weasyl.com · 2466750:9405423

Check out the proper comic page for context!

The first panel of the finalized page did have rejections but they were entirely for lighting and not worth including. As with most shots from in front of the bed, especially with the lamp in the background (and doubly so since correcting the disabled rays catastrophe) the foreground characters were dark and shadowed while the background was blown out. I continue to regret choosing not to add a light bar along the TV-side wall ceiling but I suspect too that it would have introduced similar trouble with the shots facing that wall. Regardless, as a wide shot takes a mere 2 hours, it was no real trouble to tweak some hidden planes that would brighten up the characters some, though ultimately I used blended layers of the v1, v2, and v3 shots to composite the final look.

W1 - This alternate shot of the 2nd panel of the finalized page is actually the planned page shot. As mentioned on the finalized page's description, it was discarded. The original plan for this and other pages in the sub-sequence that began with page 94 typically had the intention of showing Rederick reacting in the background in shots where his reaction wasn't the primary focus. The expectation was that it should make sense without seeing him in those panels but as page development began, I quickly decided views from that angle with Yeltsin on the right made Rederick's reactions more unclear or even counter-productive. Here too, there was room left during the sequence plan review (mentioned in the finalized page description) for a few more lines from Blythe that I had an idea for but left out to make the decision during page dev. I ultimately stuck to leaving the idea out (More details on that on a later page, maybe).

W2 - Barely even an alternate shot, really. It was the first version of the Yeltsin-on-left version that was chosen for panel 2. The real final choice is only just barely panned right from this one, entirely because it framed things a tiny bit better. You can see the strange AO artifact under Blythe's right arm as I mentioned. For some reason the wall juts have a very strong shadow in these panels, making them feel disconnected. I suspect my render scene has gotten so big, it's introducing rounding/representation errors (more of an inaccuracy) on Maya's floating point positions for objects. Maya has some rather weird means of handling positions with floating points which allows for virtually infinite scene distance but if the scene extent gets too large or the scene file itself grows too large, errors creep into the exact positioning of things sometimes to the point of being noticeable. Or at least, that's what I've read. Regardless, my method for rendering is to have a "canonical" environment scene file that provides the whole environment with everything it normally should. A copy of that environment is taken to create a render scene file. Early on I very quickly learned that using Maya's file referencing process was a far too much of a pain in the butt to work with than simply copying the scene outright. Initially, the render files were saved as a temporary file (excluded from incremental backup because of how much it would change). While that is still partly true (the incremental back up actually has time to pick up and save an ascii temporary file Maya creates while saving these things) I do also save a copy of the render file at the end of sequences which contains everything made up in them for renders. That along with copious notes for every scene. Anyways, the use of these copies and such means that I always have an original version where the creeping inaccuracies don't exist.

S3 - This was the 2nd version of the final panel of the finalized page but the 2nd rendered, after deciding solo-Rederick (seen here as S4) was insufficient. Almost immediately I decided it didn't resolve the issue but further confused it as it made it look like Rederick could be looking at Yeltsin. I did really like the idea of getting Yeltsin partly in the shot as I felt it helped make him feel "lesser" somehow. I don't quite know how to explain the feeling I wanted for him. Maybe a visual representation of how I wanted to express him feeling is the best way to describe it. Anyways, the 3rd alt shot resolved this by removing him turning the focus a bit, giving a more clear line connecting Rederick's gaze solely to Blythe. That 3rd choice was the 1st rendered and the finalized choice. This one was done after it, simply by staying up to 3 am since I had started the first render a bit later than I should have. I do think this shot does somewhat better imply he's looking at Blythe than I thought it did from the preview viewport, but I still think it's less obvious that the chosen shot.

S4 - The last rendered shot was the original page plan shot. As mentioned, rejected for not communicating who Rederick was looking at. He didn't quite fit the shot either since the angle was taken from a plan which used near-identical shots for Rederick-focus reactions but didn't have the ability to compensate for adjustments in his body position (slouching in a grouse, leaning back with surprise, or simply straight up as here). I rather like how his sculpt turned out here, despite how quickly it was produced. Though, technically, it's a blend in from the sculpt from 2nd panel.