Metazoa

First, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and all that stuff.

Alright, this is sort of old news, but there's some fanart for OMS that can be found here and here. Does it count if Breland is a friend of mine and awesome, or that MihoshiK is some kind of badass for commissioning a piece from jaggyd? I totally like to think it does.

Picked up Monster Hunter 3 the other day, but I haven't had a chance to play it much yet, though what I did play through was pretty neat; I'm still too busy working with New Vegas and being distracted by City of Heroes. I'm also trying to use the time that everyone's on break and there's a lull in tabletop gaming as folks go see their families to get caught up with my buffer. I've been doing two pages a day for this last week. While I haven't gotten back to the buffer I used to have, I'm at least into February with the pages.

I've been reading over Fantasy Craft lately, and it looks like a lot of fun. I was thinking about seeing if I can't take the setting of Ten-Ghost, wind the clock back a couple hundred years, and bang and smash the rules into working and running some local folks through an advencha! or two. I'm totally going to write up a Path of Ether and also use family names and guardian spirits as alignments.

In other news, I've since moved to using three-dimensional models to represent time and plot threads in OMS, since I couldn't make one on paper without it looking like a total mess. Also, after a discussion about gravity, photons, neutrinos (and the dark matter properties thereof), the dual aperture experiment, and quantum cascade lasers, I realize that if the Higgs Boson exists, I owe somebody five bucks. Take that as you will.

Finding Things on the Internets

A time ago (I don't exactly remember how long ago; years, at least four years), I had created a supernatural critter to fill a gap in a World of Darkness game I was running, more specifically to create a single villain with which to plague and creep out my players. I threw what little material I'd crapped out over the course of the weekend up on a geocities site and thought nothing of it (and when geocities faded away, I let it, too, fade away).

I discovered some time later through my deviantart account that at least some people had heard of or read it. This came as a surprise to me, since I had hoped, when I got some time, to tighten it up, discard the elements I didn't like, and get to work on it again, but time got in the way, and more fruitful projects kept lining up (and I don't run or play WoD anymore due to the ridiculous prep time horror games normally require).

Then, this afternoon, a friend sent me a message that he found a forum thread on tvtropes about it, and even a tropes page. Strangely enough, the OP even mentions the presence of paedomorphosis being odd or out there, which I agree with, and was even going to remove at one point, but left it in because I'm eminently lazy. Actually, I agree with nearly all the complaints, interestingly enough, and totally endorse the public gutting of the material.

This on the heels of an e-mail about a review of OMS that's appeared in the Innsmouth Free Press, which you can find here. I haven't read it yet, I'm scared to, but I like to pretend it's probably totally awesome, and I'll read it at some point when I've got myself all mentally prepared for it.

In other news, I've got the ISBN, front matter, and a pdf of the interior contents of Ten-Ghost, and it's all looking excellent. There's maybe a sentence or two I'd like to change, but it's a bit late now, and they're no big deal, really.

Happy Fun Think Time Go

It's not that the Mythos is so often "dumbed down" to be made fun of should be worrisome. It's that the very idea that our modern society can make fun of the idea of an uncaring, nihilistic universe and doesn't have to dumb any part of it down that should be worrisome.

It means we're closer in mindset to the horrible things that lurk in the Mythos than we realize.

Think about this: what do you do as part of your daily life that would be considered impossible, madness-inducing, or cult behavior to someone from the 20s, who'd never heard of a supersonic jet, driven faster than 10 miles an hour, or couldn't even conceive of the notion of m-theory without being driven to fits of disbelief? How many video games, starting with the ever so innocuous A Link to the Past, have taught you to think in four or more dimensions? The very notion of the internet or a flash mob is frightening to contemplate under these circumstances.

Things to think about.

A Wild Narla Appears

Progress on Chapter 11 is a little slow due to scheduling and sick. I am about seven pages in, but would like to have more done (I'd like to be done with it and halfway through 12 by the time this chapter ends, but you can't always get what you want).

Looking for More Material

I've got a bit of a mental disorder; I can't really talk at all to people I don't know unless I'm forced or prompted with a script (my mom used to write scripts for me while I was growing up). Typing is no problem, and I can be outgoing as long as I'm dealing with a written medium and have no one's face on the other end, but that's not what I'm discussing today.

It's faces and posture. Facial expressions and body language literally have no meaning to me at all. I don't know what someone's arm or face or body placement means at all, and in order to do this right, I've got to use reference charts (which, thankfully, I've mostly memorized now; you have no idea how much this has helped me. It's because of my attempts to do art (horribly) that have allowed me to actually go shopping by myself, even if I don't talk to the cashier) to even get a facial expression. Still, I'm entirely guessing on annoyance or surprise or anything like that (and as anyone who's looked at my attempts to draw backgrounds knows, my sense of spacial perception is crazy; my roommate finds it amusing to move things around when I'm not in the living room and watch me try to re-navigate when I come back in. Asshole.).

It's difficult, since I learn expressions and postures by rote and chart, I basically have to learn to redraw a face every time I want someone to have a different expression, which brings me to the real main point.

I have a large amount of physical reference material, but it's limited. I keep trying the exercises I can dig up with tutorials online. Anybody out there have any good ideas for helping me improve?

Call of Cthulhu

Investigator Name: David Andrew Bartlett
Occupation: Artist
Colleges, Degrees: Miskatonic University, BA
Birthplace: Glowbury, MA
Mental Disorders: Dissociative disorder, not otherwise specified
Sex: M Age: 22
STR: 9
DEX: 12
INT: 17
Idea: 85
CON: 8
APP: 11
POW: 18
Luck: 90
SIZ: 10
SAN: 90 (It's a bit lower than this right now)
EDU: 18
Know: 90
Cthulhu Mythos: 00 (It's a bit higher than this right now)
Damage Bonus: none



Accounting 10%
Anthropology 1%
Archaeology 1%
Art: Drawing 60%
Art: Painting 75%
Astronomy 1%
Bargain 5%
Biology 16%
Chemistry 1%
Climb 40%
Computer Use 26%
Conceal 15%
Credit Rating 15%
Cthulhu Mythos 0%
Dodge 48%
Drive Auto 20%
Electrical Repair 40%
Electronics 11%
Fast Talk 60%
First Aid 30%
Geology 16%
Handgun 20%
Hide 10%
History 67%
Jump 25%
Law 5%
Library Use 52%
Listen 25%
Locksmith 1%
Machine Gun 15%
Martial Arts 1%
Mechanical Repair 20%
Medicine 5%
Natural History 26%
Navigate 10%
Occult 5%
Operate Hvy. Machine 1%
Persuade 15%
Pharmacy 1%
Photography 47%
Physics 89%
Psychoanalysis 1%
Psychology 31%
Ride 5%
Rifle 25%
Shotgun 30%
Sneak 10%
Spot Hidden 40%
Submachine Gun 15%
Swim 25%
Throw 25%
Track 10%
Fist/Punch 50%
Head Butt 10%
Kick 25%
Grapple 25%
Hatchet 20%



Call of Cthulhu is by Chaosium Inc.

Goin' Down to Eltdown

The Eltdown Shards are bizarre fragments of seeming pottery found in 1882 and named after Eltdown in southern England, where they were first discovered. These shards date to the early Triassic period. Previously believed to be untranslatable, there have been several "translations" made, such as The Eltdown Shards: A Partial Translation, by Gordon Whitney. There are also a variety of non-collegiate translation, most of which make the rounds among cults.

The translation by Whitney is similar to another text, the Pnakotic Manuscripts, produced by the archaeosapients currently termed Yithians, which describes the planet Yith and the first encounters with the Yekubians. There also appears to be a shard that contains the formula for summoning a being known as the "Warder of Knowledge." It should be noted that the formula for dismissing the Warder is either not present or intentionally damaged. However, the majority of information contained on the shards deals with shoggoths, and may or may not make vague references to some sort of "prime source," which means that it's more likely the shards were inscribed by the Elder Things.

Looky!

A Yog-Sothoth reference in today's comic... maybe. A couple other references to, and some foreshadowing, all in the same panel.

And of course, a DG scenario reference.

My mom contacted me the other day and signed us both up for NaNoWriMo, so I'm having to hold off on Ten-Ghost for a little while to try and set up some back up pages, since I won't be doing any pages this November. I'm even skipping out on going to Michigan for Christmas this year just so I can keep up with this.

Oh yeah, and the Deus ex Machina line is there because it's funny, see, because Shub-Niggurath is

________________

Somebody pointed out a typo in the Oct 06 comic. If it's still there... try refreshing. If that doesn't work, well, sorry about that.

Yeeeessss

As a side note, I would like to apologize for this chapter. I really would. Next one is better, I promise. It's a little difficult to deal with a new character, in addition to having been rushed through that month, so a majority of the art suffered.

David's Parents Are Disbelieving

They wonder why he can't be successful, like his brother, or attend college for a real purpose, like his sister.

I was toying with the idea of her going to the same college, but that's one more character I don't want to have to write for, even though she's the only family member who really tries to care, even if she doesn't understand him. There's obviously a conclusion everything is building up to, and I'm almost one sixth of the way there (another 24 pages and I will be). Even so, it feels monumental, and I keep rearranging later chapters in the hopes that it will make things easier on me.

I've already planted a few clues as to what's going on here and there... and a really big one sometime in early August, so much so that it's almost a spoiler (but I won't tell you which one it is). Rest assured, though, that even if everything looks fine right now, it's just a build up to the inevitable Lovecraft ending. I mean, it is a Lovecraft comic, I should have a Lovecraft ending, right? I think I've even figured out a way to make it seem a little hopeful regardless, though, so there's that.

David is Dangerous With That Logic Stick

Go David. Don't take no shit off dat tsundere wannabe.

It's not like she's an artist named Pickman who paints odd and gaunt figures, with feral features and a strange, almost lupine cast.

She's not the actual tsundere, anyway.

Holy Crap

People are interacting with objects in their environment, it's amazing!

...and also David's eyebrows and epicanthic fold have mysteriously disappeared from his face for a single panel. Now I must dig out that shit and fix it.

Yeeeeeeah

I debated with myself long and hard about how much I want Colette to be in this, considering what I have planned later on (and the spirals into madness once I get all the characters into place and can begin this in earnest). I'm still not entirely sure how I want to approach this; I'm rewriting a bunch of things to include her a little more, notably to make her storyline heavier when it comes up.

Ten-Ghost 2: Burn the Bodies Please is coming along at a leisurely pace. A few things are slower than expected, but everything's falling together much more easily than my last two novels.

Six-Gun Gorgon Dynamo

Inside joke, very obscure. It's funny to all the maybe fifty people who know it.

For the rest of you, the internet is wide open, I'm certain you can figure it out.

I had a bit of a slow week here, and only managed to get eighteen pages of the next chapter finished. I hope to at least get it done before this one runs its course, but I don't know how successful I'll be. I just know that if I start to slip, it will never stop, and I'll never get this thing out one day at a time. If that ever happens, I will still post as often as possible, probably in batches.

Elder Things

Interesting critters, really. Here are a few, mixing qualities of several types of echinoderm. It's interesting Lovecraft chose echinodermata as the basis of his descriptions of them, especially considering Helicoplacus was described as early as 1933, allowing us to determine that the earliest echinoderms appear to be sessile organisms (though, to be fair, At the Mountains of Madness was published in 1931). It's also interesting that he chose the method of movement that he did for such an ungainly critter; I'm having to make minor changes to some things to make them fit our current xenobiological speculative knowledge (which, ironically, has surpassed the expectations of the 30s and of Lovecraft in general), namely, that most life forms we run into are going to move "front forward," by and large being that you want your senses oriented in the direction you're moving.

Here, the elder things will twist and turn, facing any number of directions depending on their current needs, their bodies thick and yet flexible enough to rotate like this, due to their largely aquatic lifestyle. It should be noted that elder things are the most human-like life forms in the universe, aside from beings living in the Dreamla Phase Space.

Chapter 1 Excerpt: Trashing the Ha-ahk-oo (draft)

She came to a mound, a square pyramidal structure with nothing more than a small, one-room hut at the top, decorated with prayer strips and pinned money, the base of the mound scattered with ashes and broken flatware and food scorched into black char. She stomped up the slope, which rose only about seven feet into the air, hoping they were north enough that the door would actually function and south enough that this was a good place to stay the night. She threw the wooden latch open and slipped inside, ducking down almost to crawl due to its size, and was instantly in a room about as square and large as a suburban parlor.

There was simple furniture inside, and the lights were on in the corners, lamps that shone steady, a radio set in the corner, with crystal candlesticks and a corn blanket over the top, showcasing a ring of sculptures that would be more at home in an upper-class dwelling. She heard the gentle hum of music as she entered, some stereotypical drivel borne on strings after a trumpeted opening.

“Oh, well, good afternoon!” someone belted out, his voice distorted as from a speaker.

Her head jerked up to the stairs, eying the man descending the stairs with a critical gaze; his shirt had no symbol on the right shoulder, a blank family guide, but deeds surrounded the empty space, trailing down his sleeve and part of the way toward his neck. He wore suspenders, with loose slacks like a city man. He was some kind of house spirit. His deeds strictly remained confined to homes, protecting them from intrusion, earning money, and fixing broken things. Wondering how to trick it, she pressed her lips together. Taking in a deep breath, she shifted to a cheery voice.

“Hi, honey!” she said, and he cracked a smile.

“Oh, well, hello, Maude!” he replied, and she waved Rules up to the door.

“You're not going to believe this!” she shouted, “I found the boy out wandering with his friends, and he's still on that whole human thing.”

He glowered at Rules as he entered the building, and she fixed a glare on him.

“You're probably going to have to give the boy a good talking-to,” she nodded, approaching the spirit, one hand reaching into her pocket, the other held up to point at him.

He nodded in response, crossing his arms.

“Well, you know how Zachary is," the spirit laughed, "the more I try to talk some sense into him, the further apart we drift. I think we should cut the boy a little slack.”

Ten-Ghost nodded and shoved a handful of dried nettle into the spirit's face, who immediately began to scream and cough. She dumped out her moccasins, spilling sand on the floor, and ordered Rules to do the same, shouting and banging on the walls as she did. The man stumbled back further, screeching and howling, and she pushed the sculptures off the radio top and told Rules to pull off the corn mat and sit on it; she kicked over a coffee table, and shook her pack, rattling the pots and belting out forest songs in a rough voice. He shivered and fell apart into a small crab-thing that resembled a high chair with human arms and a preponderance of rusted feet, the carapace scrawled over with those same deeds, etched in gold.

“Why did you do that?” he howled, opening one large eye with his mandibles.

“I had to assert my dominance,” she said, “I need to sleep here for tonight, and I didn't want to ask you when you have the possibility to say no.”

So Yeah.

Shub-Niggurath.


_______________________


The majority of chapter 6, to me, is actually fairly weak. My dialogue was a little flimsy, and I can really tell I'm still getting used to the medium here. Chapter 7 is actually a little stronger, even if the art is still pretty foul. I'm working on around page nine of chapter 8 right now, and hope to forge even further ahead before seven really gets itself moving. Chapter 6 was necessary to me in order to close a gap, and that's all it really does, is close a storyline gap; the really relevant parts are the reference to Yog-Sothoth and the last couple of pages with Shub-Niggurath emerging from the red-veined oddly-angled stones in the backyard, and the fact that the house used to belong to William Dyer of the Pabodie expedition.

Ten-Ghost 2: Son of Ten-Ghost: Everybody Sick up in This Shit has a full summary and outline, and a first chapter draft that is 50% complete. It's going slow because I have to split my time between Ow, My Sanity, Ten-Ghost 2: Return of the Whiny Doctor, and a boatload of City of Heroes alts, also, trying and failing to do artwork for friends and family. My roommate wants me to do a pair of tiger shark jaws for a tattoo of his, and I don't know if it's a good idea for my art to be on someone's skin for the rest of their life (admittedly, he already has one, a Machinato Vitae symbol I designed).

____________________________

Fresh from one ordeal, spiritual doctor Ten-Ghost wanders the countryside with her adoptive son in tow; after a visit with an old friend and hitching a ride from a forest without a home, she receives a letter. In the town of Hawiya, people are dying of a mysterious illness. Where physical doctors have failed, her contact hopes that she can succeed. But when even she can't pinpoint the cause for the sickness, and when it begins to spread like wildfire, she becomes trapped in the town. Cults and alternative practitioners take advantage of the spreading sickness to blossom, and even Death itself arrives to view the proceedings with detached amusement. Her frustration over an illness she can't solve compounds with the thought of being unable to leave causes Ten-Ghost's psychopathic mandrake instincts to begin to take root. To deal with the plague and protect the people she's been hired to help, she may have to do the most unsavory thing of all: interact with other people.

Updates

I didn't miss an update. I mislabeled a comic, even after double-checking it. Everything should be good tomorrow. I feel horrible, I can't even name my files right...

David Finally Fails a SAN Check

He can't resolve reality when good things happen to him.

Ten-Ghost Part Two

"I, Lucy Alraune Greeble, Finishes the Test Satisfactorily, do hereby solemnly swear, through direct or indirect action, to perform no activity that will harm a patient, to practice to the best of my ability for the good of my patients, to avoid violating the morals of my community, to avoid attempting that which specialists can do better, to keep the good of the patient as my highest priority, outside the interests of vigilantism, monetary concern, community welfare, or conserving economic resources, and to avoid any and all sexual relationships or other inappropriate conduct with my patient and his or her family."




Writing began on the Ten-Ghost sequel today in earnest; I could probably turn this into a trilogy at least, but I don't want to go too far. These things have a habit of turning into bizarre, seemingly overpowered characters, and Ten-Ghost is someone I want to remain a bit neurotic and not much more than she is right now. The story is a rather cliché one nowadays, but I think I can do something new with it, namely in the direction I'm going with it, and the fact that the part that's cliché in the plot is only a vehicle for character development and inner conflict. Basically, the goal is to take something that's normally an outer conflict and turn it into an inner one.

Ten-Ghost/Lucy is very interesting to write, since socially she's about where I was perhaps ten years ago.

Oh, shit, that's right, she will have written a thesis. I'd better get on that.

Finding a House

Finished a novel. Ten-Ghost. Currently in the hands of an agent, maybe something will come of it, maybe not. If not, I'll just buy some ISBNs and publish it my damn self. Working on a sequel, even though it stands alone just fine. I can see it being a trilogy, but that's as far as it goes.

The "Buy Owner" joke is an old one among my mother and I, having figured out a bunch of "code words" a long time ago and spending hours looking at house photos, trying to discern the good ones from the bad ones.

Angel Densetsu & Company

Every time I feel bad about what I'm doing here, I re-read Angel Densetsu. The artist started out rather poor but rapidly jumped in skill, and the story fills me with hope, too.

Imagine using horror manga layout techniques to tell a "normal" high school comedy.

Cover of Book Two

One hundred twenty strips. That's the content of book one.

Book two is starting, and I'm a little afraid. I don't know if I can keep up the pace, I don't know if my writing will stop hiccuping, I don't know if my skill level will get better, I want to challenge myself, but I'm afraid and I'm a creature of habit..

I'm going to keep plowing on through. I think these fears are good things to have. I believe that if I stop questioning myself entirely, I won't ever improve.

Originally I had intended to take a break after each chapter, then after each book, and I realized a bit too late that I did want to take a month-long break before diving in again, but it's not too much of a problem. I'm working on chapter seven right now, since some hiccups in life forced me to lay off the strips for awhile. I think if I pound out about two to three pages a day for the next month, I'll have a good cushion built back up.

The Pancakes

Nancy has eaten the pancakes.

Truly this is our blackest hour.

Thus is Teratoma.



Teratoma is a super hero with the cancer of justice. The original concept was to have her blood be under her conscious control and she was going to carry around needles and cut herself when a fight broke out. It evolved into cancer when I imagined her doing a couple of other things and remembered teratomas, your own personal little cancer clone!

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with her, but I at least slapped her together in Mutants & Masterminds and am using her in a tabletop game...

Friday, May 28, 2010

Chapter 6 is exactly half done; I've lost a lot of time and cushion due to a crisis of faith regarding whether or not I can continue doing this. The answer, of course, is yes. I've already spotted problem areas and areas where I've improved a little since the beginning, but the story is pretty much fully ready to go, even if the scripting process is slower than I'd like it to be.

I've also been trying to ease off a little due to a novel I've almost finished.

Monday, May 24, 2010

The local cell is P-Cell. Primus, Philip... I wonder what the names of the other two members are?

I love writing these guys, even if I still don't have a good handle on the art.

...also, for some reason, tomorrow's comic showed up today. Oh, well. Enjoy it. And its references to Nyarlathotep.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Alright, I finally got the archive and the front page to update, everything should be good now; Thursday and Friday's comics are up to date.

Progress on chapter six is going a little slower than expected, but it should be done before chapter five runs its course. Five is the last chapter in book one, and chapter six is about the acquisition of the ridiculously large magical girlfriend harem animu house. Being Lovecraft country, of course, the house has secrets of its own. Terrible secrets.

Arkham, in Lovecraft country, is disturbingly close to Beverly, and Clark's Corners is between the two. Beverly and Salem are now almost a contiguous urban sprawl, and it makes sense that the neighboring towns continue this trend, especially with the prestigious universities nearby. In this particular "setting," Glaston contains Clark's Corners and Arkham areas with Kingsport. If you head west up Yankee Division, and then get on Aylesbury, you can get to Dunwich (and the Glowbury area) in a matter of a half hour or less, but it's still an old, creepy place. Arkham Asylum has become a tourist attraction (it's "haunted," they say, and had a lot of high profile patients at one point), but the transition to a modern town has made a lot of the region fall into a new, more open and gentle array of people and places. This does not, however, obviate it from still being Arkham, and the transition of Miskatonic University into a branch of Massachusetts University has not obviated its libraries and halls from harboring the strange and unearthly.

Thursday, May 20

Today's comic isn't updating for some reason; I forced an update, but I don't know how long it will be.

Friday, May14 and Monday, May 17

So. Liz is a member of the local cell. Obviously. Originally, this was two characters. I rolled it into one to save space and to make things more interesting.

Tuesday, May 11

In the original script, David replies "that's very Kurt Vonnegut of you," but it's a bit out of character.

F@cking Awesome

I was unaware that there was a long version of this trailer out!

This is full of so much win it's not even funny. Can't wait for this to come out. The last production by the society was just as awesome, and this one is on a much bigger budget, but still filmed in period style.

Tuesday, May 04 (Chapter 4, Page 15)

This is the part of David using logic to deduce that there is probably a conspiracy already after him, and why they haven't moved on him yet.

...sometimes, when something so unreal happens to you that it can't possibly be happening, the only out your mind has is to either convince you it's not happening, or detach itself and coldly rationalize everything.

Wednesday, April 21 (Chapter 4)

WORDS WORDS WORDS

Chapter 4, General Thoughts

One of the things I'm trying to do is challenge myself, largely by drawing figures at angles I don't normally work with, backgrounds every once in awhile (something I typically never do because I am lame like that), and working with a variety of techniques I wouldn't normally try. It's not working out well, and is mostly blatantly obvious. I also find myself subconsciously trying to rest on the strength of my writing a little more often than I'd like, which will be clear in a few pages.

Chapter 4, Page 1

The statues out front and the artist Henry Wilcox are, of course, an unambiguous Call of Cthulhu reference.

The Whateley family is from Dunwich, several miles outside of Glaston. There was an incident down there about seventy years ago and they were run out of town.

Chapter 3, Pages 23-24

Love writing the Deltas. Chapter 5 has a lot more Delta action, and almost a straight week of it. I'm still settling in on their designs.

One thing I've noticed has been massive shift changes in dialogue. The story is all still the same, but pages collapse and expand based on the dialogue I can fit into them.

Chapter 3, Pages 17-22

The exchange here is a little wordy, but less so than her previous rant. You can see now why her forearms are short; she's supposed to perch like a frog.

Chapter 3, Page 16

I like this page.

That is a bat-toad-sloth thing.

Chapter 03, Pages 12-15

The confrontation here was intended to be longer, but I realized a lot of my limitations in compiling many of the panels in this area, and am still working on how to arrange things. Chapter 04 will be much better with this, I promise, with a bumpy road in the middle. One of the major problems I'm running into is that in learning to compile faces much better, I'm still very lacking in the way I do backgrounds; interactions between multiple figures is also something I have a lot of trouble with. That I can get two people on the same page is a miracle in and of itself to me.

Chapter3, Pages 8-11

"Yandere" is a moe term meaning, effectively, "ax-crazy." It refers to a character that will do anything to keep their beloved, including turning a bunch of other potential suitors into frogs to eliminate the ones that aren't who she wants them to be just to make sure there's one less guy in the world that she has to sift through in order to find the right one.

Frog girl has been an interesting experiment. As is perfectly clear in page 9 pan 4, I still haven't quite gotten the hang of her yet (heck, I haven't quite got the hang of Nancy or David at this point).

Originally, the role of frog-girl was restricted to a single chapter. This has been changed; you'll be able to see that in pages 13 and 16, if you haven't already (protip: Land of dreams, Hyperboria, and Mount Voormithadreth are your clues).

Chapter 3, Page 7

First, witness the psycho frog's shape changing scar.

Second: Good god, David's eyes in that last panel are so far apart...

Third! Yes, her arms are stubby on purpose.

Chapter 3, Page 6

I really like this character. I like her so much that I made her a part of the overarching plot, and she was only intended to be a one-off, one chapter deal. She plugged into the plot so easily, however, it was almost like I'd intended for it to happen.

So I'm very happy with that.

Her name in my original notes was "psycho frog/bat girl." She has a new name now.

Chapter 3, Pages 4-5

Those are poorly drawn leopard frogs.

I like David's head in Page 5 Panel 1. It's where I'd like him to be as far as design goes, even though his hair is a little dark in that shot, but it's at night, so that's ok, right?

Side note: I may have to slow the comic down. I'm halfway through chapter 4 right now, but my computer was attacked yesterday morning. It could be another week before I'm able to start the FTP working again, but there's enough strips in the buffer to last until the end of April, at least.

Chapter 3, Page 3

Still very stiff.

Yes, if that puppy were a terrible thing from beyond that possesses no morality.

Chapter 3, Page 2

Oh, hell.

My movements and poses are so stiff.

It's like these people are made of wood.

I try, I really do. I gesture and practice and work and my hand hurts but fuck it. I'll keep going and hope something pings.

Chapter 3, Page 1

The irony in doing a Lovecraftian webcomic is that I want to remain as laconic as possible while still engendering a sense of Lovecraft's atmospheric verbosity. The chapter narration is perhaps my refuge of that, though I've noticed in my scripting that it slowly begins to disappear, but manages, in fits and starts, to continue on. Only future chapters will reveal what becomes of the opening narration.

This is the first actual "episode" chapter, even though the continuity still recognizes its presence and what is mentioned here will have ramifications through the entire story.

That's a free font I picked up from HPLHS, by the way.

Chapter 2, Page 24

Initially, this was going to be a much more busy page, with David setting up a tent and a few more panels with much more dialog, but when I get around to drawing pages, I always shrink my dialogue to far fewer lines, which is good. I don't want to be writing a damn wall of text every two pages, nor do I want to have the reader slog through it.

Chapter 2, Page 23

My structures are terrible; I actually have some interesting issues with the way I remember details that makes it easy to retain place-memory, but few other details. I can, for example, return to and navigate a place I haven't been in years with little difficulty, but even if it's been a few hours and a major structural feature has changed, I react like it's a completely new area.

I decided to draw buildings with the features as I would navigate by as opposed to rendering them more realistically, and I'm still practicing that feature. You'll see it most prominently when I start rendering the campus more in later chapters.

Chapter 2, Page 22

The use of color is sporadic overall; I'm trying to make what color does persist stand out, and I'm still playing with the effect. When Chapter 3 rolls around (which the cover will come around on Tuesday), there will be some more than just green. I'm trying to plan for colors to use for the others when they arrive.

Some plans include:

Nancy: Green
Shub-Niggurath: Red
Narla: Deep Violet
Artifacts: Gold/yellow

At the moment, though, I like the effect.

Chapter 2, Page 21

Spider conchs are awesome. That is all.

Chapter 2, Page 20

Coming up to the end, here. Of the chapter.

Xexanoth and Aforgomon are Clarke Ashton Smith contributions.

I'm having great fun drawing the eyes that show up in the background every so often.

Chapter 2, Page 19

So. I'm terrible at clothes and shoulder motions. That's okay, that's the point of this exercise. Also, necks.

In Call of Cthulhu, it takes one "spell" to summon something, and another to actually bind it, so you have a little while of terrible outer things thrashing and crushing things left and right before you can actually deal with what you've got.

Chapter 2, Page 18

Told you he changes shape. I'm still trying to figure out how to render things reliably, which I am terrible at, mostly because I learn by rote. At least I get the orientation of the triangle pin on his lapel reasonably accurately.

Chapter 2, Page 17

And now the arrival of Mr. Suit. I admit. I really like drawing this guy, even if his design changes dramatically from scene to scene. But then, I'm working with an Unreliable Narrator specifically because I'm using this comic to teach myself both skill and the medium, so it's ok, right?

YOU FORGIVE ME, RIGHT?

RIGHT?

...damn.

Mr. Officer has got to have the world's weirdest neck in this shot.

Chapter 2, Page 16

Well, it's a green triangle. You'll be seeing it a lot.

Also, Primus Cell.

Chapter 4 will get in to why Miskatonic University is no longer officially titled "Miskatonic."

I like Mr. Officer, but I like Mr. Suit better; he'll show up tomorrow.

First Post: Chapter 2, Page 15

http://owmysanity.comicgenesis.com/

In today's comic, I was testing out a crinkle effect on the paper for later use when terrible things are doing terrible things. I'm happy with the effect, but not the colors I used. Expect to see it a few more times until I finally get it right or abandon it altogether. It's on a separate layer, since I didn't feel a need to go about balling up my original scribble. I got a little eraser tool happy, also, but I'm not happy with that effect. Mr. Officer's arm looks like it's going to pop an elbow out of socket.

Below are the two police officers, whom I can only presume are members of the speed trap off the uncanny valley highway exit.