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  Another week down the tubes!Jan 30, 2015 11:29 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:This was kind of a weird week in painting! I'm not sure I quite had it together but I took that as an excuse to try some things I haven't really tried before, and to try to loosen up a bit. Still a long way to go as always but maybe I learned a thing or two? Well anyway we can do it all over again next week!
 
Here's a photo of some pencil scratches, I posted this earlier in the day on my Instagram/tumblr/Twitter:
 
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  Big in Lund!Jan 30, 2015 1:41 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:I suppose it could very well be a statistical glitch or something but I choose to believe, in reading through my site's demographics today, that A* is quite big in the town of Lund, Sweden. Yes, because according to the numbers, in the past month, more people (well okay, devices connected to the internet?) in Lund visited A* than did people in, say, Chicago or Los Angeles—or even New York, I guess. Hm in fact according to these figures, I'm by far the most widely read in Indianapolis and Knoxville; comic capital Portland is third, and my home base of Seattle is fourth! Lund is an impressive seventh—but it had more than half (89) of the visitors that first-place Indianapolis (160) did, despite being just one-tenth the size (2010 populations of 82,800 vs 820,445!). If I'm ever lucky enough to visit Sweden, I know where I'll be stopping! ^_^ (Also I should probably be visiting these other fine cities too!)
 
 
 
 
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  I guess this is why I use heavy paper : oJan 28, 2015 11:04 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Reworked the faces a couple times, kind of agonizing to do but the smudged and imperfectly rubbed off watercolor and ink sort of build up into something interesting after a few rounds, even if the paper gets a little roughed up.
 
 
 
 
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  I didn't leave enough space in spaceJan 27, 2015 10:40 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:I usually flick/spray stars with white ink on but I would've had to cut out a ton of little masks to cover all the ships here so they wouldn't get stars sprayed on them...so I took the lazy way out and hand-painted them, which reminded me of why I don't usually do that. : P Maybe drawing this many ships in one panel was a little ambitious!
 
 
 
 
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  Ceci n'est pas un article de blogJan 26, 2015 10:24 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:I gotta stick to a more regular schedule this week so I may not manage to get much done in the way of actual blog articles—but I got a page done, at least! Wheeee
 
 
 
 
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  This new brush must nay will last FOREVER : oJan 24, 2015 3:30 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Boy! You can do all kinds of crazy things with a pointy new brush, like spending way too long painting and repainting teensy weensy bits of things! But I think this is probably good; I'm not even sure if I've replaced my brush since I started doing the pages in watercolor (I don't want to look up how long ago that was >_<)—maybe once? Although come to think of it that might have been just swapping it out for a slightly less used brush. Anyway it's uh been a while. Back when I was working in ink, I pretty much *had* to replace the brush every oh 20 or 24 pages or so, because the waterproof ink got down into the ferrule and pushed the bristles apart, making the tip of the brush become, like, two tips, which is not in fact twice as useful! Watercolor doesn't do that to brushes, so that's nice, but the tip did just wear down gradually anyway from brushing across fuzzy watercolor paper every day...but hopefully the tip'll last decently for hm a good chunk of a year? And...yow! What with the great sable shortage I guess, once these things do get back in stock, they're going to be way more expensive than they were before. Maybe I'd better not get used to pointy new brushes. : PP Oh well, we'll just have to enjoy it while it lasts! ^_^
 
 
 
 
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  Rubbing chemicals on plants with furJan 23, 2015 11:42 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Huh, weird stuff happens when I use the watercolor to "ink" my wandering pencil lines in a tight (for me : p) sort of way. Maybe I should learn to embrace the weirdness? I *do* know at least that the spatulate tip on my ridiculously well-worn brush was not exactly helping in tight corners and the like; I have just one more of these brushes left (and hm they're still out of stock after the great sable shortage, although supposedly they'll be back in a little over a month...), but heck, let's make tomorrow New Brush Day! Whee! *\o/*
 
 
 
 
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  A Hat Named "Maintenance"Jan 22, 2015 9:42 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Here's a sketch I mailed off a little while back to a generous reader who's supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign:
 
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It was kind of a study for Selenis' space station disguise!
 
 
 
 
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  Dawn approaches dwarf planet CeresJan 21, 2015 1:49 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Dawn spacecraft gets an eyeful of dwarf planet Ceres (BBC) - We've got a little, low-resolution animation of the dwarf planet Ceres, at 950 km in diameter the largest object in the asteroid belt, rotating as seen from a distance of a mere 400,000 km—a little more than the average distance from Earth to the Moon—by NASA's Dawn space probe on its approach. No man-made craft has ever visited a dwarf planet, so these are already just about the best views we've ever had of Ceres (Hubble's are fractionally better but still really blurry) but that's due to change with Dawn reaching Ceres at the end of the month (and in July the New Horizons craft will get to that demoted planet, the dwarf planet Pluto!). The plan is for Dawn, once in orbit around Ceres, to study it for 16 months, then to end its mission by, well, just shutting down and staying in orbit around Ceres, a little man-made moon for the giant asteroid. Among other things, Dawn will be trying to find out if there is a "liquid ocean of water" inside Ceres. Dawn "has lost two of the four reaction wheels it uses for fine-pointing," which means it has to spend unplanned fuel to orient itself, but it sounds as though its mission controllers are still reasonably confident about achieving their main objectives at Ceres.
 
 
 
 
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  What Big Eyes You HaveJan 19, 2015 11:42 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Here's another sketch I mailed off to a lovely reader recently as their reward for supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign in November:
 
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I mailed out the e-book version of episode 23 to December supporters at the e-book reward level on Patreon over the weekend. Thanks for the support, it means a lot!
 
 
 
 
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  Sending out ripplesJan 17, 2015 1:18 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Here's a puddle-jumpin' sketch I sent to a reader a little while back as their reward for supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign in November:
 
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Let's see... This weekend I gotta send out a round of e-books to folks eligible for A* e-book rewards on Patreon too!
 
 
 
 
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  Mimas, Saturn's mysteriously wobbly moonJan 16, 2015 9:42 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:A few or three months ago, a group of French, Belgian, and American astronomers reported (BBC) their finding that Saturn's moon Mimas wobbles as it rotates around its axis: the tiny 400 km diameter moon shifts side to side by as much as 6 km as it turns. That's twice as much wobble as the scientists expected to find, and they've been trying to come up with theories to explain it; the leading one is that Mimas has an interior "global ocean" separating the core from the outer shell, allowing the outer part to wobble freely. The other main theory proposes that the wobble could be caused by a rocky lunar core "that was squashed or elongated by 20-60 km."
 
Mimas does feature the huge "Herschel Crater, one-third the size of Mimas itself," but the ancient impact that must have caused it isn't thought to have been sufficient to account for the current wobble all by itself.
 
 
 
 
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  Complex organic molecules spotted near A*Jan 15, 2015 6:55 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Back in September (I got kind of a backlog on space news articles >_>), the Max Planck Institute announced that they'd "detected a carbon-bearing molecule with a 'branched' structure in interstellar space. The molecule, iso-propyl cyanide (i-C3H7CN), was discovered in a giant gas cloud called Sagittarius B2, a region of ongoing star formation close to the center of our galaxy that is a hot-spot for molecule-hunting astronomers."
 
Organic (carbon-bearing) molecules had been detected in that region before, but they were simpler "straight chain" molecules, whereas this newly-spotted one branches out from several nodes in a configuration that is more like the amino acids that are the building blocks of life on Earth—so, spotting molecules of that type is a big boost for the hunt for the origins of life. We know such molecules have come to Earth on meteorites, and now we know that they can exist in deep space—and that may bring us closer to finding their (and our??) ultimate origin:

"Amino acids identified in meteorites have a composition that suggests they originate in the interstellar medium," adds Belloche. “Although no interstellar amino acids have yet been found, interstellar chemistry may be responsible for the production of a wide range of important complex molecules that eventually find their way to planetary surfaces."
 
"The detection of iso-propyl cyanide tells us that amino acids could indeed be present in the interstellar medium because the side-chain structure is a key characteristic of these molecules", says Karl Menten, director at MPIfR and head of its Millimeter and Submillimeter Astronomy research department. "Amino acids have already been identified in meteorites and we hope to detect them in the interstellar medium in the future", he concludes.

So there you go! These key molecules were spotted pretty close to A* itself—just 300 light years away from it! (Earth is about 26,000 light years away from A*.) You can see a radio telescope photo of where they were found, and A*, in the article.
 
 
 
 
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  A sketch & watercolor fightingJan 14, 2015 4:12 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Here's a sketch I recentishly mailed off to a very nice reader as the reward for their support of the comic through my Patreon campaign in December <33:
 
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Patreon helps pay my rent and stuff! Yay Patreon! Yay readers! ^_^
 
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I decided I didn't like the way I'd started painting today's page so it kind of went off the rails and got a little "experimental." = PP
 
 
 
 
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  Should stop having so much fun on the weekendJan 13, 2015 2:38 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Urgh weekend hangover, ended up doing a lot of erasing and re-drawing today. I snapped photos of a few earlier versions of the characters in today's page, you can see them on my tumblr/twitter/Instagram.
 
 
 
 
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  Space Walkman!Jan 10, 2015 11:26 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Here's a sketch a reader got a little while back as their reward for supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign in November:
 
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^_^
 
 
 
 
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  Needs more )--SPACE DISCO--(Jan 09, 2015 10:24 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Here's a sketch I delivered to a reader recently as their reward for supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign in November <3 :
 
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Hm I'm thinking I should have more disco scenes, maybe fewer cart-pushing scenes (this one's almost done though, whew!).
 
 
 
 
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  A bit of pencil workJan 08, 2015 8:12 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Here's a close-up of the pencils for today's page before I put watercolor on 'em:
 
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Fairly happy with how those went. I've kind of been doing less and less light/dark modeling with the pencil as I've been doing watercolor, but now I'm thinking it can be pretty effective when used judiciously—creates another type of contrast.
 
 
 
 
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  Play Where's Selenis in Destination: Unknown!Jan 07, 2015 5:49 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:If you were to look closely at the huge and incredibly detailed crowd scene in the latest page of Marc Raab's webcomic "Destination: Unknown," you might see a familiar face! Yep, he fit our very own Selenis in there, along with multiple plethorae of characters from other webcomics in an impressive feat of illustration. Can you pick Selenis out of the crowd? Well okay you can just use the key like I did, but um I could also give you a hint! Or two! (Minor spoilers coming up!) ... She's prominently featured! And dressed and coiffed like she was at the beginning of this episode.
 
It's a really nice drawing and thanks Marc for including Selenis! : )
 
 
 
 
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  A* art at the 14 Carrot Cafe in Seattle!Jan 06, 2015 5:41 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:If you're in Seattle and would like to see some nicely framed A* art prints, or if you're in the Eastlake neighborhood and just need a bite to eat in the morning or early afternoon and wouldn't mind A* art staring down at you while you consume it, then you could head over to the 14 Carrot Cafe at 2305 Eastlake Avenue East (map), since I just put up a display of A* work there today. : ) It'll be there for three whole months—through March! (Oh yeah and the framed prints there are also for sale. : ) The 14 Carrot is a fun and funky, very Seattle little eatery, and I am not too proud to admit that I am fond of their carrot cake. : d So yep, new art display, check it out if you get a chance! And thanks to the folks who helped me get the space, their support is always appreciated. ^_^
 
 
 
 
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  And she strikes...like Nanobaaaaaaaall!Jan 03, 2015 9:19 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Nanoball batteries "are an experimental type of battery with either the cathode or anode made of nanosized balls that can be composed of various materials such as carbon and lithium iron phosphate"; this gives them a higher surface area, allowing them to charge/discharge at 100 times the speed of a conventional battery. They're still in the experimental phase, and as of the last big update in 2009 they had some problems, such as requiring too much energy to operate, and not being able to store energy for a prolonged period of time. So who knows? Maybe they won't work out. Then again, maybe they will!
 
Remember, the Supermassive Holiday Sale of original A* art ends over the weekend, probably some time Sunday—not before Sunday, at least. So you've still got at least a day to catch the savings on one-of-a-kind ink or watercolor pieces of A* artwork!
 
Here's an ink sketch I sent to a reader recently as the reward for their support of the comic through my Patreon campaign in October; I'll also show you what the pencils looked like before I went wacky on it with the ink:
 
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And that's what happens! Thanks to all the people supporting me through Patreon, it's a huge help!
 
 
 
 
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  2015? I'm still sketching for 2014! : PJan 02, 2015 3:38 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Here's a sketch I mailed off to a reader a little while back as the reward for their support of the comic through Patreon in October:
 
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Yeah I'm a little behind on showing these to you! Also a bit (but not that far) behind on getting them done, although I've now got most of the reward sketches for November done, at least. New year, more sketching!
 
 
 
 
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  Supermassive Holiday (art) Sale ending soon!Jan 01, 2015 3:56 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Happy New Year! **\o/** Well with 2015 here the holidays are kind of winding down, and so is the Supermassive Holiday Sale! That's right, you'll only be able to get $10 off any of the original art available for sale directly through this site until oh hm well at least through Saturday—I think I'll probably take the sale down Sunday or so. Original art going way back to where it started midway through episode 13 is up for grabs (only four episode 13 pieces left!), and there's even some recent stuff left as of this moment, like pages 5 and 6 of this episode. Just look for the gold "original art" link at the lower left corner of the comic pages as you read through. Three days or so left to take advantage of the holiday discount! And thanks for reading A* in 2015! : ) (And probably 2014! :)
 
 
 
 
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