||||The Space Between

Chapter 15.3 is available here.

Chapter 15.2 is available here.

I have also just discovered the ‘max-width’ CSS attribute. This should stop browsers upscaling the pages above their native 1600px width on large monitors, which results in ‘fuzzy’ images. Better late fixing this than never!

Whilst sketching out Chapter 15 I realised that it’s full of natural cliffhangers. So I thought that I might try releasing it in shorter chunks of 3-4 pages. The first 3 are available here.

The main plot is finally getting underway and by the end of this chapter, the crew will be in a lot of trouble!

Chapters 13 and 14 are up!

This release feels like it’s taken a long time to put together, but I did meet my self-imposed ‘July’ deadline. I broke this chapter down into two shorter parts after finding a natural break point in the middle. It’s been a challenge, with many functional scenes required to get things set up and convey the passage of time. But a lot of the setup will finally start paying off in the next few chapters, which I’m excited to get working on.

Lastly, I have recently switched to a different hosting provider for the site content. Let me know if there’s any trouble loading the images.

– Mark

For anyone who’s interested – I’m making progress on the next chapter but it’s taking ages! I don’t expect to have it ready for release until July.

Chapter 12 is up.

I had originally planned this to be a short 5-page bridge to the next chapter. But somewhere along the way, after adding scenes to improve flow, or just interactions that I found interesting, it ended up closer to the length of a normal chapter! After the usual pre-release worries, it’s taken me a while to hit publish on this one. I know there’s stuff that I’ll end up going back to edit in a year or so.

Whilst trying to write background elements into a sci-fi setting, I’m humbled by how hard to is to comprehend what a profound shift they would create in society and human consciousness. Each one alone could be the focus of an entirely separate story. But for science fiction to be comprehensible it needs strong attachments to the world we understand, and I think it’s too much for both the author and the audience to take on several of these paradigm-changing technologies and their complex interactions at once. I’ve just brushed past a couple in this chapter, but they gave me pause for thought.

Off to work on Chapter 13!

It’s a brand New Year, with the same old resolutions to break. 2015 was a mixed bag for me personally, so I’m hoping that 2016 will be a little better. For the comic, I’m finally done with the distraction of fixing up the art in Chapters 1-3. I expect this will be an ongoing challenge. Art (as one of my favourite sayings goes) is never finished, only ever abandoned.

As I’m working through Chapter 12, the setup for the main storyline is finally coming to an end, which means I can get stuck into the fun stuff. If you liked Chapter 3, there’s a lot more of that on the way, with much higher stakes involved. Conflict, betrayal and some shrinkage of the main cast list. Happy 2016 everyone! 🙂

Chapter 11 is up! The leave period has taken a lot longer than I expected, but we’re almost back off the ground.

I’ve also been taking time to go back and touch up some of the bad art in the first few chapters. I should be done with that by Christmas, and then it’s on to some exciting new stuff for 2016. I hope everyone has a good holiday season, and thanks for reading!

Chapter 10 is up. This is a short one but it’s still taken several months to draw due to a shortage of free time. For once I’m fairly relaxed about how it’s turned out!

I have also switched my drawing over to a new PC. Lots more CPU and RAM, plus my first SSD, is allowing me work faster and with no time lost to blue-screens.

I have a suspicion that much of my ‘morning after syndrome’ is caused by drawing at the wrong time. I was surprised in this chapter when I went back one weekend to add four new panels for pacing and they all turned out well, with few edits required. So I suspect that drawing in the evenings after work when I’m tired has been causing some problems. This sounds obvious, but doesn’t feel so when you’re actually drawing. More studies required!

Lastly, I’m aware that the readership of this comic is still really small. I don’t know if I’m producing anything of value, and I know that any appeal it has will be narrow. But I am enjoying working on it, which is the most important thing, and there is some exciting stuff coming up, so I intend to keep going. 🙂 Thanks for reading!

Chapter 9 is up. Small warning – there’s some (mild and hopefully fairly inoffensive) nudity towards the end. The leave period is turning out be a lot longer than it looked in the script, but things will get back into space soon, I promise.

This has been another tricky chapter to work on and has taken longer than I expected given the number of pages. I hope it’s turned out alright in the end. Trying to present a plausible flow of arguments in the court room scene without it becoming too tedious was a challenge. So was handling the various states of undress in the last 2 pages. I hope I found a tasteful balance. I don’t know how weird page 10 is going to seem to people, but it seemed like a fun idea to play around with. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

There’s some interesting parallels to the first chapter in this one as well. My favourite scene to write and draw was Jyoti’s extra piece of backstory – no prizes for guessing what industry I work in.

I could ramble on but I’ll keep this short. Releases make me incredibly nervous. Thanks for reading.