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| Oh my stars and nebulae | Feb 27, 2010 5:39 AM PST | url |
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Added 2 new A* pages:Only got one drawing finished, making a slow start for this first day of episode 8 comics, but I still gotta go update the page layouts on some of the A* mirror sites--namely those on DrunkDuck, Smack Jeeves, and ComicFury--to accommodate this new, larger comic size, and those can be kind of a pain, so I gotta save the few synapses I still have firing tonight. I also wanna let this first comic's new methods of making stars and nebulae percolate through my subconscious a bit. They're a step in the right direction, I'm thinking, but we'll see how I feel about them when I'm fresh on Monday! Feel free to step onto the forum and influence my thinking on the subject before episode 8 gets up to full steam next week!
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| Episode 8 storyboards wrap, comics next! | Feb 26, 2010 7:31 AM PST | url |
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Finished the episode 8 storyboards. Here's a randomized assortment of reasonably non-spoilery ones from the additional 60 or so I doodled today:
Next up: actual comics!
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| Episode 8 storyboards, part 1 | Feb 25, 2010 8:46 AM PST | url |
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Did about half of the episode 8 storyboard doodles today, ie 60. Here are tiny versions of some relatively non-spoilery ones (couldn't show some of the really interesting ones that started up near the midway mark, drat! ;P), in random order!
I guess I probably won't be able to come up with this many non-spoilerish ones when I draw the second half tomorrow, but we'll see!
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| Wooooords | Feb 24, 2010 8:12 AM PST | url |
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Got episode 8's script written: what with lots of ground to cover in terms of exotic environments, heavy-duty character interactions, and plot developments, editing it down to a decent length and polishing it off took me the rest of the day today (which was sort of Tuesday). So I won't have storyboards for you until tomorrow, then more Thursday, and then I should have the first real episode 8 comics for you on Friday.
This is gonna be a brutal episode! I mean sure, you're used to characters in A* not exactly being happy to see each other, but they haven't really gone through some of the tortuous stuff waiting for them in episode 8. Oh and Vero meets a new character who has a similarly grim outlook, but deals with it in a different way, and you can bet their meeting doesn't go entirely smoothly.
Let's see, what else can I spoil for you? Ah, here's this episode's leaked zingy line:
"Tastes like...licking a battery."
But it isn't a battery! So what could it be? HmMmm....
Back next time to show off some storyboards, finally! In the mean time, you can get some laughs reading my hilariously inaccurate quantum theory for everything, which starts at the bottom of this A* forum post, under the pretty pictures. Oh say I could post one of those here. This is the center of elliptical galaxy Messier 87, mapped in radio emissions:
image from National Radio Astronomy Observatory/National Science Foundation (source)
Messier 87 is a monster galaxy of several *trillion* stars, and that jet is a 5,000 light year long torrent of material shot out at an incredible 90% the speed of light by the magnetic field of the galaxy's core: a supermassive black hole that weighs in at 6.4 *billion* solar masses (here I am writing like Carl Sagan sounds...this is what I get for watching Cosmos on YouTube lately...)--compare that with the mere 4 million solar masses of our galaxy's own supermassive black hole, A*! But don't worry A*, we still love you.
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| Episode 8 planning, pictures, secretzzzz | Feb 23, 2010 7:32 AM PST | url |
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I got most of episode 8's script written today, so tomorrow will be polishing it up and then starting in on storyboards. This episode will take place around nifty stuff like planetary magnetospheres and radiation belts, and hey I put together bunch of nifty magnetosphere reference images for us on the forum, like with aurorae and stuff. (Although the planet in the episode will be too weird to have an aurora, actually. :o) For instance, here's a nifty Cassini image of microwave emission from Jupiter's radiation belts:
image by NASA (source)
And do you know what the densest natural element is (it isn't lead, gold or uranium!), or the deepest hole ever drilled by humans? Those and other interesting and possibly relevant trivia are to be found behind that link as well!
And I don't have reference photos handy for these, but the episode will also include heaping helpings of deception, double-cross, death, and despair, a sizable smidgen of spite, and at least one space battle. Ooh and we just may find out some actual info behind that deadly encounter at Tempus 477! Oooh (2) and here's a possibly too revealing/obvious hint: how do you hide a star?
If I can draw all this stuff right, episode 8 could turn out pretty good!
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| A* episode 7 trailer! | Feb 20, 2010 7:35 AM PST | url |
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The A* episode 7 trailer has arrived, woo!
Now, to recap from yesterday, the full episode 7 is already out.
So here's the trailer I just made today.
If you've already seen the movie of the full episode then the trailer is no big whoop! But trailers are kind of fun anyway, like little mini-movies that don't even have to make much sense! Whee! The Flash version of this trailer is up at Newgrounds--where you can vote for how rad it is!--and on deviantART.
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Also, although I won't have *real* episode 8 comics for you until Thursday-ish next week, I got a jump on things by sizing the web site up to the +33% size the chapter 8 comics will be! I can embed videos at larger sizes in news articles, among other advantages! So no it isn't your screen getting smaller, it's the site getting bigger!
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| The A* episode 7 movie! | Feb 19, 2010 5:23 AM PST | url |
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The A* episode 7 movie is here!
I had some fun picking out the tracks for the various scenes; they're eclectic as a group but hopefully evocative in the right ways.
Added 1 new A* page:Okey-dokey, so that's it for episode 7, except I guess a movie trailer (for Newgrounds and deviantART, primarily) which I'll work on tomorrow. Thanks very much to Steven Baughman and SEPET for contributing to the episode's production!
I'll need two or three days at the beginning of next week for writing and storyboarding, and then we'll be starting in on episode 8 comics; I guess that'll be Wednesday or Thursday-ish. Oh and as usual, I'll probably leak out some storyboards as I draw them earlier in the week for you to check out. Since this episode 7 movie is the last movie version of an episode I plan to do, there won't be huge multi-week lulls between episodes from here on out--just a few days off for writing/storyboarding.
Also, the episode 8 comics will be bigger! And with generally more dynamic art, since I won't be limited to drawing just stuff that I can animate.
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Since episode 7 is the last one planned to have a movie version, there've been a few changes here and there around the site, too. I've moved the movie links off the main menu, but you can still get to the movies through the episode list page, which *is* up there in the main menu. Speaking of the menu, I also added a gray box around ad text on the pages so it doesn't get confused with the menu, which it's kind of close to up there. The other change I made was to stop calling the comics "dailies," which is a reference to movie production; now they're just called "pages" or comics. Hopefully that makes browsing the site a little easier, since "dailies" was probably kind of an obscure term! But I do like my obscure terms.
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I hope you enjoy the movie! Since Flash is silly I had to break it into three pieces and reassemble it again, and there's a visible blip at one of the two seams--can you spot it? And if you'd like to let me know what you think of this latest little film, I'd be delighted to hear it!
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| Blowing your lines, A* style | Feb 17, 2010 7:59 PM PST | url |
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Still got some lip-synching, and then music-laying and video-file-creating to do for the episode 7 movie, so, since I'm trying vaguely to break my silly stay-up-all-night habit, I may not have it done until tomorrow.
But fear not! I have some "hilarious" out-takes of me stumbling over Auri's lines that had mild swearing in them! I guess I'm just not good at swearing. :P
Very mild profanity warning!
- sons of...
- bet your...
And I kept repeating his "you guys are such cards" line from last episode since that's a sort of iconic one that helps me remember his speech style.
You can also hear how my wimpy vocal chords sort of age or degrade with time as I read lines from raspy/deep-voiced characters like Auri and Vero: "sons of" is from my second full read-through of Auri's lines, while "bet your" is from the third, which is why it sounds more strained; but the "strained" quality is something that seems to me to be crucial to capturing the sounds of those characters, so I save them for last (and I do the female voices first!), and do three read-throughs for each of them, mostly using the results from the third (and second, if necessary) read-throughs, since by that point I've injured my throat enough to get down to their husky registers. :D
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| Airplanes and Gorgons, oh my | Feb 16, 2010 3:23 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* comic:Faaading out. There's actually one more image though, and hopefully I'll have the episode 7 movie done tomorrow so I can get that image up tomorrow, too.
I recorded all the voice acting last night and today am cutting it, placing it into the animation timeline, and then doing the lip-synching. In the meantime, enjoy these hilarious out-takes!
- Frustration with loud traffic passing my "studio" at 11:00 pm leads to a listless reading that boils into rage when a new type of interruption rears its head!
- At the end of the night my voice and brain are about shot and I give up on trying any more takes of Vero's last long line because it is getting worse and worse!
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| Wach out, neighbors | Feb 15, 2010 6:46 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* comic:Epic image today! >_> This scaling scene probably didn't come out exactly as I'd pictured it in my head, but ah well. Speaking of scenes, I've got episode 7's animation all sequenced up now, and will be doing the voice acting this evening, when the world is quiet and I can irritate my neighbors most effectively.
Hey you could check out this weekend's new Princess and the Giant comic, too! The Princess finally got a new outfit, how exciting! Here's a graphic object you can click on to get to it if text links are too boring to consider:
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| Snakes on a Laser Plane | Feb 12, 2010 5:54 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* comic:Selenis is all about safety. So if you're standing in a decompressing hangar while a nuclear-powered space ship is taking off, remember to shield your eye with a tracking device launcher.
I have a simple animating version of this for you
(see the "Gorgon" connection? heh) and a larger non-animating version in the gallery:
I should be wrapping up getting episode 7's art into an episode-long animated sequence today, which will leave the beginning of next week for voice and music work. I think sound took me about three days on the last episode, and that would be convenient for this one since I have exactly three comics left for it!
Speaking of comics that update once per day (A* usually updates multiple times daily but never mind that for now), my fairly new little sketch comic, Sketchy, has been ticking right along, and it's up to 35 silly comics or so now. Check it ouuuuut! Here's a recent one just to give you some idea of the nutty adventure you're getting into:
Finally, the military just announced yesterday that their "Flying Laser"--basically a 747 fitted with the world's largest gun turret assembly, housing a megawatt-class laser--successfully shot down a test missile in flight yesterday. Can the gigawatt laser turrets of A*'s space ships be far behind? Here's an under-the-nose view of the "Flying Laser's" laser turret:
Man, one little slip and that guy in the dark suit could be in for the tan of a lifetime. Anyhoo you can read more about it in the "Flying Laser" topic on the A* forum!
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| Grenade time | Feb 11, 2010 7:40 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* comic:Warm up those engines! Hokay here's another bullet-timey animation preview clip of the upcoming episode 7 movie:
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| Free fall bullet time boot to the head | Feb 10, 2010 5:40 PM PST | url |
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Added 2 new A* comics:Two whole comics today! Very similar to each other! How many little shooty gadgets does Selenis have, anyway?
Since I'm doling comics out so slowly to cover the animating I'm doing now instead of drawing, I might as well start showing you some bits of the animation being assembled. Here's a good old-fashioned free fall bullet time boot to the head:
Oof indeed! You know, I used to think the 10 fps I animate at was super cut-rate, but then last night I read that cheap cartoon animation actually runs at a mere 8 or even 6 drawings per second. So man, 10 fps is kind of lush by those standards!
Also, just another reminder that midnight tonight (Pacific time) is the deadline for contributing to this episode--aka sending me a sweet $5 through the shiny gold button on the support A* page--in order to get your name in the credits of what will be the final animated episode before I switch to a larger, non-animated comic format starting in chapter 8.
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| Decompression, baby stars, and shivers | Feb 09, 2010 8:54 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* comic:The first decompression scene since the one way back in episode 2! Also I thought the design of the back end of the ship came together here. I haven't been able to draw it that well since then (which you'll see in a few days!--ooh speaking of which, TWO hole panels tomorrow, since there's a bit of action that has to be shown in sequence).
I got the space research bug again last night and went on a bender posting pretty pictures of various types of nebulae on the forum, starting here. There are things like these protoplanetary discs--"proplyds"--around cute baby stars in the Orion Nebula
 
and other exotic stuff like the Boomerang Nebula, the coldest known spot in the universe! Neat. Once again, the parade of the latest pretty pictures starts here.
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| Ep. 7 animation starts; Wed. contrib deadline | Feb 08, 2010 7:31 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* comic:Super typing drama time! If you look carefully, you can figure out what keys he's pressing and it spells a secret message!* (*Actually it doesn't!)
As I'm trickling the end of the episode out to you so slowly, behind the scenes I've finished up all the art, and am starting in on the animation. I'll be wrapping up the credits sequence eventually, so I'm declaring end-of-the-day Wednesday (February 10th) as the deadline for contributing to this episode and thus getting in its credits; you can do that via the gold button on the support A* page. This will be the last animated movie version of an episode for the foreseeable future--next episode we move to a non-animated, larger-comic format--so if you've wanted be in an A* credits sequence, now's the time. And after this episode I won't have to pester you with messages like this anymore, whee!
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| Super-sexy Friday! | Feb 05, 2010 5:42 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* comic:In the ancientest Greek mythology, the Gorgon was a humanoid monster with a horrific face--goggle eyes, protruding tongue, fangs, and snakes for hair--whose visage was used to ward off evil. Later when the Greeks got into inventing sexy stories to explain everything, it turned out there were three Gorgons, beautiful daughters of a sea god and a sea monster. The lovely golden hair of one of the daughters, Medusa, attracted Poseidon while they were in a temple of Athena, and when the two started getting it on, Athena showed up, kinda mad, and cursed Medusa by turning her lovely hair into snakes. Later, when Perseus chopped of Medusa's head, her child by Poseidon leapt out of her neck: Pegasus! (I am not making this up.) Other stories say that Medusa's sisters, Stheno and Euryale, also had snakes for hair because they were standing nearby when Athena laid the curse on Medusa. Bummer! But for some reason they were immortal, while Medusa was not. Oh and the gaze of the three--or even just a single snake hair, in some stories--could turn people into stone.
Also! On the forum I posted groovy photos of black holes, or at least the areas around them. For instance, here's Cygnus X-1 in X-rays:
image from NASA (source)
Cygnus X-1 is thought to be a binary system consisting of a blue supergiant and a black hole; the explanation for its intense X-ray emissions is that they're given off by gas and other solar wind stuff from the supergiant, which, spiraling into the black hole, goes faster and faster and heats up to millions of degrees due to friction, at which temperature it emits X-rays. Cygnus X-1 is one of the most studied black hole candidates, and the one that Stephen Hawking lost a bet over, and had to buy another scientist a subscription to Penthouse. Not making that up, either! You can hear Hawking talking about it here.
Gosh I am full of sexy stories today!
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| Secret crush | Feb 04, 2010 6:37 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* comic:I've noticed that comics in which the characters have secret crushes on each other are popular! So let's say that Selenis had a secret crush on Vero and now the manly way he stood up to her has fanned the flames of her ardor into a searing conflagration! When will she tell him her true feelings?!?
And I actually had something semi-serious to say, which is that... Wait... Oh yeah, that since episode 7 will be the last animated episode for the foreseeable future, and I'm probably going to be wrapping up the credits next week, now would be a good time to toss me five beans (I mean $5) and get your name (and website, if you want!) in the credits as a full-fledged A* supporter! It's rad and stuff (at least I think so >_>) and this may be the last chance ever! And you can do it super-easily through the gold button on the support page.
Anyway I'll be announcing the actual contribution deadline for the episode probably early next week once I've got the art done and have a better idea of when I'll be finishing up the animation.
Secret cruuuuuuuuush!
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| Blood warts, animation buffering continues | Feb 03, 2010 8:18 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* comic:The daily dole of one measly comic per day while I build a buffer to get me through animation week! The torture! Last time we'll have to go through this, phew. At least this one is a pretty decent drawing; one of my better of Vero, I think. So I put a large version in the gallery, warts (actually those are supposed to be blood droplets!) and all; clickum to get to the big one:
Let's see I was also going to mention something actual... Oh! Two things in fact:
- IE 8 was putting useless scroll bars on about every other post in the A* forum. Man, how long had that been happening? I check the site with IE 8 but I guess not all that thoroughly (usually I'm on Firefox!). >_> Anyway it's fixed now as far as I can tell. If you ever have any weirdness like that in your browser on this site, let me know!
- On the front pages of my comic sites, you can now click the latest comic on display to be taken to the permanent address for that particular comic image.
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| End of episode 7 looms; tidied UI | Feb 03, 2010 3:42 AM PST | url |
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Added 2 new A* comics:I'm gonna make more than just two A* comics today (honest!) but the end of episode 7 is coming up fast--I've got about 10 storyboards left to cover, which means maybe 10-12 more comics, probably--so I've gotta build up a buffer to cover the week+ that it'll take me to voice and animate the movie version. I haaaaate holding stuff back and giving it out slowly, but this is probably the last time it's gonna happen, since I won't be bothering with movie versions after this episode.
By the way you may notice that the comic browsing links have moved around a bit; hopefully this condensed scheme--they're all in the bar above the comic now, instead of being split with comic navigation above and episode navigation below--will be a little easier to use for most people, and more familiar to new readers from what's sort of standard among other webcomics. Conformity, it's finally getting me! Aaaa! But anyway the new look's a bit tidier, so that's nice.
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| Squeezing, Princesses, Mangoes | Feb 02, 2010 6:59 AM PST | url |
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Added 2 new A* comics:Only managed to squeeze in a few today. More tomorrow! But other comics you can check out right now are a new Princess and the Giant and a new, compact -word- poem thing involving Pac-Man and Indian food.
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