No. 11 - Excuses excuses.

So I've been busy. I moved house, I got a dog, I had 8 years worth of hair growth removed from my hair. All pretty epic things. The first of which left me without internet for a good while. The first two left me insanely busy. The last just left me slightly cold around the ears but it's still pretty epic.

I might have to work pretty hard to have the next comic up by Sunday. I did have a buffer mind you. Now I don't.

Anyhoo.

Chapter 2 Page 21
So this page broke the mould for me. Back when I drew the comic by hand everything had to be at a fixed zoom*. Apparently these days it doesn't. I didn't really have any plans to zoom out for panel one, but then I tried to fit an entire room into a double panel and realised it couldn't be done, that's one advantage of building each room featured in the comic like it's a stage, I do that now.While I was at it I put the bottom right panel(s) as 125% zoom for dramatic effect. I'll try not to over use it though.

*I used to draw the comic around a 2 pence piece (which makes sense because I'm British), the whole comic idea and certainly the style came from seeing what I can draw using a circle as a base...

... I might of have more to say on that. I'll mention it if it comes up. Right now I'm a bit distracted, dogs are distracting... So update! Yay.

I'll try and have a new one up on Sunday.

-Tony

No. 10

Chapter 2 Page 20
I've been looking forward to this moment for ages! Of course it would have happened a lot sooner without the hiatus. I'm getting the hang of lighting effects, just about. Maybe.

No. 9 - So far, so good

Having the comic running again is fun. Though I have found myself distracted by making Project Wonderful ads. It's no good advertising the comic if I don't make the updates it.


Chapter 2 Page 19
The problem I faced in this page was the lighting. Considering S-C was supposed to prepare me for making RTP it failed as far as working out lighting is concerned. A simple drop in light was easy enough to create but combining that with the light from the Frefly was trickier. I also wanted light to be coming from the open lift doors which I managed to a degree. Maybe it's too dark now, I'm not sure. I even considered forgetting about the lighting effects altogether but then that sort of ruins the creepy atmosphere. Oh and look, something can wipe the smile of Robot's face.

-Tony

No. 8 - Robot Again

And we're back! Exactly 15 months late, but back nonetheless. You can look back in this blog to see why I've been away. I hope you enjoyed reading Sub-Consensus these past [6/7] weeks.


Chapter 2 Page 18
I'm happy with the way this page turned out. As I thought the biggest challenge was fitting everyone in and there are soem great expressions lost behind other people's bodies.

Next page is next Sunday.

-Tony

No. 7 - Imminent

This Sunday I'm starting updating Robot The Pirate again. I guess now is as good a time as any to start at the beginning and get caught up.

I'm excited. I'm also about to move house and get a dog, not really sure how those things fit in with keeping up with a schedule but if I start putting the date back now I'll never stop, and start.

-Tony

No. 6 - Lessons learnt

If nothing else the running update of Sub-Consensus after I finished whole episode has taught me I need to find ways of remaining attached to my work after its done so I can relate to the readers. The stress of not having a buffer definitely didn't appeal to me but when I've done this in the past one advantage was that when the comic was uploaded it was fresh in my head. All the ups and downs of the process came across in my commentaries and when I plugged the comic on Facebook. This time has been different. I have been quite happy to forget about S-C while it updates itself because creatively speaking I've already moved on to working on new Robot The Pirate.

I always said SubCon was an experiment in using Inkscape to make comics and in writing something slightly different (a sit-com). It is a playground for learning through experiences, finding out things I couldn't without actively making a comic.

So my new lesson: make notes to accompany the comic as I go, then weeks/months down the line when the comic is uploaded I'll still have a record of what challenges I faced and what I was proud to accomplish with each and every page. Not only will this be good for readers it'll hopefully keep me involved in the comic as it unfolds and not just the future comic I'm working on. This in turn will be good for keeping me interested in promoting my work to others.


Anyway. That's enough babble for today. SubCon should have updated today I think my settings might be wrong (something I would have picked up on before now had I been following the comic closely) but here's the link to Monday's. Episode 1 ends next Friday, the 19th, then I'm starting RTP again picking up where I left off on Sunday 28th.

-Tony

No. 5

Update!
Maybe Aggression is reading Count Your Sheep.

I finished my first RTP page in over a year yesterday. Felt so good!

No. 4 - Phase 2, no really this time.

The website for Sub-Consensus is finally all up and running so the comic is viewable at last. Give it a read. There also should be a new comic out today.

-Tony

No. 3 - Phase 2, Sort of...

So phase 2 of the Sub-Consensus project was supposed to happen on the 3rd, but I was never sure it would given I had an exam that day. It didn't. What's more, I changed my mind of various parts of the site design later that week. By friday I was updating. In fact the entire of Episode 1 will now happily upload itself until the 19th of July. But I wont share a link because I still have some kinks to iron out. The first being a problem with my coding, that was very frustrating but it seems to have fixed itself *shrug*. And the second being that the second to latest comic always links to the home page rather than the latest comic, I sort of know how to fix this but I still wish I didn't have to. I dare say it'll all be working fairly soonish.

In other news I've started working on Robot The Pirate again. My "plan" is to start updating again when S-C finishes (another reason why I don't want to be fiddling with the S-C site) so I'm hoping to have built up a big enough buffer by then. I doubt RTP update as often as S-C does because it's much more organic in design and therefore takes longer.

I'm starting dropping progress teasers on my deviantArt account too.

Stay tuned.
-Tony

No. 2 - Phase 1 Complete

Phase 1 is a simple idea, getting the site ready for public viewing even though there's nothing to see yet.

It means that by the launch date there should be no broken links to anywhere. So if you go to the site and click on any of the links it should take you to where you want to go.

In practise it was a lot more complicated and I've done a whole lot more with html than I ever have before.

The only thing that remains is something I like to call “Phase 1a”. A few days before the first update (3^rd of June. Probably) I will hyperlink up the “first page” and “latest page” images with their correct links, I'm leaving it late because this will create 2 broken links on the site (which I don't like to have in case someone is on the site before launch day) but I want them there so that they work as soon as the first page is released.

Now we just wait (and do the other things I busy doing) till Phase 2...

Stay tuned.

-Tony

No. 1

So. This is where I'm hopefully going to keep people up to date with my comic projects.

Those being : Robot The Pirate and the new spin off Sub-Consensus.

At the moment RTP has been halted since April last year, the reason being that I wanted to switch to creating it entirely digitally, reducing my production time and so making more updates. Instead (and partly because of real world commitments) I had to take the whole thing off the rails while I got my head round a new way of working.

That's where Sub-Consensus comes in. The RTP storyline froze with most of my characters crammed in a lift and a whole bunch of new characters about to be introduced. Very exciting, but way to complicated to be trialling a new medium on. So in an effort to walk before running S-C gave me a chance to start slow.

Progress on S-C: Episode 1 is complete and will (probably) start running the first week in June, at the moment I'm just working on the getting the website looking nice and in working order. Easier said than done.

Stay tuned.
-Tony