Plot! Glorious, glorious plot. Also pacing – this page feels a little odd solo but blends well with Air 23, which was drawn along with this one and is now ready for shading. ALSO ORANGE. ALL THE COLORS OF THE ORANGEBOW. Earth tones in SPAAAACE!.

This the halfway point of the chapter. It’s downhill from here – the book is now 5/8 complete! :D

So yeah after weeks of slogging on assets hauling off and kicking the schedule in the groan last week, this week is On Time (day of) and hopefully this coming week I’ll be able to start rebuilding the buffer. That needs to happen for reasons I’ll probably get into next week. In the meantime it’s been an emotionally lopsided day and it’s taken me something like forty minutes to type two short paragraphs so I think I’m gonna take the rest of the night off.

Oh, and the compartment between the cargo transfer lock and the rec area isn’t technically an airlock, though it’s being used as one – the Daedalus air supply is wired in such a way that any compartment with two or more doors can work as an airlock if needed. This allows for the cargo elevator to stay down and saves a bit of modeling time. The compartment was modeled in 2008 along with the CTL and contains no new geometry. For this scene the glass opacity has been dropped and there’s a clear line of sight into the compartment.

In other news, Lost Alpha is the best S.T.A.L.K.E.R. since S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. Possibly the best S.T.A.L.K.E.R. since Stalker. It’s also totally free and doesn’t require the original game to play so if you have a Wintendo there’s no reason not to at least check it out. So far so good, and since its release last weekend the only release on my wishlist is the as-yet unannounced Fallout 4. Shadow of Chernobyl is probably my favorite game ever and Lost Alpha improves on it. I’m enjoying it, even if I’m not exactly immersed in it – the PC has been plodding away on background renders for most of the week and today is no exception.

Next week: More plot! And some character development!