Deforestation

The setup work took a hit when I tried to do my first render: basically I realized that there were too many trees in the garden, which slowed each render time to a snail’s pace. Since I will need to do a lot of extra renders due to the action that will be taking place (the sword duel), I realized that I must removed some of the trees or I would never get this chapter done in time. As it is, I still may need to delay the release a week or so (currently scheduled for June 6^th).

Setup Continuing

The setup I talked about last time is taking a little longer than expected, but I am happy with how it’s turning out. The rest of the chapter takes place in a walled garden, but the original models I bought were a little sparse, so I’ve been filling it out a bit. Using a program called Bryce, I’ve also created an image for the backdrop. The garden came with one already, but I didn’t like it. I had hoped to use the same backdrop I used for the first part of the chapter, but that didn’t look good either.

Anyway, the setup is now almost complete: I just need to finish up a few things. I’m hopeful that I can get at least one or two renders done tonight then, if I’m not too tired.

Back from Vacation

I’ve returned safely from my vacation, so I can now get back to working on chapter 4. Pages 1-3 are done, and the rest of the chapter is a prolonged sword duel between Alexander and Rupert. I will need to do some setup tonight and download some sword models. Hopefully I can get started on some actual renders by tomorrow night. ;-)

The Benefits of Stepping Back

I finished pages 1 and 2, and I hope to get page 3 done before the weekend when I leave for a week-long vacation. I had been taking a long time completing the post-work for the last two renders on page 2 due to the complexity of the composition. Basically, Master Shakkar is talking about when the Imperium invaded his home planet and these two renders show scenes from that invasion. After finishing the second render, I decided to trash the first one. It just looked bad compared to the second one once I was done with it. However, I was able to redo the first render in only an hour by completely reworking it (ie: showing something completely different). In short, I backed away from my original vision of that render and went about it a new way, which I think looked better. Perhaps it’s ironic that I can work very hard on something over a long time and then, after stepping back from it so to speak, I can redo it completing very quickly.

Chapter 4 Started

The renders for page 1 of chapter 4 are done, as well as several renders for page 2. There are a lot of items in this first scene so each render is taking a long time to complete. On the other hand, the renders themselves look very nice, if I do say so myself. :-)

Due to a lack of interest, I have removed the Forums from the site. Since there is no forum, there is no need for the contest I had planned either. In short, both the forum and the contest were more of a distraction than anything. However, I am keeping the Store since that requires no interaction by me. It basically runs itself.

When I published chapter 3, I put an ad under Drama on the www.onlinecomics.com site. Normally I put the ad under Science Fiction, but I wanted to see what kind of response I would get with something else. Although I had expected the results to be somewhat less, I must say the traffic to the site has been much less than I envisioned. Moving forward, I will probably just stick with Sci-Fi instead.