I broke a personal record at work this week. The 74 hours was still 12 hours short of my weekly record. The 1992 miles on the highway blew away my previous record by 500 mi. Despite all this, I managed to get 3 frames done on the 5th page of my buffer on Monday, but was too wasted to do more the rest of the week. The bad thing now, is the boss gave us a heads up that for the next month or so there are going to be weekend jobs coming up. I like my job under normal circumstances, but this is really getting on my nerves. I have a ton of personal stuff I need to be doing and I simply have not the time. Fortunately I have a week long vacation coming up in two weeks where I can hopefully get things done, including significant work on BTS, particularly a color cover for the dead tree version. Aint RL fun? *Grumble*
Enough bitching though. Today I scanned some of the thumbnails I use when I am plotting out the pages. I do these at work between tests so when you hear me saying the "I plotted out 3 pages at work" these are what I am talking about. I have some folks asking me in e-mail how I go about setting the comic up so I thought this would be informative.
Folks should recognize these pages. You will notice I changed some of the layouts at drawing time and the dialogue isnt exactly what I have on the side. But these are the building blocks where I lay out the page and the basic forms before I get to the real art.
Oh and the stuff in the middle is work related. Trying to explain to a grader that if you dont compact the backfill at the base of a pipe it will wash away and form a dirt tunnel underneath until the whole culvert is washed out. Fortunately he listened. Many don't. The later are job security though.
Anyhow., I am toying with Starting Chapter 3 "The Elephant" next week. I have a month of buffer drawn now and I want to get this thing up and running again. And I have to admit, with the Hiatus taking the pressure off, I have been prone to let the comic slide for other things (Been playing Civ III like an addict. I bought it the week I started BTS and have not been able to play it until now). I need the deadline looming to motivate me back to the "Dont do anything else till you get at least a frame done each night" rules I had before work ate my brain. I will make up my mind on this by Sunday. I am not making any promises, but if I have time to get things done, expect a new page next week. If not, I have more buffer stuff availiable.
