Oh yeah, that one too! Man, A* is a smoldering hotbed of suppressed passions!

Added 1 new A* comic:

• A* Episode 7, Daily 115

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!

Added 1 new A* comic:

• A* Episode 7, Daily 116

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!

Added 1 new A* comic:

• A* Episode 7, Daily 117

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.

Added 2 new A* comics:

• A* Episode 7, Daily 118
• A* Episode 7, Daily 119

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.

Added 1 new A* comic:

• A* Episode 7, Daily 120

Warm up those engines! Hokay here's another bullet-timey animation preview clip of the upcoming episode 7 movie:

Added 1 new A* comic:

• A* Episode 7, Daily 121

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!

Added 1 new A* comic:

• A* Episode 7, Daily 122

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:

Added 1 new A* comic:

• A* Episode 7, Daily 123

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!

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