another coloured page of that comic of mine. like i said before, i’m trying to have yoshi (Y0-5H1) sound like one of those automated phone AI systems that i hate so much. i decided to give him a robofont (retroket alphabet) to further highlight that he’s not a person, he’s an AI. however his square-ish speech balloons make panels a challenge. the eye is used to squares in comics meaning panels and circles meaning speech. yoshi kind of throws a monkey wrench into that. so the next few pages are going to have a lot of curved edges on panels, to compensate. conturian trade act section 748.B states that if a GMO/AI is brought to contura but is evidently self-aware, it may not be traded or treated as property but is instead protected with the same rights as any other alien. essentially, 748 is the anti sentient-trafficking part of the act and the subsection B is for artificially created sentients vs natural sentients. i don’t recall if i’ve talked about this, but contura is such a powerful trade planet that they can effectively do things like this. a lot of the few GMOs that exist (before it was banned) wind up living there - like gekin. it’s also a frequent hang-out for robots with advanced AI, for the same reason. basicly it means nobody can land on contura and say ‘hey, i created grey. he’s mine. hand him over.’ legally the conturian courts will see him as a person and not property.  yoshi does NOT qualify as an advanced AI because he is not self aware. he can talk about himself but is still unable to pass a turing test. the protection bill is a lot more simplex. if your planet is currently under military occupation, or acts of war, or extreme social unrest (like hekshano with its crazy riots right now)  you can claim political asylum and this prevents you from being extridited back to your homeworld for whatever crimes you may be accused of there. basicly if your planet is in crazybad shape, 29-Q allows you to start over with a clean slate on contura. or at least lie low for a while. Q is the subsection that refers specifically to violent political riots.  yap yap worldbuilding i guess i should talk about the technical aspects of this page a little in terms of its creation too? well i was foolish and, in our move, didn’t double check my bristol paper supplies. normally i use bristol to do the comics because its thickness allows me to abuse it with watercolours and not have the paper crinkle up like a salted slug. i tend to use vellum bristol because its texture takes watercolour and inks better. it’s a bit rougher, and holds onto the pigments more. smooth bristol is great for markers,  but can cause some smearing for the inks and REALLY needs a lot of layering to get watercolours to look good on. ANYWAY. so this time, since i was totally out of bristol, i fell back on a pack of watercolour paper i purchased years back to experiment with. i wish i could remember the last comic page i used it on, but it didn’t turn out so great. watercolour paper behaves very differently from vellum OR smooth bristol when i give it the ol inhuman treatment. basicly it takes the inks the same - though its rough texture causes some lighting funkyness that makes the lines look rough when scanned. it obviously takes watercolours much nicer, holding the pigments tighter and allowing for some really bold colours to come out a lot faster than they would on vellum bristol. but the real issue is with alcohol based markers on watercolour paper. the roughness of the paper is kind of mean to them - it causes them to skip and it’s hard to get a real nice, solid base of colour down. due to the tenacious absorbant nature of the paper, it’s also extremely hard to blend with alcohol based markers on watercolour paper. you can a LITTLE, but you’re much better off just giving up and layering darker on top of light and hoping the transitions aren’t too jaring. another issue is that for some reason, inexplicably, watercolour paper + inks + alcohol based marker = inks smearing like crazy, even if they’ve been left to dry overnight. i’m not sure what causes this at all, but you can clearly see it happening on kyo’s tail in panel 3 and on portions of yoshi’s face in panel 4.  so yeah, watercolour paper for comics ain’t my home turf. i can make due but i did skitter out yesterday to nab some bristol. unfortunately it’s smooth bristol (only kind they had) so there’s going to be a real abrupt shift between this page and the next where the backgrounds go from SUPER INTENSE DENSE COLOUR to really muted dull colour. TRADITIONAL ARTS!ITS LIKE A BIG OL GAMBLING GAME where the winner is always ‘try something new.’ 

another coloured page of that comic of mine.

like i said before, i’m trying to have yoshi (Y0-5H1) sound like one of those automated phone AI systems that i hate so much. i decided to give him a robofont (retroket alphabet) to further highlight that he’s not a person, he’s an AI. however his square-ish speech balloons make panels a challenge. the eye is used to squares in comics meaning panels and circles meaning speech. yoshi kind of throws a monkey wrench into that. so the next few pages are going to have a lot of curved edges on panels, to compensate.

conturian trade act section 748.B states that if a GMO/AI is brought to contura but is evidently self-aware, it may not be traded or treated as property but is instead protected with the same rights as any other alien. essentially, 748 is the anti sentient-trafficking part of the act and the subsection B is for artificially created sentients vs natural sentients. i don’t recall if i’ve talked about this, but contura is such a powerful trade planet that they can effectively do things like this. a lot of the few GMOs that exist (before it was banned) wind up living there - like gekin. it’s also a frequent hang-out for robots with advanced AI, for the same reason. basicly it means nobody can land on contura and say ‘hey, i created grey. he’s mine. hand him over.’ legally the conturian courts will see him as a person and not property. 

yoshi does NOT qualify as an advanced AI because he is not self aware. he can talk about himself but is still unable to pass a turing test.

the protection bill is a lot more simplex. if your planet is currently under military occupation, or acts of war, or extreme social unrest (like hekshano with its crazy riots right now)  you can claim political asylum and this prevents you from being extridited back to your homeworld for whatever crimes you may be accused of there. basicly if your planet is in crazybad shape, 29-Q allows you to start over with a clean slate on contura. or at least lie low for a while. Q is the subsection that refers specifically to violent political riots. 

yap yap worldbuilding i guess i should talk about the technical aspects of this page a little in terms of its creation too?

well i was foolish and, in our move, didn’t double check my bristol paper supplies. normally i use bristol to do the comics because its thickness allows me to abuse it with watercolours and not have the paper crinkle up like a salted slug. i tend to use vellum bristol because its texture takes watercolour and inks better. it’s a bit rougher, and holds onto the pigments more. smooth bristol is great for markers,  but can cause some smearing for the inks and REALLY needs a lot of layering to get watercolours to look good on. ANYWAY.

so this time, since i was totally out of bristol, i fell back on a pack of watercolour paper i purchased years back to experiment with. i wish i could remember the last comic page i used it on, but it didn’t turn out so great. watercolour paper behaves very differently from vellum OR smooth bristol when i give it the ol inhuman treatment. basicly it takes the inks the same - though its rough texture causes some lighting funkyness that makes the lines look rough when scanned. it obviously takes watercolours much nicer, holding the pigments tighter and allowing for some really bold colours to come out a lot faster than they would on vellum bristol.

but the real issue is with alcohol based markers on watercolour paper. the roughness of the paper is kind of mean to them - it causes them to skip and it’s hard to get a real nice, solid base of colour down. due to the tenacious absorbant nature of the paper, it’s also extremely hard to blend with alcohol based markers on watercolour paper. you can a LITTLE, but you’re much better off just giving up and layering darker on top of light and hoping the transitions aren’t too jaring. another issue is that for some reason, inexplicably, watercolour paper + inks + alcohol based marker = inks smearing like crazy, even if they’ve been left to dry overnight. i’m not sure what causes this at all, but you can clearly see it happening on kyo’s tail in panel 3 and on portions of yoshi’s face in panel 4. 

so yeah, watercolour paper for comics ain’t my home turf. i can make due but i did skitter out yesterday to nab some bristol. unfortunately it’s smooth bristol (only kind they had) so there’s going to be a real abrupt shift between this page and the next where the backgrounds go from SUPER INTENSE DENSE COLOUR to really muted dull colour.

TRADITIONAL ARTS!
ITS LIKE A BIG OL GAMBLING GAME where the winner is always ‘try something new.’ 

4 months ago
  1. shiftysketch said: You have so much background information on this comic. Amaaaazing. You could/should probably make a guide at some point when this becomes world famous. (Because I will)
  2. keptrefler said: Everything you said about paper is so true it hurts. Aughe. Vellum takes watercolor so well but I prefer smooth because outside the comic my watercolor usage is limited.
  3. not-fun posted this