Page 70

I gotta stop spending time drawing stuff that I'm gonna cut out before the final version. =p Hm what else can I say here, darn this tricky sequence. Next week's will be kinda different than what we've been used to.

I met Phil Foglio today and he was rad.

Page 71

I think this is maybe the fourth or so page I've drawn that doesn't have the Princess in it. This fellow with the bow was lurking around in the background some months ago--remember where?

Some of the images I referred to for bow shooting and arrowheads:







While I was looking up arrowheads, I came across a reference to a Copper Age man found with arrows, and possible dead from an arrow wound: Ötzi the Iceman died in 3,300 BC in what would be, when he was found 5,300 years later, in 1991, the Italian Alps. He'd been mummified under a glacier or something, his body and gear preserved in unprecedented condition. The Italian museum page has details (in English) in text and photos of his extensive collection of clothing and tools, and Wikipedia had this impressive reconstruction of what he might have looked like standing upright, snug head-to-toe in his prehistoric snow gear:



Man. Chalcolithic man. His most significant piece of equipment was his copper axe: not only is it the only prehistoric ax found, but it existed 1,000 years before archaeologists had thought humans had discovered copper; so Ötzi single-handedly forced scientists to move the beginning of the Copper Age 1,000 years backwards.

(That was trumped in 2008 by a copper axe found in Serbia, dated 2,200 years even earlier, pushing the Copper Age in Europe back to at least 5,500 BC. That one didn't come with a mummy, though.)

But I wasn't using a prehistoric arrowhead as a model; the one I drew is meant to be medieval.

If you saw page 71 when I first uploaded it, no you aren't crazy, you could see part of the archer's face. But it wasn't quite right somehow, and after struggling to make it right, I realized it was just wrong, and removed it. =P Better now, I think. Don't worry, we will...hm...probably see his face at some point, and hopefully then I'll remember not to draw hair first and then try to draw a face underneath that, because it doesn't seem to work out well. ;P

Page 72

Probably went a little overboard on the hatching here. It's all to distract you from the relative implausibility of this sequence! Mwahahaaa. But it's over now. Er mostly. And don't worry, the Princess will be okay! I guess that does look a little painful. >_<

Page 73

The abrupt outfit change is supposed to be a clue that this may be a fantasy within a fantasy--similar to one three pages ago, in fact, but a little more obvious. Can you guess whose head we're in? Aside from yours and mine, I mean. =p

Thanks to Gary of the "Gary Does A Big Think" blog for writing an article with a number of nice things to say about this comic. And just because he seems to like them (okay and because this latest one didn't go too embarrassingly), here's a process animation for this latest page:



EDIT: You know, this may be my most Freudian comic yet! Also, if you look at this sideways, it kinda looks like the Princess is speed-moonwalking. :o

Page 74

Oh dear, back there--again! Don't worry, this is the last time I'm putting her in there...I think. Not saying I won't be putting someone else in there...

This was an interesting one to make because of the overlaying bars on the cage. The Princess is on a base layer, then there are seven or so layers over that with the bar details, hair details, background detail, etc:



Looking at the base layer, I like how her face came out there, so I made it into an icon, whee!



~~~~~~~~~~

By the way, the Princess is gonna be in an art show! Yep, Princess prints all signed and framed on the walls of the swanky Seattle coffee house, Caffè Fiore (the Ballard one!) from November through December. There's even an opening shindig on November 13th, 7-9 pm!

Page 75

Hey, Uncle Creepy's back, and just in time for Halloween! He certainly seems excited about something. ... I may have cheated a bit on the eyes.

Boy, that cage takes a while to draw. Good thing I only have to draw it a--*checks notes*--...aw dang. Oh well, at least we'll be getting out of the dungeon for a while. =P

That show of my prints--including a lot of Princess stuff--I mentioned earlier has begun in Seattle! More on that here. You can see a bunch of Princess prints in this photo fresh from our art hanging tonight



and some that were at a larger size, like the one in the upper right of this photo



They'll be up there through the end of the year. :)

Back on the road again! Nine humans and four animals, sheesh it's a regular caravan. Fortunately, Nat's here with some travel music for us:

[embed]nqej9dLlW7s[/embed]

Next week there's the opening party for my show of prints here in Seattle (see post above) at 7-9 pm, then I'll have to stagger home and try to draw next week's PatG--could be an interesting one! =P

^ Ooh I had the date wrong on last week's (still had it as Halloween, the week prior); corrected it now, hopefully that doesn't muck up anyone's RSS reader or something. Eh I should really try to use those some time and figure out if it does... Oh well, no time for that now, I gotta draw tomorrow's comic!