06-13-2011: Smellin Raaweh

06-13-2011: Smellin Raaweh
Don't forget you can always comment on the pages! Or ask me stuff-here's the formspring link. Ask me anything, really :) no account needed!
Ok so yeah this is 2 days late but I am back from vacation, have started summer work, and have gotten into the Percy Jackson series...I'm on the last book :D No spoiling it for me!
This page is exposistion and I'm sorry for that. I don't like exposition, I try to stay away from it. I much prefere for you to figure the world out as we go. I'll let you know up front next weeks page is another scenery montage of them going through the Eclipse Pass and up the mountain.
For the record anything Raaweh says in Aminosh is not important and is probably a swear or grumble or something. For instance here he is mumbling "For Sisters sake" before he tells Luphose to leave him alone.

05-30-2011: Did you mean "Loofas"?

05-30-2011: Did you mean "Loofas"?
Don't forget you can always comment on the pages! Or ask me stuff-here's the formspring link. Ask me anything, really :) no account needed!
VLOG
OK! So the Vlog was kind of a preimptive strike. I ended up staying up and finished the page with 2 minutes to midnight. However the is no earthly way I will be getting next week's done on time so yeah...no update next week I will be on vacation! WHEEEEEEEE.
Oh and spell check keeps trying to make Luphose into Loofas :B

The future is unclear now

Ok so time for a real blog.  I haven't done one in a while.

I found out yesterday that the teacher I have been subbing for has changed her mind about extending her leave to December.  Heaven only knows why but she waited till the last minute to decide to come back in August.  I don't know her reasons and I don't care to be honest.  I know she lost her son to brain cancer but call me heartless I don't care.  We all lose loved ones and maybe my own loss has numbed me to them but again...I don't care.
I went from thinking I had until December to find other work to having less than two weeks to prepare my portfolio again and start emailing people.  Also my parish just cut MORE jobs.  So there is even less than there was a year ago.
I am basically back where I was a year ago.  I have been told by my old job that I could resume it and that probably means if I don't have anything by August I might be doing it all again.  Subbing in the morning and Extended Day in the evening.
The biggest downside to all of this is that particular schedule leaves me nothing.  I might not have any time for updating the comic.  I decided to restart it because I found myself with a steady schedule which made setting aside comic time simple.  That is being taken away from me. 
I'm very worn out and exhausted today.  I spent most of yesterday crying.  Thank goodness I had barely any classes yesterday due to tests.

So the biggest question is what do I do now?  I have the rest of the month to get through then I have vacation booked the first week of June.  Thankfully it's already paid for in full, even the food.  I am at a loss to be honest...I don't even know what else I can say.

Scenery Speedpaint

So I am still working on the style direction of this comic and before you remark YES it is VERY different from the first part. I knew when I wrote this that it was going to be a scenery heavy story, which is part of my pushing myself.  I dislike drawing backgrounds and scenery so I gave myself a story that NEEDS them. This is causing work issues but then when working on the last panel of page 8 I really liked the speedpaint style look of it. I WANT the backgrounds and scenery scenes to look painterly so why was I fighting it? Today I embraced it. And I like it. I hope you do too.
Ps Oh No! What's that sneaking up on them?!
New character is coming up very soon btw.

Nocturna

Alright hey look at that. Honestly I am not sweating anything, theren't aren't very many viewers and I have spring break soon. Shaded will go up after work. Basically what happened here is I went out of town on Saturday so I worked on Friday afterwork. Saturday after I got home, and Sunday....aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall day.

hmmm

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04-4-2011: hmmmm
OK I Hated to do this so soon but I have good reason. I just finished that commission that was kicking my butt! But in order to do so I had to stop working on EVERYTHING ELSE all weekend. Also there has been a HUGE fundraiser for Japan at my school, we did a project called $1000 for 1000 cranes. We folded over 1000 origami cranes and raised $1035.16 for Japan! So that has been taking much of my time as Art Teacher and part time crane wrangler. Updates resume Monday, check the neato thing I've been working on in the mean time.

Alittle something about the update schedule

Here's a non front page blog. 
I understand not everyone has facebook and twitter so I am going to make an effort to post things like the art that I put on the fb here as well. 
I was just looking over a calendar and at the current rate of release and chapter 1, which is 25 pages (all chapters are), will conclude on August 1st.  Now I am ok with this, it will take a while to get through but I am fine with that production rate especially while I have work.  Please keep in mind what I am about to state is NOT decided, NOT set in stone, and has a possibility of NOT happening.  While maintaining the current update schedule through the conclusion of chapter 1 I would like to, at some point, be producing more pages per week.  Right now I am working on a commission comic so I am already kind of producing two pages a week but because of this as you have seen sometimes it is a mad dash to get avernyght up on time so I couldn't possibly increase production until that project is finished.  That being said what my tentative plan is is while through the end of chapter 1 the update schedule would not change I would try and produce 2 pages a week.  The best time for this production would be the summer as since I am a teacher I have summer break (I might work an art camp if I feel like it but I am sorely tempted to just take the full 2 months off).  If I could accomplish this to a fair degree then starting with Chapter 2 I could attempt a biweekly schedule rather than once a week.  My main goal is for Whisp's Journey, which is in truth a 4 chapter story, to not take me 4 years to complete.  I have too many Avernyght stories and the longer I take telling one the more others come to me.

Extremely Small simple page

I'm not cheating here I promise!

I know in light of recent "non proper" updates this page may look like cutting corners or something but trust me this is 100% how I wrote it over a year ago. And you know what.  I still think it works. Sure it's not a large page and there is very little dialoge but this page right here is an information dump. A visual information dump. That map may look mighty familiar and it should.  That map was made then used on the webpage you are looking at right now so yay.
The origin of the map is pretty neat.  Well at least I think so.
In one of my uni classes we were doing paper marbling and some friends borrowed some gold paint of mine to use and when they were done let me pick one of their marbled pieces to keep since I had helped them. Well I took one look at it and saw, finally, Avernyght. I took it into photoshop, broke it down, and eventually made what you see here.

So there it is in all its glory in all its stages. Until I saw this I didn't think about Avernyght being SO full of water. But when I saw it everything clicked into place. This also made Whisp's story fall into place, I knew what I had to do when I saw this map.

Seriously you guys I have no clue

Prepare thyself for a non phoned in blog. See I PROBABLY could have gotten the shading done but I need some air before bed. I did this whole page in a day and damn I'll be straight with you that is hard for me. That kind of comicing leads to Mv burnout and no one wants that. Now I know alot of spectacular people who can do it, do it well, and have more than one running comic. But then again I know some crazy people. I am actually currently working on a very late commission comic so I am essentially trying to get two comic pages done a week and damn it it's hard. Like I said I am just not built for that..
But lets talk about this page, which will be shaded before the end of the day I just have work first and lets face it, molding young artists is important.
NEW WORD BUBBLE FORMAT! I will be going back through the first few pages and changing this about them. I like the new format, it's less lazy and I can save some of the art that was getting covered up. I think I've learned more in my past year of NOT making comics than I did in the years I WAS making comics simply because I was paying more attention to other comics.
So as I know I have mentioned before I really like Raaweh. I'm not entirely sure why, it's one of those occasions that you hear writers/comicers talk about where the character begins to write themselves. He is one of the 100% original to me characters but I feel about him the way I feel about other peoples characters in comics I like. I am a fan girl for my own character. And that's weird to me. But on the point of a character dictating things without the authors control today I noticed something I did not know about my character. Raaweh is left handed. He is consistently left handed. And I never knew it. I just instinctively drew him using his left hand. Strange yes?

OMFG YOU GUYS IT'S RAAWEH

Sorry about that.  As I said some things came up and the page was late. and I know I said 1 om but hubby took me out today so 7 pm is what you get but it's still Monday so there.
I am constanty tryign to find a faster way to get the page quality and look that I want. I think I may have found something. Time will tell. I think the page looks great and similar enough. I want to preserve the painterly look I don't want to go cel like the old comic. But I don't want the dudge burn look junkRIOT had..if anyone even remembers junkRIOT...sometimes I even forget that I did junkRIOT. Except when I am in remake mood.
So I love Uber but tell him goodbye I think he's only got 2 pages left? And I think he's only in about 2 panels from here out. I may write him in in some meanwhile back at the ranch type things but for now this is pretty much the last time you see him until the end.
I think I spent a great deal already talking about Raaweh so I guess I won't this time. I already told you where he came from. I think he's the bees knees. He has grown so much since I first conceived him. I hope he is received well, before this the last time you saw him was only 2 pages here. I was so excited when his original pages went up and oddly enough those had to go up and get colored later...heh...
I'm gonna go work on next week's now so I am not latey mclate pants again.

Goodbye February

Again if you aren't following the twitter or fb page you are missin out!
So welcome to page 3. As you see there is a return slave daul there and I have decided his name is Boomer. This is based on a very dedicated fan who uses him as his avatar and never once gave up on the comic and always posts in the forum!
Now about this page. There is a ton of old stuff here. Interior shot of the foyer of the castle-only de-Contessa'd. An iguacha. A cart...If I could just draw boxes of people with no background all day I would. But I was nice and gave you a background to look at. With light and everything.
For those who don't recall the two dauls talking to Whisp are Sollas and Esalia. Two merchant dauls, one of which owned Poppett. They helped them sneak back into the palace before. Sollas was always Poppett's friend and never saw him as property. Esalia never took on a slave, she sells clothes, but is not what is called a seamstress. On Avernyght a seamstress or tailor is a doctor. She would be called a dressmaker or something along those lines, since she mainly makes clothes for females she's probably known in Nox as a dressmaker.
On the note of clothes the article Esalia gave to Whisp is more of a cloak than a dress or so because the slaves are made of rags they do not wear clothes, their clothes are part of their "design". So Whisp does not have legs, she is her skirt. Just thought it was neat trivia.

In defense of the "Under our noses"  I think I will expand on something mentioned in the catalog-btw the catalog needs some new edits, I might get to that this week- The dauls have certain bits of knowledge that is collective. It was mentioned in the Brief History of Avernyght that humans have visited Avernyght before.  The humans that came through on expedition were German and it was roughly during the 1890's.  When the dauls learn a language there is a chance that will spread to the collective.  Whether or not a daul can access the collective is up to the individual daul.  Yes the dauls clearly have their own language, the easiest example is their names for night and day are Ranu and Kanu.  These mark the difference between when Tersana(the eclipsed sun) and Norsana(the three moons) are in the sky.  The daul's own language is based on the Aminosh language because the dauls were born of the Sisters, who were animinosh.  The language they use at whatever time is present in the story is based solely on what they like using at the time.  Because of the connection to the Sisters they know English, why is for a future story.  The languages the dauls know are Aminosh, German, English, and Merish.  They currently speak English because it is the favorite of Arista, one of the Four Sisters who has been missing for a long time.

This also leads to the question of Uber's speech.  The dauls from the region Uber is from have a different connection to the collective.  They are largely visual individuals.  Uber is a painter, one of the things he used to do is paint rooms of the palace to resemble Earth's seasons and sunlight.  He can visualize Earth because of the collective, but his ability to translate his thoughts into words is disjointed.  Dauls from the same region are largely visual, they work as artists, seamstresses/tailors, architects, mapmakers and so on.
 Oh mapmakers...know what that makes me think of?
You know who is gonna be on the next page?

Raaweh. yay.
Point of fact, Raaweh is not from the same region as Uber, not ALL dauls in visual professions are, just as not all dauls from this region become these things, it's just sort of a general thing.

Workin' for a livin'

All of these news posts are being preserved on the blog fyi. And if you aren't following the twitter or fb page you are missin out!
Have I updated the site yet? HECK NO! I had a really busy week of work so while I DID work on the comic, extra things like site niceness did not get done. But. hey! Comic! That is good, really good considering my track record ;P
Page 3 is hurting my face because I am having to draw old architecture from the old pages. Old stuff is old. BAH! But the plus side is that I am remembering not only do I need to add more citizens and what not I can reuse dauls I drew before, dauls that fans seemed to like. I will talk about that more in page 3's blog though...
As far as this page goes I rewrote the end of it conisderably at the last minute and you know I'm still not sure I'm pleased. I like the content but I want Uber's interruptions to show more that he is on the same page as Verite and doesn't want Verite to have to go into a painful topic so much.
If I ever redid any of Ragtime I would elongate the end. I can't even go into all the problems with the rushed nature of the end of Poppette's Story. Maybe someday I will.
This is another page that the layout has changed alot from the original.  These pages were to all be done outside on the steps but it seemed too static to me and the conversations taking place seemed too long to be taking place right before Whisp took off for her journey. At first I tried to change the dialogue but it didn't work, in the end a simple change of venue fixed it. They have the ceremony for Whip announcing her plans to leave, then in the privacy of the castle they go to hammer out the details. Whisp lives near the castle on the grounds so it's very plausible she's either packing or in the castle saying goodbyes while Verite and Uber discuss things in Verite's study. There are things going on the in the last panel that aren't significant here but hopefully people will pick up on. I thought about explaining it but that's no fun. They may not be important here but in a future story they will be, but that could be said for a number of things I throw in here and there.
Also RAAWEH IS COMING IN SOON! I <3 Raaweh. More on that on the page 4 blog ;)

Relaunch

For any new readers please take note that this story is a continuation of Poppett's story, which can be found in the Archives.
You may notice that this is a lot different from the old page 1 that was never actually finished.  Well that's because it is.  I threw out the old page and actually started working full digital on pages, more about that below.
After a very refreshing year off of comics I have had a lot of changes. I DID graduate! I am the proud holder of TWO Bachelors Degrees, one in Studio Art and the other in Art Education. In addition to that I graduated successfully with honors as a Magna Cum Laude. I spent quite a few months being a bit distraught(understatement) but just before Christmas (right after my birthday even) I landed a teaching job at a local elementary school. It's only until May as of right now but I could find something more permanent later, for now I am enjoying doing something for a living that never feels like work, and gives me a lot of joy.
Another change is I have become quite enthralled with an MMO. I fully acknowledge the irony of this as I have long spoken against them and their life eating ways, but it didn't eat my life, it actually ended up keeping me active artistically, is the reason I broadcast daily, and gives me relief on frustrating days. The MMO is City of Heroes. It is painfully enjoyable. Yes I know there was just a fresh new MMO (DCUO) but I like this and have no real desire to play anything else. I've tried other MMOs before but this one I have stayed with the longest. Anyway it's fun, I play it, I do commissions for it. Fun times for Mv.
I have started broadcasting on Livestream while I work on things. I usually do it every night at 8 pm central, sometimes I don't, I usually put it on the twitter when I do. So...probably should watch the twitter...Just sayin...Tuesday and Thursday are only ever for an hour, other days are till ?? Weekends fluctuate.
The BIGGEST change is that I am now working 100% digital.  I still draw on paper when I want to but for the comic and my commissions I've been working full tablet. So much so that I shelled out and got a Cintiq (thank you new job $$). I LOVE IT. It fixes the disjointed problem I was having with a regular tablet, let my poor old breaking Graphire 3 retire and well c'mon it is just made of love. I am convinced that it is so fantastic that they must rub it down with baby kittens before shipping and that is why they cost so much-paying off anti rubbing things with baby kitten people. I've also bought Painttool SAI for inking. Both of these upgrades are...oh my just SO helpful. Currently the first two pages are completely done in photoshop but the rest will have inks from SAI, not like it will be a big change, but just in case you're curious.
It may take me a few days to get the site all caught up, I have some art to add and links to update.
We're back baby! Whooo!