Two pictures today, an early sketch of Diana, and one of Phoebe that's been colorized.

Here's Diana, although I got somewhat better at drwing her hair.  Sharp-eyed readers might notice faint vertical lines marring the drawing.  (They showed up better before I compressed the picture for the web.)  That's because I do a lot of my sketches on the backs of pieces of paper I print out at work.  Reuising is recycling, after all.  I cut the paper in half to make it fit neatly in my workspace, which doesn't leave a lot of room for big sketches, but it's good for thumbnails and just playing around.




And here's Phoebe, who actually has arms in the comic, but does not yet appear in color.  We're still working on a way to do color that doesn't take too long.  I'm a really slow artist with a full time job, and I don't want to spend every spare moment working on the comic, so we're limited in what we can do.

Diana and Phoebe originated as WitchCraft characters (further verifying that Eden Studios owns my soul), and were originally identical tiwns.  They became fraternal twins for the comic because that would make it easier to tell them apart.  That also meant I could make Phoebe brighter and more flamboyant, and Diana darker and more somber, in keeping with their respective personalities.

Okay, time for some more preview artwork.

That's the gas station I posted a map of earlier.  The maps even came in a little handy.

Beginning in February (2/01/07, at 12:01 AM Eastern Time, I believe, but don't quote me on that) I will be providing artwork for another web comic - one significantly different from David's Nearly Adequate Web Comic.  Don't worry, though.  Nothing will interfere with the rigid schedule of updates I'm currently maintaining for DNAWC.

The new comic is called Domino Girls, and you can check it out at dominogirls.lisahartjes.com

Domino Girls is a modern occult story about a twin sisters who travel the country, playing jazz and blues and fighting monsters.

Here's an early peek at some of the art.  I'll post more later.

Here's stirp 5, still in boring old pen and ink.  I tried digital inking, but I still have some kinks to work out.

Chris really wears a tiger T-shirt fairly often, but it's drawn better than that one.  And he's had a haircut fairly recently, so in real life his hair isn't quite so wild.  Mine is just about exactly as depicted.

Here's another new section I'll update from time to time as the mood strikes me, collecting spells I've created for the Buffy Sorcery system.

Protective Bio-Coating

PL: 4
Quick Cast: No
Requirements: A blend of various chemiclals that are frighteningly easy to find, refined through a process that takes several hours.  The budding mad scientist doesn't have to be present for the whole brewing time, but what he does have to do takes about an hour.

Effect: The end result of this process is a lab that smells vaguely of sulpher and blueberries and a half-liter of blue goop with a texture not unlike runny geletin.  If you pour the goop onto an organic object, it will ooze forward and cover the entire object, up to something about person-sized.  Then, in about thirty very itchy seconds, it will "set" into a flexible coating like thick body-paint.  The person inside can move, speak, and breathe normally.  He just looks like a member of the Blue Man Group.  But it's probably worth it.  For 1 hour per SL on the Occultism test (or Science, if you swing that way), he has an armor value of 10 and a "buffer" of 100 Life Points.  Any damage he takes comes from these life points before it reaches him.  Once they're all gone, the blue coating dries up and flakes off.

The Protective Bio-Coating isn't going to turn you into superman.  It only protects against physical damage.  Fire, electricity, and psychic mind bolts will all still hurt someone wearing one.  It also gives some people hives, and extensive use has been linked to cancer in laboratory animals.

Breakdown
Casting Time: Lengthy -1
Scope: Noticable 1
Duration: Long (1 hr/SL) 1
Effect: Major 3

This spell is tailor-made for a budding Superscientist to make Assemblages out of.  I would be slightly hesitant to use it because there's nothing stopping him from brewing up enough for the whole group.  A pretty easy modification is to make the spell take Way Rare Ingredients, requiring some item of which the group has only one.  That'll keep him in line, most likely.  That drops the PL way down, too, which is good since Superscientists don't get a Sorcery bonus to their spellcasting tests.

Firespeaking

PL: 3
Quick Cast: yes
Scope: Noticeable
Duration: Long (1 hr/SL)

Requirements: Both the caster and the recipient(s) must be near a flame. If the caster is a Sorcerer, he just needs to concentrate on the people (up to 5 or so) he wishes to speak with. Normal casters need to chant and trace mystical symbols over the flame for a few minutes.

Effect: Firespeaking is a simple communication spell. When successfully cast, it creates a mystical connection between two (or more) flames. The caster can see and hear the person or persons he wishes to speak with, so long as they're close enough to a flame that he could hear them whisper. (Think of the flame as being the handset of a phone). The recipient can also see and hear the caster. If the caster chooses multiple recipients, they cannot see and hear each other unless they are using the same flame.

The spell lasts for several hours, or until the caster dismisses it (by putting out the flame, or just by concentrating if he's a Sorcerer).

This spell is useful, but limited. You can only Firespeak with people you have personally met well enough to remember. The image is limited to the flames. A candle doesn't leave much room for detail. Also, only the original recipients can see the image. Others just see shadowy shapes in the flames and hear murmering. Also, you can only have one Firespeaking going on at a time. If a second caster tries to contact you, he displaces the first one in a shower of sparks and a flare of light.

Despite its limitations, this remains a popular spell. Young enchanters make decent money preparing torches so that non-magicians can easily activate the spell to talk to distant friends, business partners, or relations.

If all has gone well, the Cinematic Unisystem Enchanted/Superscience Items section now has a new entry, "The Caster Pistol."  Yes, I liked Outlaw Star.  Thanks for asking.  I don't love you all enough to go catalog all the different shell types, though.  If someone else has a catalog of them, I'd be glad to see it, and I'd write them up.

As I threatened... er... promised... er... implied, DNAWC has updated.  Issue 4 was done with a dip pin and ink, rather than a sharpie marker.  I also had a lot more fun with the fonts.  In retrospect, it would have looked better if I'd carefully cut the bottom left caption so it was blocked by the contours of the drafting table, but that lies far beyond my feeble Photoshop skills.  Right now, about all I can do is clean up a stray line here or there and do the lettering.

There will almost certainly be a 5th installment.  I have a wacom tablet I haven't used much.  Learning to ink digitally seems like a good idea, so my plan is to draw it in pencil, scan the pencils, and ink over them with the tablet.  And if that doesn't work out, I'll go back to pen and ink. :)

This isn't my only web comic.  I'm working, slowly, on a more serious one with my friend, Lisa Hartjes.  When we've got the first issue done (about 12 more pages, I think) we'll start posting.  In the meantime, I may decide to post some of the artwork for that here.

I should really put up some new gaming content one of these days.  The thing is, I've used up most of the old stuff, and nothing has really grabbed my attention for new stuff.  Still, I can't very well be a rogue game writer if I don't write any game stuff, so I should try to dig up something.

See y'all later.

Victory was actually mine five days ago, at 10:45 PM central time.  I finished the first draft of my NaNo.  I'd technically "won" two days earlier by breaking 50,000 words, but I didn't consider the job finished until I got to the end of the story.

Now I'm letting it sit for a while before I decide what to do with it.  I think it's a decent beginning of a book, but it needs a lot of work.

In the meantime, I'm not sure what I'm doing next.  Probably just focusing on the very slowly progressing webcomic I'm working on with Lisa.

I'll try to come up for something to amuse my legions of fans before too long, though.