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!

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!

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!

Added 2 new A* pages:

• A* Episode 8, Page 1
• A* Episode 8, Page 2

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!

Added 2 new A* pages:

• A* Episode 8, Page 3
• A* Episode 8, Page 4

Still not up to full speed but hey, I got twice as many pages done today, and if I can double again tomorrow, I'll be all set. :D I think the nebula came out a little more gaseous today, which isn't good for a lot of things, like digestion, but I think it's okay here. Still gotta work on getting them a bit more flowing, though. (I swear that wasn't a digestion pun.)

I *did* blow (again not digestion!) some time (see?) today getting A* and my other comics on Twitter, and drawing a couple pages of my One Off strip, which was sorely in need of an update, even of particularly iffy jokes! Those pages start here.

And I gotta throw out a thank you return link to Slamlander, who I notice gave A* a spot in the comic section of his site's portal page. Thanks, man!

After finishing up the second-newest scene, I somehow clicked my way back to the very first episode. "Injecting stimulants", etc. Thought Vero was having surreal flashbacky-things from oxygen loss. Silly me.

I guess that's kind of easy to do accidentally with the "<<< first" link being up at the top now. Vero and his stimulants!

Added 2 new A* pages:

• A* Episode 8, Page 5
• A* Episode 8, Page 6

Bah, still just two today! Got too caught up in black hole math, initially trying to show how ridiculously powerful the fantasy "mass effect" technology in "Mass Effect 2" would have had to have been to keep the crew at their normal weight as close as they appeared to get to a certain notorious black hole: it would've had to have been able to nullify 650 g-forces, as it turns out! And then I went on to figure silly things like how far away from A* you could be to be getting the equivalent of Earth surface gravity from it (answer: a distance equivalent to Pluto's furthest distance from the Sun!), or how fast you'd have to be going to have a stable orbit around A* at a distance just above that of Mars' furthest orbit from the Sun (answer: 15% light speed!). So if you want to see a lot of nutty calculations like that about black holes, they're in this A* forum post!

Hopefully less math, more drawing tomorrow. Although having figured out some of this stuff will help me for hm episode 8 or 9, in a way.

Added 4 new A* pages:

• A* Episode 8, Page 7
• A* Episode 8, Page 8
• A* Episode 8, Page 9
• A* Episode 8, Page 10

Stayed away from the maths and finally got a decent number of pages done! Just more proof that math is evil.

I think floating screwdriver is my new favorite character.

We'll have to wait until tomorrow for Vero to complete his latest thought (he is slow of mind) but MAYBE YOU CAN FIGURE IT OUT?? :o

Added 4 new A* pages:

• A* Episode 8, Page 11
• A* Episode 8, Page 12
• A* Episode 8, Page 13
• A* Episode 8, Page 14

Now I'm thinking that technically if you poked your finger through a holographic screen it would just block out the hologram in rays opposite from the directions the projection was coming from, but you know, that probably wouldn't look as cool. Anyway, this is probably something much more sophisticated, like...um...a magnetically controlled plasma field of radiant gas. Yeah! Also I gots ta keep ripping off Matrix effects, you know. :P

Banner dump! Time to update my various ad campaigns, so I made myself some "leaderboard-size" banners with chapter 7 art; you might have seen the first one a month or so ago, the others I whipped up tonight. Feel free to use these yourself for linking or whatever; they will reside on the icons page until I get tired of them!

















Help a brother out and let me know if you think any of these are particularly good or bad. :D I have a definite favorite and a mostly definite least favorite.