tonycliff

So Stricken (PDAP, Chapter Four, Pages 25-28)

Added 2024-05-30 18:03:01 +0000 UTC

Last week, Alexandra rushed to her father's aid, putting herself in great danger. Can she fend off a pirate horde by herself, armed solely with a single burning torch? Well…

This week things get worse!

… is a sentence that — as soon as I wrote it — I realized will be true for the foreseeable future (of Alexandra's story).

One of the challenges with this week's pages was that I wanted to show that The Flagbearer shields Captain Lear using his own body as well as the treasure chest. As a solution I settled on this lighting treatment where, when the bullets are flying, I cast a bright hot light from the direction of the gunfire. Hopefully the shadow tells you, Dear Reader, "the Captain is being shielded from the bullets."

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It is a rough pair of weeks, this one and the next. Not a lot of working time available. This is a shame because I genuinely like working on these pages and I miss them when I am away from them.

Hmm. That seems like a strange thing to say, especially considering the line above about things getting worse and worse for Alexandra who — while admittedly a fictional character — doesn't really deserve for that to be the case.

Oh well! :D Have faith in the narrative arc, my friends!

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Speaking of narrative arcs, Long Time Friend Sarah Airriess just made a fascinating post about a presentation on "Demythologizing Terra Nova." All I can say is that it offers a lot to chew on, mentally-speaking. Empire, ideas of masculinity, class context, the stickiness of a story — a rich palette of colours with which to colour the history.

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Until next week,
I remain,
thack, spang, tack,