(weeeoooo, queuing for the weekend.)

uh, the idea here is that we recognize the first strip of the comic. Which I always (silently) thought of as a prologue (maybe even a shot of how things looked years before the story started).

But this view is different now. we see the 2 dudes footprints heading out, because I want to say “they’ve come back.”
hopefully the audience might even draw a connection between the mountain and lightning from that other story: where the mummy looking wife walked out on a mountain and got a little zapped. Hopefully things are starting to seem a little connected? ish? maybe?

Welllll,
even if they aren’t (i mean, it’s not really trying to be overt yet. I’m just hoping it starts to click. if only subconsciously),
you gotta love some fantasy mountains with crumbling domes and lightning storms?

hmm. eh?

meh.

I actually tried to draw a little energy distributor tank on the side of the mountain (from that one strip). I tried to draw it tiny. then realized i was being stupid. this isn’t the art style for detail. blah blah.
uh. anywhooooo.

tomorrow: we switch story lines again. rest assured.
(i’d hoped to do this every three strips for the rest of the countdown. but. can’t recall if i stuck to this arbitrary rule. HMM. guess we’ll seeee.)

Weeeooo.
The steps are being retraced.

To me, this feels like the important scene in a movie. thud thud. familiar settings, traversed in the opposite direction. tension.

I can see how it may not work in web comic form… So there’ll only be one before we move along.

(queuing up some strips for the weekend. woo wooooooOOOOoooOOOoooo.)

and so this chapter comes to an end.

… hopefully it’s clear that they are backtracking. i suppose… it may be too clear? people may be sick of it. SICK OF IT! AHHHH!!!!

i hope this is starting to feel ominous.

Again, this is the extra strip that i forgot to write due to numbering error. But. i’m glad, because (i’d like to think) it really lets you stop and take in the point. at this point. which is: that they are retracing their steps now, see.

That comes across right?

weee.

and here we go. wrapping this up.
somehow i misnumbered the final 3 strips, so i only “scripted” 2. ehhh.
but easy enough to wedge one more strip in. showing the dudes, with their new weapon.
weee.

…

my doodle of this strip was actually more interesting. the first frame was head to navel of the watch dude. the strap went straight back. the second frame showed the strap going over the head of the one arm dude, who was very close to camera in foreground. the final frame had the gun connected to the strap. in a way it seems to float in the air. then you realize it’s just at the end of a very long strap? maybe? well. i dunno.
For some reason when drawing this (quickly, as it is late and i’m exhausted, and need to get up early tomorrow for affirmative action search advocacy workshop at my job)… ahem. when drawing this, i felt the need to put the second dude in the background. i think i thought it looked like he was too close when in the foreground. …. basically, it’s a perspective fail. the camera should be slightly ahead of them, so that the gun can be compressed into “frame” despite being like 50 yards away. now it looks like the gun is 10 feet away. ehhh. which makes it seem strange that they were bothering with binoculars?

hmmm. suddenly i want to redraw this one. or just shrink the dudes drastically in the first frame.
but. FUCK IT! 1am! AHHHH!

sleep time.

Another ridiculously late entry. eep.

Well. … I don’t want to talk about it.
sleep time!
(doing some contract art for old storyboarding client. most of my time went into reconstructing their script file. and as soon as I was done, they sent me the file. soo. just feels like a big downer. do i charge them for this wasted time? hmmf.)

(and then i watched the richard donner cut of superman2. which wasn’t as great as I was hoping. hmmf.)

er.
In this script we see a dude reach in and tear the skeleton/corpse apart so he can get at that loot. them binoculars. weee. it’s meant to be kinda sad. maybe ominous. who was that corpse? awwww.

also, not very exciting I guess… But it seems to get away with it by virtue of involving a skull.

… was kinda sad to apply the sketch/photocopy effect to this. the lines were pretty good. fluid and simple. and this effect kinda shit on them and overcomplicated and muddled everything. hrumf.

anwyho. sleep time! so late. omigad.

whoops! Was so distracted by my new iPad that I almost neglected to draw a new strip today.

thank god these dudes are so easy to draw.
It’s weird how they are a joy. the family-stories always seem like they’re going to be easy, but end up feeling like a failure. and the doc-stories seems like they’ll be hard, but end up being fun and weird (and rarely polished… may need to rethink that style. I keep daydreaming that i’m going to “go back” and “polish” the doc stories into some full color frank frazetta meets mike mignola masterpeice. annnd. it is starting to dawn on me that this is a foolish dream).

eh. hmm. not much to report. watched ninja assassin. watched last week’s episode of Fringe (and it was good! yayyy for the retro/1985 gimmick). And most of my iPad usage felt like staring at tv. soo. i’m feeling a bit “over-filled” at the moment.

I picked up two new iPad drawing programs (sketchBook Pro and ArtPad). Had been planning to get the new Brushes, since it was used to demo at the launch announcement. but. it just doesn’t seem as cool/feature-filled. … Also, i find myself endlessly frustrated that no iPad program will let you draw with multi-touch. it must be more than oversight. there must be some technical limitation. yeah? hmm. or i just haven’t heard of hte app that offers it.

daydreaming about making this my first app with the iPhone SDK. which would be great if it turned out super easy to figure out. ha ha? what’s that? there’s no fucking way? and it’s a horrible idea for “your first iPhone/iPad app experiment?” hmm. we shall take this under consideration. yes.

eh. in theory my dream is to use my iPad to both practice color painting, and to prep quick (like, thumbnail) layouts for
comics. and for any storyboard work.
wish there was a way to mix my comic scripting (usaully in a spread sheet, to keep panels separate) and these visual. an easy/quick way i mean. hmm.

also, need to remember to look into the iPad apps that purport some sort of “animation” relation.

… in other news, I was going to rant about this silent strip “Tomb” which a friend sent my way. but. guess I’ll save that for tomorrow.

…
oh yeah, to address the comic more directly:
the idea is that one dude spots the corpse. they approach (you can see the same bony hand in same spot in frame two, to show that they’ve moved closer). in the final panel, the ideas is that the camera kind of pulled back and turned down. so we see their boots, and we see what they see. a long dead dude. A clever reader might note that it appears this corpse was once clothed in the same material they’re wearing. the idea with this detail is to “thicken plot.” also, it’s not very well drawn, but we’re supposed to see some binoculars around the skull’s neck.

damn. godaddy is running slow as frozen shit right now. Or my internet isn’t working well again. i guess. huh. on the uploading.

uhhh. guess I won’t write too much, just in case it keeps crashing every 20 seconds, like it has been for the past 3 minutes. hmm. weeee! creative process crushed.

…

uh, no it seems to be working now. as if somehow the internet was warming up and starting to turn over faster and faster.

well.
to comment on the nose:
the idea here is that the one-armed dude loses his temper and just kicks the hell out of the cage, thus removing it from the story. the other dude is like “whoa.” the one armed dude storms off.

p.s.
btw, I went back and finished drawing the first of the anemone man strips. but the other two are still crayon doodles. I spent wayyyy too much time on the first frame of the first strip. kinda added performance anxiety to the rest of the work. blah blah. or so it seemed. at the time. blah.

and so the trap is reset.

TITILLATING! IS IT NOT?!?!?!

I did go through and review all of the remaining strip scripts, and no, this crate did not really return. soooo, I am rewriting the end of the sequence. This is a little scary. because. I hadn’t planned to … welll. You will see. but.
it probably won’t register.
sigh.

anywho.
I have weird ideas about why they felt the need to trap an animal in the first place and carry it with them, like a canary in a mine, sure. but also like symbol of their strange understanding of how the world works. … eh. maybe it’s better if i don’t speak of it further.

anywho. wow. re-reading all the remaining scripts kinda makes me nervous. big things planned. a lot of art needed. my goodness. woof. makes me kind of tired all over. hooooo boy.

eh. well. more later.

Hmm. After my trip to GDC, getting back into the swing of “cranking out this strip” hasn’t come together.
I haven’t gone back and polished the last 3 doctor strips. i’ll make a note when i do, just in case people want to see it.

uh, here we see the 2 dudes i guess (their story-space at least). Their broken carrying case is setup as a trap. A beast evades it. More trap action in tomorrow’s strip! HA HA!
ok, This sequence is pretty fucking boring. I won’t lie.

I don’t know why I wrote so many boring strips. Or maybe they’re fine, and I just enjoyed the city action too much. Part of me wonders about rewriting this trap sequence to be more epic. …or get rid of the carrying case once and for all. but. the original idea was to show a slower pace with the two dudes in the wasteland. ehhh. small conflict in my mind. ummm. hmm.

I should really go back and review the whole script. make sure this (and the family story) are pacing properly.
eh.
Take the doctor storyline, for example: I’d always intended to have an arena of death where the doctor carries out experiments. i LOVE that shit. but. I thought I should set up his wife first, as her condition is really his motivation. it feels to me like that storyline just goes from zero to sixty. hmmf. I tried to set it up in the last doctor strip. that he wants to test more than the flesh of the animal-men he’s dicking around with. ehh. well, from now on, it’s mostly animal-men fighting in an arena in the story line. if my memory serves me. and that might be a big pacing mistake. hmmf. i should probabyl be commenting about this elsewhere. sayyyy, on a doctor strip. or maybe I shouldn’t be talking this openly about story concerns at all? hmm. it all made so much sense when i cranked all the *#$^@%ing strip scripts out.

well. i’ll just stop for now. …

… in other news, I watched Lars von Trier’s Antichrist this morning. thought it was pretty damned good. wondered why everyone hated it at Cannes. to me it was so creepy and beautiful (and casually pornographic) and disgusting that it had my full attention. hmmf. oh shit, this isn’t the blog for movie reviews either. jesus. fucking internet.