Sailor Nuke / Blargh.

As you know, designs change - especially if one spends three years between initial draft and the actual appereance of a page. My drawing skills have both evolved and devolved in that time period, all depending on the point of view.

Thank you, Alec Guinness.

In any case, S. N. has changed quite a bit, really. You saw her already in her original guise in Iteration 1. I went hunting for the oldest drawing, but I cannot really say which one it is.

The new version is also quite neat, so I'm not exactly unhappy with that change. I did like the knee pads and the boots on the old one, though. I may need to re-incorporate them.

... You know, as a non-native English user, I oftentimes have no idea if I'm making any sense.

In any case, even Sailor Nuke was easier than Sailor Kawaii.... But, that's a topic for another post, due to the Blargh.

"How hard can installing Linux be?"
Hard.

Y'know, labels are... sometimes obvious, often times, not so much. I mean, this one --
nettg-related, definitely. Making-of? Maybe? Should I use the Comic label? Is that actually even used anywhere? No idea....

doodling #2

Hmm. weird character, some pondering on 3d-ness of GD's head, plus total randomness.
Junk, junk, junk.

Not as much going on here as in the first one. I was mauled by a random accountant. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Iteration 1 / Making Of #2

No big top image this time. In any case, this is the "official" Monday post, and the previous one is the "Official" Sunday post, so there!

Iteration 1 was my attempt to quickly reach the end of chapter 1 back in 2004. These are the pages created back then. 01-17 and 01-18 were used practically as-is. Parts after that went through some significant changes.



In any case, they do have some good ideas I'm still somewhat fond of, so here they are.

When talking of the Galactic Destroyer, using it requires so much CG-work later on, one might make a joke about blue screens and special effect budget, to continue the metaphor of a live action TV show for the webcomic. But I won't, right now, because I can't think of anything. So there. Urrr....

01-19 was replaced by this version, which isn't that bad, either. Plus, I like how the official version shows a bit more of the Galactic Destroyer's evolution.

Never-the-less, I like the extreme perspective view of QS, and the GD getting blown away --- I was probably watching Fullmetal Alchemist at the time. Also, the GD in the second frame is nice.


You have seen 01-20 before. As I mentioned before, I quite like the chibi-drawings in the middle, and the background action - Saturn chasing the Chibi-GD - in the last one. Beyond that, it's kinda weak.

The last frame has a distinct foreground-background thing going on, though, which is nice.


01-21 is sort-of a new page! Except that it was effectively rolled to 01-20, plus the dialogue is kinda weird there. I like the angry Science-Terra with GD-aura, and the "Final Planet-wide solution" thing. Also, there are older designs for Sailor Kawaii and Sailor Nuke.

I liked the "Free For All!" thing so much I had to put it into the actual page, too -- even if it's practically invisible.

So... What do you think? Is the official version the better one, or did you find this version of our exposition explosion to be the more entertaining one?

Doodling / I wonder if this will be #1 of doodles?

I so do have a good reason for Saturday: I woke up after noon - no good reason for that - and after breakfast and such, I went and ran D&D for nine hours.

Sketchydoodles. Two things I like here, feel free to guess what they are.

Okay, so... technically it's Monday. But the day doesn't really change 'til I get sleep... does it?
Black ballpoint... Nicely flowing and unforgiving for errors, which teaches... something or other.
I don't generally use eraser all that much in the first place, but still...

Something pointless for today / away

...
Dunno, just wanted to paint-paint something.

News: I will be away for the next nine days. Well, sorta. I'll be at my parent's place which has a decent computer system and a 512K connection - AND a scanner. So, I really won't have an excuse for not posting something every day. I've already prepared two comic-related posts, but I should be able to do some pencil stuff, in any case...

However, I'm flaky. It may be that I won't, and there probably won't be a good reason for it, so I thought I should warn you beforehand.

I did draw something else besides that thing up there, too... but it was so awful, I'd rather forget it for now. Drawings have the habit of looking better after you leave them be for a while.

Terra's Green Dress / links / pondering

You know, I didn't save once while I was drawing this. Eep. Good thing nothing bad happened...
In any case, as I was going through my old stuff, I noticed there's actually been three different ways I've drawn the dress. The leftmost one is the "most official", considering it's on Ch1 cover.
Some variation of the rightmost one may make an appereance in the distant future.

Random Linkage: Blog from the maker / s of Puffy AmiYumi show - 'twas done in Flash. Keen.
CCC City: at least "Rush II" has pretty good animation.
Cross-linkage: New rant at nettg.com with anoter link I'm too lazy to duplicate here.

*edit* I just had to add this: Shoo Fly.

Concerning the next page, here's something I wrote in an Email, I thought I could show it here, since, it has no spoilers... well, besides the fact that my current layout has six frames for the next page.

I'm tempted to split this page in two. it's better to have two pages with three frames than one page with six frames, IMO... although that does depend on the action.

Frankly, I think we can decompress here a bit, we could have an entire page with just Laios wandering. Ummm... >_<; Four or five frames is usually the optimum. When showing cool stuff, 1-3 frames is best. Part of the reason the previous page turned out as it did, was because due to my slow pace, the script has gotten "compressed" - which doesn't really help. The more stuff is crammed into a page, the harder it's to even _start_ drawing it. On the other hand, decompress too much, and you end with hardly any dialogue and ten pages where hardly anything happens. While this may work for stuff like Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, it doesn't really for a webcomic, especially with my slow pace. There needs to be a POINT to every page. This can basically be solved only by very good storytelling and pacing... demanding, on it's own, that, too.

something exceedingly simple

looks like 'kaki. Actually OpenCanvas.

I may have a fever.

*edit* Awesomeness, or "That's done in Flash? O_o;"