I hope all the new faces, races, names, and situations aren’t too overwhelming. I deliberately try to parcel out new information in relatively small doses, so it never feels like a colossal world-building dump.
In the concepting phase, I was again looking to reduce some of the work load since I knew it’d be a lot to figure out all the ships, aliens, and costumes at once. Instead of designing all three races, I opted to delay the introduction of one of them, throwing in the line about the Cetii viewing from their own ships so I didn’t have to show them! In the process, I added the short, dismissive, “Hmph, typical” line, which I thought ended up doing quite a bit with so little. It immediately conveys that the various alliance members do not necessarily think highly of each other and there are points of contempt between them, which I find much more interesting than allies who are aligned 100%.
I was hoping for centaurs, there are too many bipedal races here.
I have definitely sketched some centaur-y aliens before but they never seem to make the cut. I sometimes find bigger, bulkier designs are cool but can also become space hogs when trying to fit characters into spaces. But I do like the idea of more non-bipedal designs!
There are sometimes big, weird alien guys in the comic: there’s a cool three-legged guy from the snow-bison heist in Book 2 who jumps out in my mind.
I would perhaps be wary when declaring that there should be more or less of anything in someone else’s comic. When it comes down to it I believe the author should put whatever he wants in the comic and nothing else.
So much world building in this volume! I approve. 🙂
I think there are also some undertones in that exchange in the last panel.
Such an uneasy alliance.
Yes! And some of that uneasiness continues in the next page. Nice that you picked up on it. And yeah, this volume definitely starts building up more of the universe. I always strive to do it in an accessible way that isn’t too overwhelming, so hopefully that is the case here. I find it to be an ongoing issue with some sci-fi worlds where I feel too much is thrown at me too quickly.
It must be hard to sneak in a game of Bejeweled when all the monitors are on the perimeter like that. Paranoid micromanaging boss maybe or just kind-hearted giving them a nice window view during work hours?
Ha ha. I do remember there being a funny joke in the first Avengers movie where Tony Stark points out that one guy is just playing Galaga in the big SHIELD heli-carrier command room. The Tas’Qelar are much more disciplined though. Or maybe they’re ALL playing games and Tas’Qelar games just look different than ours. It’s all one big playtest group.
cool. i want some tabletop models like them!!!
That would be awesome!