I figure the wall of text expo-speak deserves to be placed in front of a gigantic literal wall. 😉
The writer of the Dawngate Chronicles, as part of Waystone Game's "sharing all of our behind the scenes stuff since the game is being shut down" shared a PDF file with the community that showed his scripts for all of the Dawngate Chronicles strips to date. Reading his scripts and how he described things for his artist really inspired me and I decided to give that a go for myself. Up until now I've worked out the dialogue for each strip on-the-fly from my outlines and the notes I've written down for key story points, but for this one I wrote it out in a proper script format before drawing. It really helped a lot.
Dagnabbit I’m STILL sad about Dawngate. 🙁 not reasonable to expect that that was enough time to get out there…
Ahem! Anyways HOLY SHIZZ INTEGRATION. things have gone to brimstone under the water if we’re talking integration, huh?
Yeah it sucks to lose such a fun game, especially when they were less than a month away from the Progression Patch that would have completely revolutionized the entire structure.
I don’t know if you caught the farewell stream yet, but basically a LOT of the game’s current mechanics were PLACEHOLDERS. If you can handle seeing what could have been, http://www.twitch.tv/waystonegames/c/5502616
They didn’t even give their own game a fair chance! It took LoL TWO YEARS to get a foothold. What makes them think they could get one in less? I realize it costs money to run stuff but dammit EA, you’ve got GOBS!
I may or may not watch later. I’m just really sad. 🙁
I feel ya, I know. I’m trying to keep playing but the gradual slowdown really sucks. 🙁
Coming from the other end—a writer who needs to rely on another artist for the visual end of things—it’s always the words that come first, and then description of what goes with them.
I’m sure it’s because I’m exclusively a writer, but even so I’m always a little surprised when I read that a writer doesn’t have a finished script to start with. I’ve always thought having a completely finished script, end-to-end, was a necessity before I have an artist even draw the first page. In my case, I am never confident that I won’t make a change or run across a worthy plot thread well into the story that needs setup much earlier, but it would be too late if I was “writing on the fly”, since that earlier point would already have passed.
Not that people haven’t been writing sequential fiction as they go for at least a century, and it obviously works well enough, but it also leads to things like TV series where the writers obviously paint themselves into a corner and have to do a reboot or ham-handed course change to get back to where they need to be. I guess it’s my goal to never be the cause of “one of *those* series.”
I have notes on key points and what actions need to be done in an arc, but yeah on a strip-by-strip basis I’ve roughed out both artwork and dialogue in the pencil sketching stage up to now.
Two guys in front of a brick wall, talking. If it’d been Comedy Night at the Improv, the movie of it would’ve cost millions…
I imagine Brown’s inner dialogue sounds something like this:
http://youtu.be/e6h6Rsyyjrk?t=29s
(NSFW language, no pictograms)
Integration? Thats great. But obviously there will be hiccups. I can only imagine vigilante “anti-alien” groups rising up, possibly a war. But that’s obviously not the goal. The goal is having Sarnothi walking around with humans, having hydration stations in public buildings, and general acceptance from both sides of both races.
It wouldn’t be a very fun story if everything went down perfectly, but it could also turn out to be a very sad feels train.
I guess that’s why they’re doing it slowly. After all, Selkie is the test subject, I suppose to see how people react.
Welp thinking she is sick (one of a kind) is one thing, a whole new race might have a different reaction.
Of course, the slower it is, the better it goes (usually)
Integration, yes. It’s always nice to have one’s initial guess confirmed. And the clues to this have been fairly presented; well done, Dave.
Looking forward to the little details: where did the Sarnothi come from, when they got here, how it happened with so little fanfare and notice until now…
“I’ll ignore that” lol XD
Very nicely done. I rather like how Todd, who is by no means stupid, can be extremely dense when not dealing with his areas of expertise.
If integration is the point, why is Selkie the only one in this situation?
And with the bullying, suspension, hospitalization, and now the PTA, what is the status of the project?
Vangelin: …bullying, suspension, hospitalization, and now the PTA, what is the status of the project?
up to the standards of the current public school system, I’d say? :/
*pwnd*
Yeaaaaaah schools suck at this shit
Am I the only one who finds these cigarette smoke trails a bit weirdly solid? It doesn’t stand out TOO much until you get to panel six where it looks like a grey shoestring dangling our of Brown’s nostril.
Pop those smoke trails onto a new layer and make them semi-transparent.
Heck… I’ll do it for you. Let’s see how much time between posts? ^_^/
Done. Smoke spots isolated, raised to a new layer, black outlines removed (don’t need them if we’re doing smoke this way) re-drew the small areas beneath the smoke, and faded the smoke layer to 70%. 12 minutes.
(Direct link in case the html code doesn’t work: http://i.imgur.com/jFoR57K.jpg )
(EDIT: Yeah, it didn’t.)
Hey no fair challenging me to a speed-edit contest when I’m stuck at work. ;D
Nice edit.
Hee hee!
Feel free to use it if you like it. It’s not like I could (or would) claim copyright on your own page. 😛
Y’know it might actually be good for Selkie to know she’s kinda sorta representing her people. Put her on her best behavior, Idunno.
But then it wouldn’t be a real test.
Also, that’s rather a big load to put on a little kid. Her job right now is growing up.
Yeah, the point of this sort of test is to not *have* to try. If you have to, then the test fails.
“Best behavior”
Yep, she was the perfect subject, no knowledge of her past, the orphanage kept in the dark (well, maybe in the dim grey of knowing SOME stuff, but not ALL the stuff) and Pohl had to go and ruin it… Todd will now have to figure out if he’s going to be ABLE to keep the war a secret from her, or if he’s going to tell her outright… THAT’S going to be a HUGE pile of s$%t for Agent Orange to have to clean up… and I’m still betting on there being a hit squad from the Sar’Teri either waiting for them, or have already ransacked their home and left, when they get back from this PTA meeting…
You know it’s astonishing how upon rereading this a year later, our real-life world now shares a significant part of political context with the Selkie universe……