Grrl Power #1017 – Nants ingonyama!
I’m not pleased with how this page turned out, because it’s mostly backgrounds, and I’m disappointed with my results. Backgrounds take so much longer to draw than I ever allocate. The Alari ship is barely just past the draft stage. I needed to put another ten hours into making it look like a hive of activity and showing how it’s expanding. Actually, right now it looks like a Level 1 structure in a RTS game, and someone just hit the button to upgrade it to Level 2.
And the Galytn city… well, it’s pretty basic looking. I didn’t want to make it look like Wakanda, Galytn isn’t that far along, but I wanted to make it look like a city that’s had a ton of new infrastructure put into it. Honestly I wouldn’t have minded something closer to Gaia City from Appleseed, but really that’s far too advanced as well. Still, a few buildings with curved metal roofs that collect or reflect the sun or buildings with rooftop gardens would have been nice. I just sat down to draw the city and started putting in some basic looking buildings, and that took so long I had to start moving on to other stuff.
Clip Studio Paint (and a lot of other drawing programs these days) has perspective rulers you can set up to keep your background from looking like it’s been hit with an acid trip warp effect, but the limitation of those guides is that they don’t have anyway to handle things like arches or 45 degree architecture, like rooftops or rafters or flying buttresses. What that means is you have to turn the rulers on and off about 2,000 times while drawing the average background.
There are ways to do perspective correct curves and angles, but it honestly requires a fuckton of intermediate measurements and is not a terribly fast process. It makes me appreciate artists that do amazing backgrounds. Not landscapes. Those are easy. Relatively speaking. There’s still a ton of skill involved, just less fiddly measurements.
Update: My wife pointed out that chasing nyquil with a tumbler full of Goldschlager* might not be the best idea, so I ditched the booze plan but somehow wound up getting a pretty decent night’s sleep. I think all the previous insomnia caught up with me. Anyway, I woke up this morning feeling pretty good. I’m not 100%, but I think I’m over the hump. Took about 5 days to get there. Hopefully I’m on the mend and this isn’t just a temporary boost because I’m well rested, but we’ll see.
*Yeah, Goldschlager. I’m not a whiskey guy or scotch or whatever else, I like drinks that taste good. Actually, my favorite drink currently is Dr. McGillicuddy’s Apple Pie Liqueur, but Goldschlager has twice the booze which makes it better for getting knocked out.
So, I’ve got Covid (probably Omicron). Not because I’m some dumbass anti-vaxxer, but just because we have a high-schooler in the house who managed to go a whole year without bringing anything back with him, but there’s like 2,000 kids in the school, so it was basically inevitable. I got my shots, but never got around to the booster, and so far it’s like a pretty mild case of the flu, although one point on my side is starting to get awfully sore from all the coughing. Except, I seem to be having some fairly weapons grade insomnia, and my energy and attention is suffering for it so. Sometime it takes me 5 days to draw 2 comic pages, this week it took seven. Haven’t even started on the nudie pinup yet this month. Well, actually each time I sit down to do one, I spend half a day drawing and discarding ideas, so I probably have some half-finished pencils I can dredge up and polish. But I’ll probably start a new one, hopefully keep it to a single character this time.
I’m so tired.
Melatonin fucks up my blood pressure and also I basically can’t wake up until about noon the next day, so I’m going to try the time-proven method of drinking a bunch of booze. Wish me luck! Skål!
BTW, if you are a dumbass anti-vaxxer, DO NOT POST ABOUT IT HERE. I will ban you from commenting forever. On the plus side, you will have more time to go and Darwin yourself out of our gene pool, thereby reducing your drag factor on the rest of humanity.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update: Getting Proofed!
Two chapters left to proof. I’m going to work on it after I post this page, but I’m so tired. We’ll see how far I make it.
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Joker would be proud of that grin.
Honestly, I can’t decide if Joker would approve of and applaud Lorlara’s self-honesty & genuineness, or find her too annoying to live, or both. But in any case, it’s still 2:1 he murders her.
He might try. Deus would protect her. Not because he’s madly in love with her or anything like that. Simply because she’s one of his people.
That’s how you achieve the kind of loyalty that Deus commands from his people. As Frank Herbert put it, “you buy loyalty with loyalty.” (or as Fontaine put it in “Bioshock,” “You don’t gotta build a city to make a chump love you, you just gotta make him think he’s worth a damn.”)
+1 for quoting Bioshock.
Fontaine didn’t give a flying f*ck about others (hence the ‘chump’) but with Deus i actually get the feeling that he does care to an extent. Maybe that’s just how convincing he is?
For SmugD, ‘caring’ for people is just a means to an end (the sooner it’s his end the better of course), just like a meat farmer ‘caring’ for his cow, right up until the ‘beloved’ cow gets sold to the abattoir
I have faith that one day, G will come around and realize their distrust of the paragon of humanity is horribly misplaced. And on that day, G will take back all this scurrilous libel and surely repent.
(all praise Deus amen)
Same to you Pander :P
When I was a kid, we had a couple of lost lambs wandering around the yard and garden. They’d come when called by either name, “Lunch” or “Dinner”. I came home on term holidays and “Lunch” was missing. Seems he made a really good roast. I also missed out on “Dinner” :(
Joker’d be jealous of that grin.
3:1
I for one appreciate Lorlara. At first I was thinking she may just be a one trick pony, but I’m getting the impression she can be expanded on character-wise. She’s waaaaay too into her new job, to a degree of hilarity. Still, if I had to point out every quirk from every character in the Grrrl-verse, no one would get a pass. Keep up the good work!
Lor is a Pander-insert, right?
No. Lorlana is far more lucky than I can ever be, because she gets to work with the paragon of humanity and savior of all, the most esteemed and gifted among us, Deus. All praise Deus amen.
I always picture Pander as Laura Raith. especially in the pantsuit. I kinda doubt Lor in a pander insert. Pander isn’t that enthusiastic. (fortunately for both of us)
unrelated joke:
A priest, a pastor and a rabbit walk in to a blood donation clinic
The nurse asked the rabbit, What’s your blood type?” “I’m probably a type-O” said the rabbit.
can’t think of why this seems appropriate here….
That brilliant joke removes one pun from your ledger, congratulations. :)
I will endeavor to put it back.
Seems ya missed the opportunity to call her a Drow. All kinds of Dungeons and Dragons references there.
But on the other hand, all kinds of D&D-related preconceptions to get in the way of the actual character of the Alari. Plus, of course, the inevitable disapproval of the Crows for mis-describing the Firstborn as if they were Elves.
Shout out to Kenya’s big floppy shade hat, looks stylish and practical.
Yes, she’s shown before to have a good sense of fashion, combined with an eye for being practical. Though I wonder if she will ever succeed in her atempts to get Max to appreciate style as well as practicality.
She just needs to work on the ‘practicality’ more
Everyone’s least favorite inkie got flanderized fast
Who are you talking about here?
He’s talking about Lorlana’s facial features in the last panel.
Inky=Lorlana
Flanderized = the process through which a fictinoal character’s essential traits (in this case, her teeth and/or mouth) are exaggerated over the course of a serial work.
Thought everyone’s favourite inky was Sci-fright
Nah. Sciona’s just a selfish witch, Lorlara’s fun to have around.
Lorlana’s a lot more fun a non-villainous but… enthusiastic character.
Sciona, on the other hand, is a good, well-fleshed out villain (even if most of her villainy was committed in an effort to escape off of Earth and get away from the Council that was trying very hard to murder her for years). Definitely my favorite ‘bad guy’ so far in the comic.
I don’t think stringing people up like capri sun had anything to do with escaping Earth, and it’s pretty likely that’s the sort of thing that led to the council cutting most of her head off.
The people that she capri sunned were part of the Council, so it may have been. Plus she needed all that blood for her plan to escape Earth, sooooo yes. It definitely had something to do with it.
The council wanted to cht off her head long before that, because they did cut off her head long before that.
I am not saying sciona is not a villain btw (unlike Deus who is definitely not a villain). Her treatment of wyrmil and of poor Coot does show her cruelty is sometimes distinctly unnecessary to her plans and just malicious. I am just saying most of the actions we have seen her do was to simply escape Earth so the councilwould not murder her more thoroughly. She is at least a sympathetic villain in that you can understand why she is soung what she is doing, even if some of it is extremely cruel.
Mr freeze does what he does to cure his wife, Nora.
Ventriloquist is suffering from multiple personality disorder while the real person does not want to do any of it but is bullied into it.
And Sciona wants to get home and keep her head.
Sciona has repeatedly and quite enthusiastically stated that her goals are to take over Earth and rule over humanity, pretty much so that the Alari can determine the secret of super powers, which they will then presumably use to further their imperialistic aims.
So they’re using “inky” as a slur based on skin colour?
I thought we were better than that here.
It’s obviously based on how Alari have actually black skin, much like black ink. Possibly a slur, more likely just a nickname since people do not have actually black skin outside of a minstrel show (which would be racist obviously). Also possibly a play on ‘Pinky and the Brain?’ now that I think of it.
Fortunately I don’t think Lorlana will flay Tokumei for his/her calling her Inky.
She’d flay him only if it would serve Lord Deus.
Or if she thinks it might serve Lord Deus.
Or if Tokumei said something insulting about Lord Deus and Deus isnt around to tell her not to do it.
Or if it’s a Wednesday because things get a little boring on hump day.
Actually, there are people who have black-as-black skin
The late actor who played Shaka Zulu had skin very close to black (depending on the lighting), and Grace Jones
“Inky” is an old slur for dark elves in Dungeons and Dragons as well as Everquest… I use it jokingly, as it was an out-of-universe joke slur created by players of fantasy games to refer to a fantasy race that doesn’t exist. I use it because the Alari to call them “Dark Elves”, which brought on not just by their physical resemblance to the fantasy race, but also because Dave has even said their society is structured like the society of that race, being divided into warring houses. In fact, it was covered in the “blog text” of the last stretch of pages where she appeared in the comic.
Also to everyone calling me “him”, I’m a her.
Oh and a common inky trait is delving into the dark magical arts. Normally this is necromancy but for the Alari, it’s blood magic (maybe they do necromancy too, it hasn’t been covered).
Anyway the “slur” was created because their hair is white like paper and their skin is generally black or dark blue. It was also likely created by artists drawing them in fantasy artwork having to ink them in. Pretty much all other races you could draw outlines and then maybe shade them as necessary, but dark elves… well, they’re inky. And after inking them in an artist could explain “ow my inking hand” in a pun sort of way.
So yeah it’s just a fun tongue in cheek out-of-universe, meta way of referring to them. I’m actually somewhat surprised nobody here responded with the origin of the term… Am I that old? Do kids these days truly not know the old tongue and the deep magic?
I don’t just mean her facial traits, but her personality too.
He could also be referring to Lorlana’s devotion to Deus, but she’s always been that way. :) God bless her heart. All praise Deus amen.
“Bless their heart” always makes me think of this Henry Cho bit on how versatile the phrase is.
I know of that comedian :) Very funny guy.
probably would have caught it even with the booster, but your mild flue would probably have been even lighter. And yes, it’s essentially inevitable if you have teens at home.
seriously, why are teens so freaking bad att common sense precautions… oh, right teens. Kissing that pretty boy/girl is quite literally worth risking death and horrible injury in that demographic, and has always been. *flashbacks* How did we survive that shit? Fun time though…
some teens survived by BEING bigger than the other guy, or more vicious, or having a higher pain tolerance back in the day when the only time the school stepped in is if someone were actually leaking blood. My own strategy was literally deciding none of it was worth it, but I already also knew pain was transitory, so my ‘grand high school strategy’ was to be a loner with a high pain tolerance waiting for High School to be over with so I could escape it.
Personally, I think Lorlara might be just…Genuine. as in she genuinely thinks Deus is THAT fucking amazing.
Getting vaccinated against ‘Darwin’s little helper’ is like an intelligence test; you have a passing score.
Evil smurf? Really Sydney what is it with you and being racist against differently coloured people?XD
LOL yeah it was kinda the thing I was thinking too if evil smurfet had a porn-star figure ;) Sydney just blurts out the first thing that pops into her head I used to be that way until I had kids then I had to umm “temper” my responses lol. “Daddy says…” is never a good topic at PTA meetings.
Is it just me or does it seem strange that Sydney is in uniform when no one else, including her CO, is in uniform.
Basically, they are a Special Ops team, think Delta Force (with Powers)
Out in the field, they don’t really have a ‘uniform’, and certainly as hael don’t have any rank insignia and they only salute if they want the one receiving it to take a sniper round to the head (which rarely happens because they are better than petty problems like that… they have other means of settling their issues :P )
This is to be an informal visit so not wearing their quazi-military uniforms might be a bad idea in a foreign country especially if they are at war. Max is playing a diplomat here as much as anything.
Dave, if you need a few more days to recover, it’s ok.
Oh my God that mouth
Why do I always imagine Lorlara with the voice of Frau Farbissina, from the Austin Powers movies?
Well, either that, or Frau Blucher (Frantic horse whinnies) from Young Frankenstein?