt I’ll be able to get another page done on Saturday and Sunday. Of course, miracles can happen, but I wouldn’t bet on it with my current run of luck.

From looking at the stats on my website, it seems people are specifically coming to see the new pages as they appear. I can tell this because they will come to the first page and then go directly to the last (most current) page. This makes me feel good. Perhaps people even like what they see! ;-)

The sample I have below features a star field I made using a very good Photoshop tutorial. It’s still not as good as the images found in Eve Online, but it’s a start. My only concern is that the new stars don’t match the old ones I’ve done for this particular story. It would be better to have consistency, but I decided to go for it anyway. Hopefully no one will care (and I doubt anyone will).

Cyber Cadet Blog

I haven’t updated my blog in a while so I figured I better do something at least.

I added page 14 this week, which will lead into the second to last segment of the story. I actually had the page done earlier, but left the narration to the last minute. Credit goes to my wife for suggesting a change to the wording in the final panel. I had something a little different, but I wasn’t happy with it. She said I should make it a shorter, so that’s what I did. Who says I don’t listen to my wife (well, at least sometimes)?

Btw, there’s another blog I would like people to check out. It’s called Cyber Cadet and features the sci-fi ramblings of a disturbed mind. I’m not sure whom this cyber cadet guy is, but he should probably be watched carefully, or at least kept away from battle droids of any kind.

Here is a frame from page 14 showing one of the Imperium Marines. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of the armor model in this shot (see Alexander the Prince), but I really like how it looks.

Another Week, Another Page

I published page thirteen over the weekend. As I mentioned in my previous post, I had hoped to get more than a single page done last week, but obviously that didn’t happen. I’ve been in a creative malaise again it seems. I haven’t really done much of anything. I have gone to the hospital each day: my father fell and he’s been in there for a couple of weeks. However, I can’t blame my lack of production on that since I’ve had plenty of time to get things done.

I tried again to put a forum on my site. This time I’ve offered to host other sci-fi comics on the forum too, for people who want a forum but don’t want to go through the trouble of setting it up. I post my offer on the online comics web forum, but nobody has shown an interest so far. I’ll give it some more time, but I’ll remove it yet again if nobody is interested.

Here’s an image from page thirteen: