Busy, busy, busy....

Well, Project HERO has seen me achieve yet another page that's had me awake at night wondering if it's actually possible to produce it in Poser. Firstly, I should say that I've yet to have editorial feedback on these pages, so there's a fair chance that they could change, but I really wanted to update the blog and share them with you all.

The big splash panel required an aerial shot of a Korean jungle village with villagers. Now, I would have liked more villagers, but my computer just flat out said no to me. The compositing route wouldn't really work with this image either, because it's important that everybody and everything casts shadows here. Several layered on figures casting no shadows would have just looked wrong. Still, to produce a picture like this using Poser is quite an achievement in and of itself. Of course, more memory, a faster processor, and the latest version of Poser would probably let me add more figures to the scene, but none of the above are an option right now. When I'm doing this full-time professionally and there's money to spare, I'll definitely be getting a dedicated 3D workstation PC though (although I put together my "dream" workstation PC package on one website recently and the total cost came to £6,000! When I do finally get my dedicated workstation I don't think it'll be quite that fancy...).

I'd also like to draw your attention to the dead soldiers in the second panel, whose uniforms saw my most extensive texture editing to date. Click on the pic above for a better view.

In other news, as well as working on Project HERO and The Young Gods, I'm also colouring a couple of pin-ups for Chuck Satterlee over at Markosia. I'm currently working on a pin-up for Chuck's Of Bitter Souls series and he'll be sending me over the line-art for the second pin-up soon. Don't know exactly when, where or if these are going to see print but rest assured I'll be announcing that here as soon as I know. The colouring is a nice change of pace for me, and it's something I can do at lunch while I'm at work. I'm trying to keep as many strings to my bow as possible so that if the work dries up in one area it'll keep coming in another. I know that the ultimate decision to give up my nice, secure full time graphic design job and plunge head first into the life of a full time, freelance comic book artist is a massive risk, and I need to do everything in my power to minimise that risk when the time comes. It would be great to have regular work in all my areas of expertise - 3D art, inking, colouring, plotting and writing - but I suspect that there probably aren't enough hours in the day for that to be feasible.

Talking of writing, I'm currently mulling over the idea of publishing Elephants From Norway Go Mad In Winter via Lulu.com. I'm undecided on this right now. A couple of people have read it recently, and have really enjoyed it. I wrote it over ten years ago though, and...well...I'm just not sure. I really think I should go over the whole thing again and rewrite it...but...I just don't have the time for that. Maybe it's something to keep in the back of my mind for when I have the time. I am very fond of it though, and it's always seemed a shame to me to leave it gathering digitial dust on my hard drive.

Well, that's all for tonight, really. V for Vendetta comes out tomorrow so hopefully I'll have time for a trip to the cinema this weekend.