Far Out There

Okay, let’s get the sucky news out of the way first. There’s no new voting incentive today. If you didn’t catch the story on the Facebook group, here’s what’s going on: you know that new scanner I got? The one I desperately needed because my old one died on me? Yeah, turns out that scanner had some bugs. I mean, literally. Bugs were living inside the thing and were starting to get all over the place. Obviously, it had to go (and before you ask, no, the bugs do not remain. Thank you Raid), which kind of put me in a jam again. Still, despite it’s indigenous population, the scanner DID work, so the night before I tossed it, I managed to get the next week of comics onto the computer. Alas, there was NOT time to do Voting Incentives as well, and honestly, you wouldn’t want me writing The Killer Station of Deadly Doom on that little sleep anyway. Hopefully my NEW new scanner will get here tomorrow, so incentives should return by Friday. Sorry about all the disruptions, guys!

Anyway, on to non-sucky stuff. It was really fun to draw a space scene and ships and stuff again. And WHAT a ship, huh? It’s been mentioned several times that The Exposition is considered to be a “tiny” ship. Well, I guess now we know why.

A few random bits about that ship, since I’m still really jazzed about it: I’d originally intended The SuperMegaAwesomePants to be much less symmetrical, with lots of gangly bits sprouting off in all directions (to contrast with the Expositions simpler design). Unfortunately, I really needed to ink this fast due to the circumstances above, so I went for broke on the size instead. I think it was the right call. Speaking of size, I tried to put some windows on the thing to add detail, but I couldn’t get them to show up. To match the scale set by The Exposition, I’d have to make any windows just a pixel or two wide. Again, this ship is BIG. Also, I’d originally imagined the pointy bits being the FRONT, but when I started coloring, I realized it made a lot more sense to put glowing engines on that side and make it the back. Oh, and I totally forgot the name of the ship when I was penciling the page. Actually, I think “The BigLongNameIForgotButWillPutInLater” may be even funnier than the real thing.

(Historical Notes: Oh man, that whole “literal bugs in the scanner” thing probably holds the record for wonkiest technical problem I’ve ever had, and that’s a list with some intense competition.  Anyway, I think what really makes this page work so well has nothing to do with the big ship itself, it’s how The Exposition looking tiny makes the big ship FEEL big.  I need to remember this blindingly obvious fact next time I need to draw that ship the Justice Heroes Kids stole.)