Welcome back, everyone! I’ve been taking a break for the past week or so to gear up for another big year. This was a productive break. I finished most of the revisions on Season Out of Time, did some work on Intrepid Force III, and did a little bit on the Intrepid Force graphic novel. I’ve also been cleaning my house. Here are a few samples from those experiences. I’ve touched up the writing in Season Out of Time and have even added some new chapters. I’m still deciding between endings. This is the cover design in its current state of progress.
This new cover design isn’t finished yet. I’m still working on the lettering and the bicycles. I imported some new background images, and used a higher quality 3D figure in the foreground. I also touched up the wax museum billboard.
Here’s a sample of the writing from Intrepid Force III:
Zapper Martin was singing softly to himself as his airtruck whispered through the chilly November night. He sang longingly and soulfully about life, love, hope, and women with large behinds. Where, oh where, had it all gone wrong?
The yellow eye of Venus hung just above the horizon. Zapper thought of his friend Ahadri who had died on that golden world. He touched the rosary that hung from his neck and wished his friend the best.
This is really sad, Zapper thought. I ought to be out partying like a. . .what thuh?
A swarm of dark shapes floated, ghostlike, over the trees blocking out she sky overhead. Zapper stopped his truck and watched them.
That can’t be what I think it is.
But it was.
I’ve been working on the Intrepid Force graphic novel for an embarrassing number of years. Computers were much less powerful when I started out, and it took forever to do anything. Now both the quality of the computers and the software has gotten better. This is the scene from the prologue. Corbalew, the villain, has wiped out a ship full of space marines and taken one young ensign hostage. He torments her in a video message to taunt the heroes. The picture on the left (or top, in some browsers) shows the older version of the graphics. The one on the right shows the new, improved figures and textures. (Yes, I confess I used my bad guy figure on the wax museum billboard above. Did your eagle eyes catch that?)
Cleaning up my house doesn’t seem like much to blog about, but I’ve got some pretty interesting artifacts piled around here, and I’ve needed to get some of them in order. Ages ago, I bought some original comic book art pages as a convention in Dallas. They’ve just been lying around in cabinets and drawers for years, and I thought it was time to frame them. This is from the Star Trek graphic novel Ashes of Eden. I’ll show you the framed page and the page in the graphic novel.
So, that’s what I’ve been doing during my time off. I hope you had a great Christmas/New Year season.
