hi I just came home from the work session at the bar and I didn’t actually eat anything today so one glass of cider got me pretty wasted. Also I finished a page before I got all wasted. Don’t worry it was already half done when I started drinking.
Up next: That One Page In Chapter 14.
This is a monologue I’ve been working towards since, oooh, chapter VII or thereabouts. It will continue for the next couple of pages, culminating in an unglitched version of that page you’ve been seeing hints of for the entire third volume of the story.
The start of a new chapter! In which we will find out what Mattie said to Rita that had to be so deeply encrypted.
This page concludes chapter 24. Which has generally just not been a good chapter for Rita, has it?
Next up is, at last, the full version of chapter 14.
30-40 pages left. I really need to figure out what the hell goes on in the chapter marked ‘denouemont’, my notes on chapter order just say “How long is this? What exactly happens here? Does it really exist or does it just shade into the epilogue?“. Which is not very enlightening when trying to estimate how many pages this final volume will be.
Today I walked from my mom’s place to a cafe in the French Quarter. As I did, I wrote down all kinds of things I was noticing as part of the look of New Orleans – both in the Quarter and in other parts of the city. Ultimately I hope to only draw a lot of these things one or two times, and turn them into parts of a massive library of art brushes, graphic styles, and symbols that I can use to make drawing ‘The Drowning City’ go super-fast.
And then I sat in EnVie for about an hour and drew the big central world 2 panel, and edited a copy of the first one into the second one. And now this page is done.
Tomorrow I fly back to Seattle, and this page gets posted. Buffer? What’s that. But I’ll be able to draw on the plane.
I mostly finished this page on the plane to New Orleans, and did the final tweaks while sitting at my table on the first day at Wizard World New Orleans.
Next page status: fully sketched. And here I am with a few hours of the first day of a con stretching out ahead of me. Yeah I think there’s a good chance of me getting back on schedule.
It’s the beginning of a new chapter! Again. This one’s even in numeric sequence with the previous one – how long has it been since that happened?
My notes had things going from chapter 23 into chapter 25, with some indecision about whether I’d call attention to the missing scene, but I decided to to show most of what happens here after all. Jumbled timelines are fun to read and write if done well, but sometimes you need islands of coherence.
There are about 32-35 more pages left, in this chapter and five more. Next page status: I have first draft dialogue for the blue timeline throughout this chapter, and four panels roughed out of about, oh, eight or ten, probably. Depends on how I handle the other timelines.
Edit. This just came out of the queue and the next page isn’t done. I might be able to finish it on the plane tomorrow but I’m not making any promises, especially since I’m going to be at Wizard World New Orleans this weekend. I also have the next seven pages completely roughed out, so things should be moving again soon. Expect a brief hiatus and be pleasantly surprised if it doesn’t happen.
The End.
Not really. But this is the end of chapter 23. And we have finally come around to the unglitched version of this moment we saw back in book 2. (And might I also direct your attention to the end of chapter 13? Repeated imagery is fun.)
About 40 pages left. Then it’s The End for real.
So much for that buffer. I spent the last week doing pretty much nothing but playing video games and having a cold.
The next page is mostly done, so that should be going up on schedule. All I have for after that is my outline, so I guess I’d better get to drawing. But right now the sun is about to set and I’m probably going to fall back into the mindless embrace of trying to get a 100+ kill streak in Diablo 3 or something.
At long last, after a hundred and fifty or so pages, and almost four years of me drawing this comic, Rita gets to point a gun at Barrett and pull the trigger.
Didn’t we see this chapter already?
Next page status: um I have some sketches? I’m also posting this a week and a half before it goes online.
I learnt the very basics of After Effects to do the glitched out text. Don’t worry if you can’t read the center text; it’s not supposed to be legible. You should be able to get some idea of the top and bottom text, though.
In the print version, of course, this text will just be in spot gloss.
(Also thanks to STriker for shaving the file size on this almost in half!)
At long last, this is the final page of chapter 20! Patreon backers got to read it ten days ago.
This chapter has taken forever. Not surprisingly, really: it’s got a complicated thing going on that required me to lay the entire chapter out at once, plus dealing with three back-to-back conventions followed by a wedding, followed by a visit home just as I was starting to get a rhythm again, followed by a lot of fighting seasonal depression now that it’s starting to get dark around 4:30 here in Seattle. These last few pages were finished a while back; here’s hoping i can maintain this buffer for a while. Maybe even increase it. I’ll need some buffer for certain really complicated pages planned for chapter 26.
I’ve also been getting some work done on Secret Project P. Here’s hoping I can get that done before the window of opportunity for it closes.
Next page status: 152 has a sketch and will finish this chapter at long last!
(I’m posting this ten days before it goes up; I think the likelyhood of me getting page 152 done before then is PRETTY GOOD.)
EDIT. Yep, 152 is in the can. And I’ve been sitting on my ass for the past couple of weeks playing video games and being mopey so I’d better scramble to get the next few pages together.
ALSO! In response to the number of people speculating about just who that face in the last page was, I have this to say: Vg vf gur Tbqqrff, naq vg vf nyfb abg gur Tbqqrff. Ure ahzore vf Nyrcu-0. uggc://ra.jvxvcrqvn.bet/jvxv/Nyrcu_ahzore. Lbh jvyy frr zber bs ure va puncgre gjragl-frira. (Rot13’d for your protection, in case you don’t want even the tiniest hint of a spoiler.)
Next page status: 151 is done; 152 has a sketch and will finish this chapter at long last!
I was tempted to build a 3d model of this flying pirate ship to get this up-shot looking right, but I won’t be drawing it any more after this. Not worth the time. Instead I just looked at some pirate ships on 3dwarehouse.sketchup.com in their 3d viewer and eyeballed it.
I can’t help but think that this is a pretty cool artifact of living in the future. I can look at a 3d model of a pirate ship without ever even leaving my browser.
Next page status: 150 and 151 are done; 152 has a sketch and will finish this chapter at long last!
Barely staying on schedule. Must fight seasonal depression.
Large parts of this page were drawn while hanging out at Lucid sharing drinks with cartooning friends.
Next page status: four panels, all roughed, none finished. Pretty sure that’ll be done by the Thursday, and then pretty much the entire rest of the chapter is finished.
It’s a page!
Next page status: 4 panels; 3 roughed, one finished. Patreon supporters can see the whole chapter in its current state.
And now to go run some errands, then decide between drawing some more Rita, drawing some other stuff, or playing more Dragon Age Inquisition.
Next page status: Done and in the queue!
I think it is time to admit that I am out of clever page titles for a while. I’m spending so much time jumping aroubd back and forth drawing this chapter that I kinda have no inspiration left for those. Not that it really matters now that the site’s really emphasizing the chapter rather than the individual page.
Next page status: 6 panels, 3 finished, 3 partial. Damn it feels good to be back in the groove of putting out pages on a regular schedule again.
The black space in the background is intentional. Just saying.
Also here is some fan art by Dragonaur! Thank you!
Next page status: five panels, one drawn one sketched. If I can keep making myself actually work on the comic for an hour or two every day it really shouldn’t be a problem.
I agonized over the song Tom is singing the end of for a while. (Yes, it’s Tom – he’s got a new Hat. There’ll be some dialogue on the next page mentioning his name.)
See, it needs to sound good. On the next page, Rita’s saying it sounds beautiful. But let’s be honest; my strength as a writer is not in writing lyrics. So I didn’t want to have something half-assed that I try to convince you is beautiful.
I experimented with censoring it, but that felt weird. It gave it extra significance that it doesn’t need to have; it’s just a bit of texture to this sequence of ‘lots of time passes in the green world’.
Ultimately I just decided to go with the final line of what’s clearly a longer song, and a bit of onomatopoeia for distorted guitar playing. Which is basically swiped from the last riff of King Crimson’s “Dinosaur”; the Skylands are very definitely a prog-rock fantasy world, so of course Tom is a prog-rock guitarist.
Next page status: 1.5 panels out of 3, maybe 4 done.
Here are some close-ups of the books Tom and Rita are reading. Click for full-size.
The title of Tom’s book is a terrible machine translation of “Oyster Soup Kitchen Floor Wax Museum: A Memoir”, which is a title swiped from a King Crimson song off of one of their later albums. It contains one of my favorite guitar solos ever, right after Adrian Belew says ‘Play it for me, Spider-fingers’.
And while I am making you listen to King Crimson let me also include one of my favorite songs of theirs of all time: Dinosaur. I find myself singing this every now and then in a certain kind of mood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c-VYR9p4K0
Hi. I’m not dead. Neither is this comic.
The past two months have been crazy: I finally did all the shipping from the book 2 kickstarter, did all the shipping from my store that’d been backed up by that kickstarter, went to three conventions and a wedding in four consecutive weekends, and then basically hid in my living room with the lights off playing a video game.
I’ve been working on the entirety of chapter 20 in one huge file, skipping back and forth. You’ll see why as it slowly unrolls; if you’re a Patreon supporter, you can get a preview of it here. Right now I’ve got the next two pages drawn, so I’m going to actually have some stuff in the buffer for once – let’s see if that serves as a spur to keep me drawing while I’m hanging around New Orleans next week visiting my mother!
This is the end of chapter 13.
This page took a hell of a long time. Mostly because I’ve been busy doing stuff for Rainfurrest. I’m still not quite done with the conbook cover for that.
Also of course there’s Kickstarter fulfillment starting to happen. I probably need to get some friends together for a shipping party soon…
Rita’s boss is pixellated out because you’re just not cleared for that.
Or maybe they’re pixellated out because they’re a YCH who’s going to be a Kickstarter reward. Possibly at a stupidly high level because I really kinda like having them be a mystery, although I may want to rework them a little bit to make it obvious they’re definitely not Barrett beneath all the pixelation.
Anyway. There’s still some stuff left in this chapter. Guess I’d better get to drawing it.
The second panel of Fantasy World made me giggle so much. I love it when my characters start insulting each other.
I am glad to announce that as of today, there will be no more ads on Decrypting Rita.* Thanks a lot to my generous sponsors on Patreon!
* at least while it’s in progress, I’m still debating if I’ll bring them back once I’ve moved on to Drowning City and Absinthe.
I think I drew the bishiest Savage Henrys ever in this page.