511

And we're finally all caught up.
The blogspot Site is now whole again! I must say That flashback art wasn't as painful as I remember it being.  There are still some really bad ones, and it was agonizing going through it 1 page a week, but reading it all at once wasn't that bad at all.
Now then, Let's finish this fucking thing.

510

It's been so long since the waitresses were shown in this comic that they're still in Black and white. I had a filler comic about Hart being the one abusing them. only turned out 1 of them, though.

509

The flashback finally ends, It's a one way stop to the finally from here.
Shinji looks pretty good in these shots. although his neck is a little wierd in the last panel.

508

507

I'm always more comfortable with using abstract backgrounds like these when the characters are indoors. Those rooftop scenes in the final chapters are always so difficult because of that.

506

I remember feeling a huge amount of satisfaction when I reached this point of the comic. Suddenly all that frustration finally went away and I was back in full enthusiasm.

505

I was worried about that Tree thing when i started drawing it in the previous page. Now that the memory of agonizingly drawing that tree has faded, I can appreciate how nice it looks.

504

First off, the actual date of this comic was around April of 2011.

This monologue of Quats was written in July of the previous year. There was so much writing backup from how long it was taking to actually get to this point. it was very disenfranchising.

In fact almost all of the comic up until where we are right now was written during the summer of 2010. It's just been this long game of catchup for the past 2 years.

503

I cut a lot of dialgue between Quat and Stacie at this point. She was going to half lie that Livelake was a friend of the diamonds and that's how she knew "he was dead" even though he wasn't part of the guild
I cut it though. thank goodness, it would have bogged down the whole thing.

502

Mr. Fuck has so many little things about him that never get explained until this point. It actually works out pretty well for him.
That lighting effect actually wasn't that hard for me to do, but I'm never ever doing it again.

501

This one is so Frustrating. I really love the joke in this one, but the page itself cuts from one scene to another scene and then to another scene. I could have done a better job showing that.

500

Demon Shin is so much easier to draw than normal Shin.

499

Dammit David Spade, you ruined the moment of this page with your being a terribly designed character I was stuck with.
ugh. That guy ruins everything.

498

That noise effect crashed this page the first time I tried it. I forget how much progress on this page I lost, but I know I had to redraw a few pictures. That's the only time I ever really had to reboot photoshop, though. So I consider myself lucky.

497

I spent ages on this page Paneling was actually pretty easy to do, but drawing so many dynamic poses that I wasn't used. and then I had to draw those same poses again with different characters. And I got all stressed out that if I didn't draw the pose right the first time, I would have to redraw both of the pictures and it would
Anways. This was worth the effort.

496

I like this page, But I'm always worried that the detail about Quat's mask being protection from her own powers gets overlooked.

495

I actually didn't like this one too much when I first drew it, but it works really well.

494

I had a lot of trouble getting the angles right for these panels, since they're facing each other from across the room. But Looking at it now, I'm super satisfied with it.

493

Oh yes! Yes yes! That whole 4 panel reaction Ada has is just great. Quat's excessive lighting powers is one of my favorite reveals ever.

492

491

Started experimenting with the Noise filter at this point. Which gets useful for showing Quat's power.

490

Coloring

489

I think half the reason the art quality went back up so far is that I was drawing Magic 8 Ball girl again. It did feel good to go back into my comfort zone.

Still wasn't used to making the word bubbles in photoshop, though. also quat's face gets all wonky there.

488

As much as I keep complaining about the low parts of this chapter of the story, this is my favorite fight in the whole comic.

487

That splashpage of all the stuff Ada complains about was a nightmare to put together
Also, that first panel  being shot from outside the building was pretty challenging as well.
The next 20 pages get really fucking elaborate. I'm not sure why I did this to myself.

486

Had way too much fun with Photoshop on my second outing. For these next few pages I would bring the file back into flash to do the dialogue and framing. But I wouldn't be able to keep it up.

485

Drawing characters was a lot easier in photoshop, but Compositing the overall comic became more and more of a problem.
Text boxes ended up being the worst problem. The Text tool takes forever to load up, and I can barely see what I'm writing, and it doesn't have any box binding to it, so I have to enter every line break manually and ugh...  So anyway, art significantly improves, but the works gets harder just as usual.

484

I wish I had done a better job on this one. I'm still pretty happy with it (I like the way Shinji gets older as he's talking with IVan) but this is basically the last time he ever sees IVan alive again. It really could have been a lot better.

483

This one isn't as bad as last week. IVan pose in the last panel really shows how limited my anatomy skills are, though. Grump

482

I remember drawing this one and deciding that  just couldn't draw the comic in flash any more. Looking at it now. Flash wasn't the issue.
More specifically for this page, the problem at hand was partly that the lines were too thick, but even more important, the background details were more accute. That makes the background sort of pop up in front of the characters and makes this page just completely painful to look at.
At least the title panel looks nice.

481

I get really metaphorical in the dialogue. Mostly to cover up how poor the dialogue is.
Anyway, Blah blah blah. The King Sows decent between Shinji and Quat again.

480

Ugh. That's all I'll say about this page. ugh...

479

I'm not drawing Quat right at all on this page. She's really hard to draw right, though. There's all sorts of little quirks to her eyes and her hair.

478

Out of all the characters that I don't like to draw in this comic. That fucking king is my least favorite character to draw. I tried taking steps to really establish the setting in this chapter, but it managed to fall apart on me really badly. And it only gets worse on the next few pages.

477

That train scene's a little confusing, now that I read it. Anyway 2 more chapters before the blogspot archives are finally patched in. The art takes a drastic nosedive next chapter.

476

You know what this flashback could have used... Adult Quat narrating the story a little. I never use a narrator, but this is one of those times it could have really come in handy.
Love the art in this page, though.

475

During this time the comic was written in 2 ways. On my walks to and from work I would come up with some rather elaborate  monologues and plot developments, but not have them drawn out yet.
or I would draw out scenes between two characters, but not ~exactly have the dialogue completely written.
That left me cornering myself quite frequently. Especially during Quat's dialogue when we get back to the present.

474

That wasn't "simply put" at all, IVan. Simply Put would have been saying "Shinji was supposed to killed steel blue billiards, but instead I had him join my team"
Bad 23 year old me! Be a better writer!

473

The backgrounds are kinda trippy here. I wish I did more stuff like that.
I don't know why I thought giving that girl different colored contour lines was a good idea. that looks terrible.

472

I liked these last few pages. The drawings are pretty great, the story is just the characters bouncing off each other. I'm wish I could have made the backstory that went with it more engaging, but it's not as bad as I remember it being.
It's a shame the rest of the flashback could be like this.

471

Kinda of a lame set up for the joke. But I did want to emphesize the importants of the Hearts Faction in the suit league. All rookies start out as clubs, experienced normals become the spades, and experienced supers become the hearts. (two wich there are 1 or 2, as most super powered heros are clubs.)
Looking back though. That really wasn't an important detail to the story. I could have easily left it as subtext.

470

Top Panel Refers to a collection of filler comics I posted before this chapter. The Ear-fter Burner was from that filler as well. I should repost that arc soon, but not now.

Harts demon form took all summer to get right. Really I'm surprised how well it ended up looking.

469

So many time skips during these pages. I want to think that they work, but I know there is probably a lot of confusion.
For the more astute reader: Shinji's design in this chapter starts out as a Ralts, Becomes a Kirlia and then looks like a Gardevoir.

468

This... should have been two separate pages. I don't know why I thought combining them together would be a good idea.
One thing I do like is the little Rivalry Adult Quat' and Ada are having on the top panels throughout this story.

467

Hate doing newspapers. I fot all the information out on there, but I don't know if the point of it got accross. Luckily the proceeding comic covers for it, but in turn it made the next page very wordy.

466

Conflict between the central characters of a story = Good writing
Lengthy exposition about the history of a made up orginization that no one cares about = bad writing.

465

UGH UGH! This was like 4 pages worth of exposition crammed into that one chalkboard creating one of the stupidest monologues I ever wrote in this story and the background on that first panel makes me want to strangle myself.

Fuck it. Sometime this month, I'm outright scrapping this page and page 464, and I'm rewriting them completely. I don't fucking care if it's been over 2 years, this page is fucking disgraceful. I hate it so god damn much.

464

So the story is that after Quat hear's about how her team functions, she asks why they can't try reforming the heroes instead, and IVan likes the idea, but Shinji does not.
I tried to convey that in this argument between IVan and Shinji after the fact, but it did not pan out right at all.
Really I should have just scrapped this scene and completely rethought it out, but I couldn't afford to redraw it back then.
Also, IVan's Shirtlessness was really hard to draw for me, because I could never make it look like he pants weren't falling down.

463

Now this one, I like. could have used a little something in the background, but the colors are good, the dialogue's playful and the reaction shot at the end is great. Little vectory, though.

462

WHY WHY WHY!? That first panel is painfully unfinished, The sudden revert to black and white doesn't work, the grey tones aren't used well here at all, and it feels like the page is only half written.

This was. I had a lot of enthusiasm for the flashback when I first thought of it. I had some great ideas for what it would lead into, but... I just kept reaching this parts where I couldn't draw it. It's painful reading these.