I probably should not have so enjoyed making this page.
But I did. So long, Greta and Mordecai. You deserved each other.
The invaders thought they were clever making their portal immovable, huh.
Somehow the bit in "The Secret of NIMH" where the owl tells Mrs. Brisby to move her house "to the lee of the stone" might have inspired me here.
Black-out panels are nice because they cut down on my drawing time.
I'm not really happy with how that nebula turned out, though. Next time I paint it I hope to do better.
Another page of people just talking. So I try to make it more interesting with varied camera angles. This is more difficult than it should be, although I think the tweaks I did at the middle stages improved things.
2023-06-14 23:02:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Albert Montoya, and more than a million other people, are avenged.
This is one of the longest set-up to pay-off sub-plots I've ever written.
That's the problem with those new-fangled personal Miyagi shields. They burn up juice like crazy and then you're screwed.
2023-05-08 19:35:12 +0000 UTC View Post
Y'all are so quiet I'd forgotten I needed to upload more procedural art. So, here is page 43. Sorting out how to portray the "Zinger" blasts and shields took most of my time.
2023-05-05 03:09:17 +0000 UTC View Post
This page really blew my schedule, but only part about the extensive use of Clip Studio materials. It was mainly that scene in Panel 3 with all the extra characters. (The waitress being rudely knocked aside was modeled on my late wife, EJ, whose loving memory will be with me as long as I'm alive.)
2023-03-22 14:40:16 +0000 UTC View Post
(oops, forgot to post this before the page 41 art)
In which the hunters meet their quarry, and Li gets shot.
William doesn't have any combat experience and it shows.
Also in this and some subsequent pages I spent more time with lighting and other "effects" work than I did drawing the lines.
I'm planning another crowdfunding campaign later this year (not This Means War Part 3, that won't be complete until next year) and have been wondering whether to run it on Indiegogo or Kickstarter. Each platform has advantages and disadvantages. So I thought I'd ask those who are already supporters of QUANTUM VIBE: which platform do you favor?
I might have made the town exterior scenes a bit too dark. Especially as ink-spread will make them look darker in the print version. But I've set things up so I can lighten the dark a bit if need be.
I did do a fair amount of copy-paste of the pencils and inks for panels 2-4. Well, actually a lot of copy-pasting. But it helps the comedic effect when rodent-munching William pops up in panel 4.
2023-02-03 22:06:25 +0000 UTC View Post
Another cool feature of Clip Studio Paint are brushes to lay-in "trees" and "foliage". The brushes are single-color so I paint-in the darker colors first and then the lighter colors on top. (Except when I forget or decide I need a darker under-coat but then I just set the "ink-style" to "background" and it paints underneat whatever I ha... 2023-01-26 06:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Catching up a bit ...
Here I'm taking more advantage of Clip Studio Paint's cool "materials" feature, quickly placing pre-rendered clouds in the sky for the landing panel. It doesn't have a similar feature for placing clouds as seen from space, unfortunately.
And back to the Pillars' meeting room, which is the closest thing to "home" Alyss has at this point.
2023-01-06 23:36:36 +0000 UTC View PostAs per usual, QUANTUM VIBE will be taking a week off at the end of 2022. Updates will resume January 2, 2023.
Unfortunately I've fallen a bit behind schedule on Not-Safe.Space. I could upload a page today (Dec. 24) but posting NSFW art the day before Christmas seems wrong to me. So, the next page of Not-Safe.Space will go up Thursday, Dec...
A lot of detail in the last two panels. This page took an extra day despite essentially re-using the last panel of page 33 (with minor changes) in the first panel of this one.
2022-12-22 18:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Pencils, Inks, Flats, tones, and effects.
Alyss' face in Panel 5 took a lot longer to finish than I anticipated. I was going for "dangerous" and kept getting "ugly" until I figured out how to soften her Dangerous Face. You can see the final alteration comparing the pencils to the inks.
To make up for the slower output and not uploading any QV content for Patreon the last couple of months, I present this four-parter for page 32. Pencil roughs, inks, color flats, tones and some effects.
2022-12-11 02:38:54 +0000 UTC View PostI'm behind schedule on updates, and I apologize. I've been battling some kind of flu bug these past couple of weeks. My temperature fluctuates, some days I feel fine others I have no energy. I just now finished the last update of Not-Safe.Space while running a 100-degree temperature. Future updates this month will be late as well.
I'm hopi...
2022-12-10 06:07:59 +0000 UTC View Post
From Clip Studio Paint's "record" feature. Which I remembered to start after I'd half-inked the first panel.
This page might be of interest because it uses a lot of layers. The background of Panel 1 was drawn in-full, without any of the characters or debris, then copied to panels 2 and 3. Saved me a butt-load of time.
Normally I'll ...
2022-10-27 11:51:52 +0000 UTC View Post
This is an updated version of the map that has appeared a few times in this strip, the first being Volume 5, the Château Perilleux arc. It shows the areas fully controlled by the IGC invaders in the early days of Part 3. The yellow areas are not fully under heel but assaults are happening in most of them as the invaders choose their various tar...
2022-09-26 03:39:52 +0000 UTC View Post
(Actually panel 4 not 9)
Another procedural video that I thought might be interesting to view.
I know I haven't posted much here lately as I've been a bit time-crunched between the last crowdfunding campaign and launching the second strip, but I'll strive to do better.
Note to all:
I have created new tiers for supporting the Not-Safe.Space content but the story doesn't launch until July 14 so you won't see anything. You can select one now if you like so you're paid-up for July but be advised the Not-Safe content doesn't start until July 14.
2022-06-24 01:01:29 +0000 UTC View Post
A straight time-lapse from my Clip Studio Paint inking and coloring.
No text commentary this time, but if some detail interests you, you can pause or slow the playback speed.
The NSFW spin-off to QUANTUM VIBE will launch right here on Patreon, in July. Probably late July. When I'm closer to being ready I'll set a firm date (probably a Thursday for a weekly update) and this premium content will be available to backers at new tier levels TBD. (I'll have that number settled in another week or so.)
NOT-SAFE will p...
Pages 3 and 4 featuring some aerial combat were a bit complicated to generate, so I thought a quick run-through of how these were assembled might be of interest.
1. In Photoshop, lay in the dialog on a template.
2. Rough pencils of the characters and action.
3. Inks on primary layer.
4. Inks on Segundo Azul and holoca...
