if you want taste a good cake, you need to wait a good cook time!!
(dunno if is the right translation for an old romagna way of say, but i think it sound ok :) )

Eheh that works, yeah.

I think knowing that the drawings will go up as daily comics is causing me to spend a little more time on drawing each picture, too.

Added 6 new A* comics:

• A* Episode 5, Daily 84
• A* Episode 5, Daily 85
• A* Episode 5, Daily 86
• A* Episode 5, Daily 87
• A* Episode 5, Daily 88
• A* Episode 5, Daily 89

Selenis has started swinging around on her grapple, and you know what that means: time for a fully animated action scene. This one goes on for...ohh longer than I want to think about right now, and goes through all different directions and flips and asteroids-- Well, it's going to be pretty wild, if I survive to finish it.

Here's the grapple and run seen partially in dailies 87 and 88:



Extra points if you noticed that she leaves a footprint behind. :D

Also added a few higher-res bits from today's work to the episode 5 art gallery. Small previews (click 'em to go to their gallery page to see the full version):

Motion test for the next shot, swinging down.

Added 2 new A* comics:

• A* Episode 5, Daily 90
• A* Episode 5, Daily 91

Got through two quick frame-by-frame sequences today, or mostly, anyway. The first was a pretty easy one with just the rope swinging down (I think I'm going to be hating that rope by the end of this episode!), the second a more complicated one with Selenis in full swing. Still not quite done with that yet, but here's a non-inked-in preview (and I still have to draw the rope, dar!; if this isn't animating for you, click it to make it go):



If you saw the earlier test version on the forum, you'll notice that this one goes twice as fast; the original speed wasn't quite zippy enough. Fortunately the cut frames won't go all to waste, as I can use them, transparently, to make the motion of the remaining frames look smoother, like I did in the version above.

Filled in, finally:

Added 2 new A* comics:

• A* Episode 5, Daily 92
• A* Episode 5, Daily 93

Phew! The pose for daily 92 fought long and hard before it would come out properly stylish; in fact it came out looking rather familiar to one you've probably seen before elsewhere, only upside-down. Here's a hint (and the latest episode 5 art gallery entry--click it for the full size version):



And then I found myself revising the helmet in this one like four times:



Just one of those try try try again days, I guess. =P

Added 4 new A* comics:

• A* Episode 5, Daily 94
• A* Episode 5, Daily 95
• A* Episode 5, Daily 96
• A* Episode 5, Daily 97

I should mention that generally lights, stars, etc shining in space won't have a big beam or halo, since there's nothing in the vacuum of space to reflect light like there is in the air around us here on Earth. I've been doing a lot of halos and things in this current episode 5 scene, though, and I suppose the excuse I could make about it is that the scene takes place in a planetary ring system, and those tend to have lots of dust and ice particles in them (even though mine is unusually "chunky" with all those big asteroids), and those could cause light to scatter and create halos and beams and things.

The *real* reason though is that it looks cool. ;D Especially in the dailies, which don't have the benefit of animation, it's been helping me illustrate depth and direction; this ring system setting is kind of tough for that, because there are tons of objects floating around, but nothing concrete about most of them that can give a sense of scale--you can't tell just from its outline if an asteroid is small and close by, or big and far away--so using atmospheric depth and depth of field effects in grayscale helps with that. And I've been using a larger halo effect here and there to help show in which direction the system's Sun can be found, which hopefully helps to orient the viewer in this big field of rubble.

Oh yeah, and beams and trails can help give a sense of the animation in the non-animated dailies, so I've been using them for that, too: missile trails, and in these last couple dailies, to help punctuate the change from lights off to lights on--in that big whatever-it-is that Selenis has a gun pointed at!

if it's cool it's ok :)

The art in this one is very impressive... I can't wait to see the finished product in motion.