Hehe my perspective is always a bit off since I just eyeball everything. Don't take a ruler to anything I do, the results would be shocking! =o

Thanks for noticing the hands! Working in pencil seems to be helping me get the anatomy more refined; the drawing is also going much quicker, although the shading is probably taking a bit longer--but I think that'll get faster too once I get more adept with the use of washes.

I actually have been thinking about limited color possibilities I could use here and there for special emphasis. Probably not for those drapes! But been thinking about what could be done with a thin splash of watercolor here and there, or maybe hm well there's a red Japanese liquid ink I've seen at the art supply store, and then some little bowls of either Chinese or Japanese solid inks in various colors. Those might have been kind of expensive, can't remember exactly.

Ahem! So forceful Selenis! I think were about to loose our PG rating in the next scenes... either violence...or violation... maybe both at the same time! {Be gentle! lol.}

Yeah I've actually been worried about the end of this episode for a while now in those regards. For instance, originally

**okay I guess this is a minor spoiler**

I was going to have Selenis completely undressed, and just rely on a lot of shadow and silhouette shots and other trickery like I did at the beginning of episode 11, but that would be more difficult here due to the setting and action, I think, and I have advertisers now that I can't afford to scare off! (Sellin' out, woo!) So that was why I did the third costume study here to see if I could have her retain enough clothing (sheer and partially see-through as it may be) to stay in business. And actually I think I'll be able to show more of her wearing a slip like that, if I want to, since it can very conveniently cover just the right places at all times. :D

Added 1 new A* page:

• A* Episode 13, Page 139

These last few pages have been an interesting experiment (in this one here I even started from the blank page with light washes, gradually going to darker ones, and then just barely a touch a pure black ink at the end), but as you can probably guess, right after this moment the light goes out, and I can get back to nice zippy blackness. I think with going *all* gray washes, I lose the snap of the drawing--it really does get a bit washed out. So I think maybe you'll see me using them more as solid fills (like I did in the first one, 136) and maybe I'll be able to bring in stand-alone washes in areas where I'm more comfortable with them. But anyway yeah back to black, whew!

Which reminds me: thanks to everyone who's been giving me feedback on this change from digital to traditional art on the comic! I've been getting a *lot* more feedback than I usually do since the switch, and it's pretty much all been really positive and encouraging, and I really really appreciate it--and it's driving me to try to learn and get better at it with each page.

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Speaking of which, I did another black and white photo-based portrait for a reader today! I also had to raise the prices on these a little ($10 now! =o) 'cause I've been completely unable to resist spending waaaaay more time on them than I'd originally intended. But see, how could you *not* spend the time necessary to capture an expression like this one:



:D

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Scanning the pages at 1200 dpi is resulting in source image files that are over 100 MB each, even when zipped with maximum compression. If I ever do get back to doing two pages a day that could be about 4 GB of source image files per month--that could kind of add up! I mean heck over time that's gonna be a lot of burned backup DVDs, even. And what if my ancient, tinder-dry apartment burns down, etc. So today I signed up for Amazon S3 ("Amazon Simple Storage Service"), which lets me upload bajillions of bits of data to what is supposedly pretty secure backup storage on Amazon servers, and for a pretty reasonable monthly fee. Zipped up, all my comic stuff so far has come to about nine gigabytes, and...looks like I've got about five gigabytes of that still to go in this long initial upload. But at least when Seattle is wiped off the map in the coffee wars, my ridiculously high resolution scans will still be safe (uh assuming part of Amazon's "redundancy" in their S3 storage includes backup servers *not* in the Seattle area =o).

Ah nice points! I like the change to a white contrast background for the last two scenes... I saw the original posts with the black background contrast. Nice. I for one believe you can portray intimacy without being crude or necessarily beating your audience over the head with it!

I honestly feel sorry for Mr. Andarian, his expressions are not of a lascivious eager sexual predator... but a young man truly entranced and charmed, perhaps falling in love with a beautiful and amazing woman companion - someone he truly wants to be special to and a part of his life.

I think he would treat her well... but that's just surface appearance for all we the audience knows.

...Too bad we know Selenis will kill him without remorse.

She's pushing the button !

You're right. The lighter washes don't work as well with their general lack of krispy-ness.
-Still damned good with foreshortening and details.
(I had some thoughts in here about ways to maybe deal with light images, but nothing is really as good as getting back to the black & white basics.)


-You could just get a USB drive and backup everything. 500 GB cost about $70 at Fry's a few years ago. Its only on when being up- or down-loaded, so totally secure.

I'm glad Andiran comes across that way, and also that I've managed to avoid crudeness so far! There can be a fine line in expression and tone in situations like this, so, whew!

Well I'd be interested to hear those thoughts! I do think it will be valuable to be able to handle light images, and of course once I have more confidence--well actually even now I suppose--I think I could do one more crisply just by selecting a single tone, rather than trying to build something up with multiple washes. But it is nice to have that black anchoring things, and I think you can still do a light scene with black lines and areas if they're the *right* black lines and areas--so that's something I'm going to try to work on as well.

Yeah it looks like Best Buy which is near me has 2 terabyte drives for $90 these days. So physical storage isn't really a problem (and I don't mind having a stack of burned DVD backups--heck I have a stack of blank ones already and those should last me for another year or two I suppose), but I think to be really professional about it, offsite storage is a must as well! If up rack up about 60 GB of remote storage a year, even after two years I'll only be paying something like $16 a month for it, so that's pretty affordable even for me!

(1) Some of the manga-type comix use graphics in place of backgrounds and even for shading. They use special programs to do that in addition to photoshop layers (but you could have prepared paper, as in stamping or rolling a pattern or texture.) Very delicate patterns that are essentially black & white- sharp and defined and soft at the same time ! Then you blend into them with your washes.

(2) Use ink and airbrush to make very soft backgrounds or foregrounds, with subtle blended gradations to emphasize and direct attention to the brushed artwork. In either (1) or (2) you need to only use parts of the paper and mask out or restrict the others. This is more a complex process than just blocking out your image with brushes.

(3) Color again. All you really need is a few clicks warmer (or cooler) to set it off.

People talk about composition like it is some iron-clad set of rules. Several have mentioned mystical proportions and ideal compositions. I think this is all hogwash. Composition is for one purpose, and that is to make your image come across (which is to direct the attention of the viewer.) There are lots of ways to do this, and some of them can involve dimensions, others the surface treatment, contrast, focus, etc. If you try to make "carved in stone" rules about this you miss the potential of just seeing ways to be original.


-The problem with CD's and DVD's is their limited life-span, including how many strange ways they can suddenly refuse to give you access to your own data.
-Off site storage is possibly allowing other people to have access to your images.

Hmmm interesting ideas. I'm inclined to think I can do it all with a brush if only I get good enough with it, but you've got a good point about not needing to be limited to a single technique. Now you've got me thinking of going and buying some Ben-Day dots or something to paste on the pages. ;D I wonder how much that stuff costs.

Is CD/DVD life really more limited than a hard drive?? =oo I assumed they would last a pretty long time.

Amazon's S3 service is *supposed* to be pretty secure. Obviously it is out of my control to a certain extent. Everything I'm uploading is in encrypted .zip files. I'm not really *too* worried about it getting stolen though, I'll admit; I mean, if someone can swipe my art and make a ton of money out of it...I kinda want to see how they do it! =o