[J][041213]

Guess who didn’t draw a comic over the weekend?

[D][041213]

I are stallink. Well, crap, life is making me stall. I’m in freaking school, not a full time artist, which is not exactly to my preference, but meh. MEH, I tell you, MEH.

Anyways, I drew five comics over Thanksgiving Break, and that Author’s Note Comic in Arizona, and on Friday, my stockpile runs out. Seriously, I haven’t done any real drawing since Thanksgiving, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten how to draw. Oh fun, this probably means there’ll be a style change or whatnot.

Well, I know what I’m going to draw for next Monday and next Friday, and what the long term plot (Maybe even for the entire thing of 2005) will be. That’ll only be 104 comics, so I’ll see what I can do then. And for any matter, my Domain and hosting runs out in August… whee. Anyhow, I just need to draw… hopefully Christmas break gives me enough time to do FIFTEEN comics, and then I’ll not have to draw anything until February. OMFG.

Alright, whatever, I’m out of time to write more.

[J][041206]

See, D-san goes off on one larger plot-line, and I go off on one smaller one. Now you readers can be doubly confused.

[D][041206]

Buy copies of Starcrossed – Only $6! Email me today! Whee!

Speaking of which, I’ll do gallery updates again real soon. I promise. I have content. Whee.

Anyways, there is no rant. I’m modelling a Beyer Garratt NGG11 in Legos, which is taking huge amounts of my time. The model is essentially done, save a few touch ups and stuff. And I have to work out the damn smoke unit, which is… umm… dysfunctional.

I was GOING to model an NGG16, of which there are more built, I think, but I didn’t really have enough wheels for it, nor did I want to build the blockier tender and boilers… Though the NGG16′s do have more detail to work with…

[D][041211]

I finished the NGG11. I rebuilt my K1, and went through 90% of the material I need for the research thing I have to do. Now I just have to write it. Anyways, back to the Garratt, it’s 52 studs long, about eight bricks high (A stud is shorter than a brick), and takes up approximately 750-1250 pieces. How do I know that latter statement? I guessed.

You know, the really hard part about building these locomotives is the drive base. Getting all the cylinders and the wheels to fit together without excessive friction requires a whole ton of placing, and replacing; shaping and reshaping. The front truck (Considering the drive base is articulated 4-4-4-4, the front truck is the first set of four) went through at least nine variations before I settled on the current design, which involves this wierd SNOT (Studs Not On Top) ing to get the sides of the cylinders to line up and stuff. The second truck went through almost as many changes before I went about duplicating both trucks on the other end. The drive rods were relatively simple to get together.

The front and rear ‘boxes’ are the tender and the water tank. They look the same on the real thing, and they look the same on the model, but they aren’t the same on the model. The tender, after a variation that made it a brick higher than the water tank, was made to hold a couple inches of wire for the unfunctional smoke unit atop the boiler. It is made with gaps so that you can connect another cable out of the tender and into a trailing car which might hold a battery box. That other car looks like crap, so I don’t use it, thus the smoke unit is unfunctional.

the cab and boiler are relatively low compared to the heights of regular production Lego trains. I’m not exactly sure why, but I think it’s because Lego baseplates tend to add that extra plate or two of hight to their locomotives or whatnot. Anyways, it was made, unlike the first cab of the K1 to actually house a minifig. The entire boiler assembly was probably the easiest thing to model here.

Anyways, never did get those galleries up, and I don’t know why I’m wasting time writing stuff nobody will read (I mean, who cares about the technical aspect of this thing?), maybe next time I’ll waste your time with comments on the K1. Alright, good luck to J on finishing his tank engine.

Brickshelf

[J][041204]

Woot. D-san draws seven panels, gets to skip the rant. I like the original dialogue in the “rant-comic” better. D-san, you shouldn’t put yourself down so much. And I do like StarCrossed. Or by “this comics” (comics?), do you mean the “rant-comic”? I liked that one too…

[D][041204]

Today is the day I try to sell more copies of Starcrossed, but I don’t think I’ll sell any because there are too few readers, and even fewer ppl who care to buy an earlier, not as good work. So I’ll tell the story behind Starcrossed, just to make a point to this random rambling.

So, it was even earlier than Arizona of last year that I concieved a storyline for something I could draw, something much longer than any continuous story I had done before, the longest having been less than fifteen pages. So the idea for a science-fiction/mild romance was in my head almost a month before I took the trip to the 2003 Holiday Festival swim meet in Arizona, at ASU.

Whatever the case, we, meaning Dylan and I, two fellow artists, were doing what we dub a ‘drawing session’, when through some course of action, I was motivated to start drawing the first few pages of Starcrossed.