Grrl Power #581 – Cleanliness is next to coldliness
Water at that depth isn’t quite as cold as I was hoping it would be when I wrote this page. A quick googling told me ocean water at 1000 meters would be about 34-36 degrees Fahrenheit, so 1-2 Centigrade. That probably varies a lot depending on where in the ocean you are, still the moonpool water is at least 30 degrees colder than the air in the vault. Not as much of a shock as I was hoping but then again, Sydney isn’t one to react to stimulus in a subdued manner. The first time a doctor bonked her knee with the rubber knee hammer thing, she kicked so hard she rolled backwards off the examination table. Not because she has super nerves or anything. Her leg scared her.
If I had a little more space on this page, I would have liked to include Valen walking behind Max on the first panel, which would have placed him under Sydney, and in the second panel, Max is looking behind her not only at Sydney’s path, but also Valen splattered in blood.
My art is steadily improving, as any skill does when you use it, but my consistency could still use a lot of work. 1st panel, Max looks fine, 2nd is fine but slightly off somehow, I think her eyes are slightly too far apart. I can live with that, but the 3rd panel, she looks like she’s 17 all of a sudden. Then in the next panel she’s back closer to the right age, but she looks more elfin than Germano-Scandinavian. Then panel 5 looks fine again. Well, it’s a skill like any other.
Another skill I need to work on is painting rocks. I won’t tell you how much time I spent on the backgrounds for this page, because it’s a little embarrassing. It didn’t help that the reference I used was lit from the top, and I needed it lit from the bottom, because that first panel is looking over the pit of spikes. I’m sure you’re thinking, “well, just flip it over, Dave.” Well, as it turns out, our brains are so used to seeing stuff lit from the top that it didn’t help. With no other reference like a root sticking out, which is itself casting a shadow, it can be surprisingly ambiguous. At least with the stupid picture I happened to pick. Check it out.
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About the comment on the panels – what I could see is:
2nd panel I think eyes might be slightly smaller and nosetip a bit larger
3rd panel eyes are larger – not just more open but bigger, and the shape is different. Maybe they are just more open, but I don’t get that kind of impression, and I think the pupils may be a bit larger too. Lower face shape might be a bit rounder – the back of the jaw doesn’t come as far down and the cheeks are less strong (compare page 2683)
4th panel her mouth being open changes the shape of her jaw to be more.. pointy, and her chin is thinner. Nose looks thinner too, and her inner eye corners seem to be tapering down with more curve than f.ex. 5th panel.
About cold water – it’s not fatal by itself, people commonly dip into water through a hole made into ice of frozen lake.. and it’s more healthy than dangerous. However submerging quickly into icy water especially if you are hot (coming from Sauna f.ex.) or have exercised (elevated heart rate etc) can be fatal. It causes surface blood vessels to contract to preserve heat, and it can skyrocket your blood pressure. I’ve done that mistake once, and very nearly lost consciousness (and I didn’t jump in, I went down on a ladder).
I don’t know about the health effects, but people do much worse:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_Club
Admittedly, water isn’t involved in the above, but really 300 degree F difference. Insane. See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear_plunge
Ye gods. -73c is the embrittlement temperature of steel. And they’re running around naked.
Didn’t they get down close to -90c at one of the Antarctic research stations a few years back? That’d be a thing to see, so cold that CO2 would be freezing out of the air…
Im friends with a couple girls that live in michigan, and they frequently … uh “have fun together” in the snow outside during the winter when its well below freezing. Dunno what is up with them but they love extreme cold.
I think the age thing in panel 3 might be due to the lack of lines on max’s face – no brow furrows, crows feet, or anything like that, so she looks baby-faced?
I would suggest making Character Turnarounds for everyone. Just, t-pose reference images- face-on front, 3/4, side, 3/4 back, back, any in between that you want to do. Spend the time on those, get them exactly how you want. Then you can go back to them to double-check positioning and size of eyes and jawlines and stuff.
Panel two its her left eye thats off. Should be a little larger, and a bit (maxima’s) down-right and maybe slightly more angled.
Rocks- Try googling for pictures of stalagmites- public caves sometimes light those from beneath for dramatic effect.
You want stalactites lit from the bottom. The easy way to remember the two is — tight to the ceiling, might to the floor.
As for the temperature thing, you’re thinking it’s further from ice, but if there are passing submarines than likely the water is salty. As such it has a lower freezing point than normal. The further you go down, the more dense the water is because it has greater salt content lowering the freezing point slightly further. If you want to think about it a different way Sydney just did the reverse of the Ice Bucket Challenge. I’d say that plenty damn cold enough. In 50 degree water hypothermia sets in in less than an half an hour. 50 degree water is 48 degrees colder than your blood, the water Sydney just jumped in is 50% cooler than that. Somebody needs to find her a heat ray and some towels stat.
i use stalaCtite, ceiling, stalaGmite, ground
Yeah, the stalactite holds tight to the ceiling, and the stalagmite might get off the ground
Gault’s complaint seems pretty weird to me. Is he *actually* worried about a submarine randomly finding them? There weren’t any warnings about being loud before. Or is he just complaining because Syndey’s distress is annoying him, which seems a little unsympathetic given that being covered with congealing blood wouldn’t be fun for anyone? Regardless. you’d think he would be more interested in having found the blood portal.
I don’t know; this comic didn’t really work for me. It would have been funnier if we’d just cut to to the next scene and Sydney is wet and shivering from having cleaned off in the Moon Pool. I didn’t need to see her comedically diving towards it.
I think he’s being hyperbolic. He wants her to be quieter and less chaotic-and thus less likely to mess things up-but he’s not actually worried about anything other than the Kraken hearing her, assuming the Kraken has the capability of hearing like humans do.
hey also got shown up recently by Maxima trashing the council’s golem, so he’s a bit tetchy
It’s funny that you say panel two is slightly off because I was going to comment that it was one of my favorite drawings of Maxima before I read your notes.
Now, while it still is a fantastic drawing (very expressive with a nice angle) I can’t unsee the fact that it’s because her left eye (her left, not our left) and the plane of her cheek beneath it don’t have the same shadowing and contour as her right cheek. It makes it appear like the left side of her face is level with us while her right side is angled downward, effectively splitting her face in two.
Still a great drawing though and one of my favorite of her.
I’m picturing that blushing navy guy from the early chapters sitting in a sub listening to whale song when Sydney’s colorful language starts in.
and then saying ‘ wow, i never knew whales could swear like that’
on an american sub
‘ensign… what have you found?’
‘a young lady who can almost curse like a proper sailor, sir’
‘what anime are you watching ensign?’
‘the sonar microphones. she’s below us some distance off- trying to pin it down, sir’
‘how did she get down there?’
‘sir, should we ask? it might give our position away sir’
‘carry on ensign’
If you had said “Argentinian Sub”, it might have been relevant, if 6 years pre-mature
In the central panel Max looks really pretty. And don’t get that confused with beautiful or attractive. I mean pretty.
Near-freezing sea water is still plenty dangerous if you aren’t prepared for it. Speaking of, 34-36 degrees Fahrenheit was about the temperature of the waters around the Titanic the night it sank. The Passengers that went down with the ship were all dead in a matter of minutes if not less when they hit the frigid waters of the Atlantic.
Between 15-30 minutes in average case apparently
https://www.ussartf.org/cold_water_survival.htm
She could have just asked Dabbler for that cleaning cantrip…
I think Dabbler’s still busy being Ultra-Bimbo with Cooter. Besides, if I was in that situation (and I am a ton like Sydney, only less hyperactive), I would definitely go for the water rather than the magic, because water is closer.
Heh, it would have been funny to see Valen looking all WTF and covered with blood. As well as Max’s reaction to that. But sometimes these things are had to fit onto a single page.
Also in the context of how cold the water is vs. the air in the vault: let us not forget that Sydney is beginning the trip wearing dry (on the inside) gear designed to protect. She also weighs in at (guessing here) 85 pounds, soaking wet. And she’s about to be. Also her tiny levels of body fat (insulation) are rivaled in smallness only by her tiny levels of muscle mass (heat generation). Frankly, I expected a stream of invective at least three times larger. Though the amount of creativity is, as ever, perfectly up to scratch. Not bad.
85 pounds? Nahh. I’m just her size and I’m like 100, 110 at least. But I still get *freezing* when the air is 60 degrees Fahrenheit, so the rest of your comment checks out.
Now is as good a time as any for Sydney to test and see if the Green Orb (“makes air? [TM]”) is more of a complete package regarding Life Support functionality; i.e., can it make WARM air to dry her off quickly? My money is on a) probably, and b) that’s the other thing the orb has a skill pip already.
I’ve swum in 35 degree water, diving into it after a long hike. Not recommended; you’ll swear like Sydney! On the other hand, I loved her totally inappropriate swearing and wish I’d been that inventive at the time!
Did a polar plunge for charity…the air temp was -35F wind was about 10-15mph but we had trees kind of around us. The water was filled the night before and they popped the ice out that morning. :) Jumped in wearing boots and a kilt and yes it was a bit nipply. It’s also why I wear cotton boxer briefs with a kilt in all season.
In my case, it was a pool of snow melt – the worst part was that after we’d swum across and raced out of the water, we had to dive back in to get back. Fortunately, the weather was warm (ish), so not nearly as stressful as yours. For some funny reason, I have avoided repeating the feat – at least, deliberately!
30 degrees is a heck of a change — (physics geeks hide your eyes) Water moves heat much faster than air does (why you can stick you hand in a 500 degree oven, but not 200 degree water).
Hey, uh, anyone else having formatting issues with the site? For some reason everything is stacked on the right now, and there’s this big four inch gap on the left that just exists as a void.
Have you tried tilting your monitor to the left then smacking it a few times?
I often get blank spots in some web pages, but this is due to the ad blocker I am running.
The page in general is formatted more to a standard 4×3 screen than a 16×9 wide screen. If your browser is maximized on that type of monitor you will get a lot of bare space on either side of the page banner.
If you are having actual page formatting errors, try viewing it on a different browser as a test to see if it is a compatibility issue.
…I can’t escape the idea that Chrous is out of frame, quietly laughing his ass off at Sydney …
So… she swallowed all that blood. How many different types of undead is Sydney now?
Get control of Sydney? My dear sir, have you been paying any attention at all? I’m guessing no. I just keep saying it, but Max should really stop taking Sydney on missions until she’s got some basic level of discipline.
Sydney? Discipline? Did you just use these two words in same sentence without a negative?
“Basic level of” discipline might be lower than the x axis and still be “level”. I’ve been doing a lotta math lately, and I assure you, it’s true.
Note about blood and icy cold water…. Coagulated blood would require A LOT of agitation to remove…. Can you imagine Sydney spinning like a clothes washer…. New orb power reveal? Clean setting?
You forget. she did testing underwater with what she can do. Possibly blood will be jetting out of the water
I really love DaveB’s artwork in general, but sometimes he makes Maxima look PARTICULARLY good or cute and I just have to call him out for that with congratulations. Maxima was drawn GREAT in panels 2, 3, and 4. Really love her facial expressions.
uh, trust me, at that temperature of water, she might actually be under-reacting. 32 degrees farenheit is where water turns to ice, so in her shoes, I’d hit that water and jump out so fast I might stay dry.
In her shoes, 32 degree water might just cause frostbite!
I’m worried about Yorp. No posts in how long?
He said something about going on vacation away from his computer at some point.
Does her comment about salad mean witch’s have hairy chests. or they rub salad on their chests before serving it. My weird mind isn’t sure it wants to know.
While remembering that an old church campus house had a picture of a woman with a weird genetic thing causing her to have blond wavey chest hair. And she was born female, and has a child with her happy husband now
She could have said cold as ice cream, but that has generally happy associations.
Since she’s complaining, she instead, gives us an image of a horrific salad on an evil plate.
To really spell it out…
She combined two colloquial cold descriptors the fastest way she could:
“Revenge is a dish best served cold.” & “Cold as a witches tit.”
So, together we get: Revenge is a dish of witches tits. She threw in the salad part gratis.
(Not sure where you are getting the hair from…)
You know, this makes me wonder if there is a deep sea jellyfish out there somewhere called the “Witches Tit”. If not, there should be! Any oceanographers out there? Make this happen! ;)
OK, I’m calling the continuity police. Having a hard time believing that Sydney The Diver would just jump into the water and not know that it’s cold.
She has only really dived in warm surface water
Maybe she knew how cold it would be but chose cold water over blood. I wouldn’t stop her from voicing a slight complaint about the cold.
*It
We all endure no edit.
Besides, *I* wouldn’t stop her, either!
There’s the intellectual knowing it’s going to be cold, but that doesn’t prevent the visceral shock of feeling the heat flood out of your body and the subsequent reaction. Plus, of course, the potential for misjudgement of just how cold it would be, in absolute and/or subjective terms.
Speaking of art skill, I forget things about drawing faster than I can learn them, it feels like. It’s the most frustrating feeling to remember that I knew how to do something right, but being unable to do it. My art improves at such a snail’s pace as a result…
More related to the comic, I think a sudden drop to what would normally be at or near freezing temperature (and wet) would be more than enough to shock anyone, really. A 30 degree drop is only a slight chill when you are diving into a 65 degree pool in 95 degree weather; it’s chilly but not too bad. But dropping from 60 to 30 is way worse. xD
Well your body temperature is relatively constant regardless of weather (if not, you’re in serious trouble). True, surface temperature can vary in more extreme cases, but that isn’t going to make a huge difference overall – body heat is normally just under 100F, so naturally slipping into 30F water (supercooled at that point actually) would be much greater shock than 65F – regardless of the conditions you come from (unless, I guess, you were already submerged into water of roughly equal temperature – and then only because you wouldn’t really sense a difference).
Also it’s not just about temperature. Naked, in 70F air without breeze – you’ll feel a bit chilly, but relatively comfortable. If you dive into 70F water from there, it’ll feel cold – because it starts draining your heat much (about 30 times) faster.
panel 3? I want that bigger and with a bit more of the background and of the Major. Cause it is gorgeous.
I once heard my grampa declare, “It’s colder than a witches tits in a brass bed in a Minnesota snow storm!”
I’ve never forgotten that, though this is the first time I recall repeating it. I thought it was pretty unkind to witches, especially since I’ve met a few over the years. (Real world witches, not supernatural ones)
witches or wiccans? there’s a difference.
You should really think about doing a deleted scene section.
I’ve found that artists are always the most critical of their own works… That being said, those center three panels are probably the best renderings of Max Dave has done yet… certainly my current faves! Hot max is HAWT!!!
So, um, is nobody curious why there’s a moonpool in here? I mean, its existence implies access to the room via a water channel, which means all the security doors and stuff are basically irrelevant. Just swim in.
It’s the entrance they used to get here
There is access to the vault complex, but not to the vaults themselves. The moonpool comes up outside the main security gates: you can swim in if you know about the illusion at the entrance, but you still have to get past the locks and the Guardian.
The eyes depth from that flat area of her nose seems different between panels, but that could well be an optical illusion. The nose itself seems to change between panels as well, starting more rounded and becoming more… Angular? The jaw line also changes from the panels before it in panel four, becoming longer, and panel five is kind of in between or that may just be the angle.
I think the “skull technique” might help you out a little w.r.t. rotated heads.
https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/sexy-drawing-lessons/ (about the middle of the page).
ps. Of course, I suck at drawing, so what do I know? :-)
There’s a lot of comments, so I apologize if anyone has said this already, but cold water feels MUCH colder than air of the same temperature. At that temperature, a skinny woman like Sydney could die of hypothermia in less than 15 minutes, and become incapacitated in even less time. So, yeah, her reaction is actually a little restrained, for Sydney.
anything lower than 1 degree celsium would be Actual Frozen Water so I dunno what the author was expecting
Agreed.
Salt water freezes at a significantly lower temperature than fresh water, depending on the salt content. Also, it is possible to supercool water without it freezing.
+1
Likewise the deeper you go, the more the pressure, and the lower the temperature at which water will freeze.
Whilst most of the deep water in the oceans are within a narrow temperature range (0 to -3°C), they are at the end of a narrow, dark tunnel, so it may be much colder there. Not to mention the possibility that the magics at play may have made it colder (yet still falling within the natural range at which it would not turn to ice).
I can sympathise with the urgent need to wash the gunk off.
Just be sure not to go beyond the pressure negating magic!
Okay, dunno if anyone has touched on this aspect of nigh freezing cold water, buuuuut….
(I’m no scientist or anything as such. I’m just going to school to be an engineer. While I provide no hard figures here, you can fact check a lot of this stuff on the web.)
Do any of you people have any idea what kind of energy sink water is? Seriously. There’s a reason why the stuff is used as a neutron medium in nuclear reactors. (It’s not just coolant – it slows down the zipping particles just enough so they actually strike the rest of the fuel atoms and perpetuate the fuel’s criticality.)
No, really. Water is a HELL of an energy sink.
And Sydney just dunked herself into a whole metric f***-ton of the stuff while it’s nearly freezing.
That water is literally sucking heat out of her like those sirelings were sucking blood out of their boy-toy. In water that cold, people typically survive only a few minutes because the water takes so much heat from your body that it goes into shock and basically shuts down in an effort to conserve what little energy you have left. Which, unfortunately, is what kills you.
Granted, the metabolic process can keep up to a degree. However, that requires training and acclimation – just like the people that do the Polar Bear Plunge do. They don’t just decide one day they’re gonna jump in a half-frozen lake. They take baby steps and teach their bodies how to cope with the sudden and honestly traumatic shock of having that much heat suddenly ripped from their living tissue.
Keep in mind, the metabolic process actually -is- a fire of sorts; we literally burn oxygen and other chemicals in our cells and heat is a byproduct of that reaction. Extreme cold is a method of extinguishing a fire, and the metabolic process is no different in that respect. You should see how much these people in the Polar Bear clubs eat, both before and after their plunges.
So in my mind? Sydney wouldn’t be cursing at all. At best, Sydney might get out a choked shriek, followed by stunted, panicked flailing, and a rightfully worried-to-tears Maxima rushing to get her out of that water, get her out of those clothes (no matter how embarrassing that may be for Sydney), and use whatever means necessary to start warming her up again.
If anyone thinks that’s extreme…. Well, guess what. That is SOP for any time you got someone plunging into water that’s that cold and were in no way prepared for it. Look it up. Anyone who was a Boy/Girl Scout can set you right on this.
The temperature in the deep ocean waters is 0 to -3 degrees, pretty consistently. So that is bad but not quite Arctic ocean type cold. And even that is survivable by people untrained who fall overboard, for example. It is all down to how fast you can get them out. The colder it gets the less the margin for any error in rescuing them immediately.
Sydney’s biggest advantage is that she is self-propelled, so would be out in a second or two. Which is easily enough to avoid the worst effects, especially if the pool is at typical deep ocean water temperatures. I have swum in those kinds of temperatures (on the surface I hasten to add), without any kind of training.
It may surprise some folks but Africa can get pretty cold in winter. I never saw any snow, as a pup, until I left it. But we had to smash ice on swimming pools on more than one occasion. If you fancy a dip you don’t let that put you off.
It is actually at its worst in the first few seconds and minutes. Or if you are foolish enough to be part-in part-out. But if you keep moving your body gets used to the cold and it becomes enjoyable. Although even the boldest need to get out before too long.
My goddaughter surfs all winter long, in the UK. But does cheat by using a drysuit/wetsuit (I am a bad godparent I cannot remember which).
So I Sydney would be OK. She just needed to dry herself off and ensure that she remained warm enough that her core body temperature did not drop. Which, in a cold underwater base, would require wrapping up and getting by a fire or other heat source. Normally.
With significantly colder waters frostbite becomes a serious issue and you have to take further precautions (holding such cold limbs by the fire will likely result in lost digits). But that would not be such an issue here (unless the pool was significantly cooler than in the ocean beyond).
On one hand, I’m surprised no one called out the Colonel on this sooner. On the other hand…Master Gault is not charmed by the heroine’s demeanor, so something terrible is about to happen to him.
BAH HAHAHAHAHAHA
“Witch’s tit salad on a dish served for revenge” gets me every time I re-read this.
Forget the subs, a non-Russian fishing boat could hear her.