Added 2 new A* comics:

• A* Episode 5, Daily 164
• A* Episode 5, Daily 165

Added "Episode x" panels to the start of each episode's collection of dailies; a side effect of this is that any links to dailies from elsewhere on the internet are now off by one, including those in my previous news posts for this episode. :o Ah, progress. For instance, A* Episode 5, Daily 163 is what was called Daily 162 in yesterday's news post.

I also changed the "first daily" and "last daily" links in the daily browsing interface to read "episode start" and "episode end," respectively, which hopefully convey their actual function more accurately.

Added 2 new A* comics:

• A* Episode 5, Daily 166
• A* Episode 5, Daily 167

Reminder: today's the last day to contribute to episode 5 and get your name in the animated episode 5's movie credits. You can do that on the support A* page.

Looks like I should be wrapping up the drawing for the episode today, then it'll be on to animation and voice work.

Added 2 new A* comics:

• A* Episode 5, Daily 168
• A* Episode 5, Daily 169

Nasty computer virus delayed me from posting today's comics (note to self: don't be dumb!), but now we're back on track. I did indeed finish the art for episode 5 yesterday, so now actual animation begins, woo-hoo! Not sure how long it'll take me since there's a ton of art to assemble for this one, but we'll see. I may be able to work up some little preview clips as I go.

I've also done a few One Off comics this week, so if you haven't seen those yet, give 'em a look. One Off is my little one-panel gag strip.

Made me laugh lol.

:D

Added 2 new A* comics:

• A* Episode 5, Daily 170
• A* Episode 5, Daily 171

I just can't help fitting that weird flower of Mar's in the corner of some of these office scene shots. :D

I'll be doing this week's The Princess and the Giant comic a day early, so that should be popping up sometime overnight tonight. Monday's a holiday here in the States, but I will be back with new A* comics, news, etc on that day, so stop by if you're around, otherwise have a nice (long) weekend!

Here's some looping space battle action for you! Just finished animating this section:



Now this is just a small snippet of the rough first pass on the animated version of episode 5; to get to the final version of this section I still have to add vocals, sync the lip movements to audio, tweak the timing of the camera switches so they flow nice and snappy, add music, and the final version will probably be straight to YouTube and won't have the dithery color reduction you can see if you look closely at the background here during the laser fire--this is only 16 colors, final output will be full grayscale...if my computer can handle it for the whole length of the movie! :o

Added 2 new A* comics:

• A* Episode 5, Daily 172
• A* Episode 5, Daily 173

Matrix fans will know what today's last daily means: Solvan Mar is now unplugged! :o Heh anyway I think that one came out pretty well, so I put a recombobulated (that is not a word!) larger version in the episode 5 gallery; click this tiny version to hop to it:



Over the weekend I got down a good start to outlines for episodes 6 and 7; several interesting hints of much larger schemes will be showing up in those episodes, along with what I think will be some fun new locations, characters, and action scenes, so I'm excited for those. And animating up episode 5 proceeds apace!

Added 2 new A* comics:

• A* Episode 5, Daily 174
• A* Episode 5, Daily 175

Since I'm not trying to squeeze the episode 5 movie into a sub-10MB Flash file, I get to indulge in one of my favorite effects: long multi-stage fade-outs! Here's an unused alternate version of the fadeout that will come after what is, in the dailies, Episode 5, Daily 51:



(Click the image if it isn't animating for you.)

Originally-originally, Selenis was going to end by looking down at the ship's hull, since that's what she's about to "cut open." I think her straight-ahead look is more arresting, though, so instead I'm having her look down first, then straight ahead (is she breaking the 4th wall? OMG!). The version that will be in the final animation keeps her staring ahead throughout the entire Cheshire Cat-ish fadeout, but then I got to thinking maybe I should have her lower her gaze right before it goes black, to show some humanity or something. And I want her to have that, but in the end the straight-ahead fadeout was smoother and much more powerful, so I went with that, and preserved this alternate version for todays news post, huzzah!

Added 1 new A* comic:

• A* Episode 5, Daily 176

Is Proctor referring to the arrival of their troop squadron to Vero's vicinity, or the impending release of Episode 5? Only have three dailies left for the episode, so hopefully the animation/sound/music won't take me much longer than that. Here's a low-quality preview of an action sequence that came together yesterday (click if it ain't animating for you):