Space Captain Steve

Wake 2.0

I got the wake working better and actually attaching somewhat to the Regis. Way harder to do than you'd think it should be. Far from perfect but it's getting there.

BTW this is the new version of the game that's trying to optimize some of the effects so that it still looks nice but doesn't cost as much to draw each frame.

More inventory

I made up a bunch more test shapes to play with. Still not entirely sure how these are going to represent you items. I have a few options I'm thinking of but a lot of it depends on how much work I want to do with this stuff. At the moment it's all just experimental stuff. Like this version that's at a slight 3D angle. For this the item icons would sit in the ships perpendicular to the ground.

Another idea is giving all the shapes gravity so they drop to the bottom of the screen and into...

A real wake-up call

Spent the last two days getting my head around mesh warping and finally worked out the math for it today. Which is honestly extra amazing because I suck at maths. I have run into a new issue to fix but it's really just some more math that I can't be bothered with today. So I'm going to draw a bit instead. 

Still, a nice bit of progress!

Inventory Tetris Begins!

The last few days I've been poking about and experimenting with controls for dragging and dropping inventory items about. I figured I should start looking into it as it's been a year and that was one of the main things that inspired me to start Gunwale.

It's been a lot of one step forward, one step back as I worked my way around learning new controls and running into issues that would pop up when I got one feature working only to break another. But that's programming for you.

Here...

Biggie Kit

Here's a full size version for Patrons only.

Weekend Kit

Went back to draw an old friend on the weekend.

Crime Club: Liberty, Rivalry, and Fraternity Pages 2-3

Here are some more rough pencil pages from the next Crime Club story.

Still life: The Galley

The last couple of weeks have been a bit off. Busy and I got a bit sick last week with a cold. I always get messed up when the season change here - the day/night temps have are a lot more spread and I get caught out by the cold. Every... year.

Anyway here's some kitchenware stuff I designed for the galley in Gunwale. I dropped in some of the inventory items to dress it up a bit. I'm pretty happy with how it's looking.

Crime Club: Liberty, Rivalry, and Fraternity Page 1

Forgot I had 9 pages of this already laid so I decided to spend some time on this as well as doing my Gunwale game code rewrite.

After getting that Blade Kitten short out I don't feel like I need to rush this. That said, I do feel re-energized to draw it. I know stuff will probably get put on hold for a month or two when I have my operation but that's still a month or two away at the earliest (unless I have a heart attack or something before then but I don't plan on that.)

So, yea...

Blade Kitten Alta Part One: Now in Color!

I wanted to see how the whole thing looked colored, so that's how I spent my Saturday :)

Enjoy!

Friday Night Lights.

Oh look what I tried tonight. :D

So, more color or no color?

Where Greeley goes, cargoes.

Inventory screen mock-up for the Gunwale's cargo. Your main possible actions are touch buttons on the left. You'll be able to drag items around to sort. Maybe I can have something more contextual when you hold down on an item. It's early days and this stuff will all change multiple times before I even get started :)

Back on the gunwales

After the flurry of comic stuff over the last few weeks I went back to Gunwale Regis to recode the basics on it. I tested it out on a Samsung A7 lite Tablet and the framerate was unsurprisingly bade. So I did some tests to see what it was capable of. I found it easily got 60fps with a few full screen draws so I went back to my original build and started turning stuff off. With most of the layers on and the effects turned off I was getting a good 30 fps which is more than fine for the speed th...

Sorta new Kit

I was thinking about Episode 3 again after doing those comic pages and came up with some ideas for some fun stuff if I could make a new game with the original engine. Not that it's something that's likely to happen but it's just a fun thought experiment.

I started playing around with ideas for Kit's costume, as I do :) After a few different scribbles I realized that the bike leathers Kit is still the one I like the most right now for adventuring. So here's a modified version of it for f...

Blade Kitten Alta - Part One

A wave of accomplishment washes over me as I did complete 6 pages of a Blade Kitten Manga in less than a month while learning new processes in Clip Studio Paint. 

So please find attached the completed first part of this story. There are two more (about 16 pages all up) but I'm going to hold off on them for a bit.

Let me know if you liked this and want to see the rest. And , you know, maybe find out who this mysterious Kit Ballard character is? ;)

BK AToTK page 7 finish

Remember how I just said that I wasn't going to get anymore done before the weekend? Turns out I'm always most motivated to do art stuff when I'm supposed to be doing something less fun :)

I knocked out these inks super quick. I'm getting into a groove with this technique. There's a bunch of computer HUD stuff to add to this page still but I'll do that later when I do the lettering. 

I have some non-comic Blade Kitten designs I want to play with over the next few days.

...

BK AToTK page 6 finish

It's definitely a different thought process work in B&W with tones in Clip Studio Paint but I'm learning new tricks with each page.

One more to go as well as the slightly reworked page one. I'd finish it up today but I really need to clean up a bit around the house first :)

BK AToTK page 5 finish

Honestly the pages are a bit all over the place as a try out new things but that IS what I wanted to try first. Seriously considering taking the inks, dropping the tones, and just coloring them normally before I do the other 2 parts.

BK AToTK page2-3 finish

3 pages to go. This has been an interesting experiment so far. I mean, I've really wanted to use the screen tone features for Manga Studio/Clip Studio Paint for ages but it's just a pain in the butt thanks to years of working differently for color comics. 

That said, I still may use the line art to do a full color version later on.

BK AToTK page 4 finish

More experimenting in Clip Studio Paint. Skipping the 2 page spread and jumping ahead to a normal page. This time I did 95% of the page in CSP. Still working the kinks out of the system and continuously fighting off the urge to just do it like a normal color comic.

BK AToTK page 1 finish

Spent the last few days experimenting with how I'm going to ink and finish these pages. I inked two versions of this one in Clip Studio Paint and one in Photoshop. I like the feel of inking in Photoshop better mostly because of the familiarity. The tones were all dropped in in Clip Studio Paint because it does that so much better than Photoshop.

I'm going to port the new inking brushes I made from Photoshop to Clip Studio and try inking a different page with that.

Beat back in the...

BK AToTK page 7 pencils

That's the pencils for part 1 done!

I got a lot done by just brute forcing my way though the weekend. I doubt I'll do anymore work on it this week and I don't know if I'll just plot out part 2 next or if I'll try to finish a page off to see what it looks like. I'll jump that ramp when I come to it.

I'll also probably get back to that Crime club story that I'm a 3rd of the way through laying out at some point. It's been sitting around too long this year :( I blame my TY4 work for d...

BK AToTK page 6 pencils

Getting clean-ish lines on the page then moving on.

BK AToTK page 5 pencils

The GT finally makes it into a Blade Kitten story! 

I got 5 pages penciled this weekend. Haven't had that kind of output in years. I guess the change was a good idea. Even if I don't get anything done beyond the first part of the story I'll be happy (assuming I do the art finishes).

Two more pages to go! And I've got tomorrow off :D

BK AToTK page 4 pencils

Moving right along...

BK AToTK page 2-3 pencils

Decided the plan is to get the penciled pages out as quick possible. Pretty rough but workable.

I also went though and setup all the panel borders first.

BK AToTK page 1 pencils

I got page one penciled tonight. I decided to do the floating panels as more of a collage strip because I really wanted a lot of white space for the text. I actually spent most of the night playing around with different layouts of the text until I decided on this one. I guess I could move the image strip to the left so that the text could be left aligned but that might feel too boring.

Fun Fact: The sound effects and the trigger thing are taken directly from the 2023-08-04 12:31:03 +0000 UTC View Post