Creator's Diary: Friday, April 14 2008
Whatever

The nominal roadblock preventing the production of new pages -- the 3D bridge set -- is done. It has been a long time, I know. In terms of page count I don't have much to show for the recent year, but it's not a total loss... I did get a lot done in terms of story and visual design. Ultimately I think the comic will be richer for it in the long run (this is what is referred to as "putting lipstick on a pig"). Now I will try to get some pages downrange.

One thing I have resolved to do is to try not to let the process of creating 3D elements interfere with page production the way it has been. The 3D stuff is cool and useful, and it's one of the core concepts of the project, but I have allowed the lack of properly-built models to serve as an excuse for not getting anything done. It didn't take a whole year to build the bridge set, but there were times when I felt like drawing and not slogging out the 3D, and other times when my own ambitions overwhelmed me. So my plan is that I will continue to build and use 3D elements, but when an asset is needed for a new page, but not yet available, I will try to simply draw the thing by hand instead -- until such time (if any) as the model is completed. I did this with the Loroi cruiser in page 51, and will continue to do it, in particular for many of the ships that I will never have time to model, for the next several chapters. Hopefully the combination of 2D and 3D ships will not be too jarring... it's a common thing to see in anime series that use CGI, but we'll see. The good news is that the bridge set is done... and I'm pretty pleased with it. I will get a lot of mileage out of that set.

I worked on a lot of junk during the hiatus, and so some of this has been placed/updated in the relevant Insider sections. 

Thanks to all the folks who stuck around during the long hiatus.

- Arioch  

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