[080617]

Man, this is actually late. You totally forget about the days when there is no school. I was actually about to hit the sack before I remembered… ho fuck, it’s Monday. Or rather, Tuesday as of 41 minutes ago, PST. Today’s comic reverts back to good old fashioned pencil and paper. For great justice, really. That digital stuff… yeesh. Comics are done up through 486. Still sixteen ahead as of now, but they’ve been going really slowly as of late.

Anyways, last week I built a table I’d been meaning to build for a while now. I was fed up with the small surface area of the small folding table I was using in my room as well as with the inefficient use of the space underneath the table. So way back in like May I decided I was going to build one myself. Just so I could make it exactly the way I wanted it to be made. The only to do that seems to be DIY these days… whether it be computers or furniture or whatever…

So I went down to good old Home Depot and bought some wood (I’m really glad they cut it for us, I would probably be significantly less accurate with my circular saw) and some other little tidbits and brought the lot home. I had a really simple design layed out for this thing involving only 10 piece of wood: 6 four-by-twos and 4 four-by-fours and thus I was somewhat concerned that it wouldn’t be very sturdy, especially once I felt how heavy some of the wood was.

My requirement was that the table have casters (for some semblance of portability) and that it be able to support more than my weight and ultimately it did both. A lot better than I expected for that matter. Construction took barely an hour and a half and it took another hour to slowly move the thing downstairs. The completed table is 68 x 24 x 32 inches. And here is a picture [100614: Dead link].

The new table replaces the one centered in this picture. Since it’s 32 inches tall, it lines up perfectly with the sill that my monitor stands on. However, that means I really need a new chair, since those folding chairs are already a bit short for a “standard” 30 inch table. I’ve been wanting a rolling chair in this room for a while now…

This is the (and I just thought of this name – it’s epic!) Ebon Magician Curran – or what’s left of the original draft before I dismantle the superstructure completely [100614: Dead link]. Justin and I are planning to attend the next Baylug meeting (this Sunday) and I am thus trying to rush a new MOC into life without much success. The Curran, at the moment, seems to be falling into the same pitfall as my last large ship, the Sakurazaki.

Somehow these proto-modular ships have this tendancy to become extremely bulky. I was originally trying to get RID of some bulkiness by doing away with the modular aspect of my earlier ships, but it seems to have failed for larger ships. My one success (of three now) has been this ship (she should be the Pikeru now that I come to think of it XD) which I think is really slim for her size [100614: Dead link]. We need moar like that one and we are unfortunately not getting it.

The real pinnacle of the modular system (in my book) has been the now deceased (sacrifced for the son of a Curran no less!) Tsuruka. For the most part Tsuruka verifies my thoughts that the modular system works best for smaller ships; much larger modular incarnations, Narusegawa, Kagurazaka, Aoyama, and even the failed Sakurazaki to an extend have been extremely fragile and largely ungainly. Even the Tsuruka – especially the cargo module – was such to a degree.

Hopefully the next incarnation of the Curran will bear some fruit. That’s all for now.

[6/10/2008] Ah, late again (where’s Derek’s update? EDIT: He forgot. I did it for him). Anyway, I decided to include a full-body shot of Grav this time to further stave off confusion. (Great word, “stave”. I’m probably using it wrong.) In this shot, you can clearly see the third leg, and why the pleated skirt is absolutely necessary, as I mentioned last time. If she stood up fully, she’d probably be really tall. You’ll probably see her pull more cool tricks with the legs in future comics.

By the way, this time’s comic is sort of a reference to the fourth-ever Nonsense Wars update. And also to all those “D-san Presents!” comics.

Aah, Grav. So fun, yet so complex, to draw…

[6/3/2008] First off, to cut off any confusion, Grav has a third robotic leg in the back, which is why she’s stable in panel 3. We’ll see more of it in later comics.

As I mentioned last time, Nonsense Wars has a shortage of “normal” female characters. Even in D’s half! (Granted, he’s got that glasses-girl in the latest comics, but I’m not sure if she’s going to be a recurring character.) In my half, at least, this is probably due to my weird tastes. I’m not sure about D, but I think his tastes are more normal than mine.

At any rate, the usual way to deptict non-normality is with the ears, as the resulting character winds up still looking relatively normal and can be drawn in a fairly straightforward fashion. Chikara, Aerith, the Lesser Demon (lower left of panel 1 here), and Cachiera follow this pattern. Come to think of it, the Lesser Demon’s Co-worker and Unit 518 also follow this pattern to an extent. Even “Golem-chan” gets stuck with this trope.

One of the fun things with Grav (who does not use the “different ears” gimmick) is that from certain angles she looks pretty normal (as in panel 2 of today’s comic). (D thinks’s she’s lower down on the “weirdness scale” than 518 is, and I suppose that makes sense.) Making up for this, of course, are various other headaches I get to deal with whenever I want to draw Grav. First off, I’ve only got a tenuous grasp of how Grav’s hairstyle works, so I’m pretty sure I’ve screwed it up already. Second off, the nature of Grav’s legs basically demand a pleated skirt (how else are you going to get the flexibility?), which is one of the many things I have trouble drawing. Add this to the fact that the faceplate makes for interesting angle shots, and, well, yeah.

Oh, how I torment myself.