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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Let’s hope there’s no magical consequences of this…
“isn’t quite as cold as I was hoping”
“so 1-2 Centigrade.”
That’s right on the border of freezing. How bloody cold did you want it?
Salt water can get a bit lower. 0°C is freezing for distilled water. In standard pressure environments.
And the reason why there are no salty ice bergs is that as the hydrogen and oxygen align into rigid lattice structures it pushes the sodium-chloride ions out as it slowly expands and there is no place for the salt to latch onto.
During the Hollow Earth craze over a hundred years ago one of their proofs was fresh water icebergs they claimed came from “inside the Earth”.
At that depth, and with the salinity of seawater, it probably go another 10c down…
Agreed thou, 1-2 c is enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey(not a dirty statement, despite what it sounds like)
The drop doesn’t sound to bad, but water transmits cold much better than air, so it would feel a hell of a lot colder..
actually the fel of the water isn’t that bad, i have done some diving mid winter and it’s not the water thats the problem, its the cold air against wet skin and we are talking weather so cold here that the sea water was well and truly frozen in some places
Water at that temperature will cause your muscles to lock up and hypothermia to set in in a matter of minutes.
I can attest to this. I’ve fallen through the ice into water. heh, twice. While the water was nothing fun or even really felt at the time. That walk home once out of that water was some of the most miserable times in my life. Most likely the root for my utter dislike of the cold. Though oddly enough no fear of walking on ice cracking or otherwise.
Now that I think about it this was one of many reasons I’m surprised any of my childhood friends and I survived childhood.
I constantly marvel that we survived as well. Sometimes I wish parents were more forgiving of Darwin. We have “be safe” the adventure out of the world in so many places. We push safety so much but then we make our kids neurotic and afraid to fail. I used to jump off of Roofs and out of trees. Then there was the experimenting with fireworks.
heh, sounds like we had similar lives growing up. Besides the ice instances, there were fires electrocutions, chemistry sets, Sliding off roofs into snow piles in winter. Spelunking drainage pipes (pretty sure we are the reason the city put up those overflow gates) One memorable time was using a claw hammer on .22 bullets because we were out of fire crackers. Mind you this was all before we even got into high school. I used to have a list of stupid shit I learned before becoming a teenager. Might have to recompile that again some day. Because remember kids. Pencils conduct electricity…
One of the hazings naval military units still perform is crossing the arctic circle, and part of that includes getting hosed down with a fire hose, which on ships typically use sea water. Trust me, water at that temperature is cold enough to make even the most well-endowed man completely turtle! It literally sucks the breath right out of you.
That’s the kind of water you have a survival time in the ocean measured in MINUTES. And not many of them.
Why is the super secret magical vault not sound proof? Gault’s joking, right?
Nah, he’s just joining in with the “dicking with the GEoD” crowd, because seriously, as long as Sydney stays in the moonpool, there’s no way a passing anything is going to hear her any more than the rest of group, or, say, the sound of smashing the door sentry
GEoD stands for what? Golden Elf of Destruction?
Actually, at that depth, the temperature is mostly given by the pressure, due to the “water anomaly”. Therefore, it doesn’t really matter which ocean it would be, as long as the salinity doesn’t differ much (I doubt there are any significantly saline bodies of water that would reach 1km or more of depth).
There are punctual exceptions like black smokers. But apart from that, yes the water temperature down there is pretty uniform.
They’re in a thousand meters of water – it’s either being held back by magics or there’s an airlock on the way in!
At first, I was thinking that this situation would be like NOAA’s Aquarius station, with an open access to the external water. The internal air pressure has to match the ocean pressure at that depth. However, realized that there is a huge difference between 20 m and 1000 m and the air pressure required to balance a 1000 m water column would be difficult for pretty much anybody to survive, Max and the vampires being possible exceptions.
Another thought is that the entrance is 1000 m underwater, but then there is a long upward channel. That could raise the position of the vault to as little as a few meters under the surface and the air pressure required to balance that would be slightly elevated, but not so severe that only Max could survive it. Maybe a little decompression on the way out, but that shouldn’t be so bad.
A magic pressure regulator would probably help too, because the above scenarios require that the air is somehow trapped and that all the people that have been in there for the last few days would use up most of the oxygen even for a chamber that big, so there must be some air exchange. So, I think the chamber is only a few meters underground, with air passages up to ground and magical pressure barrier just under the pool.
I think Maxima looks nice today.
If you need more practice just send each of your fans a signed illustration.
Dabbler could probably tell you exactly what that would taste like.
It will be cold, but not freezing, or maybe us southerners are made of more hardy stock
Only if you’re thinking of air temperature. Water that cold will kill you in minutes from hypothermia because heat transfers so much better to water than to air.
Looking at the image you flipped, the odd thing is, some of it even looks reversed, as in, some of the protruding ridges become indented crevices… very odd
R’lyeh is like that, I hear…
That lighting effect is used in some optical illusion effects to confuse the viewer to seeing a bump appear as a hole, or vice versa based on where they think the light is coming from. If you look at some photos of things like craters on the moon and turn the photo upside down you get the effect.
https://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royprsb/early/2009/02/21/rspb.2008.1635/F1.large.jpg
Some people in conspiracy circles use this lighting effect to make (purposely?) confusing claims about things seen in aerial photos to support their ideas. One I can think of is taking photos of sand dunes in channels on Mars and making claims that they are actually giant structures or sandworms (that NASA does not want you to know about! Dun, dun, DUN!!) https://www.ebtx.com/mars/marstube.htm
The worm is the dune. The dune is the worm.
on arrakis we need desert power.
The thing that you’re talking about is a documented optical illusion that happens with concave images of faces most notably but can happen with any concave object. It’s especially noticeable with faces because your brain trying to always map it into a positive space as opposed to a negative one.
Sydney is not out of control. Sydney is NEVER out of control. I mean, one has to have control first, to be IN control, right?
Besides, the water is causing shrinkage. So, what lady-parts actually shrink in cold water? Thanks to Seinfeld, we all know what happens to us guys…
Most of the equivalent lady-parts are internal. They don’t get cold except during a very serious case of hypothermia, at which point death is immanent.
I believe the standard reply is that Sydney can now use them to cut glass…
Meant to make a comment about that, but forgot :(
Forget about glass, she can cut diamonds!!
Having personally fallen into water at something approaching those temperatures (I was canoeing in the winter, don’t ask) I can say that it’s not an experience I’d like to repeat in my lifetime.
Go for it. First time was really bad, but the second time was rather funny.
Heh, people where I live have a tradition of bathing in ice-holes on the Epiphany day.
In Finland they do that any time of the year. Yes the Finns are tough guys.
As a Canadian, I much prefer swimming in a lake during July than January. I expect my experience in Finland would be the same. Mind you, January is great time to walking on water.
Also a Canadian, and I have jumped into English Bay on New Year’s Day. The Vancouver Polar Bear Swim Club is one of the oldest and largest in the world.
your all crazy. i like being warm
seconded
Who will win the world champions of cold endurance. I put my money on Russia, Finland and Canada. It will be a tough battle.
Not people in Alaska, USA? They live at the same latitudes as those others.
there are people in alaska? :p
they might be saner than the other three countries. who knows?
Maybe if she focuses enough, she can use the PPO as a heat source to warm herself up without vaporizing the entire room…………..
Then again, this IS Sydney we’re talking about………..
PPO seems to have not “turn the power down” option. Maybe it’s unlocked with further points spent?
Maybe the life support orb?
It’s been theorized that its functions may include temperature control, but not actually demonstrated. She does have only one pip in that ball, after all. (Besides the lone double link, i mean).
Halo curses majestically…. maybe its her super secret super power?
It might warm things up a bit, anyway…
^_^,
Nah, cursing is skill-based, not an innate power. Mathias classified her as a 7th dan blackbelt in cursing, remember.
I miss Math T.T
As said above, salt water can get a little colder then pure water, but it freezes at -1.9 degrees Celsius.
A quick Wiki search shows that an increase in depth does not results in an higher decrease of temperature.
Coldest temperature seems to be about -1.4 degrees Celsius.
Besides, the moon pool is heated by the temperature in the vault, so likely to be non-freezing, Sidney is just hit by the difference in temp. between the pool and the vault, I wonder how it feels for those Scandinavians who jump into an icy lake straight from a hot sauna.
It’s hard to explain. You know it’s just above freezing, but it doesn’t really feel like it. Thing is you aren’t able to stay in for very long before it starts to feel like the water is biting you all over, then you start shivering. By now you have lost a lot of your strength, and it’s high time to climb out before it gets worse. A few minutes of this and you stop freezing and the water starts to feel warm. This is very bad as it means your core temperature has dropped significantly, and you are only moments from loosing consciousness. I have never lost consciousness so I have no idea how that feels though, and I’m quite happy to leave it like that.
Why I know? Stupid bet on who could stay in the longest. It’s possible we weren’t entirely sober, why you ask?
During basic training in the military they had us bathing in a river during the winter. It was just so we should know what it felt like, and how to handle going through the ice while on skis and carrying a full combat load out. So they broke two holes in the ice, one about 40 meters downstream from the first with divers in full gear standing by.
So one after another we were to ski into the water and then swim to the other side and climb out, and we’d better get everything with us, skis and all. If you didn’t make it you had a nice swim under the ice to look forward to, and hopefully the divers would pull you out still alive. Unfortunately I ran a fewer that day so the medic wouldn’t let me participate…
There were only two of us who didn’t get to take a bath that day, so they didn’t bother to set it all up again for just the two of us. I was so sad when I heard that…
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.
Panel 3: The younger look seems to come from the more fuller aspect to her face. You forgot her sharper jaw lines and made her cheeks appear to be fuller. For some reason you also shifted her hair parting more to the side and stopped it half way to her crown as well.
Panel 4: Gunna blame the elf look more on the perspective more so than anything. The angle and her hair kind of play down her more chiseled jaw line. With the raised eye brows and wide eye look it kind of gives her that more elf like appearance.
Panel 3: I think it’s mostly because of lack of shading.
No, panel three has a definite change in parting, you can still it a little in panel four…. it’s, almost like Maxi is imitating Sydney’s hair-style
I would attribute panel 3 to her wide opened eyes. That should express surprise and realizing what’s going to happen but it somehow reminds me of animation movies like frozen.
Panel 3’s face is near featureless: there is no little forehead bump above her nose and no chiseling of her face. Also her eyes are almost manga-like and slightly larger, especially the lateral whites and with very non-Max eyebrows. Panel 1 is overly chiseled. Panel 4 is still missing her forehead bump and facial shadowing. Panel 5 is back to normal Max.
My intent with panel 3 was that Max’s head would be tilted down slightly as she suddenly realized what Sydney was about to do. That made me elongate her nose slightly and reduce the space between the bottom of her nose and chin, as that part would be angled slightly away from us, making it look like she has a smaller chin. Her widened eyes compound the effect and it all makes her look young.
TLDR; faces are hard.
For what it’s worth, panel 3 is one of my FAVORITE images of Max. I think she looks fantastic.
I think the bottom of the chin needed to be further down her neck and her gaze also pointed downwards. I think you did right with the hair being a bit more forward of her face to give the impression it might be hanging forward from a downward slant.
No matter the case her facial expression in the last panel is perfect. I’m sure you could have conveyed it more obviously with a more simplified, comical expression but the subtle way it’s done is much more suited to Maxima and conveys it much more perfectly.
Next time,Maxima should leave Sydney back at the base….! Under constant MP(Military Police) supervision?!?
It seems that you can’t take Sydney ANYWHERE!!!
It seems that you can’t take Sydney ANYWHERE!!!
not twice anyway
Should Maxima assign MPs to constantly stay with Sydney or do something different?
She’ll corrupt em. Just wait, Max’ll come back and they’ll be playing out the Hardware Store scene from Galaxy Quest
ITYM ‘improve’ them
To be fair, if I was covered in that stuff no force on earth could stop me rinsing it off. urgh.
The unseen panel two image may put an end to the elf-stalking: if Val realises he will also have to put up with Sydney, he may finally stop stalking Maxi :D
I will be honest at first glance, Sydney rushing past Maxima looked more like the claw of some giant monster reaching for Maxima from behind
Max’s ears poking out of her hair makes her look like an Altmer. No wonder the lovechild of Legolas and Drizzt was checking her out.
Also, how does Syd knows that specific dish?
At some point, she may have started working through THE LIST.
She’s simply mixing several cold things together, surprised she didn’t add monkey balls to the salad
Or at least that the dish is made out of brass
Need Dabbler’s Cleaning spell, STAT!
(Also… Witches tits aren’t cold. Not at ALL!)
Dabbler is busy at the moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26VAi9xhZKI
Everything about witches is pointy. The cold is merely implied.
Having gone from nice and warm to ice cold water, you got it right. I’ve been in more than one stream running of the rockies and done my share of “Polar Plunges” for charity.
Dude, have you ever been swimming in REALLY cold water? Most swimming pools don’t go below 70 and a lake starts to get uncomfortable below 60. Somewhere around 40 is when it starts getting painful in under a minute.
Water wicks heat away so much faster that it feels far colder than comparable temperature air. Also, I’ve read a few stories of people diving into surprisingly cold water and the shock being enough to stop their heart, but I believe that’s mostly with older to less healthy people.
I cannot attest to the fatality but I can attest to its probablility. Many years ago (healthy and in my 40s), I went camping by the Ho river on the Olympic peninsula in Washington. I was hot and sweaty and looking forward to a dip in the water to get clean and to cool off. I didn’t realize it at the time but the source of the Ho river is ice melt off the glacier on Mt Olympus. At the campsite the river was about 40 ft wide, flowing at a pretty good clip, not shallow and with steep banks. I was all set to jump in when my guardian angel suggested that I test the water first. I stuck my left arm in and it was like I stuck it into an electric light socket: instant convulsion and pain. I have no doubt that I would not have survived had I jumped in.
my family moved from Florida to Michigan up (Air Force brat here) And I was enrolled in a swimming class – in Lake Michigan (or Superior – I forget which is closer to Kinchloe AFB). The water in summer there was probably not less than 60 degrees, but I was a 1st grader used to Gulf waters (Eglin AFB). The only things I really recall – I was only in it about 5 minutes to just above ankles, and I could barely walk after. The other kids – Michigan natives, had actually been out there playing around in it. I flunked. I’m sure it was just what I was expecting versus reality, and I could probably do it today.
But I agree, Sydney’s hollering is the least I’d expect.
Villains are going to love Sydney; she provides her own deathtraps!
Master Gault clearly has not realized that nobody controls Sydney.
And that includes Sydney.
I’m not gonna lie (Marge) — it’s nice to see Sydney cursing again. It takes me back to olden times (er, like, two days ago, in-world) when she demonstrated her black-belt in swearing for Math.
I have never done the polar plunge but I have wadded into Lake Superior, at Pancake Bay Provincial Park. The first meter out is fine thanks to shallow water, limited movement and solar heating, but a few steps further and it was around 1°C. Very painful.
How effective is water against freshly bloodbstained clothes?
Wouldn’t hot water be better?
Naw, hot water sets the stain. Cold water to get out bloodstains every time.
Max’s “give me strength” look in the last panel is spot on.
Yeah, she needs the strength to not punch Gault into the wall
The cold is preferable to the gore (at least in my opinion). Now, did her cell phone survive? :)
Dabbler: “Sydney, you better get out of those cold and wet clothes or you will catch a cold. I would be happy to help you.”
And the thing is, that if she offered that or skipped consent altogether to unclothing, she wouldn’t even be a pervert for doing that. She would be saving Syndey’s life. We are talking about water that is a few degrees away from freezing into ice.
Well she would still be a pervert, it’s in her succubus nature, but under the circumstances it should be forgivable.
Alternative scenario:
Dabbler: “Max, do you mind me filming you tearing off Sydneys clothes? It’s for scientific purposes.”
Max and Sidney: “No!”
Dabbler: “Mind if I join in then?”
Max: “Shut up right now Dabbler.”
not meaning to be too pedantic, but if it’s in the nature of Dabbler, then it’s not perverted. strictly speaking, it’s not even perverted compared to human nature. Most human cultures, however, are real update about all kinds of harmless sex things.
updateuptight.It would be more than forgivable, it would be the sane and prudent thing to do. Sydney’s life is in genuine danger.
I’m sure Dabbler have a cloth disintegration raygun ready for situations like these.
Have you ever fallen into water thats 30 degrees colder than the air? Sydney’s taking the shock pretty well actually, considering how she reacts to just regular stuff. I fell into the ocean at around 50ºF once and it took a minute to even be able to form a sentence more complex than “COLD! C-C-COOOLD!”
Remember that water has its highest density at 4° Celsius – if it gets colder than that, it starts to expand. Which means that at the bottom of lake (or in this case, the ocean) it should be about 4°C because both warmer and colder water would rise, mix and stabilize at that point.
I am not concerned with the scientific arguement about just how cold the water can be. I am just laughing my ass off about Sydney being sooooooooo Sydney in today’s comic!
Sydney should be aware that the Twilight Council could very well have witches on it and her last comment would be viewed as quite offensive.
Only if the witches aren’t too busy laughing at her self-torture antics.
You could rule a magical effect makes it even colder?
…DaveB, do you have any idea how cold water that’s just one degree above freezing actually IS? Sydney isn’t overreacting. If anything, she’s underreacting. Heck, the fact that she’s even able to speak at all is nigh-miraculous, as dropping into water that has that significant a temperature difference from the air tends to cause muscles to sieze up as if they’ve been paralyzed.
She just dropped into the equivalent of the water under the ice on a frozen lake in winter. Maybe even colder than that. She’s facing an immediate danger from hypothermia. The water does not need to be any colder to justify her reaction. In fact, it could be much warmer than it is, and still justify that kind of reaction.
It agree here. She is getting in water that is literary as cold as it can get without being frozen (under non-laboratory circumstances). If she dunked herself in, she to dump her clothes immediately.
And I don’t mean dump her clothes for sexy reasons. Her clothes would be sucking her body temperature out of her. She would need a change of clothes, towels, intake of warm fluids and a heat source if she does not want to experience hypothermia.
David Lillie of the Dreamkeepers graphic novels does pretty good rocks. This speedpaint might help give you some inspiration?
https://youtu.be/22gmwKeBoy8
I do like watching other people paint stuff. Especially when they leave their toolbars and layer palette showing, so I can see what they’re doing.
That “Check it out” link you posted is very fascinating to me. Our brains reinterpret the positioning of 3D edges based on the light spectrum regardless of orientation. I think that without showing the light source we default to top light source in our brains naturally. Couple of things occur to me thinking this.
1) I don’t think there’s a good way of doing that other than the over exaggerated “glow” from “the floor” or below.
2) if our brains interpret top down lighting by default and by clearly identifying a light source can change it to the proper orientation you don’t need to go out of your way to figure out how to do bottom source lighting.
You know… If you kick excessively hard from rubber bonk on knee, and its not psychological/intentional, you have a little something called hyperreflexia… That’s actually ready bad as it suggests an upper motor neuron lesion… Could mean anything from demyelinating disorder to brain/spinal cord damage…
I’m thinking she kicked only on the upper side of normal, but she was started by her own kick and comically overreacted.
Here’s an interesting question though: can a doctor even get a kick response from someone like Maxima, and if so, could they survive the experience?
her creative swearing always cracks me up XD
Phun with Physics time!
Sydney’s orbs revolve around her head at about 1 spin every 5 seconds or so. The light trails in panel one are dead-on straight. She would need to be transiting the room in under a 10th of a second to get those speed lines. Lets hope there are no bystanders between her and the pool.
Well, there was one stalking elf behind Max…
Water not as cold as he was hoping??? You can’t get much colder before it goes solid!
actually, the more salt that’s in the water, the colder it could get before freezing solid, if i recall correctly, that is.