Category: News

The Process Changes

Death


Prep Work for Comic page by ~spearcarrier on deviantART

Heavenly Bride fans haven’t heard from me in a while… it’s not on purpose. I’ve been working, and for a month straight my computer was hijacked by some nasty malware. The end result is I lost work time, paid work time, had to spend money I didn’t have to get the computer cleared, and then yesterday the first fake check came into the bank from said hijacking.

I’m real lucky, I guess, that I’m not in my town in Illinois – where I went to the police to report my identity was suspect so I could get a police report for the credit bureaus was was called a liar in not so many words. I went to the police station here and got my report. If another check comes through, I’ll be able to fight said identity theft.

Even though I still have scores of work to do, one of my jobs is in a lull. So I took the extra hours .. not to catch up on commissions but to catch up on Heavenly Bride. This is usually not anything to make note of, because it’s more notable when I actually finish a page and post it for people to see. However, today I added another step to my HB creation process.

Why would you do that??? you’re wailing to me right now. I can hear the outcries across the land. This is going to slow me down! Now I’m going to take even longer!

Truth is, this particular process I used to do in the beginning – except not on such a streamlined scale – and I still do from time to time. You can tell from panel to panel. I’m talking about using 3D to set up sample scenes for me to draw from, of course. I can’t draw that stuff without a reference. I suck as an artist.

But with the prep work for Akashik’s reboot and my intention to go almost 100% 3D there I’ve come to realize that I need to pull in some more tricks for HB. I want the artwork to be even better looking you see. I already have been aware that professional mangaka will use tweaked photos for their manga backgrounds, and they also are using CGI to generate what they need. Taking that knowledge and what I’ve gained with working on Akashik, I sat down today to do the final two pages of Chapter 7.

I normally wouldn’t do a sneak peak for folks outside of the Pup Forum, but this is a big deal for Apocalypse comic creation period. See the sneak peak. Wooo.

Pulling in CGI like this actually is a bit costly – but that’s what your support dollars are for, to help this comic and others I do be the best they can be. If I like the process,I hope you’ll be able to see the difference. It’s too bad it doesn’t speed things up for me too. 🙂

Been thinking.

Spearcarrier

And I’ve decided that yes I’ll be skipping Cyphacon this year. But I may also skip Bayoucon this year. And we won’t be putting up a Christmas tree, although if I can get a wreath I’d like that for the door. =^-^=

The past year’s events have kind of left me… not wanting to do these things anymore. A lot of what I’ve been doing was for my children’s sake: I’d pick up trinkets at the con for one, I’d drag the other along so she could have fun, we’d put their presents under the tree. It’s all kind of pointless now, really. My kids will never know how much my world centered around them, that even when working a lot of it was for them in some offhand fashion… from buying food to somehow getting a prom dress… to sending the boy a card or random item I thought he’d like. These days I’m just… fuck it. There’s literally no reason to bother any more. So I’m throwing out the hype, the glitter mess, the exhaustion and trading it in for peace and quiet.

I haven’t been able to put out a single new chapter for HB all year because of all that’s happened: that’s a big incentive for not doing any conventions. I have nothing new.

And I don’t want to do commissions so much anymore. I’m burned out. I want to do my *own* stuff. I wake up every day wishing I’d win the lottery or… something… so I could, indeed, do my own stuff.

But maybe we’ll go just to hang out. I haven’t gotten to do that since… oh… ever.  =^-^=