V3 Sneak Peak #8: Purgatory

Purgatory. I'm trapped in art purgatory. I'm paying for my creative sins, and cannot move forward until all of my past wrongs have been atoned for.

...So, yes, the book corrections are significantly more work intensive than I'd estimated. The 104 pages of Volume 2 fixes are finished, but Volume 1 is still in the works. Although finalizing Volume 1 for digital sale remains my priority, there have been windows of time where I've been able to splurge on sanity-restoring V3 work.

Over the last month, Chapter 8 has gone from a story outline to a script second draft. I'm extremely excited about how the narrative is shaping up, but it's difficult to share examples without giving stuff away. ...I have to at least share a tiny bit - "Ravat". There! That's the tidbit - ask for no more, the treat jar is sealed tight.
In addition to scripting the next Chapter, we've been making some progress blocking in the colors for the establishing shot of the strip club from Chapter 7.. That single page had enough coloring in it to stretch out over a few days' work all on it's own. Those establishing shots are endlessly pretty, but enormous production-time hogs.

And in other news, we made our first seasonal Christmas Prelude! http://www.dreamkeeperscomic.com/PreludeChristmas09 We wanted to try something a bit new with this one, so there's actually some animation included in the comic.
Nothing major - and nothing in the direction of the 'motion comics' that some companies have been trying to push in recent years. Whenever I saw one of those 'motion comics', I always felt like I was just watching an extremely cheap incomplete animated show with no sound budget. I think by crossing the media border a little too far, they lost the appeal unique to comics, and had nothing to offer alongside the competing full-motion animation out there.
Our experiment is really more of a small flourish layered on top of a traditional static comic format - a little falling snow here, some blinking lights there... Feel free to check it out, and we'd definitely welcome any feedback about what you think!

It's certainly been awhile since I rolled out the animation skills... Getting a bit rusty, even the simple 5-frame snow effects loop had me scrunching up my forehead in effort. Apparently the brow-scrunching friction in the skin somehow directs kinetic energy into the brain cavity and helps speed up the ol' head engine. At least, that's the theoretical framework I'm working within at this point. I may want to use caution with any increasingly ambitious animated endeavors, lest my face implode in upon itself.

And leaving you with that thought, I hope everyone out there has a very fun and gratifying holiday season - take care, and enjoy the seasonal Prelude!