Chapter 9 Posts

Hur hur hur.

Chapter 10 starts on Monday! Also, an alternate version of this page by my friend Hazel is the new vote incentive. Psssst it has uniiiicorn

On today’s page, a rare instance of Adrianna actually succeeding at something vaguely useful. (Hint: This is not the start of a trend.) I got to paint lots of clouds on this page, so I’m pretty happy. Today is a good day.

Still frightfully busy, sorry for leaving you all to your own devices down there in the comments. Though… it seems at least some of you are hugging over how much you like the comic, so I’m going to sit here on my sleep-deprived pedestal and feel smug for a few fleeting moments.

But seriously, you guys are the best. <3

Also, for anyone who found that little step by step thing I posted a couple of pages back, I shoved another one up on my deviantart page recently.

Aw yeah, check me out, updating bang on midnight, just like the good old days. Finally getting a hold of the horrific spiral downwards that is my time management, so the pages should be more punctual than they have been recently.

Elsewhere, fellow Rampage comic Garanos has just ended! Garanos was one of the first (and best) webcomics I started reading – I’m sure a lot of you are aware that the majority of webcomics don’t reach a proper end before collapsing in on themselves, so this is huge achievement on Alex’s part. Head over to her site and you can read the whole thing from start to finish.

Another page wherein I lament not being able to draw faster. The colouring was less than two hours, the lineart took like a whole day. Bahhh.

Still, I think I’m hitting a good style for the lineart that compliments the colouring, or at least makes it easier. I always liked the fineline inked look with cel-shading, but couldn’t be bothered inking that carefully. What I’m doing right now is inking somewhat sloppy fine lines on top of a greyscale sketch, and keeping it all in the final piece, so I get some extra shading in there to boot.

I think I’m not making any sense, so have a slapdash step by step sort of thing.

If I were smart this would have been a vote incentive, but I cannae be bothered right now. It basically goes 1) Lineart/greyscale tones, 2) flat colours, rubbish background, 3) tint highlights blue, shadows red, 4) add some hard blue light, 5) gradient with some shadows cut out, then 6) final colour adjustment, texture.

Phew. The colour scheme for this page didn’t come together until right at the end when I finally remembered some basic colour theory and bumped the purples in the shadows up. Baaaam. The lighting’s a bit crazy on this page, but it kind of always is in this thing, so what the hey. Magical rainy sunset timessss. Also, I swear every time I draw the ship it looks worse and worse and worse… fortunately, that won’t be a problem for much longer!

My spam filter’s been rather over-zealous recently, it’s been catching out a few perfectly legitimative comments for some reason. If your comment doesn’t show up immediately, don’t worry about it – I always scour through the spam messages just in case.

*throws up hands, flails about*

More coherent commentary come Thursday, possibly. A bit overwhelmed with stuff right now.

I think this page might well be the biggest art disaster I’ve had since page 8 in which I ended up redrawing three quarters of the page. This wasn’t quite as bad, but for some reason it’s ridiculously hard to draw someone with their foot up on their knee. Much harder than drawing an airship landing as it turns out. Who would have thought?

When I couldn’t get it drawn in pencil, I resorted to sketching with watercolours, and when that turned into a mess, I scanned said mess and drew over in Photoshop for about 12 hours until it stopped looking like a mess. Then, typically, I spent less than two hours on the colouring, and it was done. I swear, if I could just hire someone to do the lineart, I could update daily.

Also, somewhere in the middle of that I managed to slam a door shut on my drawing hand. This slowed things down considerably, as you might imagine. /whine

Oof, a little late with this one. I ended up deciding “Hey! I know! Time to crack open the watercolours!” for the lineart, and it all went quite well but ended up taking a bit longer than usual, so sorry for the delay. Also, I think I figured out what was off about the last panel of the previous page, but I’ll fix it later…Dead tired, going to bed. urrrrrrr

Ffffffffffffffffffff… It’s pages like these that make me wonder why oh why I decided a steampunk style comic, airships and all, would be a good idea. Especially airships that dock at awkward angles, therefore necessitating horrendous amounts of perspective drawing. This is probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever drawn, and I really only have myself to blame.

So here we go, the airship finally arriving in Seras Daya. Also, sorry if anyone was expecting that last scene to go on longer. As if I would actually reveal details about the plot, how preposterous.

Aghhhh. Overwhelmed with university right now.