Will we, really?
This is one of the pages that gave me a lot of trouble. Both the big portrait of Mary and the pseudo3d schema explanation of the derive premise. The first part was just due to my ineptness at drawing women, and since I've made it I have recieved several bits of correct criticism about the face and the arm that I'm going to put to good use once I'm done with the comic and move on to fixes and alterations before publication.
The second part was just due to how time-consuming the process was. I actually took a map of the streets of Paris from the internet, distorted it with perspective tool and steadily traced the city block shapes. That was the easy part, though, actually shading and doing the manual emboss on the edges was the difficult (read: boring) part. I have to say that sometimes I wonder if these expansive ideas I get before I start some pages, when realized, make a discernible difference for the reader at the end. I mean, could I have just slapped a vector map of Paris on there - or indeed, any map of any place - and called it a day and nobody would have complained? I wonder about self-impressed notions about what is 'cheap' and what isn't, sometimes.
On the whole, I'm fond on the page but I'll be fonder once I fix the things that need fixing on it, at the end of the journey. The blog is steadily - and scarily - catching up with me, by the way. This is page 16, and I'm on page 22... I hope it doesn't ever completely catch up and I have to draw the page that will go on monday, during the week before it, if for no other reason than how that'd mean I've slacked off for a month and a half somewhere in there...
-Helm
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EDIT: ... but then again it's kinda sad to have a 'read more' link that leads to nothingness, so let's at least have a status report: I'm finishing up page 21. I've sat down and made the overview of the rest of the story. The comic is going to be about 44 pages. So page 22 is the absolute middle. I've gone back to the 'two pages a week, almost' method of working now that the summer is over. This means I'll be done with this in 3 * 4 * 2 = the end of January, which is on-schedule for how I expected things to go.
I also expect I won't keep my schedule of two pages a week ALL the time, and also after I'm done with the whole thing I'm going to take it from the top and do slight alterations and edits on all the pages: some bad font-work, some flat faces and other small things like that (this is where all the feedback you've given me in this blog will be the most useful) so let's say that by the beginning of March this will be done and ready to publish.
I'm going to try to publish it both in Greek and in English, this time, so god help me. At least if all goes well loyal readers and humans who just happen to be non-Greek heathen savages will have the chance to get the artifact version of the story.
I leave you with this concept, in light of the upcoming elections here in Greece: they who align themselves with an ideology completely fashion out of themselves a concept, an idea. And an idea is always something less than human.
-Helm
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That dress is pretty revealing!
And that huge piece of jewelry pretty tacky if you'd see a combo like that in real life, but I think she gets away with it in a black and white comic. Plus, she looks pretty great in that first panel, so full of desire and hope.
He didn't even change clothes.
Rocky panels for a rocky start!
-Helm
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This is a composite trace from a few photographs of down-town Athens, assembled in a way that suited my aims. I mean, the vantage that looks towards the Parthenon doesn't have these exact buildings below it, but these exact buildings are the ones I found most pleasing from my trip to Google Image.
Talking about Google Image, man what a useful thing for artists that need reference. Back before it most serious artists had tons of magazines stacked in a corner, fashion, IKEA catalogs and the like just to have a reference archive. That's probably gone, now, the ever-constant process of digitalization.
This page was really tortuous to draw because I kept feeling like I wasn't making any progress, right up close to when I was almost done with it. Can't explain it very well.
-Helm
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The fires are out, the house escaped (barely) and the political fallout is well underway. The destruction was very extensive, but in purely ecological terms and in houses and livelihoods lost. What will this all mean and whether people will stop trying to figure that out once somebody explains it away for them (as per usual) one can only hope against but we'll just have to see.
But how about a comic, right? Here's some thoughts on the comic, on this comic blog.
That tree in panel 2 came out pretty much procedurally, if you'd believe it.
Anybody notice the Space Invader bandanna? ZX's not playing our side, if you know what I mean.
About clipping through stuff in videogames. I've been talking with Graham Lackey for a few years how somebody's got to make a live action short film full of 'early 3d' tropes and bugs like say, people talking without their mouths moving, or holding something with a hand that is just all the fingers glued together in a karate arm form and the item just glued on the open palm, or, of course, glitching out in geometry all over the place, noclipping. Dudes bunnyhopping to get somewhere faster, you know what I mean. Somebody will do this eventually, and I'll know it was our idea first!
ZX wears shorts out of courtesy.
Really not much theory to talk about this page, I think the technique is pretty straightforward if you've been attentive to how I use rendering to convey mood. It'll be interesting to see the whole comic from beginning to end, I'm starting to be hopeful of that day, since I'm on page 20 now and the comic'll be about 35-40 pages, so I'm past the point of no return now. Keep reading, keep commenting and keep trying.
Also, this summer I conquered Neapoli for the second time. It was a great time, I'm sure we'll go there again.
-Helm
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At the beginning of the ZX comic you might have noticed the location of the dam. It's based on a real place, one I've visited often, at Marathon. It's as much a character in the comic for me, as ZX or Stefanos or Mary. The photos above are of that place. It doesn't exist, as you see it, anymore. While the dam has nothing to fear of fire and will tell our silent tale long after we've made a mess of everything else, the evergreen around it is now gone.
So, here's to the memories. Here's also to this enduring memory of a Greece at constant organizational shambles, a Greece that never stands a chance as long as it doesn't take itself seriously. Here's to crooked smiles also, they always know what to say and how to pacify, how to make a gentle spectacle of this disaster that keeps on happening. You know what it means and now you don't have to make an effort to understand it anymore.
My house will probably survive the fires. Do not be alarmed if I do not post tomorrow, my family might be evacuated, but I'll be back, on one machine or another. We'll all keep talking here on the spectral internet, but please, look at the Marathon Dam above and raise an spectral glass with a spectral arm. If something insides you shifts just a tiny little bit, don't be alarmed, you're still human. You keep on being human no matter what they do to you.
From this far-away place that you might have only imagined, there are humans here also and with their burnt faces moist with tears, a salute.
- Helm
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A routine is a comfortable mindspace. Divisions of time are even, the rote almost practiced, feels like it's been done before a million times.
I really like the last panel, I'd talk about negative space and gestalt effects in composition but I'm kinda apprehensive now that a reader told me in the comments my negative space doesn't work, heh.
Do you have such a routine, video-games on mute well after midnight, a bottle of wine, feeling like a child?
Things are going alright back on page 18, a bit slow really, this page took a week by itself and it's not completely done yet, but it'll have to be, today. Leaving for a couple of days in Thursday, don't be alarmed if some comments don't get validated until then.
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