armory

Hello, Internetters.  So, I'm back from my mini-hiatus, and I've put up some new stuff in the Image Gallery.  You can check it out by clicking on the following link or visiting: depravitysedge.com/imagegallery.html

subtle and not-so-subtle jokes and references

You may have noticed that there are 4 new strips on the site today.  As we get deeper and deeper into the storyline, the sets and scenes seem to be getting more complicated.  From the standpoint of practice and technical skill refinement, this is probably a good thing, but from the standpoint of my inherent laziness, it's just plain no good, man.

 But that's not the theme of this post.

The theme of this post is subtle and not-so-subtle jokes and references.  I'll try to focus on the subtle things I've added in the comics to this point.  In the second strip, we notice that Dimitri is sporting a shotgun with a rather unnecessary sight attached to the end of the barrel.  In strip 3, we see that Dimitri is holding his shotgun in the opposite hand as in the previous strip, our first clue of his ambidextrousness.

In strip 4, we get our first clear shot of the nunchaku-knives, which, though they look cool, would be a rather impractical weapon for all but the most skilled or masochistic.  Strip 5 shows us that Dimitri keeps an ashtray in his office which is strikingly similar to the ones at the bar.

The Final Fantasy VI parody strip is also the sixth comic strip.  In strip 11, we get a clear shot of Rina's familiar-looking sword dongle.  The fellow featured in the drawing in strip 14 is also a cartoon bounty hunter. Also, did you notice the electric guitar in strip 16?

Vampire manga fans may recognize the guy hanging on the wall in the 17th strip, in addition to another pilfered black ashtray on the table which is kind of difficult to discern.  The 21st strip features a truck with a trailer which reads 'Fail Mart' with a tiny symbolized whale's tail separating those two words.  I wanted to make a joke here about how major retailers choose logos which reveal how they feel about customers (Target thinks of consumers as Targets, and the new Wal-mart signs replaced the star with this asterisk-looking symbol that looks suspiciously like a brown star...) but I opted to go this other route instead in order to make a tech-related joke.

In the 22nd strip, if you take a close look at the window, you can see the reflection of the emptiness of the set.  And finally, this brings us to the 24th strip, which has a graphic depicting a country incorrectly labeled as 'Egypt'.  The guitar-playing cat in this strip is an homage to the piano cat, and I refuse to reveal the rest of the headlines cut off by the news tickers.  Use your imagination.

dep edge kombat II

I've spent the last few days working on new strips, and another video game strip.  You can probably guess from the title of this post which game I was trying to mimic.  Since it may not be up for a few days, here's your exclusive first look at the aforementioned strip.

two new strips

I put up the 14th and 15th strips today.  It was a lot of posing and modeling and distorting and nonsense to set up, but I'm mostly pleased with how they turned out.  Some things I'd like to fix:  the outline of the door, and the bottom of Dimitri's bathrobe (the perspective doesn't line up).

Still, it's progress.

the image gallery

Yes, I'm kind of buzzing right now.  I have, in fact, had a few beers.  While I'm aware this post lacks the professional tone that characterizes most blog posts, I've decided that I do not care.  What I'm going to do now is improvise.  Let's pick a random image from the image gallery and start riffing.  

Yeah.  Check that out. It's a toilet.  All made of angles and sharp[ness].  In Soviet Russia, toilets defecate on you (metaphorically).  Now, you may ask yourself if it's possible to make a less blocky toilet, and the answer is a resounding yes!  But if it's a passing object that is not central to the plot of the story, the amount of time I'm willing to spend on its creation is minimal.  I could have used a few 3d modifiers to smooth it out, but that's not edgy, and the comic's not called 'depravity's smooth'.  Nope.

And....this rug.  This stupid rug.  I actually did use the modification to smooth it out, and look how it turned out!  Terrigle.  No, that's not a misspelling, it's a new word to describe the level of terriblosity in the turnout (existing word being assigned new results-oriented meaning related not to number of people attending an event but, instead, an end result of an action, as if English could be so logical.  Sucks to you, English.  Whoa, check it out!  Multiple sentences enclosed in parenthesis.  Prolly get an ungry [secret third -gry English word] e-mail from my sister decrying linguistic rape--[unwarranted double-dash followed immediately by bracket!]) of this image.  But whatever.  Not so much going on in the caring-about-that-shit-right-now department.

Going for three. Nothing bad to say about this one.  It's the baddest friggin' ashtray in the history of the world to this point and will probably be used as a marker to denote the current year, as in today is July 9, 0.  And that 0 shows that it is the year 0, meaning it's been exactly 0 years since the creation of this hastily thrown-together image of this ashtray that I made.

Yeah, I can't keep this up, I really can't.  Time to cry into my pillow and re-watch 6 episodes of Arrested Development.  In my head.  Because I memorized them.  Because I have nothing better to do.  Except blog. To you. *tear*

newspaper articles

Today's project was making a suitable 'about' page for the dep edge site.  Rather than tiny blurbs about the characters, I thought it would be fun to write newspaper articles with pictures of the main characters with titles that gave a little insight into their respective roles.

While I wrote the entire articles, I made them just big enough to be barely legible so that the titles alone could communicate the idea contained within.  It was a lot of work, and involved formatting, printing, and digital manipulation, and ended up being very time-consuming.  

But I think it was worth it.

blueprints of the auto shop

I spent the evening making blueprints and taking snapshots of Auto Erotic.  I've always loved seeing diagrams and blueprints of the headquarters of comic book heroes, so I decided to give Dimitri the same treatment.

I'm kicking around the idea of making blueprints for other structures in the Depravity's Edge universe, like the Lucky Neko bar and the Futanari Dojo, but it's a time-consuming process.  If there's any kind of demand for them, it's something I could do at a later date.