drugsandwires

Chapter 4 Page 33

Chapter 4 done! Thanks to all of you who stuck by and supported us - it'd a bit longer to get out if we hadn't hit that 5 pages a month goal. But with that, we'll still be going on a 4 to 6 week break with guest art and hopefully special extras for patrons planned in the meantime. I'm also gonna take that time to get back on track with BPA. It's been tough balancing that with my freelance work, but I'll try to do better.

Next chapter you'll finally get to learn more about Sandman and what he's...

Chapter 4 Page 32 + Upfront Charge

And here's the finished version of this page. Sorry I'm late with it! Jetlag's been one hell of a trip.

I got to look at many cute St Bernards for this page so I'm happy. Having said that, drawing dogs is still hella complicated and I'll have to get some more practice in soon.

In other news, our Patreon got shifted to upfront charge - for you existing patrons nothing really changes, though should you up your pledge it will charge you the difference straight away. New patrons will be char...

Chapter 4 Page 32 Inks

Finally back from Japan and getting used to timezones. And drawing. Sorry I left you all on this horrible cliffhanger for so long! I'll try to finish this page later today, in the meantime, here's the inks I did on stream just now.

Chapter 4 Page 31

 ...Lots of people are going to be angry with us, but hey, all the clues were there from the start of Chapter 4: 

It was pretty therapeutic to draw as horrible as it is to say. I have a nagging feeling tumblr's gonna be angry at me if I don't Content Warn the hell out of this page, and as someone who's been struggling with suicidal ideation for years and gets contagious urges every time suic...

Chapter 4 Page 30

That's right, for once I have an early page for patrons. Only took me the entire chapter. 

One of our readers asked me when we're going to see the bit from the Chapter 4 teaser I made back in April. Well, here it is. 

I remember we wanted to build up for this moment by repeatedly having people ask Dan for cigarettes only to be rejected, but that didn't end up happening (aside from Nagy in Chapte...

Guest Art preview #1! [animated]

So I just couldn't wait, so here's a sneak peak at one of our guest arts planned for November!

This one's by Lauren Halvorson aka Fishmas who did an amazing job at portraying Dan's glitchy self!

We've actually got one more animated GIF art which I'll share another time, but it's great to see everyone's takes at our #aesthetic. I'm super grateful for all the artists contributing and will definitely plug them and their art...

Chapter 4 Page 29

Finally, here's the page I've been wanting to do for a long time. I think I even managed to do it justice this time.  This page was all about acting with Io leaving me cues like "some complicated mixture of disappointment and resignation " so I spent a lot of time getting that right. Panel 6 took me at least 4 or 5 takes before I settled on something.

Anyway, here's a close up for that totally not creepy photo I decided to paint:

2017-10-23 00:43:50 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 4 Page 29 - Pencils

I feel like it's been a while since I've posted any wips on here - especially since I tend to finish a page right before it's due. But, this time I got my pencils done a bit earlier, so here they are. D&W continues to ramp up The Feels.

We've got 5 pages left including this one and I'm running out of time to get them done as I'll be going away for a couple of weeks in November. I'll probably be streaming daily until London MCM, but yeah..no guarantee it'll get done. Finales are pretty impo...

Chapter 4 Page 28

Sadness montage! My favourite.

If the first panel looks familiar to you, that's because it is:

Now, I generally don't reuse drawings. I think doing that can cheapen a comic and make it look too artificial, but in this case I also wanted to make a point of Dan walking down the same route, but alone this time. So, fewer bright lights and more SADNESS.

I'm very excited for the next page. I th...

Cooking with Lin

Yay, wonky traditional art! ..can you put together a phrase out of those fridge letters?

I'm hoping to start doing more extra D&W art again once the current batch of BPA is out of the way. Still never got around to finishing that $400 extra, but truth to be told I've been having a hard time coming up with ideas for these things. I had some strip ideas revolving around BPA era, but it was a bit too much to do on top of the regular BPA.

 I'm planning a bit of a holiday after Chapt...

Chapter 4 Page 27

Last week we had two types of comments: "Yay, Dan's getting clean" and "I don't believe you guys for a second". Now you know which one has won. 

Io actually apologised in the script for making me draw Dan smiling. In the end I decided not to shy away for drawing him all smiley and goofy looking, after all...that won't be happening again any time soon :')

First layout of this page was actually a little different, and prior to that the script actually had Dan stoically sit through the...

Cryo's old .txt files + art part 2

So a few months back I posted some of my old Notepad file contents where I mentioned that I had some even older files lying around somewhere. And today I found them all. I even found that text file so embarassing I locked it with a random password. 4 years later, I would actually very much like to take a peek at it (it had something to do with Dan's family/background?), so if there's a haxxoring softwa...

Chapter 4 Page 26

I was so happy to finally rid Dan of his facial hair i managed to finish this page in one sitting - though I'm sure future me will regret it tomor- later today, actually. Ah well.

Anyway, this is another one of those pages I storyboarded myself before the script for it ever existed, so that might explain why it's a bit..self-indulgent :p I actually can't talk about this scene without the context of the upcoming pages, so I guess I'll leave it at that.

The pasta strainer showerhead is an ...

Chapter 4 Pages 24-25 + design stuffs

I am finally done with these. A late update, but still a double update, so yay! These pages took a little longer because of all the extra bits I had to design - in retrospect, I would've been better off polishing those drawings instead of trying to find the exact font they used for an AltaVista logo in 1996, but hey, sometimes you gotta indulge yourself.

I've already posted some older Troy sketches in...

Pages 24-25 WIPs + New Character!

Hey Patreon, sorry for being so silent this month - a combo of freelance and Thought Bubble happening at the same really didn't help this month, but I'll do my best to catch up. These pages should go up some time on Wednesday and they're gonna feature a character I've been desperately wanting to include for like 2 years now. Her name is Troy, and I can't give too much away for now other than she'...

Chapter 4 Page 23

Aaand that's a wrap on the school scene. If you didn't hate Vitaly's guts already (like most of our readers seem to), this might convince you :D 

This page was quite fun to do considering it's a car interior page and those are never fun. I did enjoy designing Vitaly's buddy on the fly although I might never be allowed back into Canada again. (Sadly there was no space to do much with the other one)

For those of you unfamiliar with Throbbing Gristle, they're the pioneers of experiment...

Chapter 4 Page 22

So I've done probably a 7-8 hour long stream of just inks/colours just now and the page is done, but gosh am I wiped. Sadly I don't know when I'll be able to get ahead to make early pages for patrons, hell, I don't even know if I'll manage to get the regular amount of pages done seeing how I'm juggling multiple freelance jobs and preparing for thought bubble! But, sadly, patreon does not yet fully support me so I gotta get that extra work done. ONE DAY.

Anyway, there's a couple of comic refere...

Chapter 4 Page 21

You'd think Eve witnessing Dan's current state was bad enough, but as people have already mentioned, we always find new creative ways of humiliating our protagonist. 

Other than that, I'm happy to finally draw Nate again - in his schoolboy attire nonetheless. It's actually quite uncommon for post-USSR countries to have uniforms in schools, but the upscale-y/elite schools have them sometimes, so we figured it'd be appropriate. 

The school building was actually referenced from on...

Chapter 4 Pages 19-20

Terribly sorry for being so late - having said that, I still managed the double update this week, so we're back on track! I was hoping prepping the 3D files early would save me some time, but I went away to a music festival for the weekend and came back a total wreck :D

Anyway, I've already done a detailed breakdown of MHF's Shodan-esque avatar in a separate post, so not much else to comment on.

Deleted Scenes: The Crud

Can we even call this a deleted scene? Well, guess we're going to live adventurously today. 

Anyways, when Claire and I officially decided to go at it as a team back in '15, one of the first priorities from my end was to get a good handle on her very particular brand of cyberpunk. It seemed about the right level of courtesy for somebody who had probably all of 12 followers at the time; Claire was the one with the none-too-shabby fanbase, and I was the rando she'd invited into her home to ...

Chapter 4 Page 18

Have I mentioned I really like purple?...

We're finally back at Synacon for the next couple of weeks. The Synacon plot kept getting pushed further into the chapter, but rest assured, it'll all start making sense soon. I had a lot of fun with this page despite the challenges and I can't wait to do the rest of the scene. Doing some low effort 3D and #aesthetic pixel art for this was actually quite enjoyable and it's a nice change from my regular comic workflow. 

Here are some assets i...

Three dimensions of pure terror

So this is kind of what I meant when I said I was doing prep for the upcoming scene. I would normally save it for after the scene's been complete, but I feel bad I haven't been providing early updates so here's a SNEAK PEAK at least.  
Io went through multiple ideas of how to visualise MHF's remote appearance which I'll let him talk about in his commentary, but the last thing he sent me was a video of System Shock 2. And that's when I Knew.
In addition to that I decided to get that su...

Chapter 4 Page 17

So this page came a little late for which I apologise! Partially it's because I've been doing some serious prep for the upcoming scene at Synacon  - because yes, we're finally getting back to those guys. Can't wait to share it with you!
But in the meantime we have Dan's life winning the race to the bottom. 
Useless fact: Manager's PC is *the* 1981 IBM PC, and as it turns out, I drew it on its birthday. 
There's some other interesting artifacts in his office, but ...

September - Extra Art Poll!

Just noticed we've reached $400 and I'm super excited. Thank you so much for your support - i know it's early to say with Patreon's numbers constantly fluctuation for no reason, and people pulling out/declining, however if we don't dip below $400 at the end of the month, I'll draw an extra illustration and you'll have a say in it! I'd appreciate any comments and suggestions, but here's a poll with some ideas of my own, too. (but please feel free to pitch in)

Extra Art - Family Photo'75

That feeling when you're stuck in 1975 without a smartphone, your children are being little shits and your nanny's running late.

Been meaning to draw Dan's family for a while now, but never got around to it. This wasn't going to be NY-themed until I saw some photos of little kids in bunny outfits at a Soviet NY kids party things they always did, and that got me inspired for some reason. 

Chapter 4 Page 16

This was one of the script bits I originally wrote and thumbnailed myself! In the original the argument gets a little more aggressive, but after Io's rewrites we ended up with something more fitting and open-ended, leaving people guessing. 

It was nice to draw some comedic faces on Eve for a change, especially after the Serious Conversation of the past few weeks.

Looks like patreon updates caught up with actual updates once more. Gonna try and get ahead of things next week! We're al...

Dreamspace "Good Ending" and Cryo's old text files

So I found some of my old .txt files I tend to hoard on my desktop and just about everywhere else and found stuff ranging from old scripts, to Skype conversation grabs, to random streams of consciousness and things I copy pasted from the internet. It's fun to be reminded of just how cringey my writing was in the pre-Io era, but there was also some material I legitimately forgot about.

As it turns out, Dreamspace v2.02 had an alternative storyline. At the end of Dreamspace v1.01 Dan's about to ...

Chapter 3 Page 15

I was hoping to get this page for patrons sooner, but it took surprisingly a lot of time to complete! I've been looking forward to drawing it for ages, but quickly realised how tough drawing a simple dialogue can be. There's no fancy/trippy visuals or details to entertain the reader, it all relies on character acting and getting the faces/body language just right. I'm maybe 75% happy with the final outcome - could always be better, but hopefully it'll work for our readers, too. 

Thanks ag...

Chapter 4 Page 14

Dan manages to dodge therapy by bringing up their favourite writer/visionary/consort of darkness.

That flashback panel gave me a lot of trouble as I couldn't find the reference I needed, but I think I just about managed in the end.

Chapter 4 Page 13

Here's a slightly earlier page for you guys!

I kind of messed up the upper panel by drawing Eve on the  right even though she spoke first, so in the end I had to cross over the speech bubbles which I think is a no-no in comics. (then again, there's also a rule about keeping characters on their respective sides, which has an official name I can't for the life of me remember right now. You just can't win.)

This page and the next ones have gone through about 3452 re-writes just in the ...