J162 – 4koma 4koma

[9/24/2007]

Today’s comic was summoned as a result of a conversation that D-san and I had over instant messanger. It’s not entirely clear to me exactly why I have difficulty writing 4koma (4-panel comics) now; they used to come naturally, sometimes at the rate of 3 per week. Now, well, error something happen. D-san actually assisted me with the punchlines on these (it often used to be the other way around). Ah well. Hopefully said imaginary “touch” will return.

Oh, the reason behind the title of today’s update (“4koma 4koma”):
1. They’re 4komas about 4komas.
2. D-san really wanted the titles to line up with those of the previous weeks. OCD? Unfortunately, dynamic spacing has made this impossible. Ah well.

dcomic 437

[070921]

WELL, comics are now done through 452. Yay. As you can see the rate has been going down.

Anyways, I moved into my dorm on tuesday and they made me install a bunch of bloatware to get the internet working so I’ve finally made a full transition to my D830, as I really wouldn’t want to bog down my older machine with all this crap. It’s really nice having a wide screen. At the same time it doesn’t fit in my backpack so I’m going to have to find some sort of solution for that. It’s not that heavy once you move it around a bit too. I discovered that I actually really don’t like having the trackball in the middle of the keyboard. I always seem to fuck up g’s h’s and b’s because of it.

My genius idea of the week was to keep old food warm by using my desklight. Hey, it’s nearly 40W of heat, why waste it?

After I write this I’m going to try to bike to Borders. It’s funny that after moving I’m actually closer to my local Borders than before. I think I should be able to bike there without a problem. I wish the busses got a bit closer, but as it stands, they stop a few blocks away. I also don’t know hoe timely the busses are, but whatever the case it’s nice that they’re free.

Uhhh… nothing else to say, really.

J161 – Sandstorm 09

[9/17/2007]

Today’s comic bothered me when I was creating it. Panels 1 and 3 specifically. Those poses were annoying. Panel 3 returned again when I realized it was difficult to tell that the bullet was hitting the side of the wall that’s not visible in the panel. I wound up having it go through the wall, something I hadn’t originally wanted to do.

Anyway, the police chief is an interesting character. He’s kind of fun to draw, but it’s hard to draw him consistently, mainly because of his face shape and hairstyle. Also, annoyingly, the “POLICE” chevron on his shoulder seems to only show up at those angles where it reads “ICE” or “LICE”. Gwah~

dcomic 436

[070908]

Drawn up to 450, 451 has 5 of 8 panels done.

Anyways, today’s update is pretty much one of the low points of the current generation of comic pages, I think the quality goes up again through 439/440 and then starts back down. But like I’ve said before the quality fluctuations aren’t even close to being as bad as they once were.

This storyline is pushing it’s third year of existence. Though the storyline can technically be extended to episode 16, comic page number 367, I didn’t really know what I was doing until episode 28, comic page 378. Though back in the days of three updates a week, these two weren’t too far apart.

I recall riding back from somewhere with J on a bus and rambling about where I was going to take this storyline and it occurred to me (now, not when I was riding on the bus back from God knows where) that I’ve known where this storyline has been going… for quite a while now.

Ok, so maybe it’s not exactly the same as I envisioned it on the bus, but I think the general idea has stayed the same. In episode 79 I did mention connecting the Directorate storyline to the Confederate League… I still intend to do so and it’s working it’s way in there. We already see the BKS ship in comic page 422. If you look real close you can see the ship’s… engraving on the front hold, it reads “1904 Commander Cecil”.

But anyways, I was talking to J and I was going to write something about hacks, but that doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen anytime soon. Anyways, before the next update I’ll actually be in college. Good God.

J160 – Sandstorm 08

[9/11/2007]

Hi everyone. Sorry the comic is late again; I was working on it late at night, and then I wasn’t able to use the scanner because its owner had gone to sleep.

Anyway, I’ve been playing around with the export settings for the comic. Today’s comic is a jpg, whereas most of the recent Sandstorm comics have been png files. I’m not sure that there’s an appreciable difference between the two; Just for comparison, here is the jpg version and here is the png version. Personally, I don’t see much different except for the file sizes. Heck, I don’t even really see a difference between “high” and “medium” quality jpgs.

One of these days I’m going to output a test file in a whole bunch of different file formats at different settings, and do a gigantic read-up on all the image formats to see how they work …

And then still be equally confused afterwards, having spent several hours on this task.

dcomic 435

[070908]

Drawn up to 448. Nothing else to say.

J159 – Sandstorm 07

[09/04/2007]

Hey everyone. Sorry about the delay…

Classes at MIT start tomorrow. This means I’ll probably be running about frantically until I figure out how the system works. Ah well.

Today’s comic looked totally awesome before it was inked. Then it lost some of its character. This always happens; I need to find some way to keep the character of pencil art while keeping the clarity of inked art. I think I will buy some 6H pencils just to see how well they work …

dcomic 434

[070831]

Yay, 434. Currently working on 445. Things aren’t going as fast as they were. But frankly I’m surprised I’ve progressed as far as I have during this cycle. Maybe I’ll actually get to 449 or wherever the hell I wanted to go.

[070901]

Well, I wrote this brief entry a few days early, but as of September 1st, 13 pages (433 – 446 inclusive) have been completed! Along with that, part 4 of the Directorate storyline is also complete!

I’m actually having a lotta fun doing the comic (for the time being). I’m playing with a bit of effects and stuff with the pages so until I get bored of that I’ll probably keep going for a while. If the stockpile gets really big (I’m really getting ahead of myself here!) I might just bump the comics to two a week (meaning one update with two pages – I can hear J in the background “ha ha, yeah right!” [my sentiments exactly]).

Speaking of J I ain’t seen him online since he left, so I figure he must be pretty busy. Ah well.

Anyways, hopefully I can make the story pages a bit better over the course of these experiments. As usual, we’ll see how it goes.

Oh, one more thing. Pertaining to J’s RC plane comic: is the typo in the title of the second column or is “Obstance” really a word?