CHUMI, Peggle Deluxe Enjoyer:Hello my pals! How’d you like this series of updates? It was really exciting putting this mini-visual novel together, and I really hope you’ve enjoyed the ride. I feel like we covered so much ground! Because we’ve had a bit of an unconventional update, so that makes for a bit of an unconventional commentary this time. The Helltier Updates have been split into little chunks, so we want to let everyone who worked on these chunks get their moment to talk about their process. Let’s get crackin’!
HAVEN, Seasoned and set to 350° for several weeks:Hey guys, welcome to hell. I mean welcome to !!!
Will that even look right in the document? I bet it won’t. Anyway we’re finally here! “Hyperbolic Hell Tier Chamber” was one of the first things we plotted out when we began HS:BC , which makes sense since The Point was where HS^2 left off. Many meetings where we would be trying to explain this concept ended with me or james saying “it’s like dragon ball and silent hill” to which everyone would respond "Ohh okay yeah that's sick.”
JAMES, Director and (Dragon) Ball Enthusiast:It is. I remember early on I was like watch Dragon Ball Z and Gurren Lagann. I just searched dragon ball in the work chat and its actually kind of insane how often i mention it??
MILES, hyperbolically aged to geriatric status:This is one of the first things I was greeted with when I hopped on the project, and it was so so so cool to get to work on and even cooler to finally drop!!! Let’s get into it.
MILES: Starting, of course, with ANOTHER [S] PAGE THAT DROPPED AT THE BEGINNING OF JULY!!!!!!! AHHHHHH!!!!!!! This was the final third of what, internally, was referred to as Update 10 (which contains everything from John and Vriska arriving at the meteor to Vriska meeting up with Davepeta in her hive). If we’re being fully honest, we forgot to pop this final third into last month’s Patreon commentary, LOL. So I’ll cover it here.
It’s been so, so cool to see the multimedia aspect of Homestuck kick way the fuck back into gear. We get one crazy flash of the OUTSIDE of an esoteric singularity realm, now we get one of the INSIDE? Are you kidding me? Never let it be said that we don’t spoil you.
MILES: Here, Vriska finds herself in a locale that is all-too-familiar, yet eerily different. This bit actually WAS conceived as an [S] page from the getgo, as we really wanted to sell the mysterious, haunting nature of this transition, and James and Kim did a fantastic job with the sight and soundscapes. I love the wistful, spacious vibe of it all. I also knew for sure that if we were going to find ourselves in yet another purgatorial, Silent Hill-type situation, those enigmatic Homestuck Horses were going to need to show up again, in all their spectral majesty. Horses, as you and Vriska well know, are extremely important staples of Homestuckian metaphysics. Something deep is afoot here. Or ahoof, I guess.
JAMES: Miles this may please you to know, but everyone was like “wheres equius’s house?
MILES: As I think I mentioned in the last commentary, Al is none-too-pleased by this development, but what’s done is done. There’s a lot more to say on her perspective, motives, and ultimate aims through this grand, multi-and-meta-narrative tale, but I think it’s better to let her slowly tip her own hand than to say much on it ourselves. At least she has the decency to let us take a peek inside.
MILES: And now Davepeta is HERE!!!!!!! We’re so happy to see them back! Didn’t they die, or something...? How did they get here? It’s a mystery. Although not that much of a mystery, when you consider the fact that they were last seen getting spaghettified into the very black hole we now find ourselves within the singularity of. What’s vastly more important than how they got here is the fact that they are apparently going to serve as one of a friendly host of spirit guides who are going to help Vriska, and I quote, “save [herself]”. I don’t know if that was really the most efficient or legible way to quote that at all. But what’s done is done.
HAVEN: Finally, Homestucks best character is here. I know this is the writer's commentary so you don't usually see these here but they didn’t make it into the previous months artist’s commentary (i forgot) and they wouldn't quite fit in this months either; so here are some (year old wow lol) Dragon ball related Concept sketches I did about Davepeta’s role here and the helltier chamber in general that also feature an incredibly important and amazing character we ultimately decided to cut so we can give them proper spotlight they so deeply deserve later...
MILES: Davepeta, as well as a host of other sprites, have come to welcome us. To welcome us where?
MILES: To Hell indeed. Welcome, O sinner, to Helltier. I feel like we’ve said welcome to hell a billion million squillion times in this document. Anyway, from here on out we’re getting into the VN section! HOLY fuck is it cool to see this actually real.
FLORAL, Feelings Haver: So crazy that this thing is out and playable and not just a design document and a bunch of scripts. Seeing it all put together is so amazing, so grateful to the programmers!!
JAMES: Yeah, damn. When We first envisioned this it was sort of just a daring dream. We didn’t even know if it was possible.
JAMES: This stemmed from a somewhat unanimous desire to see talksprites again. I wanted to try something that felt familiar, but was something new. I wanted to try and push it just to see if it would be cool. And, you know what it kind of is!
My section in this, (dubbed internally as part one, but is effectively just the prologue) is pretty brief. Looking back in the work chat, It seems kind of insane to me now that I could advise Floral about anything writing-wise, but early on she asked for my advice about word-count.
JAMES: Bro really said “write less”
FLORAL: This was good advice, it really forced me to focus on the essentials ( I still ended up writing a couple thousand words though TOT)
MILES: I’m actually glad you did, though, because it reminded me NOT to do that for once with my part that’s coming down the line. For once, TEMPORARILY, Miles was able to remember to shut the fuck up... and also all the words you guys wrote are amazing. As a chronic over-expositor, I’m always pro-more-words.
JAMES: This has sort of taken off as a whole thing, and part of me knew it might. I made a corny post on tumblr about it (the site where you go to make your corniest posts) and it's actually a little nuts how many people will come and explain Homestuck to me. I’ll admit that at first I didn’t care that much about Vriska, beyond the fact that she was an important character with a lot of nuance and plot relevance. Obviously that has changed. Once you are on the other side of things you can’t help but love these little freaks.
Ok. Here is the most important thing about Vriska. She has made mistakes because she is a teenager and teenagers make mistakes and do things wrong. Yes. I know. She was trapped. She was doing what was required of her by society, by her monstrous mother, by her friends. She was groomed. She was abused. She felt like she didn’t have a choice, and admits later that she even felt bad about some of it in retrospect. She was doing things in-line with a kismet based relationship. She had a hard life, and did what she needed to do to survive. I’ve heard it all, and a lot of it is true.
So. Taking that all into consideration... Did she do wrong things? Yeah man. Sometimes they were a product of her environment and sometimes they were just because she’s a little mean. The actions are still there. We are able to look at it from a third party perspective, but try telling one of the kids she fed to her mom that it wasn’t wrong of her to do that. Sometimes you do shit in order to make it to the next day that you aren’t proud of. It usually isn’t murders, but there you go.
But, you know, look. Hey. Yeah. Me too, bud. That’s so much more relatable than a flat statement admonishing her of any mistakes. I hope this makes sense. If I’m being a little more blunt about it I'd ask “What, you can’t enjoy a character with flaws”? That’s weak as hell to me. I support women's rights and women’s wrongs. (the entire audience is going “oh here they go again”)
Anyway, where you fall in the Vriska binary is up to you, but don’t talk to me about it unless you come at me with something a little stronger than “well, you see alternian society” dogg don’t cite the deep magics to me.
MILES: Not to pop in at the end of all this with some fuck shit but maybe it’s good she did all that wrong. Maybe it was funny.
JAMES: One of my favorite bits is having someone apologize for things the other person has no clue they did. The more ridiculous the better. I wanted it to seem like Vriska has been sitting there for hours apologizing for ridiculous things you know she isn’t really that sorry for.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had this happen to you but I had a family member who would do this all the time. “Hey, sorry I told Juan Jr. you smelled like tears. You know. Cause you’re crying all the time. Cause you’re a baby. Cause you cry baby tears all the time. I’m sorry I said that.” bro I wasn’t even there I would have lived my entire life never knowing this and being totally fine now I’m worried I smell like tears? What does that even mean???
I wanted to give Vriska that energy. She is genuinely trying to make amends but at this points it's because she HAS to. She sort of can’t really help getting a few of these in there.
JAMES: I love this bit of Vriska thinking, “Ah, that's the solution. I need to tell him he was right.” Especially because she just did this a few days ago from her perspective and it made Tavros so happy to hear it he did like three to four separate little dances. This breaks her.
JAMES: I like this sequence because it shows a few things. Vriska tells Tavros she’s ignoring what he said to establish a sort of social dominance. She then graciously offers to follow Tavros’s advice, which she just claimed to be ignoring. She then basically just does what she wants anyway, steamrolling Tavros’s ideas in the process, but still manages to insult him by saying that his idea (which is actually just her idea that she’s framing as his) is actually really simple and stupid. She needs that. She needs it to be Tavros’s idea because there’s no way someone as clever as her would take this long to come up with such a simple idea. She then Immediately takes ownership of the idea back, by stating that it really was just that easy all along. Everything is easy for someone as strong and smart as her. Duh. She spends the next few lines then looking for affirmation from Tavros. It’s just that easy isn’t it? Isn’t it Tavros? It’s easy. Agree with me.
FLORAL: I love the consecutive “oH, oK,” s, Tavros really is just along for the ride.
JAMES: He’s kind of just happy to be included.
FLORAL: I was trying to do a lot with these lines. It’s easy to assign Davepeta the ultimate therapist role and have them say all the right things BUT.
I think one thing I find very funny about Davepeta being in this position is how Dave and Nepeta are both so actively different from Vriska, especially in how they handle other people.
There is a dichotomy to Homestuck characters, are you the guy that will force your will onto the narrative or are you the guy to be acted upon by the narrative. People that externalize and people that internalize. It’s usually the latter that also forces their will onto other characters too. Wonder who that sounds familiar to?
So for me, it was important to bring up this kind of insight which I feel could only be had between Davepeta and Vriska. Talking with someone you literally have no personal baggage with but you can’t relate to either. I’m super nitpicky about things like this because, to me, it makes the difference between two people talking a situation through and a protagonist talking to a “go this way” sign.
FLORAL: AND YET AFTER ALL THAT the irony is that Davepeta does advise Vriska in exactly what she needed to hear! Alternia was a planet steeped in death but one thing Vriska (and Karkat and TEREZI to a degree) internalized that the other trolls may not have is that death is a losing state. Their whole self worth is tied to it. Everyone needs to prove they deserve to live.
This idea of death existing outside of personal humiliation and failure is so outside of Vriska’s world view, no wonder she didn’t put two and two together.
FLORAL: While writing, this was the version of Tavros I referenced the most, which is kind of hard because we only see him in one flashback but I really wanted to capture this whimsy he had before his life got kind of miserable. I also thought about how he approached his planets quests, dude likes the grind! He’s the type of kid that wants to stick as closely to the rules as possible because the rules are there to make things fun! This isn’t the Tavros that was paralyzed, or traumatized, or became a gollum reference.
And that’s important, because again none of this is about saying sorry, or making amends, we’re here to deconstruct the root of the issue.
FLORAL: One detail I haven’t seen anybody comment on but personally tickled me was the implication that not only has Vriska aged a couple years outside the Hell Chamber, but also spent substantial amounts of time inside of it too, just to have it all erased. It’s an Inception situation, which makes the fact she never once asked Tavros what he wanted to do soooooo funny to me.
FLORAL: All Vriska does in Act 5 is try to get boys to win at some game, whether it’s SBURB or against Terezi. I think a lot of people see Vriska as some kind of sadist? But the reality is she cares very deeply for people, it’s not just about HER winning, it’s satisfying to her to see other people become stronger too. She just doesn’t grasp that her “end justifies the means” mentality isn’t universally recognized. There’s also nothing objective about her values either, but because they are based in survival they feel objective.
Don’t you know how the world works Nitram? Don’t you know what’s waiting for you?
FLORAL: It was fun finding ways to get Aradiabot to piss Vriska off, which we know is usually not caring enough. Vriska really is just so mad nobody gaf. That’s why the original Aradiabot beatdown was such a sense of catharsis for both of them. Vriska was just so happy to see Aradia CARE, that she wasn’t broken and unreachable forever. Facing indifference really makes some people feel truly powerless.
It’s one thing I really appreciate about Vriska’s writing in the original HS, that she is desperate for connection even if it’s through violence. In a lot of ways, it feels like violence is the thing most comfortable to her. It’s insightful and true to a lot of peoples experiences.
FLORAL: If there is a way for me to tie in aspects…. by god I’ll do it. Especially if it means highlighting my favorite part of the Time aspect, it’s theme’s surrounding death and decay. It’s a perfect contrast to Light, in a lot of ways. Light empowers it’s players, makes them believe they have the tools to control outcomes. But Time… that’s untouchable. It’s a constraint more than anything, an oppressive force, just like irl. The outcome is the same for everyone, and there’s no stopping that. It’s set.
FLORAL: This part to me was one of the most important things to get across in this chapter, to really sell the nuance of this situation. It’s all about acceptance, and that acceptance had to be tested and followed through with. No guilting or being down on herself about being a trash hag, unable to change Aradiabot’s mind.
I think one of the most important things when growing up is realizing it’s not some unbearable burden to be unliked by some people. It’s not proof you’re undeserving of people in your life or even that singular person hating you, it’s just a boundary.
Thankfully… the boundary respecter is in the building now.
JAMES: This really is such an important lesson to learn in your own life, you know? There are always gonna be people that don’t hate you but they just aren’t that interested in you in a meaningful way. You just gotta be ok with it.
FLORAL: We got a good bit of catharsis at the end of a lot of hard truths! YAHOO! There is something foreboding too though, because while a lot of people consider getting better for other people, self improvement is pretty isolating. And doing something for yourself, is sometimes the hardest part of journey’s like this.
Pick a prompt to be the theme for the next Patreon exclusive illustration for November! This illustration will be done by Alexis! Vote on which one you'd like to see!
Hi, Chumi here! As James said, we're trying something new for the next few updates. Here's a preview of one of the backgrounds that will be used. A bit of a different look for a familiar room... Hope you're looking forward to it!
Chumi, the killer: Greetings and salutations everyone! I hope you all enjoyed the update, we finally got to see 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓟𝓸𝓲𝓷𝓽! Vriska gets whisked away into 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓟𝓸𝓲𝓷𝓽! Davepeta and all the sprites are in 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓟𝓸𝓲𝓷𝓽!!! Exciting things are moving forward! Anyway, I handled a majority of the panels, while our lovely art director and my eternal nakama, Kim, drew 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓟𝓸𝓲𝓷𝓽 and the animated sequences! Thank you Kim!!! I love you!!
Kim, Chumi’s eternal nakama: I remember as soon as Miles handed us the script for this update, I could envision it SO clearly. I wanted it to be especially memorable too since we’ve been building up to see this dang thing! Chumi made the first draft of boards and I swooped in next with some revisions to amp up parts for drama or comedy.
Since this overall update was an especially chunky one, we had to be smart about it and split up the work between multiple artists. Chumi is an absolute powerhouse when it comes to the panels, so she handled a good sum of the standard panels. Meanwhile, I volunteered to handle the more intense parts like 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓟𝓸𝓲𝓷𝓽’s reveal and the two animation sequences. One could say I was being a little extra for these parts, but I can’t help myself…. I love me some good showmanship LOL.
James, Director: Fuck yeah wooo yeahhhhhhhhh.
Chumi: Behold, the boards! Our entire plan laid bare..
Kim: Look at how dang long this is!!! Two whole ass animation sequences AND a painted panel. As you can see, all of this was initially going to be one update, but once we changed to the smaller but more frequent updates per month model we chopped up this particular update into three parts.
Also, funny thing to note about these initial boards versus the final output, we actually added a couple extra pages at the last minute because he wanted to hit the funny number for the next update… “Why?” you ask? You’ll see soon enough! 👁🔍
Another curious point of interest in these boards is that you can see Fefetasprite was originally in place of where Gcatavrosprite was going to be, but we were at a back and forth whether or not to depict her in the panel LOL. Instead, we wanted to save her for something a bit later…
Alright, enough about the boards– let’s talk about the panels!
Chumi: The soldier guy is just some rando. I was afraid people would think he’s Dave so I put a ponytail on him. He’s just a random guy!!
Kim: We gotta stop putting sunglasses on these guys LOL.
Chumi: Also, the thing behind him… It’s a crab-tank! Just like in Splatoon 3!! Holy shit!!
Haven: I love the clouds circling overhead like an eye above the meteor, or maybe a shooting target.
Chumi: Originally, the tank looked like this! It’s supposed to be the Resistance’s melding of human and troll technology, so it’s a tank with… bug legs sticking out the side. And a honeycomb pattern. My first pass at a tank design LOL… I did not try at all.... Thank you to the other artists for dedicating a day to hash out tank designs!
James: I like how little of it is a crab. It's like a regular tank and someone glued crab legs on it
Andi: Tbf it was more like, we thought we didn’t need assets like this until other visuals of the meteor were showing up and it became a bit of an afterthought when we realized a lot of artillery would be missing. The good news is, we hashed out the tank designs in one day on voice call! Hooray.
Kim: There’s a lot about Earth C that has yet to be explored before our current team took over. So, there’s always a huge question we have to ask ourselves, “how much of this planet is going to be expanded upon?” We have to consider if we would be coming back to/reusing something enough that they’d be important recurring props or places. Since we’re a small team, there’s only so much time we can spend doing explorations for a random prop/location that might only show up for a single panel and probably never again. A lot of base Homestuck was loosely made, so it was probably a lot easier for Andrew to get by with just that– but as a collaborative team now, it’s a lot more challenging going “on the fly” when we need to know we’re all on the same page!
And trust me, our current team has spent a lot of time thinking about Earth C! It’s especially important since, well, the entirety of our Candy cast grew up/lived here for a good chunk of their lives now! The world they live in is gonna inform how they are as people now, don’t you think?
Chumi: Very important questions I sent to Kim. The tummy stayed but unfortunately, we gave John ass-reduction surgery.
Kim: LMFAO Sorry fellas. I strongly stand by the fact that Homestuck characters should remain as funny cartoons at base.
James: Me waking up on the surgery table, cheeked the fuck up: who do you think took all the ass.
Chumi: Aah, Sollux. I hated drawing this hair.
Kim: I like to imagine Sollux’s hair like an overgrown buzzcut, and that makes it a lot easier for me to understand tbh LOL.
Chumi: And then Roxy! She started out with a bit of different proportions, but she ended up looking too tall when compared to Sollux.
Chumi: My original storyboard had John and Roxy in the background, while Vriska looks back at them with a judgemental smile. I was envisioning that “car crash seat belt statistics” meme kind of smile.
Chumi: Yeah, that’s the one. Thank you iFunny.co.
Chumi: This panel used to have John looking a bit more shocked, with arms intact. Two more things that had to go! We just keep taking and taking.
Kim: In the initial boards, the original subtle joke was that John would be the only person jawdropped seeing the singularity revealed while everyone else was a lot more level about it. Though, if history shows, John is kind of a hard person to surprise… so we had to subdue his reaction instead. Him just standing there kind of stupid like :0 is probably more in character for him anyway LOL.
Chumi: Oh my god, it’s𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓟𝓸𝓲𝓷𝓽. My sketch really depicts what it looks like now! Kim is here to talk about this part! Take it away!
James: Put this thumbnail in the art book.
Kim: BIG REVEAL TIME!!! The art team worked hard to bring this machine to life. The singularity was yet to be fully designed by the previous team, so we took the mantle of figuring it out! The only base we had to work off of was the silhouette of the machine draped over by the tarp.
Page 404 in Homestuck: Beyond Canon
Kim: We went through several iterations exploring what the machine containing The Point would look like. The only other basis we had to work off of was that, in Andrew’s original outline, it was mentioned this machine was specifically made of cherub technology, similar to the one famously seen in Hiveswap. Not the same machine, but it had to be built in a way that these portals were inspired in the same vein of each other. Have a look at the other concept designs we explored for it!
Rough Concept by Andi R.
Rough Concepts by Kim Quach
Kim: As you can see, over the iterations we were slowly approaching closer to the final design that you are all now familiar with! We had to make sure the cherub imagery was clear. The big serpents were a no-brainer to include one way or another, for sure. We also had to functionally consider this machine was specifically built not only to contain The Point, but also to serve as a gateway.
Final Concept by Kim Quach
Kim: Finally… 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓟𝓸𝓲𝓷𝓽. Or rather, the thing containing it LOL. Now, you may be looking at this and thinking, “huh! There are quite some specific design choices here!” There were a handful of essential key elements and notes passed down along to us that we had to include for this particular machine.
It was noted this contraption had to appear like it was a collaboration between Roxy and Calliope–a solid cross between Lalondian SBURB tech and cherub technology. The cherub influences are quite obvious with the giant serpent and all LOL. Roxy’s influence brought the sci-fi element to it, with the more computer hardware and gamer lights inspired look. It’s quite interesting when you compare this one to the Hiveswap portal, which is notably a lot more steampunk in design while this one is more “modern” and futuristic!
Last two points (hah) of interest that you may have noticed are the inclusion of fire and the timer. I can’t exactly elaborate what the fire relates to just yet, but I wanted to note their details here as deliberate design choices that you’ll see why soon enough…! Perhaps that timer will count down to what that is… 🤫
Chumi: Aww, a lil Callie for size!
Panel 650 Sketch by Kim Quach
Kim: Here’s the initial sketch of the singularity! I wanted the portal to look IMPOSING. A literal BIG reveal that we’ve been waiting for–what all the hubbub everyone in the Candy timeline has gotten so stirred up about! So imposing that it’s literally BREAKING out of the screen. Angled in a way that even you feel small looking up at it, but the stairs extend towards you… inviting you in.
I love the way in Beyond Canon we’ve been getting more experimental with our page layouts as I’ve always thought was the most fun part about the original Homestuck. I hope that we get more opportunities to play around with it and more wacky ways to provide an even more immersive experience for you guys!
Callie was initially going to be a part of this panel too, pulling off the tarp, but I was worried her inclusion would be making the page too wide and wouldn’t look good on most screens. 😭 Sorry, Callie…
Kim: Ze final render… In fact, I believe this is the first painted panel within Beyond Canon too! I did consider rendering it in the usual pixel style instead, but I wanted to recall those Le Epic Moments when things got serious and suddenly things were ~painted~ like seeing the Ancestors or Yaldabaoth. I’m making whole ass paintings for Homestuck now… the things I do for you guys.
Anyway, onto part TWO of the update!!!
Chumi: Vriska looks a bit different in the sketch. I fixed up her face a bit in the final!
Kim: The last thing we see of her until we see her get zucked into The Point…. R.I.P. Vriska you will be missed….. jk she’s fine (probably), but let’s get to talking about the animation!
As some of you may have already heard, this particular page wasn’t initially going to be a whole sound page. Actually, the writer of this particular update, Miles, said he originally envisioned this would be a short gif LOL. But the more I worked on boarding this particular sequence, the fancier it got. It felt appropriate that it’d be a little Epic and Mysterious. “What does this machine do?! What happened to Vriska?! What’s happening?!?!?” Need to build up that tension!
Kim: I approached boarding this sequence like I would with any traditional storyboard for animation! Noting all the actions, the number of shots, the camera movements, etc. Usually I would make a rough animatic before I’d start animating, but considering this sequence utilized a mix of both After Effects and traditional hand-drawn animation– I put this together a bit more unorthodox.
I did consider for a hot second hand animating the first four shots (like the sliding assets and the warping), because AE can kind of be hell to fiddle around with. But y’know what I realized. It was more hell to hand animate it LOL.
What I HAD to hand-animate, though, was the actual Vriska warp as she’s flying into the portal, the sand in the timer, and the fire. If I hadn’t, any preset I could find only seemed odd looking…
Kim: If it’s of any interest to y’all, fun fact, most of the assets and hand-animated sequences were done in Clip Studio Paint. Here’s a peek of how it looks behind the curtain! While I can’t speak for Andrew’s animation process– I think what may be an interesting tidbit for people outside of the animation field, usually in animation there’s a lot of extra bleed room outside of the camera! Some secret little things and details you don’t see in the final animation itself… 👁
Just kidding, there’s usually nothing exciting in there, (cos it’s always meant to be cut out anyway) but the extra bleed serves as fail-safe in case things need to be adjusted around or resized. Cool to know there’s a little more to it though, right?
Looking at this screencap, not gonna lie, my file organization for this sequence is a little insane but I Made It Work LOL.
Chumi: AHHH
Kim: Here’s the Vriska warp isolated without all the crazy camera transitions and whatnot. It happens a little fast though, doesn’t it? It’s okay, it’s supposed to happen very quickly, but you may have missed the funny little warped Vriska faces that briefly show just before she disappears LOL. Here’s the warp slowed down for your convenient observation. :-)
Kim: “Wait a minute, wasn’t it a wider shot when Vriska was warped into the Point?” Good observation theoretical asker! I did a sneaky little camera trick actually! When the camera zooms outward, it happens very quickly that I swap the background out for the wide shot.
Kim: It happens so seamlessly you don’t even notice it, right? Here it is again at 20% speed. 👀
Kim: Call that Movie Magic, babey….!!!!
Kim: This is the only rough animation I still have for this whole sequence LOL. I’m still pretty proud of this shot tbh! The camera working upwards revealing the activating flame, the hourglass clicking into place, the focus shift onto “what will this timer do?” then the PSYCHE! mwah love it.
Also, this entire shot was animated in CSP! When I first started animating in CSP, I always figured the animation function was pretty rudimentary, but when I found out you could do camera movements and sliding assets WITHIN the program….. It was a game changer.
Making animations for Homestuck really is a dream come true! I’ll be getting back to you guys more on the next animation in the next part of this update, heheh.
Chumi: Kim is the goat. Kim is the goat!!!
Chumi: 4 little things…
Kim: Returning to their cellular form…
Chumi: I was hoping for more opportunities to depict the characters in the… super-fucked-up-armless style? The Pantskat style? Whatever it is, I wanted to see it again and I’m happy I got to make it happen! They just look so silly. Dot eyes and stick legs. They look like little bugs.
Andi: I missed pantskat style. They’re so easy to draw from far away.
Chumi: I originally imagined Jade-Callie’s face mirroring Gamzee as she peeks into the Candy timeline at a critical moment.
Kim: We had to change this up a bit because I believe the last we saw of that particular Jade-Callie was just lookin’ fucked up LOL. Impact-wise, it’s definitely much stronger to see it from Alt-Calliope herself’s point of view.
Chumi: Everyone, especially Haven, helped me workshop the panel into what it looks like now! It really bangs! Thank you!!
Haven: Of course! I'm always chomping at the bit for a chance to draw more cherubs.
Kim: AND NOW… It is onto the next flash animation! This one’s actually pretty short since there’s not as many moving parts compared to the last one. Since this one’s a bit more standard, I was able to put together a rough animatic for this one. That way, I can pass the rough animatic down to James, our musician, so he could figure out the audio timing.
Kim: Ya like seeing the temporary assets I used for this? LOL
Kim: I don’t usually do this kind of animation that often where it requires a lot more puppeteering, and splitting up parts to animate as separate assets.. Puppeteering I still consider a new type of animation (even though it’s not by now; I know, I know–!) I was trained in traditional paper animation and hand-drawn digital animation, but I’m fascinated by getting to know how new animation methods work (like Live2D, After Effects, and Adobe Animate) and using this as an opportunity to train myself in them!
Kim: This shot of Vriska actually has a whole fullbody hiding in the bleed–! I wanted to lowkey reference this panel and type of Hero Mode style below for this shot in particular, since the poses were quite similar, hehe.
Kim: After watching the final version of the flash, does looking behind the curtains of it feel like forbidden information to you guys?
Also, what’s particularly interesting about this shot is that we’ve never actually seen the surrounding area around Vriska’s hive depicted before. 🤔 It almost feels cursed seeing it from this view… Something else seems to be missing too, hmmmm…!!!
Bonus: If you stayed and watched ‘til the end of the flash…….. I applaud you. That’s it. LOL
Last but not least, HUGE props and thanks to our technical staff, Kohi, for helping composite and put together these multimedia panels on the website. These animated sound pages wouldn’t be possible without Kohi’s help and expertise!
Kim: Aaaand this is the last panel I contributed for this update! Originally, this panel was the default standard size, but I decided to stretch this out even taller. The writers emphasized that we wanted Vriska’s hive to feel far in this panel.
Kim: This is a never before seen angle we’ve ever seen of Vriska’s hive, it took me a second to even figure out what the fuck was the geometry of the cliff faces below her hive. I am especially a stickler for trying to be accurate to canon, so I meticulously tried to match the cliff sides and even every spot to the original panel…
Chumi: Kim is the goat!!!!!
Chumi: Animating this was a………….. learning experience. Also as I was working on this, I realized Vriska’s desk is a fucking BLOCK!!!!
Kim: It’s funny how simple gif animations like this can be quite tricky to make look just right. I had to help guide Chumi a little bit on this one. It reminds me I read somewhere (correct me if I’m wrong) that Andrew literally learned how to animate while he was making Homestuck, and it still impresses me to this very day that he did.
Andi: No worries, Chumi, you absolutely NAILED these isometrics. You really matched the pacing of how these sprite gifs tend to look like. It has an old classic feel to it that I really missed! I am also very sorry that you had to probably manually strobe Davepeta frame by painful frame….
James: someone get this mf’er a gamer desk.
Kim: I think more Homestuck furniture should be fucked up blocks to make our lives easier.
Chumi: Who are these douchebags? Just kidding, I could never forget you, Davepeta and Nannas. I was really happy to see the excited reception to Davepeta's return! But, some sprites are missing though…? Also those scary-ass ghosts in the background… They look familiar…
Andi: They’re saying damn bitch you live like this??
Chumi: In this panel, I wanted to call back to the… colored-silhoutte style?
Chumi: Whatever the hell this is. Homestuck has so many styles, I wanted to bring some back! Calling back to previously-seen things is something I really loved and thought was an important part of the reading experience, so I love doing this stuff.
Andi: I REALLY LIKE IT!! It’s got a good charm. Once in a while you can get away with not fully rendering out every detail on these kids, they are so memorable by design, it lends itself to these types of panels very easily!!
James: hell yeah you are really good at callback panels.
Chumi: Actually, this was the first panel I finalized. Barely made any edits on this thing. Once I added some cute sparkles and put it through a jpeg-ifier, it was complete.
Andi: People underestimate how very particular sbahj shittiness is to replicate and Chumi nailed this like INSTANTLY. It was so good I laughed so hard.
Kim: The tiny Vriska and Erisolsprite bit at the end is especially my favorite part of this image. Truly, Welcome to Hell, Everybody.
Hi, James here. We're gonna be tryin out something with these next few updates, so here is a preview track from the the first one. We needed a handful of tracks and since we aren't in the position where we can be paying people to do outsourced work on a short notice like this, it fell to me to write 'em. A lot of them are sort of loose concepts/sketches like this so I'll post a little bit about them here.
This one uses samples from one of my favorite songs "Ghost Town" by The Specials. It also has a few bits from "Ghost Mound" which is a song from Hiveswap that I didn't name. Obviously this is named after the Specials song, but it didn't sound anything like the song or have anything to do with it, which was annoying at the time. I never really mentioned it but I always sort of hated how the old lead writer made lyrics for those songs because they weren't very good and we don't get along.
Anyway, now the songs co-exist because of that. That is the only reason I added those samples in. It has nothing to do with the update, I just liked it. Or does it? It might? It doesn't. Or does it? Hmm. Damn.. does it?
Anyway, so this little exercise in sampling made it in. I would have liked to spend more time like mixing and extending it, but there were a bunch of other tracks I needed to do. I will be sharing those in the coming weeks as well. OK see you soon.
Pick a prompt to be the theme for the next Patreon exclusive illustration for October! This illustration will be done by Meruz! Vote on which one you'd like to see!
HI, James here. Thought it could be fun to put some partial music previews for upcoming updates here with no context. I wanted to show thanks for all the paid members for sticking with us, and give you something that is exclusive to just you guys. Sound fun?
This was based off of a track I did for Pesterquest, but ended up changing quite a bit. What is it for? You will see... soon!
Pick a prompt to be the theme for the next Patreon exclusive illustration for September! This illustration will be done by Hone! Vote on which one you'd like to see!
Chumi, has a red crush on Commander Karkat: Hello everyone, happy May! Let’s take a moment to discuss this juicy update… I know everyone on the team is dying to talk about one guy in particular…Hehe…
James, Director:The Salamander
Andi, up to no good:Hi yall! Thanks for joining this month's artist commentary where I go into all the crazy STUFF that happened here and had the privilege of illustrating for! Let’s start with the Rebellion upd8! Also special thanks to Miles for writing this portion, he did amazing capturing these characters and took so much care!!!!! I laughed at so many moments.
Andi: Originally, I was going to have Karkat bust the door open, but I felt like I needed to extend some anticipation, so I made it more of a sliding door that’s opening part way. Displaying our favorite highly anticipated adult troll right away on the first page would have been meh impact, imo.
James: MEENAH HOLY FUCK
Shitpost by James Roach
James: I’m sorry.
Andi: Never be.
Andi: This was mainly testing colors and vibes.
James: I think it's amazing how good of a grasp of color you guys have. I like looking at your cool color blocking things.
Kim, guy who has an art degree: Let it be known coloring is just fucking around with the color wheel and hue sliders until something looks good. And color theory or whatever too, i GUESS. 🙄
Andi: AND NOW FOR THE MOST POPULAR PANEL OF THAT UPDATE!!!!!
Andi: This is a thumbnail I inserted in the script doc during production. Karkat looks a little lean and underwhelming in the thumb but that's because the real deal was still in my mind's eye. I had yet to fully display the masterpiece that is the sexy, rebellion leader, Commander Karkat Vantas.
Chumi: HOOTING AND HOLLERING!!!
Andi: I am very appreciative that people enjoyed the full complete shot so much. I was really excited to hear what people thought after seeing this mature, grizzled looking Karkat.
James: It was really important internally that Commander Karkat is ripped. Just completely stacked. Huge as fuck.
Andi: Let’s play “spot the difference”. Me and the art director, Kim, were on voice call screensharing my panel progress and we thought, what if-... what if we gave him stubble. Just to see!! Yknow, nothing crazy!!!
Kim: I look at the previous panel now and keep thinking he looks too smooth. Already, we both felt like he was missing something. Commander Karkat needs that extra GRIT. I remember we were so worried we would get pushback from the others against the stubble too LMFAO.
Andi: As soon as I drew it on, it was clear enough that this had to be done and locked in. It just looked WAY too good not to have. Plus, I am a stubble/beard enjoyer so perhaps my own bias slipped through. Anyway, I popped it in the work chat to see what others thought….
Andi: It was a no brainer! We kept it.
Chumi: And the chat goes wild!!
Kim: And how could we deprive the people of this… We do it… for YOU guys.
Andi: I think I just really like to see a troll with facial hair. Majority of them have huge head hair, so I don’t see why that shouldn’t extend to facial hair when they are older.
Kim: Makes you think when will we see the first troll with a full on viking beard…
James: For now, it's just me and Karkat.
Andi: Thumbing these was quite fun. You can probably notice that Karkats tablet was going to be see-through but I didn’t end up going for it. A lot of thumbs are going to look different from its final form so you can expect some cut details in the final.
Andi: Since this is basically a version of the Condesce, I took major inspiration from a lot of the old Condy panels from HS1 for her smile and proportions.
Andi: Alright, let's bring in the LOBsTERs.
There was actually going to be rebellion sickle iconography here on the flag but I decided to keep it simpler and omit it. I think there is more we can do with that in a different place.
Kim: Let me just say I wanna take a second to appreciate how Andi does such a good job of capturing the goofy jitteriness and crunch of Homestuck gifs so well LOL. Not even with just this panel, but in prior updates they made as well. They capture the stupid absurdity of them just Perfectly.
Andi: I love homestuck-style gif animation, it’s got a charm to it that I feel is important to replicate and maintain its comedic snappiness.
Chumi: I remember seeing some comments about the carapace guy being naked! Woops!!!
Andi: They’re not naked!!! It's camo, if you can’t see it, it's working!
James: none of you are gonna be laughing at homies all white camo when it snows at The Point
Andi: Also, you may notice some non-trolls here. Many have joined forces to help take down the establishment, such as that random salamander (who is earnestly inspired by Karkats eyepatch).
Andi: The human there in the group is just an earth C guy who got radicalized and that “naked” carapacian is a trigger happy gone-commando rambo. The troll front and center is just a lobster themed troll donning the lobster claw horns. Someone mentioned that the human reminded them a lot of Percy from Pyscholonials. I had actually just finished playing it during the making of these panels and his stupid face was definitely an inspiration LOL. This group deeply cares about the cause and are willing to risk their lives for their commanders, whom they deeply cherish and idolize. I will mention, these are just a few of many LOBsTERs we are able to see. These select few just happened to be the top dogs.
There isn’t really much of a huge lore story with these guys other than some citizens of earth C choosing to partake in the cause, except the sniper on the top left is actually our art director's trollsona (Who has been seen frequently throughout many Beyond Canon scenes).
Kim: I think it’s so funny to just keep inserting my trollsona everywhere. The last we saw of it was back during The Funeral chapter.
Kim: I like to think this display radicalized me so much I turned to the Resistance LMFAO.
Andi: Yiffy’s existence and defiance against the batter bitch 2.0 changed everything.
James: Keep putting him in there and just never explaining it.
Chumi: I’m hoping everyone in the team will show up in the comic at least once!
Andi: “not like dave huh?” SMH, Meenah. I fucking love them both individually and as partners. I drew a silly comic about it.
Anyway, do not mistake it. They are snogging it up red-style. They are all over each other flushed-ways. Do not get it twisted!!
Andi: I was so excited for this Sollux and Karkat moment. When I first read the script, I was so stoked to see our gamer nerd return and interact with one of the OGs. It had been… what? At least 15 years since the last on-screen interaction between them???? It’s so crazy.
Chumi: The “are we still friends” line… Aww!
Andi: Sometimes when youre thumbing scenes you just kinda throw shit down and go “is this anything?” and work off of it. Lol Thumbs aren’t meant to look pretty, just sell the main idea.
Andi: And now for the Jane + Jake update…
James: oh boy!!
Andi: Special thanks to Floral for writing this absolutely phenomenal conversation with these two. Floral, you did amazing!!!!!!! You actually made me like Jake?? How many have the power to do that… Floral also did a bit of thumbing as well to help stage this.
Thumbnail by Floralmarsupial
Andi: Floral started off the thumbs with Jane having a meltdown! Yippee, this Jane panel was the first I started focusing on as far as setting the tone and colors. I made sure to animate it so that the pen and monitor would jump and the glass of water was splashing at every desk slam. Jane tantrums are always fun.
Thumbnail by Floralmarsupial
Andi: Cripes.
Chumi: Standing there… menacingly.
Andi: Ah yes, the Felt returns. These guys have a lot of work cut out for them!!
Funniest fact about this sketch is that we hadn’t designed the laser yet at that time so I just wrote “Needs visdev”
Chumi: It was really nice seeing the Felt fans out there who were so happy for this one panel!
Andi: We must continue the tradition.
Chumi: I have to admit, I felt very ambivalent about Jake before this update. That has changed!! You guys are making me feel emotions about Jake English!!!
Andi: Seeing Jake angry is so crazy to me, this guy hardly gets argumentative, let alone visibly explosive. This man has been holding so much in for the past decade, at some point, the pressure has to release. (It was also very satisfying seeing him stand up to Jane. I was clapping!)
Thumbnail by Floralmarsupial
Andi: When doing this panel, I was thinking to myself “What more can we do with this scene?” This is an extremely traumatic and significant event for father and son. What additional insanity can I include in this image to enhance the chaos? Then I thought… who else none other than MotherFucking Gamzee.
Andi: Okay,I did not intend for him to look so scary LMAO! I tried to make him look blissful and oafish but I think the angle sorta forced the sinisterness LOL I think it worked out though. I remember showing the team and there were visceral and fearful reactions. I was like “IS IT THAT OMINOUS?” It was a very funny response. Gamzee enjoyers seemed to have been happy to see this freak again, so that's good. Jesus christ though, I’d be so terrified if I was ever near the vicinity of this deranged clown man. Poor Tavvy, you were toast before you were even born.
Kim: I remember when Andi showed me the polished version of this panel, I audibly went “oh my god?” when I saw Gamzee’s looming figure. When I saw the initial sketch of this and the suggestion of Gamzee in the chat, I imagined he was just gonna be a funny little guy in the corner. To my shock and surprise he was a whole ass man watching down at them like a malevolent god LMFAO.
Andi: It was suggested that BGD puts a comforting hand on Jake's shoulder when Jane implies that she had forgiven Jake for Dirks death (Which is so utterly fucked!) but I felt that there wasn’t enough lead up to something intimate like that yet? It ended up being saved for the eye reveal!
Thumbnail by Floralmarsupial
Andi: Floral had suggested a comical bonk, which I did like! And I even drew it! But it didn’t feel like he was freaking out enough. So I ended up cutting it and making it a lot more dramatic and Jake visibly a lot more panicked. I still really like this gif though, I like how Dirk looked here. I was kinda indecisive about many panels here I was sketching up, honestly. So there is some cut content. However, I think the message still delivers, and you lucky patrons get to see the unseen.
Chumi: Actually a huge fan of this change! As much as I love calling back to old panels, I love that the new one just keeps piling on the stress! Poor Jake!!!
Floral: I adore this panel so much, the subtle animation of it, the red. This more serious shot was exactly what the scene needed.
Andi: God, now onto the Dirk eye reveal. I’ll admit this part was very difficult. I re-did this about a hundred times. I really really wanted to nail it and do it justice. If I have a chance to do a strider eye moment, then by god I am going to put my all into it.
Long before this, I actually drew some “fan art” before the actual art was even done.
Andi: I felt like the two panels weren't enough, I needed to add more anticipation, but at this point I was in a huge rut. I ended up asking for help from Kim and he saved my ass!! Thank you, Kim!!
Kim: I’m all about that Building Anticipation when it comes to boards… Teasing Just Enough context with every panel to put audiences at the edge of their seat, wondering what’s supposed to be shown next 🫣
Andi: Not only did we get a Strider eye moment, but we got an English eye moment as well! It is so rare to see detailed eyes in Homestuck but the times we do, it is very impactful. I referenced a little bit of John's eye in HS1. Of course, I’m not trying to draw these scenes identically. But I hope I managed to make things feel a little nostalgic.
Thumbnail by Floralmarsupial
Chumi: AHHHHH HE’S SCARING ME… STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT…
Andi: I remember when the idea of Dirk showing his eyes was first pitched to us and we were all like “YESSSSSS” it was an amazing and compelling decision. Our writers are so awesome. It was a total hit!
Andi: I think this is the first time we’ve seen “Dirk’s” eyes ever. It’s not Dirk, but it is a faded echo of Jake’s remembrance of Dirk. I’m sure when they dated, he had to experience this intense and cold gaze before which was retained in BGD, except this time, to Jake's utter shock, it was his own eyes looking back at him.
Kim: A subtle foreshadowing that I like about this particular update is that even before the reveal, Andi tinted the shine of Dirk’s shades with green as well… huhuhu the little hints!
Chumi: This panel made me go bonanas!! Dirk’s gone!!
Andi: Wait. Actually no, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Dirks eyes.
Andi: THIS is the first time.
Chumi: He’s really cute…
Thumbnail by Floralmarsupial
Andi: Tavvy… (shakes head sadly)
Thumbnail by Floralmarsupial
Andi: I thought it was a very genius thing to have the last panel just be the closet door hanging open, implying that Jake had left. And it leaves us with ourselves to reflect and soak in what happened with Jane and BGD leaving. Very moving scene. Props to Floral again for being able to write and draw out amazing visuals!
Andi: I think that concludes the artist's commentary! See you next month!! Once again, thank you for all the thoughts and comments you’ve all shared. We read all your responses and we always welcome discussions here and all across the net. It’s just exciting to see people engaged and invested. I very much appreciate everyone here, still listening and reading what we have to share. Some of you are real troopers for sticking as far long as you have, and I can’t appreciate that enough. Your support on our patreon makes this happen and we could not have done it without you.
JAMES, Director: Welcome to the writer's commentary for… May? Is it May already? This sucks. I just finished watching Dawn of The Planet of the Apes. I didn’t see the first one. I didn’t know that was where APE STRONG TOGETHER came from. I had been saying it completely independently of this movie franchise.
JAMES: I’ve come back to this document having now watched all of the planet of the apes movies. The second one was the best one. I wonder if the same could be said for… other media? :3c
MILES, sore from the gym: Dark Souls 2. And of course…
FLORAL, the devil: Kung Fu Panda 2 : )
Wait, OH FU-
JAMES: I forgot we got a real genuine “Dark Souls 2 is the best one” guy over here but I don’t hate it.
(pt 1.)
JAMES: For a long time I thought Metal Gear and Metal Slug were the same thing. I love Metal Slug. I am actually kind of so-so on Metal Gear which around here is like saying you don’t enjoy happiness or laughter.
MILES: Okay, I know that I was implying that MGS2 is the best Metal Gear with that last gag, and it probably is Objectively, but my favorite is MGS4. I feel like it's important for me to be true to myself here. I’m being so real with you right now, and it’s endearing you to me. I know it is. Please?
JAMES: …
MILES: Anyway, I know that there was already a pretty heavy aura of MGS floating around Commander Karkat, but the opportunity to Big Bossify him even further was something that we were like... fundamentally unable to let slip by. He’s got so much grizzled sexy war shit going on. Heavy, HEAVY emphasis on the sexy: I’ve always been a believer in the potential of Buffkat, myself, and Commander Karkat is the culmination of all my dreams, brought to life by Andi’s immaculate draftsmanship. Look at his arms. Look at his fucking TITS!!!!!
JAMES: wow!
FLORAL: yipee!
MILES: Sorry. I mean, I’m not, at all, but I’ll throw a perfunctory apology out there to get us back on track. It’s just that Karkat is so damn large and in charge now; it’s no wonder Meenah had to snap that up for herself.
MILES: And snap she did... I had a lot of fun writing the banter between Karkat and Meenah for this update. I think that after having been through 15 years of the ups and downs of war they’ve kind of seen everything about each other, which lends itself really well to the sort of easy ribbing the two of them get up to in the first half of this conversation. Karkat’s matured into his role pretty admirably, and although Meenah is pretty similar to the Meenah we’ve always known, I like to think that the two of them share a sort of sharp domesticity that really really works for each of them. They’re both able to oscillate between straight-man and goofball in effortless harmony...
FLORAL: They have this great sense of comfortability and in particular I loved how open and affirming Meenah is in her attraction to Karkat, without being overbearing. I’m sure it’s a welcomed change from Karkat’s past relationships… 😏
For what was the audience’s first real look into their dynamic, I’m glad Miles volunteered to take the reigns.
MILES: I just think they’re cute together. As this update came together, I got fully sold on Candy!MeenKat. More on this later, but I’m glad they got together. Candy Karkat deserves a loving partner, too!
JAMES: I think we’ve mentioned this before but the LOBsTERs is a sort of inside joke. Someone said it to me once and I had no idea it was from something. I thought the guy saying it to me was just piecing together random words and I was like yeah man. Send them in, I guess. nervous whispering “check out this freak..” Anyway it became a sort of beloved phrase that I would just occasionally say with no attachments to the source. Everyone else knew!
FLORAL: The first time James mentioned the LOBSTERS I almost fell over. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard the call…
MILES: I love this stupid fucking joke so much. I’m not even sure if half of our current readership ever watched the Amanda Show, but sometimes you have to kind of just do stuff for yourself.
JAMES: I was more of an iCarly guy.
MILES: Also, very weird and nitpicky clarification; the LOBsTERs aren’t just the guys in the armored truck with Karkat and Meenah, it’s sort of a catchall term for units of the top-level Rebellion operatives. So really, there are probably hundreds of LOBsTERs getting sent in. These are just the best of the best.
JAMES: OK. This is sort of a mixture of VisDev and writing, but I’ll talk about it here. Early on I made a point of insisting that Karkat uses crab-based spy devices. Originally this was so we could explain how he was listening in on the Jane briefing. There was sort of an elaborate explanation to “how does Karkat know this information” ranging from him being in the room with Meenah, to him listening in at a different terminal. There were also the aforementioned crab devices.
(from Jake: Eavesdrop update, this is being broadcast from a spycrab drone.)
JAMES: The official explanation is that there are just little spycrab drones all over the place. It just kind of spiraled. It was originally proposed that we show them, but one of the big things we have to deal with is panel bloat. That is to say, making the artists draw too much. A big part of this project is managing artist and writer’s appetites vs how many pages we can reasonably ask them to draw during the time we have allotted them to draw. It will always go over. That's the nature of creative projects, they will take longer than you think is too long. I think I have said the words “be less precious about it” more than anything else.
Anyway, Spycrabs. Crabtech. I don’t know why that's so funny to me. Karkat has never seen a real crab. Imagine you were a spy and all your spy gear was based off of a sort of silly version of your dad. “Hold on. I gotta take this. It's a call from HQ” and then you hold your wrist up to your mouth and talk into a watch shaped like a cartoon version of your father. “Go ahead HQ, you’re Loud And Clear on the CHIBI-JIM.”
MILES: Here we have another example of the functionality of Karkat and Meenah’s relationship. This conversation was fun because we get to see Meenah play a more supportive and nurturing role, which I don’t think she’s ever done on screen before? But that’s what happens when you spend 15 years with someone trying to save the world... it’s touching. She learns, as does everyone who cares about him, when Karkat really really needs to calm down and recenter, and she knows, as does everyone who cares about him, that sometimes the way he needs to do that is by ranting for a while.
MILES: I know that Meenah brought it up in a sort of indelicate way, but I wanted to make it clear that despite their mutual security in their relationship, Meenah knows Karkat well enough to know that the news of Dave’s supposed-death is something he’d need to talk about a little more with someone more liable to listen than John. Sometimes supporting your partner means letting him rant about his shitty ex who failed him in every possible way who just died. Somewhere on the ship, Davebot’s programming is running sneeze protocols. But she was right, I think Karkat needed to get that out.
JAMES: I originally proposed that we do this update juxtaposing two relationships. On one hand we have Meenah and Karkat, who really get each other. They are good for each other. They talk about their problems. They communicate. They do this and still manage to get things done. I wanted to also lampoon this idea that all of these characters so far are just kind of stopping and having really self important conversations in public. Just airing out all their feelings in the middle of the park. I know we gotta tyrant on the loose but do you think we could take five minutes to stop and talk about how I feel bad?
Karkat and Meenah manage to communicate, get things done AND still find the time to get Sollux his Arby’s.
MILES: This was just fun. I think it’s great that while Karkat has spent the past 15 years becoming a sexy Che Guavara revolutionary, Sollux has been sitting in a room playing video games and ordering delivery, and despite all that and the fact that they probably almost never see each other in person, they’re still in contact semi-regularly. Bros 4 lyfe.
MILES: Karkat and Sollux getting into a big fat screaming match and reconciling at the end will never die.
JAMES: By the way, Incredible job with “Gruber Eats.” A nod, of course, to the bad guy from the movie Die Hard, Hans Gruber. No. Just kidding. We had talked about how “GRUBHUB” is already real, but nuts to that. They can Pay Us if they want us to put them in. Hey if you want $20 off your first two orders on Uber Eats use code eats-uberjamesroachue. I hope at least one of you does this so I can get a free digital gift card. This is not a bit I absolutely will use it to get a Big Gulp and a gas station hot dog delivered to my front door.
MILES: You already did this, so I’m not gonna blow up your spot and plug my own shit, but dude... I should have thought of this earlier. In one of the next couple commentaries I need to find a way to get promo deals on shit. Keep an eye out for that, loyal fans...!
(pt 2)
FLORAL: OH BOY! I’m glad everyone had a good time with Commander Vantas and his lovely healthy romantic relationship between equals. Naturally the follow up to that had to be Jake and Jane.
To be honest I’m having a hard time picking and choosing what to talk about. This was an update I was personally sweating bullets over for what is probably super obvious reasons. It had to be perfect, and the team really came together to sell the fuck out of it. Special shout out to Miles specifically, for elevating Jake’s lingo game and further fleshing out BGD’s and “Gamzee’s” voice. His editing single handedly stopped me from continually freaking out about this whole exchange.
MILES: Floral is going to sit here and try to pretend that they aren’t a mad genius by foisting credit onto us, but I’m spiking that shit back like a volleyball. All we did here was edit for flavor, there was nothing else to change. I laughed so hard the first time I read this conversation.
JAMES: Re-establishing that Jane’s forces are all just clones. Her whole army. Clones. Of who? Who can say. Probably me I guess. Anyway, Wow! An Imperial force, setting out to quell a rebellious separatist force? you might say its a real
Att
Attack of
Attack of th
JAMES: You know it's actually insane how we’re getting this sort of revisionist history about the Star Wars prequels not being total dogshit.
MILES: I could go on and on about how the prequels, while horrible movies, actually lend credence and depth to the entirety of the Star Wars universe, but this isn’t the forum for that.
JAMES: I wish it was.
FLORAL: Jake has a little bit of Jar Jar Binks in him. Some could say, narratively speaking, they have similar functions and audience reception. Thank god Jake does not look like Jar Jar Binks or else no one would care about the yaoi.
FLORAL: I love this whole set up, it’s very dear to me, this image of solemn soldiers forced to lap up water. Like animals!!!!! My rule is, if something makes me smile or laugh as I write it, than it goes into the first draft. And it stays as long as it keeps making me laugh.
MILES: They’re true patriots.
FLORAL: I salute them, the poor bastards.
JAMES: The water not being poisoned as one of Jane’s selling points for proper treatment is a good joke. She really believes that it's a good thing.
FLORAL: Now, moving on to the most important part of the update. Leprechauns on the moon. What’s it like up there? How did they get their engineering degrees? Who fucking knows.
JAMES: A bunch of questions about “are the snaps canon now?” and I think it's always interesting to get into “canon” talks, you know me. I love. To talk about. Meta. (I do not)
JAMES: I think people get a little too into the idea of something being canon or not. For the sake of the narrative about canon being part of the story, “Dubiously Canon” works but also just functionally, this is what's happening on screen. This is canon because it happens and you see it. Yes. The Point Is That Ultimately The Reader Decides What Is Meaningful To Them. Yes It Is A Commentary About Narrative Structure. Yes. I Get It but also like lighten up man its fine.
FLORAL: Anyways, I hope everyone liked the laser twist! There’s a very VERY subtle hint we put into Update 3 about it.
FLORAL: Contingency plans, man.
FLORAL: Fun fact, this whole sequence was inspired by my roommate! Not the child endangerment part but she has a deadly peanut allergy too and has been doing oral immunotherapy to cure it. I saw her go from eating one gram of peanut to 5 WHOLE peanuts.
For years, multiple times a week, I have watched her eat these peanuts, and keep her heart rate regulated for a whole hour hoping she doesn’t die.
Anyways she’s still alive and so is Tavvy! And it was a lot of fun writing Gamzee just doing this whole process in the worst way imaginable. Bro is NOT a doctor and said “JeSuS tAkE tHe WhEeL.”
ANDI: Floral this is a crazy as hell story, LMFAOOO I am glad both she, and our Tavvy continue to see the light of day.
JAMES: I used to have a roommate that was an aspiring voice actor and he would do voices all the time and I hated it. Unfortunately it made a cute girl politely chuckle exactly one time and he never ever stopped doing it. I get it. Chasing the high of making a beautiful woman laugh is one of life's most noble pursuits.
FLORAL: “PeAnUt BuTtEr JeLlY tImE :o)” I looooooove Gamzee, the way he talks makes me feel inhuman.
MILES: Getting to write little snippets of Gamzee dialogue makes us all feel alive. Even from beyond the veil of death, his wisdom rings true...
JAMES: this one was for all those PUT GAMZEE BACK INTO THE COMIC mfers out there. It wasn’t but we can pretend it was.
MILES: Anyway, it’s awesome that Tavvy basically grew up in the single worst household in the entirety of the Homestuck canon, which is saying A LOT. There probably weren’t any real ramifications.
FLORAL: Oh, for sure not.
: )
JAMES: : )
FLORAL: ANYWAYS speaking about Tavvy’s awful life, I was really happy with how 2/3rds the people responsible for it shaped up this update. Going into it, there were some pre-established scenes I wanted to touch on to hammer out continuity.
FLORAL: I actively sought out to make a point about this line, considering its been in contention since it was posted for contradicting the Epilogues. I love this line, I love it because I always read it as Jake’s assumption of the situation. I touched on this in Update 6, but I love unreliable narrators and I love exploring how characters interpret limited information.
Recognizing these inconsistencies always had the potential to make an interesting point about how both characters saw the relationship and each other.
I’m not going to pretend its a perfect one to one synch up, we are different teams after all, but it was satisfying to finally tie these two ends together.
I was also interested in Jane’s last scene in the prior HS^2.
FLORAL: Jane looks a lot less confident and a little bit sorry in the panel following this line, and that hint of doubt was enough to guide the story to what we see in this scene. I think it’s very human that minor details of situations sink into us and leave these kind of world shaking impressions the longer we sit with them.
FLORAL: If the same scene had played out, but with Jane and her dad, I think she would have called out to him.
FLORAL: I love this part, mostly because it stays very true to Jake’s character. No one is going to give Jake the perfect answer here! He has to choose what to believe in, and that’s dependent on the information he holds already. Not informed by philosophy or therapy speak but what is personally important to Jake. And that’s fucking movies.
I also believe that Jake still considers himself liking “Dinner with Andre” despite falling asleep.
FLORAL: Again I am having a really hard time saying anything about the deeper parts of this update. There was so MUCH that needed to be accomplished, narratively speaking, that trying to summarize it neatly in a couple sentences is making me draw a blank. There was so much love and excitement put into it, since the moment we sat in call and agreed to BGD’s eye reveal. (If you haven’t already, please go look at the Artist Commentary right now and see the process and work Andi put into that moment, those visuals are everything to this update.)
Mostly, I hope people saw the humanity of the characters shine through. They were all childhood best friends and even though they have hurt each other in truly awful ways, that history is fundamental. It’s painful! It offers no simple solutions. But it matters.
Pick a prompt to be the theme for the next Patreon exclusive illustration for August! This illustration will be done by our local team artist and writer Haven, and the focus will be on one of the two moons! Vote on which one you'd like to see!
Haven, Master Of Ceremonies: Hello all, welcome to the 15th Anniversary Update Artist’s Commentary! This one’s kind of loaded, months of work went into this one. I hope you enjoy!
James, Director: Yippee
Chumi, enthusiastic about this update: Hello everyone! Thanks for celebrating Homestuck month with us, I hope you all had a great 4/13! Speaking of 4/13, let’s get to commentating on this update’s art shall we? Getting to see Dirk again in all his smarmy glory was soooo exciting. To be honest, I was hyped for this update to drop for ages. It’s got plot advancements, it’s got some lil’ sneaky hints for the future, it’s got emotional beats that made me feel some things for a big jerk… I hope you guys got hooked and are looking forward to the next update HEHE.
Kim, your best friend: What a month last April was! I feel like I say this every year, but I feel like each and every 4/13 just gets more and more amped up every year. But, y’know what, people were probably feeling especially sentimental this year because it was the 15th anniversary! Got a lot of old fans even crawling out of the woodwork for it too, heheh. But enough sappiness from me, I already got all mushy in the newsletter – onwards to the commentary!
This update is a bit more concise on the panels this time ‘round, but DAMN was each one BANGIN’!!! More beautiful Guardian Mode panels, Rosebot’s new outfit, and not to forget the introduction of GUARDIAN SPRITES!!! Seriously, big props to Haven for spearheading the art for this update! I’ll hand the mic over to him to let him talk about his process.
Haven: Alriiiight!! Okay let’s take it from the top.
Haven: I went and thumbed all of these on call with Miles alongside his initial script.
Chumi: Anime-villain-ass pose.
Haven: Third sketch had his spread going a little wild so I reeled it in just a bit
Kim: Bro ur spine….
Haven: There we go.
Haven: After that sketch I went into shuffling together this background. He’s got everything he needs back here; music, fine color coded literature, color coded drinks, color coded monitors to check on the progress of his color coded pursuers.
Chumi: This room looks sorta comfy actually, especially the cute chair….
Haven: On one of the monitors here you can see a gridded globe of deltritus I based off the drawing from a previous panel.
Haven: Voilà. Also, I switched dirks sandals from zori to geta (but more on that later.)
James: He needs to geta job
Haven: This panel was so fun to do, on the left side there is a monitor tracking meteor landing sites, all blue because they are a long long time from touching ground. I typed out like 30 random coordinates with relevant numbers but they all got shrunk so you can’t even read them.
Kim: Waiting for fans to zoom in and hyper-analyze those four compressed pixels to guess and see what it could possibly mean.
Haven: Goo vats and a variant of The Ecto-Alchemologizer from early Homestuck^2
Haven: Dirk looks directly at the audience for most of this update because he’s mostly talking to us. Anyway, transformation time…
Haven: I initially had this transition more like he was growing into it (also with the armless version of his sprite) but it was a bit off.
James: I like his little tattoo nub
Chumi: I love that it looks like he straightened his back… Posture improvement.
Haven: Luckily Andi then came in with this much snappier version.
Haven: Which I then edited into this!
Andi: Really like the white fade into this, that was a great touch.
Kim: Another subtle detail I particularly love that Haven did with this is how the background proportionally adjusted to them as well. No longer are we Kid Sized… This is a grown-up’s world now!!
Haven: Now the sprite itself. Like I mentioned earlier I swapped out his zori for geta, a little less Kamina and a little more Mugen. They’re drawn bigger in the non-sprite panels than they are on the sprites themselves because I think it looks cool.
Haven: First real version of the Dirk sprite; pants a little too poofy, shirt a little too loose, James said he looked like Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and to top it all off I didn’t even notice I colored his sandals incorrectly (I am colorblind.) Clearly some work was needed.
Kim: I still remember when we were all concepting over this sprite and you literally just found out at that moment you were colorblind. Still shocks me to this very day LOL.
Haven: Kim swooped in and dropped some initial arm art and some thoughtful commentary.
Kim: I almost forgot I added that there LOL. Early on, we were considering whether or not the Guardian sprites should be with or without arms by default. We initially considered armless, cos that was always Homestuck’s odd funny little trademark. Though, with the more proportional Guardian sprites, it might seem a little off lol. Haven came up with the brilliant idea to opt for a nice in between– a single arm approach, mirroring Dad Egbert’s sprite!
For Ult-Dirk, I proposed two “default” arm versions to see how everyone felt. The version on the left, I was initially thinking something sharp and angular like the arms on Bro’s original sprites, but it was a bit too clenched for what we were going for. So, I proposed a more relaxed version alongside as well, as it was more in-tune with Dirk’s overall seemingly composed personality. As you can see, everyone was very pro-arm!
James: There was also a point where he had the original bro sprite arms and it just looked like they were ten feet long.
Haven: oh yeah i almost forgot about this, the bro sprites with arms look fine because of the posing but these are for dirks neutral stance.
Andi: This exploration process made me really look at bros sprite and jesus his arms are fucking long. I think it makes sense to sort of proportion Dirk to be a little different, he does have bro’s likeness of course, but this is Dirk, yknow? He’s gonna have his own unique set of shapes.
Haven: And we end up with our 2nd draft! I was a fan of these, but the hunch... I was told the hunch had to go.
Chumi: Omg the hunch is insane on these.
Andi: It’s weird. Sometimes I like the hunch, and it suits him, but then sometimes it just doesn’t. I flip back and forth, but I do think choosing the straightened posture was a fitting choice.
James: Part of me was a little sad to see it go, because the bad posture always felt a little OG Homestuck. It leaned a little too hard into the old bro sprite. It just wasn’t reading as Dirk. I think there was some point where we joked about giving him a hat, too.
Haven: We continued to cook.
Andi: We felt like Dirk could have a little bit of a chest. I’m sure he’s got muscles, a lean cut. Some of us who are quite passionate about those of herculean nature, we were a little adamant about having that visible, even if a little. LMAOOO
Haven: our victor, our... ultimate dirk.
James: Playing that like, Ultra Instinct stinger in my head right after you said that.
Andi: And it was final, the first adult sprite to be seen in HS:BC. And no better choice than to make Dirk be the one to start the chain. This man is in his late TWENTIES, being a little kid sprite must have felt like being stuck in a peanut shell. Cramped and stuffy. Then he shed it all, gloriously. We finally see the sprite of another iteration of Bro, the younger one who grew up in different circumstances, one who is still just pretentious as ever, donning a shitty anime cape and exuding zero swag whatsoever, but still handsome nonetheless. A minute slay, if you will.
Kim: I also wanted to appreciate– I love the inbetween Haven ended up settling on between the more boxy VS. defined torso! In the progress of this sprite, we were all at a back and forth how much definition these sprites should have. I think it was a good move to make that Homestuck follows a little bit of cartoon design logic where it’s not too detailed, but strong enough simple shapes to get the point across.
Haven: yay
Kim: I love the sunglasses-less version. That man has never seen an unfiltered light of day.
Andi: The dark circles on this man must be an abyss.
Haven: Ok next up we got Terezi, originally I wanted to have the panel having dirk turn around and strike a defensive pose looking more like bro; but I was short on time so I just made him swing around and that didn’t look very good to me so I kept him standing still, trying to ignore her interruption.
Andi: Still in character. I love her impatient tapping.
Concept art of Meat-Terezi by Kim Quach
Haven: Now the Terezi Sprite itself was done to resemble the art of Kim’s updated Terezi design.
Haven: Here’s some warm up sketches i did trying to get a hold on her new look.
James: At some point I hope we bring back the bright red jumpsuit from Terezi’s courtroom drama.
Haven: Terezi’s process went a lot quicker than Dirk’s, with far fewer iterations.
James: I think it's pretty visually interesting how this outfit translated into a Homestuck-style sprite. Homestuck characters are so often… very bottom heavy. I’m not an artist so it is hard for me as a layman to explain this, but the visual shorthand of sprite mode lends itself to flaring outward. Thinner at the inner joints. You don’t see a character's ankles or legs that often. When I originally proposed this outfit change, I had in mind a much more straight legged cut on Terezi’s pants. Much more tailored around the cuff. I think we touched on inspirations for this in the very first artist’s commentary.
But what we get that ultimately feels so much more Homestuck is this sort of Flared, almost Bell Bottom cut. I think visually this feels much more comfortable for the sprites even if as a ‘fit it's a bit crazy to think about.
Kim: They’re chic! I imagine them like stylized flared slacks. I think what’s also nice about the Guardian sprites being more proportionally sized is that it’s easier to design more unique silhouettes for Homestuck designs! When it comes to the usual kid-sized sprites, I always feel it’s a bit odd to make them too detailed– their charm, to me, is being very simple, straight-forward, but strong designs.
Andi: She's soooo cute, no wonder she gets bitches.
Haven: I loved having both #ffffff white blank Dirk next to #000000 black ancestor style Terezi
Kim: You know when there’s shadows shit’s getting serious.
Haven: So menacing... We went through a couple color variants on this but the team settled on black Dirk and grey Terezi.
Haven: bunp (also the only panel where you can see dirks mouth, yes he still has one)
James: how would he eat
Haven: oh shit
Haven: This was initially a single panel reveal of Rose but I felt it would read more coherent if it was: rear shot with dirk in view -> reveal. It also lets everyone see the front and back of the new design immediately.
Haven: also of note is that rose originally had a shorter cape with an opening highlighting her robo-trapezius
Concept art by Kim Quach, Haven, and Andi R.
Haven: ok let’s talk about the rosebot redesign
James: lets fweaking talk about it
Haven: This underwent INTENSE deliberations. A, B, D, E, and H were done by Kim. C, and F by Andi, and G by me (Haven)
Kim: And of course, huge props to Xam for the original Rosebot design! It really gave us a solid base to work off of. The black bodysuit and the pointy shoulders were a MUST HAVE to keep.
Chumi: The side slits on her dress too (smexy)...
James: This was a heated couple of days in the concepting channel. I really pushed for two elements: The return of The Seer Hood and the sort of pointed under-armor sleeves. I will get more into the reasoning of some of that in the writer's commentary.
Concept art by Kim Quach
Kim: The first iteration was actually a fanart I made waaay before I even did anything officially for Beyond Canon. These were simply some inspired drawings I made when I saw some high fashion dresses on Tumblr that I felt would look cool with Rosebot’s other-worldly vibe. Though, now that I look at it, they’re probably a little too high femme for her, but I figured I would throw it in the ring to help as a starting point and stir some ideas.
Concept art by Kim Quach
Kim: This one here is an early version made about the time when us artists were approached to do Beyond Canon again, and one of our first assignments was to rework Rosebot. As you can see, it’s pretty plain! This was an attempt to simplify Rosebot into her most essential design points (with a little bit of inspo from my old drawing) to see how we can add onto it and/or work around it.
Concept art by Andi R.
Andi: When I first did C, I first suggested bringing back the hood starting the chain of designs. I felt like it was important to enhance the seer visual similar to when she first god tiered, I’m glad the rest of the team was on board with that and we made it work. We also fiddled around trying to figure out where to put the aspect. I also thought a matching cloak chain would be interesting, but maybe it was too derivative to Dirk.
James: I was a big fan of the belt chain from F.
Haven: I combined what I liked from B, E, and F into G.
Concept art by Kim Quach
Kim: After 5 million iterations and deliberations– we finally came to our new design of Rosebot! There were so many discussions of what little details to or not to include; what seemed the most essential, what seemed extraneous, etc. I’m really proud of what we all concluded though! Her design is very sleek and fun to draw.
I think what I especially also really like about this new iteration is that it touches upon a bit more into Rose’s personality/interests. It’s more wizard-y, a little mysterious, and looks a bit more like robes and feels other-worldly than just a dress. Enjoy the Rosebots!
Concept sketches by Kim Quach
Haven: Be careful who you call ugly in sprite mode! 😂
Andi: Man, they all look so grown.Haven did a spectacular job capturing the guardian sprite vibes and keeping them in-style and looking good next to each other.. I think it's interesting how Terezi is the second “guardian” sprite troll we’ve seen. The first one being the Condesce.
James: Oh hey look who it is.
Haven: what the hell is that
Haven: onward, alright so here they are looking at what is presumably a member of the species rose constructed for the contest (i like saying presumably even though i know that it is in fact exactly that)
James: could be anything.
Haven: I wanted to frame the shot so that Rose is inside the vat with her creation and visibly uncomfortable at that association.
Andi: What an interesting specimen in the vat there… humanoid appendages are quite different to the usual eldritch slop that Rose was previously littering around Deltritus. Curious.
Haven: everyone reading this should draw what you think the weird shit in the vat looks like
Haven: Looong panel, this was a lot to plot out but very fun.
Chumi: I remember team members were talking about her hip swivel in this pic and if it was too sexy or not HAHA.
Haven: I came into the chat like “Is this too much guys let me know”
Andi: Her smooth sashay…. lets just say, we were fanning ourselves profusely after seeing that. I need a towel.
James: nobody in homestuck should be sexy
Andi: They can and they should.
Kim:completely ignoring everyone else Can I just say I love how Haven drew Rosebot’s hood here. That extra sharpness of the hooks on the side is such (mwah) beautiful shape language. (<-- guy who loves strong silhouette designs)
Haven: Strilonde Cliffside Feelings Jam... by the sunset, a combination of their colors. Purple and orange stars dance overhead, alike in dignity but the arrangement makes them seem as though they’re drifting apart.
Haven: Dirk is making himself small here, legs together, hands in his lap; He’s nervous, afraid that even sitting right next to her he might still be alone.
Chumi: AHHH… THIS IS IT… My favorite part of the update starts here. By the way, is that an Umineko reference I detect?!
Andi: I gotta read umineko already, I need to see the references LOL
Haven: With a single touch he’s reassured.
Haven: Dirk is here vulnerable, cape over him like a blanket, alongside his family. He’s acting out of love and despite everything he hopes they can understand that.
Chumi: This panel was really it for me. I was so excited for this update to be released so the audience could experience it too. Family… Working towards a greater purpose…. He’s doing it for all of them…This moment of vulnerability hits home after getting to see the Big-Villain-Bravado-Dirk. I felt my heart squeeeeze a little the first time I read this.
Andi: At this moment, they feel that they only have each other.
Haven: Here are some bonus sketches and other stuff i didn’t know where to place made during this update's production. In the previous artist's commentary I spoke about how we probably won’t do unique update art for every update but right as we were about to launch this update we were talking about which panel to preview for social media I immediately was like “WAIT... I’ll get something together in like 5 minutes.” I couldn’t help it. I love Homestuck too much. And with that it’s a wrap, I hope you enjoyed!
JAMES, Director: Welcome to the writer’s commentary for April that comes out in May. I was excited for this update to come out for a lot of reasons.
HAVEN, Ready To Rock And Roll: Let’s go.
MILES, locked in: Let’s fucking go.
MILES: I had so, so much fun writing this update. I need to open with that because I’ve spent the last MANY months nervous about this one dropping, on 4/13 no less, but now that it’s out I’m feeling myself. Writing Dirk is challenging; he’s a wordy prick but he’s got a very fun voice that sort of seamlessly fluctuates between jocular aggro machismo and snobby yet self-aware intellectualism. I wanted the first return of the dreaded orange prose to really, really punch, and I’m proud of how this little passage came out. He’s just such a smug asshole, but he’s glad you’re back! And, of course, he’s glad to be back. Let’s get into it.
Also massive shoutout to Haven on the art for this one... everything just looks spectacular.
JAMES: Yeah, just visually stunning. I don’t love saying that about Dirk, but there you have it.
MILES: Dirk, like many of us, is really eager to get the fucking show on the road. He’s excited for what’s to come, as are we! Of course, as Terezi so aptly points out a few lengthy paragraphs later, he also can’t help but grandstand, but who could blame him? He misses us. But first, a little tweak...
MILES: This was just something all of us, Dirk included, felt was necessary for a while now. You can get more on this in the artist’s commentary, so I won’t touch too much on it here, but it’s just so awesome to see the adults rendered in a more guardian-esque style. Our babies are growing up...
JAMES: Making the adults look more like adults was something that we knew we had wanted to do for a while, but it was functionally sort of difficult to pull off. We discussed gradually transitioning to this,or any other number of options but Dirk sort of forcing it on everyone through the narrative was a stroke of genius. And I think it comes naturally to so many characters because they already perceive themselves as adults. But, what about those that are.. Still working on that? What will it be like for them the first time they are in sprite mode, I wonder?
MILES: I loved writing this conversation. I mean I loved writing all of this, but getting to tear into Dirk as everyone’s favorite legislacerator was a treat, especially because she’s totally right. Being the only one who can hear this dude spouting off into the metanarrative has got to be kind of a hassle.
MILES: This conversation was also fun because we got to address a little of the tension that’s been building between these two power players. Terezi sort of got dragged along here on a whim, and as Dirk has so tauntingly pointed out, she’s kind of overwhelmed, caught between two much more active and assertive forces in Dirk and Rose. It’s been pretty clear since the Epilogues that Terezi feels lost and directionless in a lot of ways, so even though it grates it’s easy to see how despite all her misgivings, there is at least some purpose to going along with Dirk and Rose’s designs... but that doesn’t mean she has to like it. Still, she made her recupercoon, and now she has to nestle down into the slop. Or something. Dirk knows it, and it’s part of what makes his taunts/threats/legitimate points here so cutting. She can try to sit out and keep her hands as clean as possible, but this IS happening. No ifs, ands, or buts.
MILES: I LOVE WRITING DIRK AND ROSE TOGETHER!!! Man, oh MAN. These two were MADE to shoot the shit, I swear to god. I’m going to get into this more later, but I really wanted to get across the fact that I think they really must have just fantastic repartee. They’re so alike in a lot of ways that it feels almost a shame that it took Homestuck this long to get them chatting, but that’s fine because it means we get to do it. Haven put it best; Rose is a daring and irreverent nutcase, and Dirk is the improvisational master of yes, and.
MILES: That said, even Rose is getting sick of this Spore Build-A-Bear Bullshit. I touch on it later, but I think that the idea of “motherhood” is super, super loaded for her; having to become the mother to an entire species is a big responsibility and it might kind of wig her out!
MILES: I wanted to really quickly touch on this capital B Bullshit Dirk mentions a couple times. As we all know, he’s got special story powers now. Especially in the absence of other interfering forces such as Al and the presence of many other characters, he’s able to bend reality (or rather, the story, which to these characters is the same thing) with incredible ease... but Dirk IS a details guy. The whole little rant he gets up to here is his way of reminding us all of that. His Bullshit powers are, in a way, his ability to assuage the reader that the nitty gritty isn’t worth our time, just his. He’s self-aware, he knows that getting into every tiny granular detail of everything doesn’t necessarily make the best story, even if he thinks it’s important, and what is he doing all of this for if not to provide us with a good story? This little rant, and his Bullshit indulgences, are his way of compromising between his obsession with detail and the knowledge that the show needs to go on in an exciting way.
MILES: This hurts the Dirk.
MILES: I might have been a bit heavyhanded with it, here, but I wanted to make it clear that Dirk really gives a fuck about how Rose feels, and values her collaboration; the fact that she seems not to want to play with him anymore is not only disappointing to him from a logistical point of view, but from a deeply emotional one. This could have been a home, and what’s more, a home for a guy who is famously guarded and uncomfortable. But without her participation, that prospect loses a lot of its meaning. The seagulls of his childhood, who would have served as some of his only in-person companions back in his first home, out on the sea, no longer have a place here. He plays it sort of cool, here, but you can tell it’s a blow. Also it’s an Umineko reference. He should read Umineko. Maybe he already has?
MILES: This last section of the update really, really matters to me. It’s one of the most touching things I’ve had the opportunity to write, actually, and this starting bit is critical. I feel like I’ve seen a lot of confusion about what exactly is happening here, so I think to be safe I’ll spell some of it out in this commentary, because it’s integral to understanding what might be the single most important point we were trying to make during this update.
Dirk, fearing that Rose is slipping away from him, prepares to pull her forcibly back into the headspace. The keyword here is PREPARE. As in, he hasn’t been actively doing it for some time. His orange text charges up, though, a signal to us that he’s getting ready for a big narrative flex, but right before he bites the bullet and violates Rose’s autonomy, ROSE reaches out. Not ROSEBOT, but ROSE. The orange fades away from his ellipses; he powers down.
MILES: Rose, fundamentally, is a woman of action. She is a breaker, a mover and shaker, a fucking badass concerned first and foremost with getting shit done. She’s many other things as well, but Homestuck pretty strongly implies that she’s most comfortable in the flowstate of doing what’s essential to make sure things turn out alright, even when that gets messy and alienating and brutal. Less room for emotions to muddle up your head and make things uncomfortable if you know there’s a utilitarian purpose to getting something done.
She is so, so much like Dirk in this way. Why do you think he brought her with him? He could have taken anyone, really, and if his goal was just to kidnap someone for villain points there are plenty of other folks he could have kidnapped. Hell, he could have just killed a bunch of people! That’d be fantastic motivation to chase him down, and it’d still give the narrative that kickstarted burst of excitement necessary to get things “back on track” (or at least, back on track according to what it is HE thinks makes a worthy story).
Instead, he brought Rose. The reason, I think, is because she GETS IT. Lest we forget, she’s also the only other person who was fundamentally aware of the fact that there was a metaphysical problem in Homestuck’s universe, a person who knew that if something wasn’t done, if their story wasn’t continued, their entire multiverse risked degradation and annihilation. Dirk absolutely manipulated Rose into coming along, but what’s critical is the only place I think he had to do any really severe over-writing of Rose’s actual beliefs was by manipulating her into thinking Kanaya was okay with her departure. Other than that, the two might as well have already been on the same page. He even says as much in the Epilogues, and why would a guy so fond of telling the gnarly truth to the audience lie?
What I’m getting at here, in a very long-winded way, is that Rose is here largely of her own accord, if not entirely before then certainly now. She’s in this shit to win this shit.
Her affirmation of that in this last bit means the world to Dirk, and recenters him in his purpose.
Just a heads up that patrons should be receiving email notifications when a post is unvaulted, so this type of monthly unvaulting announcement will no longer be made.
HAVEN, Al’s 3rd biggest fan: meats back on the menu!! Production on this one was intense because i was doing the same unwise thing i was doing at the start where i was writing and drawing 2 updates at the same time, luckily Chumi had my back for the front end/end of this.
Chumi, consumer of meats both fancy and not fancy: Meat’s back on the menu! It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?? I know a lot of fans have been waiting to get back to Meat, and it was really encouraging seeing all the enthusiasm! Haven and I were the artists for this update, and I wonder if it was obvious who did which panels. Let’s talk about ‘em!
HAVEN: This update starts with the schooner passing by a pair of binary stars, the ship flying directly in front of the red dwarf to show we’re in Al’s territory now.
HAVEN: Soooo many drawings went into this one, luckily i had chumi’s help for a good chunk of it.
Chumi: Haven did a lot of the more complicated panels PLUS he storyboarded the entire thing. Goddamn!!! Thank you Haven for your hard work 🙂
HAVEN: Just doing my part 🫡
HAVEN: We exit candy with kanaya turning from rose, enter meat with kanaya sleeping alongside her rose. She is not seen wearing the rose for the rest of the update.
Chumi: All of the scraps of fabric on her table are either black, white (symbolizing her mourning) or pink. She’s sleeping on the pink one too… Naya clearly misses her wife.
ANDI: :(... take it easy, naya.
Chumi: The shades have come off!!
ANDI: Lalonde eye moment.
HAVEN: i was like “can i make him take off the glasses for this one” and everyone was like “yeah”
HAVEN: art director KIM helped with the board on this one
Chumi: Replicating Jade’s handwriting took a bit of studying. So many curls!
ANDI: I think you nailed it Chumi! Whenever I saw Jades writing, I just thought… Wow, that is a lot of curls.
HAVEN: this panel came out soooooooooooo good chumi went crazy on it
Chumi: Beautiful, beautiful, unpossessed Meat!Jade! We finally get to see her! And she’s in a new outfit! And she’s playing the flute again! This is one of my favorite panels ever, and I wanted it to be reminiscent of the famous Jade: Squeal like a piglet and fertilize some plants panel. See below.
ANDI: YESS, I remember when you were working on this panel, it felt soooooo homestuck to me when she did this. Very good.
Chumi: Haha yesssss. I stopped the animation and studied it panel by panel to try and recreate the same amount of enthusiastic jumping around. Girl I love you.
James: Yeah, I remember we spent an afternoon in the work chat refining it. I said “add a random one where she flips the other way every now and then” and you got it immediately.
James: Wow this was like literally days after launch. We were all so cheesed.
HAVEN: new outfits means sprites! also the trees in this panel are particularly lovely!
Chumi: Some new sprites! Credit to Haven for making them! I missed you, Jade Harley. Not to knock on Roxy’s ‘jamas and slippies though, they are also very cute!
James: They are cringe actually. Just kidding. I’m just jealous nobody has put my face on any pajamas.
ANDI: Calli x Roxy pajama clothing merch, when?
Chumi: Okay, Jade is talking about something that is a little important to the story, but I want to talk about how cute she looks here. Little bean mouth smile!! Girl I love you. And now… Let’s talk about Jade’s new outfit!!! 🎉🎉🎉
HAVEN: take it away chumi!
Concept art of Meat-Jade designs by Annie “Chumi” Lee
Chumi: When we were talking about a new outfit for Meat!Jade, I produced these concepts with never-before-seen speed. That’s why they look so shitty!!! We wanted to have an outfit that was reminiscent of Jade’s old outfits: casual, cute, and simple!
We all based our concepts on the Three in the Morning Dress + the dress possessed!Jade was previously wearing. However, we didn’t think that Jade would want to keep wearing the same outfit that Al!Cal put her in. Plus, it’s a rather fancy outfit that can get hard to draw. At the time, I was thinking about buying a shirt-dress combo outfit for my own wardrobe. It occurred to me that it would work perfectly for my girl as well: a casual way to wear the Three in the Morning Dress!!! Jade’s new outfit was thus born.
The entire art team contributed concepts of her outfit. We had a whole vote and everything! Let’s check out what could have been…
Concept art of Meat-Jade designs by Andi R.
ANDI: These were also done very quickly, so please don’t mind the shittiness. Anyway yeah! We were trying all kinds of stuff based off that 3 in the morning dress!! So many ways it could go.I think we were also fiddling with the hair on her sprite as well and seeing if it should stay long and messy or not.
Concept art of Meat-Jade designs by Kim Quach
Concept art of Meat-Jade designs by Haven
Concept art of Meat-Jade designs by Haven
Concept art of Meat-Jade designs by Haven
Chumi: We also discussed whether or not we should revert her hair to its normal style, alter it slightly, or keep it as wild as it was during her possession. In the end, we chose to change it back! One of the other ship passengers must have given her a haircut.
ANDI: I think reverting her hair was a great choice as it shows that she is taking control back from her body. I’m also very happy we came to vote for the little hip string with becs face on it, it's just so cute.
James: Part of the reason we voted for this one is because it seemed like something a 20-something would actually wear casually. Another win by local clothes-wearer Chumi.
Concept art of Meat-Roxy and Meat-Calliope designs by Haven
HAVEN: i drew these matching pj’s a long time ago but im still really happy with them
Chumi: These are so cute. The matching pajamas. The faces on the ‘jamas. The character slippers. Both are fully equipped to get some prime-time sleep and forced Jade and Kanaya join them as well. That is frankly unfair because Jade and Naya did not get matching pajamas. Or maybe they just didn’t get a chance to switch into them before getting a face-full of sleeping powder.
James: I keep thinking about this face
Chumi: Thank you to the team and Andi specifically for helping me with the panel transition! I originally envisioned it as a door slowly, sneakily closing, but we decided to speed it up! Here’s the original, which feels a bit painfully slow when compared to the final.
ANDI: Yeah this one was tough because we tried a lot of speeds, a lot of frame cutting and adding. Making sure it reads well and finally I suggested adding a little “Close” blurb to punctuate the door. And I think it helped! It’s little stuff like this that we put attention to.
HAVEN: into the dream world and the return of the bubbles. i love making these photobash type panels, when i was reading homestuck in 8th grade seeing how andrew combined photos with drawings blew my mind. there was a couple years where this was all i’d do in photoshop.
HAVEN: shout out to kim for helping with the boards here and the timing of the animation in the following panels
HAVEN: 3 bubbles here: violet, maroon, and sea foam colored. Not really much to say about them other than that i'm fond of these 3 in particular.
Concept art of panel 587 by Haven
Concept art of panel 587 by Kim
HAVEN: as you can see we went through a lot of versions of this
Chumi: I LOVE THIS SHOT AND ALL OF ITS VARIANTS!!
ANDI: I loved these a lot. I’m happy with the one that was published, it had so much depth and you can feel the dreamy-ness from it.
HAVEN: i think this was the first panel i sketched out for this update
HAVEN: i’m a big fan of mixeling and deliberate use of image degradation so i almost wanted to leave roxy and callie looking like that 3rd photo but with callie facing forward.
HAVEN: the only colored part of the space bg being red leads into the door because unbeknownst to them, they’re being followed by al
HAVEN: once again thanks to kim for these thumbnail edits!
HAVEN: The Home. this agonizing panel. This was kind of a non-negotiable part of this update and what's funny about that is that I wasn't even sure if it would be possible to implement it the way i wanted to all the way down to like the week of the update itself. It’s not even that complex all things considered, it’s just big. But this was the first like “weird panel” I got away with and with it i keep pushing for more non-traditional pages and sections of the comic.
HAVEN: done in a similar style to the illustrations by Shelby Cragg in Act 6 Act 5 of Homestuck, I aimed for a feeling of both nostalgia and shock with this one; and I wanted to trigger vertigo with it. The feeling of scrolling down the massive winding tower like a water slide.
HAVEN: apropos of nothing aren't those flowers at the base lovely? The purple flower on the far left is a particularly gorgeousColor don’t you think?
Chumi: I love how this came out, and how it looks on the site. I really missed page-breaking panels like this one.
ANDI: Legendary.
HAVEN: this panel was completely redrawn but i still really love this callie drawing
HAVEN: big al in the building, went through a number of iterations and i’m really proud of how it came out. The first time we Al radiating with the power she claimed from eating her big bro. The swirling space alongside her wraithlike appearance... like an avatar of the dead. Although she does fight for life; In this way Al is like the Adam Warlock to Dirk’s Thanos, Caliborn is of course the Magus. Is Callie The Goddess then? You guys should read some Jim Starlin comics.
HAVEN: i don't have much to say about these, i just really like drawing al.
HAVEN: the 2 groups split by Al here is an ideological one. Defined, and adjourned just as quickly.
HAVEN: And the nightmare ends, but the dream continues! Bonus update art below, i toyed around with the idea of doing a little sketch for each update post on the main accounts but we decided it might be too much extra work to set a precedent for, though i might continue to do them if i have the time.
Concept art of Meat-Jade designs by Andi R.
Concept art of Meat-Jade designs by Kim Quach
Concept art of Meat-Jade designs by Haven
Concept art of Meat-Jade designs by Haven
Concept art of Meat-Jade designs by Haven
Concept art of Meat-Roxy and Meat-Calliope designs by Haven
HAVEN: once again thanks to kim for these thumbnail edits!
