Top to bottom: Daedalus bridge, Q1 2008. Castores aft cargo bay, part of the Castores, finished March 2013. Daedalus geometry is from Q1 2004 (not counting the changes and alterations made to the aft section to accommodate thrust gravity in 2008). The Shuttlepod is just below the dashboard in panel one; first real appearance is panel two, asset completed last Wednesday. Semi-rigid spacesuit placement model, last Wednesday/Thursday. Daedalus Cargo bay, March 2014 with first appearance today. ELG-2623.4.21, textured late November 2013 and first posted late January 2014. Daedalus cargo bay kibble (boxes), initially used in the rec area environment, first posted June of 2008. The first full-panel interior shot of the cargo bay also features the cargo ramp/elevator, first seen in The Dualist and modeled in mid 2007. Panel seven is almost entirely new work but some lighting, a texture and the lowered elevator are from the CTL, which first appeared in December of 2007. Panel seven also contains the first appearance of the Daedalus SAS, finalized on the 23rd. And last but certainly not least the rec area, again from early/mid 2008.

The Castores, the Daedalus cargo bay, the shuttlepod and the spacesuit dummies did not exist in February. I managed to keep the comic on schedule while developing these assets so I figure it’s forgivable that things slipped a bit when the whole mess was finally brought together on Friday. I was expecting a CPU-heavy weekend but not for the production schedule to be punted squarely in the groan area. The short of it is always attenuate your damned lights, and if it’s not in the shot and not reflecting light on the shot turn it the hell off. Panels two and three were surprisingly resource intensive renders, and panel seven was about to kick things out of alignment even further when it occurred to me to double-check CTL lights – it turned out that a badly behaved fill light was jacking things up.

So yeah that’s a HELL of a lot of work on the screen, and a good chunk of it will be used extensively in the next chapter of Transitional Voices, so the fact that I just burned roughly six weeks on what’s ultimately going to be a few panels of pacing filler isn’t actually Horrible Amounts Of Soul-Destroying Overkill – it’s getting key elements of the next chapter built now, while I have the opportunity to not skimp on them or otherwise rush them. Though I probably could have skimped on the Skyrim and gotten this thing out on time, had I foreseen the HORRIBLE RENDERING DEADLOCK that all y’all refer to as Friday and Saturday.

Panels two through five are textbook Plot Lighting – Murnau heading into darkness. Plot darkness.

Additional details: Visible in panel three – the pod is locally locked and being run via remote. In panel seven, visible on the full-scale but probably not the webscale – the home port of the Daedalus is listed as Kolg Saerai (referred to as “Kaysoo” by West and members of Thule Garrison).

Next week: FASTER RENDERING INTERIOR SHOTS THAT AREN’T GOING TO GUM UP THE DAMNED SCHEDULE. Also plot.