the_gneech | Time For a Break!

Been working on Orange Alert all day. As annoyed I got at the title page art getting screwed up last night, I ended up more or less butchering what was left of it this morning, so I gave up on the idea of doing a hand-colored version of it and moved it to Photoshop where I could correct mistakes as I made them. So that got done finally, and it was on to assembling the body of strips!

I have completed Yin's visit to The Village, and Dover's proposal to Comfort. I have reached the point where the TCM crossover begins, which means I've gotten as far as I can without scanning Vince's strips [1], and as that will require a reboot and I am getting hungry, I think that's a good place to take a break.

It's always interesting to go back and look at your work with the distance of a couple of years ... Orange Alert begins with the first strip Hikaru colored for me, September 5, 2001 ... almost two years ago. My artwork has improved a tad since then, and Hikaru's coloring started out pretty good and quickly got even better. The hardest part of the process, for me at least, has been getting him to use my preferred palette for the strip, instead of the flourescent colors that seem to come natural to him. ;) I actually rather regret that the book will be most b/w, because the Village sequences in particular lose some of their flavor without the horribly tacky wardrobe choices of the various No. 2's...

Anyway, I'm on page 28; assuming the book is 110 pages like Love Bites was, I'm a quarter of the way through -- go, me! :) Time for dinner.

-The Gneech

[1] Have I mentioned that I'm way grateful to Vince for letting me include the TCM strips? If not, well, I am way grateful to Vince in re: TCM strip inclusion! Thanks, Vince! You're the ginchiest. :)