deadwinter

Comic Report #118.3 - Out in the Cold

Hello!  So I got the next page finished about when I expected to, so I'm gonna post it quick and get back to it, as usual.  This page marks the end of The Rooftop Scene, so next page I can get moving on the next big bend in the road, but I'll wait until those pencils go up to reveal what that is.  For now, though, a quick paragraph on this finished piece.

There's a few effects I wanted to hit which I think came out pretty alright.  In the second row of panels I wante...

Comic Report #118.2 - One For The Road

Okay, so!  It's near the end of the month and I'm near the final pass of this comic page, I believe I can have it done by the end of tomorrow, or more specifically early Sunday morning.  Right now, though, it's my responsibility to report to you my progress on this task, so let's take a quick look where we're at right now.  I'm expecting I can knock out the rest of this first pass tonight, and then tomorrow I'll go through the backgrounds, post the textless page and then get th...

Comic Report #118.1 - To and Fro

So at the start of this month I was like, you know what?  I'm just gonna knock this page out, easy.  No sweat.  I gotta tell you, though, I don't know where this month went.  I don't know where the time has gone.  I do know I put a lot of work towards hitting some game development goals, both in Dead Winter and on my other job, Kitsune Tails, and that's where a lot of my month went.  But!  I'm still going to hit my target for this month.  That's sort of...

Comic Report #118 - Patftermath

Okay so, here's the thing:  I've got this whole scene written up where Pat's heroic reputation lands him in a bad spot and so he needs to make a decision without anyone else coming to his rescue, and that decision has been to clonk his Gravekeeper handler upside the head with a crowbar.  He felt justified in that moment, but in the immediate aftermath of his action he realized the weight of what he'd just done, and had himself a little panic moment.  For the next page I want to...

Comic Report #117.2 - KRAK!

Hello!  I got a textless page for you to enjoy today, a little bit before when I thought I'd have it done.  What happened was, I had a real good drum and bass set playing and powered through a lot of my backgrounds, and that saved me a whole bunch of time.  Anyways, lemme get this to you real quick so I can get back to lettering and get this thing up on the site.

One of the nice little parts about transitioning into a snow-laden scene is that snow is pretty easy to paint....

Comic Report #117.1 - We're Back

Hi, sorry about that, thanks for waiting.  This week has been a bit more hectic than I anticipated but I made about halfway-progress on the first pass of this page; I'm pretty confident I can get it done in time for my deadline, and that will I think line up with Friday, so if everything runs smoothly I should have the textless page for the usual time this week.  For now, though, let's look at what we got.

When I was going through the inks on this one of the things I wanted to...

Just Need A Moment

Hello!  I had some last-minute family things pop up so I don't think I have time to write up a work report today.  I didn't want to leave you hanging so I'm popping in to let you know now, I'll post a write-up this weekend once I'm able to.  See you again soon!

Comic Report #117 - Uh Oh!

Hello again!  This month we've made a bunch of progress on game development tasks but it's time to get back into working on the next comic page.  There's some odds & ends game stuff I want to clean up but I am digging in to get this page finished by the end of the month so the next few updates should be all about comic progress until the page goes up.  I feel at times like I am a bit overloaded for how much I can manage on my own but I am thankful for your patience and grat...

Comic Report #116.3 - Dressed to Impress

Hello again!  I've got the textless version of the next page to share with you, more or less right when I'd hoped to have it finished.  I don't know why this one has been a bit of a slog for me, it wasn't that technically difficult to do, I guess I just had a lot else going on this month.  I should have the dialogue wrapped up really quick and have this thing posted in a jiffy, but for now you get to see all the nice art before I cover it up with word balloons.

A nice fea...

Comic Report #116.2 - Home Stretch

What a week, huh?  I'd hoped to have a bit more of the comic done by today but I managed to get it just to the last phase for today, and then this weekend I can get the last of it wrapped up and have it ready to go for the start of the week.  I'd been trying to keep these pages inside of the month-marks and my work cycle has lined up with the last day of a month being a convenient deadline, allowing me time to work on other gamedev tasks with more focus near the start of the month a...

Comic Report #116.1 - The Middle Pages

Hello again!  I've got a double writeup to share this week, for comics and for gamedev progress.  I had planned to shift more into comic stuff earlier but honestly I spent the week feeling a bit sluggish in the heat, so I just did what my brain was already in the headspace to do.  I got comic progress up to the paint and finalize phases, but I didn't get a chance to start painting in the panels yet.  I'm still planning to get it finished by the end of the month, I just nee...

Comic Report #116 - Plan of Attack

Hello!  It's about the middle of the month so it's time for me to get back on track and push forward on the next comic page.  We got a lot of work done in a big gamedev push but a lot of it was sort of invisible, under-the-hood stuff, with a new long-awaited thing we might be able to wrap up in this coming week cycle.  I started work coloring Alice's sprites but I will save that for next week's update in a more complete package with the new thing we're bolting together.  I...

Comic Report #115.2 - A Light Dusting

I've finally got to the end of the comic page and I finally have a textless version to share with you.  I'm slightly ahead of schedule by a day or so, which is nice; I also get to try out a new Discord remote update notification feature which I'm excited to get to, so I'll keep this brief as always and put some text to this page asap.

I think I slightly underestimated what I needed to do to render "accumulating snow" in monochrome black & white.  The amount of snow I'd pla...

Comic Report #115.1 - In The Bag

Hello again!  I've got a bunch of progress stuff to share with you today.  There's a pretty fun gamedev update waiting to be posted, but first let's stop in on the comic progress.  I'm expecting I can have this page finished by this time next week, which I think is about the end of the month, which is sort of my goalpost for when I want to put a comic page up.  For now, though, here's where I am today.

One of the details I'd omitted from last week's progress was the ...

Comic Report #115 - Peer Pressure

This week I got a bit of gamedev and a bit of comic work done, preparing the foundation of the next page and a new scene in the comic.  It's always fun to shift into a new scene in the comic, pulling out new characters and new settings to set up and draw, so since that's where we are today I'll go over a little bit of my planning for the stage I'm preparing to set.

Given the timeframe in which I can reasonably make comic pages things tend to move a little slower than I like, so som...

Comic Report #114.2 - Kitchen Tile

Hello!  Here's the textless version of the next page.  I think I can hammer out some dialogue real quick so, as usual, I'll keep this short and get back to work.

This page ended up being a trickier background paint job than I anticipated.  The first and second panels in particular involved a lot of depth of field shots in low light, so I had to do a lot of modeling from scratch.  I didn't really block these in super-detailed in the first pass so I had to do the bulk ...

Comic Report #114.1 - Soft Light

Hello again!  This week I've been sick with a kind of perpetual snot disease so I just focused on working through the next comic page. I'll switch back to gamedev stuff after the page is done, and I'm kind of expecting to have this page finished either at the end of the weekend or the beginning of next week, so that should be coming up in next Friday's report.  For now, though, here's what I've been doing this week!

Over this week I hit the milestone of getting my pencils inke...

Comic Report #114 - A Quiet Moment

It's another Friday and we're back on our normal schedule, thank you for your patience.  This week I focused my efforts on getting the next comic page shaped up to present today.  I've been a little sick this week so I put off doing more gamedev work to get this done, so next week I should have more dev work to share.  Today though, let's bounce back into comic work.  

I'd skipped sharing my progress on this page last week because, I feel, it's one of those pages you...

Game Journal #195 - Big Hugs

This week's report is a bit late, as mentioned previously, but I want to keep my rhythm up so I got some stuff to share.  The comic page I think is not quite in a place where there's much to say about it yet so I'm gonna tinker with it a bit more this week and have that be my main focus for Friday's update, so for how I hope this gamedev writeup is satisfying.  I got a lot done on the gamedev front this week so let's have a look at that!

This week's focus has been on The Hugge...

Update Notice

Just a real quick note but I have some family things I need to attend to, so this week's update will go up on Sunday instead of Friday.  Sorry for the inconvenience, and I'll have my usual work report to share with you then.

Comic Report #113.2 - The Secret

Hi again!  I got the textless version of the next page ready for you to have a look at. It's always a bit of a struggle to hack through the ugly phase of a comic, which is like 90% of it, but once all the backgrounds are in and the final details are down I am generally pretty happy with how my comics look, I think they're really one of a kind.  I got a quick thought to share and then I'm gonna get back to my lettering, so let's hop to it already.

There is a Secret about this p...

Comic Report #113.1 - High Fidelity

Last week I focused mostly on gamedev stuff so this week I set my attention on completing the next comic page.  I got myself within sight of the end goal so I'm expecting I can have this page finished up over the weekend, I'll likely be posting another update within the coming days so please look forward to that.  Today I have sort of an abstract topic in mind to talk about, so I hope that might be interesting to read.  

I've been juggling a few projects lately, mostly ou...

Comic Report #113 - It's Time

Okay so today I have a new page to share with you, and there's something big about it that I've been thinking about for a while now.  Before that, though, I just want to make a note that this week will be a comic-only update.  We have made some gamedev progress but it is small little things (colorizing level props) and some big things (new enemy AI behaviors) but it is kind of hot today and I don't do great in the heat so I'm gonna go easy on myself, type up about a comic page and s...

Comic Report #112.3 - Set The Timer

Here it is, the textless version of the finished page!  This one was a bit of a pain to get done, I spent a whole day just hacking away at those first two panels trying to get all the details right.  I'll be happy to move on to the next scene, this office has too many clues in it!!  But anyways, a little on this page before I move on to lettering it.

I ended up really liking how the light room/dark room effect panned out.  With the lighter contrast allowing Nate Mulg...

Comic Report #112.2 - Just a Little More

Hello again!  This week I had wanted to put all my time into working on just the comic and nothing else, but I've been cooking enough things lately that I also gotta keep an eye on.  I did get most of what I wanted to get done for today, though, so I expect I should be able to have this comic finished by, ohh, around Monday/Tuesdayish?  I am planning to have this thing wrapped up this weekend and then I can have it posted and move onto the next page.  I'm gonna keep this o...

Comic Report #112.1 - Focal Point

Okay, so!  This week I had planned to put the comic as my central work focus, but right at the start of the week we hit on an enormous milestone in our gamedev project, so I put a lot of time into stabilizing that so I could focus on the comic again.  I recognize that if some creative thing gets stuck in my head and I try to focus on something else I end up distracted doing that other thing, so I just fed the gamedev thing while it was sitting like a hot coal on my mind until I coul...

Comic Report #112 - Composition

It's another Friday and we're back on the comic grind again.  I spent a bit of time this week working on gamedev tasks but I made sure to get the framework for the next page up for today, that way I can get the ball rolling and try to get this page finished before my invisible little deadline.  This layout took a little bit of hacking to try to achieve what I wanted in just one page, so in today's writeup I'll talk a bit about planning my page compositions as I go through the gist o...

Comic Report #111.2 - Aha!

Hello!  I'm back here again with a textless page preview for you.  I'll keep this write-up as quick as usual so I can get back to lettering and get this thing posted as quick as possible.

I had slightly underestimated how long it'd take me to paint the backgrounds on this page, so it stretched a bit longer than I anticipated.  Marty's office is loaded with a bunch of tiny little details, and while it's a bit tedious to reproduce them in every panel I do think it's importa...

Comic Report #111.1 - One Week More

These past two weeks or so I've been going pretty hard trying to knock out some gamedev tasks and get over a hill but this week I wanted to get back on task for comics, so today I have page progress to share with you.  I'm expecting I can have this page finished for next week so there should be another update with the textless page before this time next Friday.  I'll often stress about not making comics as fast as I want to but I gotta do what I gotta do so I'll try not to sweat it ...

Comic Report #111 - Examine the Scene

Hello again!  This week I've got the sketch phase blocked in for the next comic page, so I get to share a bit of story progression with you today.  I have also been making headway on gamedev animation work so I'll be putting a progress shot of that up after this.  For now, though, let's jump into the page and go through what we've got set up today.

Over the past few pages Liz and Alice managed to connect their book discovery on the bus to a real person in town and through...