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Funfacts…

Traces of Chaos is actually a Planetary Romance with some Space Opera sprinkled in, although there’s neither a romance nor opera in that story.

Silent Suns is the unholy marriage of Film Noir and Cyber Punk IN SPACE!!, which, and I’m sure you agree, is a wonderful setting for humor. That is if I do my job right.

And I might’ve just ruined your whole weekend. MWAHAHAHAHAHA.

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ToC Chapter 2, page 3 Retroperspective.

Lovebirds!

You can view the full page here.

Despite it’s flaws, I like how this page turned out. It did highlight some serious flaws in my workflow though, so there will be two big changes for the next page1.

First I’ll simplyfy the way I’ll handle light and shadow. Well, not so much “simplify” as in “get some method into my haphazard approach”. Same difference. Some rummaging in my favourite art forum has shown me some real nice ways to do that.

Secondly I’ll experiment with a slightly different workflow. Instead with a digital pencil sketch, I’ll start with a low-res grey-scale painting to figure out layout and composition first. I tend to get lost in character details way to early, wich leads to stiff characters and odd layouts. I hope that the switch to colour blocking will force me to get rid of that bad habbit.

So much stuff to learn!

Footnotes:

  1. Is that what artistic maturity is about? The ability to mentally finish a work and look forward to apply yourself on the next one? That topic might be worth it’s own blog post.
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Why Two Comics? A Tale Of Artistic Attachement.

Maybe it’s a bit odd to work on starting a second comic when I have problems with keeping the first one going, but well…

Traces of Chaos is my baby.

The thing with us creative types is the second a work becomes your baby, you stop seeing it clearly. If you’re in love with something, you’re going to have a tough time seeing its faults.1 Assessing your own art is hard. Being attached to it makes it even harder. The creative world is littered with examples of works that took a quality nose-dive because the creator lost the ability to check their own work.

But I still adore Silent Suns.

Otherwise I wouldn’t bother writing and drawing it. The story feels solid, the setting entertains me, and it’s a certain kind of pulpy, dark humored science fiction fun you only get once a moon and which I am desperatly missing in the webcomic world. I’m pretty sure that Silent Suns will gain a far bigger following that Traces of Chaos ever will.

For starters, there are no icky furry things in SiS, which, despite being quite well liked in certain depths of the internet, are still putting off the majority of potential readers. Secondly, the female characters in SiS are more… classically attractive than Siendes. As much as I love Siendes2, I am fully aware that my attraction to muscle gals is not as widely shared as I’d love it to be. Thirdly ToC has a much slower narrative rythmn than SiS, which tends to be a deathknell here in the fast paced internet world.

SiS even might be objectivly better than ToC ever will be, simply because I’ll be much more capable of doing quality control on SiS than I am on ToC.

And you know what? I am fine with it.

It’s about pets and racehorses.

I love my cats and I go through a lot of bullshit for them, but that doesn’t change the fact that they have no real productive use.  They haven’t caught or even seen a mouse in their whole life. My cats, they’re for cuddling.

Same with Traces of Chaos. It’s a labour of love and I’m allowed to coddle it. If it takes ages to be completed, well, shit happens. There’s no compromise I am willing to do when it comes to the story and art, and well, I’m fully aware that no, this is not necessary a good thing. ToC’s a hobby.

But Silent Suns is going to be a racehorse. It’ll get everything it needs, too.  Racehorses, service dogs, all working animals need heaps of training and care, too. They’re often more expensive than pets, too, because it’s hard, directed work to allow them perform at their best. But perform they should. Just like Silent Suns should update thrice weekly and eventually pay my bills.

My pet-project spot’s already taken, afterall.

Footnotes:

  1. It’s not even a contradiction to the “my work sucks so much” many creative types suffer from. You can suffer from chronic self-deprecation and still grossly over-estimate the creative value of your pet projects; it just means that you miss what’s really good in your work because you’re blinded by your prejeduces.
  2. And I DO. She and Chalcara are my favourite characters I’ve ever inveted.
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Warm-Up Doodles #06 – Traces of Chaos, Szlem

szlem

 

Szlem, Szlem, Szlem…

Man, now I want to paint that bugger, I can even see the image in my head already.

I enjoy drawing him; good thing, too, since he’s going to be the antagonist of the next Trarran-storyline. If I really keep his braids on chin and checks around, Shivret or Siendes are definitivly pulling his head down on them.

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Worldbuilding Wednesday #04 – Chalcara’s Routine

Chalcara's relationship with time is kinda iffy.

Do you want to ask your own question? Questionlist, rules, and place to post here. All Worldbuilding Wednesday information is canon unless it isn’t, the story itself is trump

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