This is a group shot of several of the current models with some rigging

They’ve got a few issues, and the silhouetted characters are very incomplete (and unclothed, thus the silhouettes), but it’s all coming along. Oddly, the nonhuman characters like Tyron are far easier to rig.

I’ve run into a few issues where my 3D software crashes incessantly if you glance at it wrong, but that’s helped by saving early and often (which I try to do in any case)

I think it’s fairly obvious that my last attempt to continue Shadsly did not go as planned (a combination of artistic frustration, frustration with Google’s apparent unwillingness to list the site, and general malaise).

Part of the problem with Shadsly up to this point is that I’ve never been fluent enough with drawing to do the thing in a timely fashion or with satisfying results.  I’m well aware that the only solution to that is practice, but my mental image far outstrips my actual ability to the point that it kills my motivation to do so.  I have to constantly fight to get something even vaguely close to satisfying, and it doesn’t help that I have to take shortcuts to get even that done on time (which is why those early comics still aren’t colored).

As such, whenever Shadsly returns (no promises when, but I’ve certainly not given up on it), it is likely to be done with a completely new process.

Since very early on I’ve debated turning Shadsly into a GMod comic, albeit one with mostly custom content, but there’re were a number of issues with that, including both process complexity and aesthetic concerns.   Still, the idea lurked in the back of my mind, and came out to dance on my skull whenever I got frustrated with drawing.

I have always considered myself to be a terrible character modeler … the picture of Tyron elsewhere in this gallery was probably the best thing I’ve done until recently.  Even that took ages and didn’t have a very good mesh flow.

However, I have been putting the downtime to good use, building up my skills and trying new things, and seem to have recently finally started to break through my character modeling “block”.  I have decided that if I go this route, I will skip GMod entirely, and just do the thing straight in my 3D app.  I would pretty much have to use the thing in any case to make stuff for GMod, and with my software I have far greater control and the ability to do comics on my decrepit laptop.  The price is less ability to use props from the Source Engine, of course, and more effort spent making backgrounds.

This picture, an (incomplete) test of a 3D model of Shadow, is part of that effort.  It’s not spectacular (and is already out of date), but it’s better than some of the cringe-worthy drawings that have ended up in the comic already.

Making friends quickly, isn’t she?

Story Notes: Not much to say here.  This page is pretty self-explanatory.  Shadow appears to be reasonably safe in here, but she is, of course, trapped.  I’ll leave translating the inscriptions as an exercise for the reader.

Art Notes: I wish every panel could turn out like panel 2.  All-in-all, though, the page turned out pretty well.  Had to redraw panel 5 a few times.  All of the blur effects on this page made my machines SLLLLOOOOWW.

Jumping the wall was perhaps not Shadow’s brightest plan.

Title Reference: It’s a horrible punnish allusion to The Prisoner for no good reason.

Story Notes: Shadow’s Tell wasn’t really meant to be much of a surprise to anyone except Shadow (certainly not to most of my current readers, as many are aware of the origins of this motif).

The implication is that she only wears a glove on that arm because on some subconscious level she has always been aware of her nature, she just hadn’t understood it.   That’s why she took Tyron more or less at face value when she met him (after the initial shock), and why she put up only a token resistance to what he was saying.

This doesn’t mean she necessarily embraces this stuff, however.

Art Notes: I’m not overly happy with panels 1 and 4, but the rest of it works pretty well, I think.  Especially the coloring on panels 2 and 3.

It’s hard to see, but in panel 1, Shadow is holding the pepperspray I mentioned last page.

Oh, and if you wondered why there’s sometimes no rain, and sometimes lots, the storm varies its intensity every so often throughout this whole scene.  There probably shouldn’t also be mist at the same time, but hey, artistic license.  It makes the backgrounds less flat.

In Shadow’s town, you can’t throw a rock without even odds of hitting a cemetery gate.

Title Reference: Nothing in particular

Story Notes: Once Shadow has retrieved her purse, she can clean off her face a little.  Soggy Shadow is probably showing a bit more bravado than wisdom here, but climbing the wall isn’t too big of a stretch; she isn’t a complete stranger to entering cemeteries at night, and she’s feeling extremely put upon at the moment.  (She also carries a can of pepperspray in her purse.)

Art Notes: So, this is the page that caused the hiatus of the last several months.   I have effectively redrawn it from scratch, and made some dialogue and pacing modifications in the process, but this is essentially what I intended to draw back in March.

The original plan was to return to full color with this strip, but that may have been what broke my brain.  After the Broken Dolls storyline, the switch back may have simply been too abrupt (color is a lot of work, and though I love doing it, it doesn’t flow as naturally for me in illustration as in painting).

When I started up again, I drew this as you see it here, but experimented with altering it to use a monochrome or two-tone scheme, but I never could settle on one that I liked (all the variations I tried caused some sort of issue).  The next page will return to at least minimal color usage assuming no major snags.

That was … unexpected

Title Reference: Because it’s the end, duh.

Art Notes: That taxed my skills. I’m tired of drawing, forever. I’m going to go take a week long nap now. Then I will start a new comic next week, titled Goth Girls Are Awesome. It will be updated once every seven months.

Story Notes: No more story. That’s the end of Shadsly.  Really.  No, really.  OK, maybe. I’m an artist, I’m a flake by nature.

Fair warning, there will be no new shadsly tonight.

I’ve spent most of the time since the last one either asleep, or feverish, unable to breathe effectively, and doubled over from coughing. I do have a little work on it done, but not nearly enough. I’ll pick up again next week, hopefully.

In the meantime, I am posting this silly drawing that I did last week on a whim.

Tyron, you slowpoke.

Story Notes: Finally, we’ve reached the end of this conversation, and are nearly at the end of the first chapter.  I hearby promise considerably less expository dialogue.  Otherwise, Shadow might blast me.

Raise your hands.  How many people remember that Shadow had a purse?  (It was shown on page 1.)  I wonder how many thought I was forgetting to draw it all this time.  Silly readers, I only forgot to draw it on pages 2 and 3! (Doh!)

Art Notes: Hmm.  A little less funky distortion (mostly caused in this case by my right-hand bias rather than the tablet), though I’m still not happy with that last panel.  Much better than panel 1 of page 11, but not as good as panel 1 of page 10.

Just for those of you that suggested I do something about the backgrounds, this page has several panels that are nothing BUT background (or at least, are sans-people)!

The recent lack of backgrounds was less a stylistic choice and more just a combination of time constraints, my previously mentioned boredom with the environment of this particular scene, and various upheavals with my process (tablet-drawn, vector art being the most jarring) forcing me to expend a lot more energy than usual in getting the central elements done.  As you see starting with this page, I plan to get back to more fully-drawn panels.  The first part of Chapter 2 (which has a somewhat different style) will be more integrated in this respect.

Story Notes: Not much to say about this one.  I don’t even have a snappy comment to make (probably just because of the intense frustration this page caused).  Mostly I’ll just remind you that Uri was placed on guard duty by Tyron several pages back.  That’s what she’s doing here; circling above the conversation in the alley.

Art Notes: Really not a complicated page, considering how much trouble it has given me.  I think the transition to tablet-only has caught up with me.  I managed to get some reasonable bits out of it, like Tyron’s eye in panel 3 and the pic of Uri in panel 4 (which is probably my favorite panel here).

I’m still not at all happy with Panels 1 and 2, though.  I may actually redraw Panel 1 from scratch before all is said and done (though I’ve done that about three times already).

Colored version will appear when I’m less fed up with looking at this page.  Note to self: fix balloon in panel three so that Tyron’s eye isn’t talking.

Cut the poor girl some slack on the homophones, huh, Tyron?

Art Notes: So here it is: the first all-digital story comic for Shadsly.  I’m kind of pleased with how it turned out, considering I could barely draw Shadow without goofy distortion on the tablet last week (using the Intuos rather than the Graphire helps quite a bit, both because of the tablet itself and because the Graphire driver kinda sucks compared to the Intuos drivers).   I’m especially glad panel 1 turned out reasonably.  Panel 3 still irritates me a bit, though.

Looks like I was wrong about there being another dense-text comic in this chapter.  Don’t worry, though, the remaining ones are rather lighter.

Story Notes: Technically, I suppose that a Tail could be a Tell.  It just doesn’t happen to be Shadow’s particular Tell.

If you get the impression that poor Shadow is trying to latch onto any explanation for all this that means she’s normal, you’d be right.  After all, Tyron just got through telling her on the previous page that he could sense that she has power.