Hello and welcome back.  We've finally reached the point where we're 10 days before launch, so things are just a tad busy around here.

And at this point a lot of stuff needs to be done.  We still need to do the lettering.  We have page testing to do.  Ayne still has to ink and tone the last few pages of the current chapter.  And that's just chapter one – chapter two's been written, but no storyboarding has been done, much less the drawing or the rest.

And of course, along with the rest of chapter one, we still need to work on rendering and other aspects of the work, such as rendering and aesthetics.  Yay.  Of course, our fail is your gain, so…instead of me doing work, I'm going to waste yet more time and talk about today's subject.  

Everyone has a style, a particular kind of design.  There's a particular aesthetic to each type of work, whether it's the simplicity of White Ninja or XKCD to the lush complexities of The Phoenix Requiem or Saint's Way.  Obviously you know this; we talked about it in looser details a few days back, but now to get into the finer things.

It's the little touches in the world that make the world real.  Imagine driving through a city.  There are the usual buildings, bus stops, stores, what have you.  Okay, that's the normal signs of the real world, right?  Except…everything is blank.  The stop signs are just red octagons.  Billboards are just long, blank rectangles.  the buildings are faceless slabs of concrete, just as blank and bare as the road you're driving on.

That's why there are the little design touches that make things.  Which stood out more, the umpteen billion blue Jedi lightsabers vs. Yoda's and Anakin's green lightsabers or red Sith blades  - or even Mace Windu's signature purple lightsaber?  Why are the signs different for different supermarkets – after all, what Wegmans sells is no different from Piggly-Wiggly or Gennardi's or Vons.  Yet it's the look and feel when you go in that shows how different each one of these are.  Each little touch, each little design, makes it feel unique and special – even the generically same red stop sign (which, I'm betting you didn't know only has to be red on public property; it can be whatever color the owner wants on commercial or private property).

 (in order: a ski resort in Michigan; Princeville, HI Heloport; Augusta Golf Course, GA; private property in Montana)

These are little touches that bring the world alive.  And it doesn't have to be just stop signs or different buildings.  Store logos, the things people wear, the kind of car they drive.  They don't have to be all the same, even when there's a good reason to (when Henry Ford produced the Model T, it wasn't the only car in existence, so why should everyone in your videogame drive nothing but the same generic-looking Ford Taurus-like car?); even a minor change like that makes a huge world of difference.

The differences in your characters should also reflect this.  I don't care of all ten of your characters are huge fans of the Beatles and the Beatles only, they should like different ones or even the same one for different reasons (one likes John because of his vocals, one likes John because of his guitar playing, one likes John because he was the "Angry Beatle.")  People are different.  Hell even clones should be different to a certain degree – don't believe me?  Go ask a set of natural clones (aka identical twins or triplets) if they're exactly the same; chances are, though they look the same and like a lot of the same things…surprise, surprise, they're two different people and should reflect this.  Books, bees, flowers, trees (a crazy little thing called love….): they're all different.

That's not to say that when you draw a group, you should spend hours making a homogeneous mass a group of individuals; there are limits.  But when you "zoom in", they should be.  Comics scholar Scott McCloud called this "reflecting the other", that the group in itself is a sum of all parts and those parts are an extension of the one, but that once you break it down into individuals, each individual is "other" from each other and can be detailed as such.  Even when you're focusing on one single member in the crowd, that person is "othered" and can be drawn detailed while the crowd is not.

I could go on and on about this, but I'd be beating a dead horse (not that it's ever stopped me before….)  so anyways, back to work, and I'll see you folks tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Day 9, Rendering (No Meat By-Products, We Promise!)