Psu: Gunwild at it again with very specific sound effects.
Gunwild: "KWA-DRANGL" is pretty obvious. "LANGELAAN" was the writer of The Fly, and I think the person to invent the word "teleportation."
Psu: It's a bit of a long walk! But I'm glad I remembered that. I don't use sound effects all that often. I like them, but I don't exactly have...
2018-02-25 03:01:51 +0000 UTC View Post
Sorry, guys.
You hear that a lot from me and I mean it every time. But last week and the weekend before screwed me up bad in a couple ways I wasn't able to compensate for. After finishing the previous page, remember when I said I felt better? Well afterwards I was feeling a lot worse. And I couldn't draw for a while. But even worse than the, frankly moderate pain I was feeling in my wrist and ar...
2018-02-25 02:47:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Gunwild: Ya know, Mr. Skwidj is scared a lot, but when he can step up and help the crew, he does it.
Psu: I'd be scared when a bounty hunter points a blaster at me. It's one thing to step up but another thing to see the immediate danger of your ac...
2018-02-17 22:44:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Sometimes Psu and I want to make sure a page layout even makes sense, because we're doing something unusual (or unusual for us, anyway). Then we may go through a bunch of these sketchy layouts. As you can see, the figures are barely there - it's more a matter of deciding how much space they'll take up than the nuances of their poses and things like that. What's interesting (to me anyway) is that i...
2018-02-17 19:47:54 +0000 UTC View Post
Shh, don't make a sound! Just click through to this Cassiopeia Quinn update.
Gunwild: Mercy's got a bit of an Adam Warren fanged grin in panel 4. I like it!
Psu: Look... as it stands I’m just gonna have to pretend that the colors were blown out by a flashbang. Regardless of that, this is actually one of my favorite hero moments in the comic.
Gunwild: It's something small, but I hope that even with the color semi-...
2018-02-10 19:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
This page has more boxy interiors than most of our stories. (It's a somewhat modular-looking, unadorned installation they're infiltrating, so that's intentional, not done to avoid work.)
This kind of thing with tight corridors and rooms involves a lot of accurate perspective lines and stuff that isn't very glamorous, even when it's done right. To jazz it up, we may continue with the pinkish "Vap...
2018-02-10 11:15:05 +0000 UTC View Post
This update combines the great flavors of minty gum and cola! What could be better?!
Gunwild: Panel 1, I didn't get it until you explained, but you have a little Steve Globs back there.
Psu: Oh man I miss the color... But I also totally forgot about Steve Glob. Is it time to admit we didn't actually intend to end this little story with an action beat when we first set out to do it? Frankly we didn't even intend for it to go longer than a few pag...
2018-02-03 01:06:15 +0000 UTC View Post
Yay, hot springs!
"I wanted to go to the lava pool... my shell's only turning red instead of a healthy black!"
"Sorry, Warrant Officer, there's a ctarl-ctarl in there. And you know the Regency's policy for maintaining good relations with the Ctal-Ctarl Stellar Empire is to avoid all ctarl-ctarl at all times."
When this page comes out you'll notice that a few of the top panels will be switched around, and Minx will have put an X-cut in the back of the tanker. The better to show that she's got two swords on hand - namely, the two that Cassiopeia has stolen over the course of the series. They used to belong to Maddy. Keep an eye out for 'em!
2018-01-30 06:02:18 +0000 UTC View Post
Congratulations to human sporting-man Roger Federer on his victory in the Australian Open, marking 20 major titles! May his enemies jiggle in fear of his name!
2018-01-28 12:48:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Gunwild: Okay we'll totally cop to making the Vanaa renaissance and space age look a lot like humanity's style in those eras, what with the ruffs and artsy hat. But in fairness to us, we WERE trying to draw a parallel there quite intentionally that eventually builds to all that stuff King says about similarities.
Psu: Oh yeah, and really that's part of the Muppe...
2018-01-27 10:15:15 +0000 UTC View Post
There are only three ladies in our crew, but Psu wanted to fill out the frame a bit more, so this pinup will feature an added attendant robot kneading the Cupcake.
2018-01-27 08:03:48 +0000 UTC View Post
This new CASSIOPEIA QUINN update is here to deliver the refreshment (and pretty girl space adventures) you’ve been so patiently waiting for!
GUNWILD: Immediate thing I want you to talk about in panel 2... the Cow Tools.
PSU: It's an ancient Vanaa salt scraper. Our comic is full of references, and it would have been a missed opportunity to mention the Far Side as we examine the silly past.
GUNWILD: I'm badly distracted by the voiceover using variants of the word "exist" three ti...
2018-01-20 17:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
This layout wound up not working, so you won't see it on the final page. It's not because it's a bad idea to intersperse one scene with another to keep things interesting, but the problem was that the conversation Penny and Cassiopeia are having would also have been intercut with the dialogue in the insert panels. That's a no-no, at least if the things the characters are saying don't supp...
2018-01-18 06:19:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Zoiks, that's one spooky planet - not that it'll stop the meddling kids from this CASSIOPEIA QUINN UPDATE!
PSU: Oh my glob.
GUNWILD: I actually wrote this before I was aware of... do you know about Squirrel and Hedgehog? It's a North Korean propaganda cartoon with animal-people representing the nice North Koreans and evil foreigners. Except that they accidentally made the dangerous, menacing Americans and the Russian bears and so on look like total badasses. I wish I...
2018-01-13 16:55:01 +0000 UTC View Post
When there's a tricky set piece thing to draw and color, that usually gets handled first, so that the way everything else looks can be decided based on it.
For example, in panels 1 and 2, the gang are clearly looking at this broken planetoid-thing with its massive gas plumes and only distant starlight all around. So how it ends up being colored will affect the lighting on them, and it's importan...
2018-01-09 21:39:36 +0000 UTC View Post
This Cassiopeia Quinn update pairs well with carrots OR potatoes. Take your pick!
Psu: Isn't this next page the balance joke?
Gunwild: We just did that one. Although it's on this one too. Oh right, this is her actually doing the pun.
Psu: No no, we did the one where they crush it. Now Peia makes her first Balance Pun. Yeah that's the ticket. (We can probably include that.)
Psu: Two things I wish I...
2018-01-06 22:50:12 +0000 UTC View Post
I had fun mocking this meme up with our characters. - Psu
2018-01-06 04:21:59 +0000 UTC View Post
The return of the gloobs.
This and the page following it was actually going to be a set of three 4komas - which is to say, comic strips with four equally-sized panels, like most Japanese gag strips are. But instead, Psu thought it would be worth the effort to go with some bigger rectangles and some smaller, with the art being a bit sketchier, like our holiday strips sometimes are.
It wasn'...
2018-01-03 23:12:45 +0000 UTC View Post
It hasn't been the easiest year, but we made it through. Together.
See you in 2018!
Remember that time we showed the Cassiopeia from the opposite, evil universe? Well, naturally, in that universe there is an opposite, good Dr. Botz. And she's unbelievably sweet.
"Please, just call me Karla. All my friends do!"
"But we're not yo...
2017-12-31 09:18:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Gunwild: Whoa there, language!
Psu: I really love the inking on this page. It's a good argument to go right back to that old style of pen for drawing the lineart.
Gunwild: The last panel has its share of ridiculous Easter eggs, but I like the box of "Frosted Frakes" the best. Jonathan Frakes totally retweeted someone's photoshop of that sa...
2017-12-29 08:56:25 +0000 UTC View Post
Um, Zeke, where is your coat?
(Canon answer: He didn't want to get machine grease on it.)
Difference you might notice from the last layout we shared for this page: Panels 3 and 4 were broken up by a dividing line that represented a screen before. That didn't really leave room for it to be established that Cassiopeia and Beebot were "interacting" through their video call screen by touching it from either side - a good idea, but not one that played well on the page. Maybe another time.
2017-12-26 13:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
As an extra (and for everybody, since the page is already out), this is an early version of the last page posted. It has all of the original dialogue - in comparison, you can see how the bubbles shrank and were moved a bit because it was already so distastefully talky. Some words were changed and cut, and so on.
Also, you can spot that Motor Minx was going to have a body in the final panel inste...
2017-12-24 01:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post
