UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

9 thoughts on “558 – Cotton Clad Calamity”

  1. Yup, he’s a bastard XD

  2. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Are those pajamas available in XXXL in the gift shop?

  3. It’s been a while, so let me ask: Did we get a reason for him to WANT Susie dead? Not to backseat, but if we didn’t, I’m worried were about to move into “Stupid Evil” territory. Now, stupid happens, don’t get me wrong. It’s not bad storytelling for that to be the case here.

    You’ve just done a good job NOT having that be a driving factor, so the “Kill off the stars of my successful reality TV show.” seems shortsighted, otherwise. Oh, I guess I could be mistaken about the in-story reality TV show’s success. Like, if the company behind them is losing money, or they think a change in management at the ranch would make the whole thing more popular/profitable, then I can see the above scenario happening as well.

    I REALLY think I’m just forgetting something important, but that I don’t have time to deep dive to remind me of, hence the comment. >_<

    1. It certainly has been stretched out over quite a while, but there have definitely been hints from quite near the beginning that whoever is running the reality TV show definitely wants her dead.

      But I certainly don’t recall any reason why.

      1. Yeah it’s fair to not remember since it’s been a hot minute (many, many minutes) but if you feel like a refresher the most relevant bits would be the beginning of Episode 8 and the end of Episode 15. We haven’t explicitly spelled out exactly what The Exec means by his “side hustle” or who was on the other end of that phone call, though.

        I’m hoping that when the whole thing is eventually available it will make sense, or at least enough sense to have hung this narrative on.

        1. Thanks for the replies, Deoxy and Clint. Yeah, I’d totally forgotten about those things. Good to know!

  4. Seems about time for the two people who aren’t there to make a surprise entrance as the ace Susie didn’t even know she had.

  5. There’s still 3-5 people on her side that might be planning something. This guy is a megalomaniac with a god complex, so letting him think he’s the sharpest tool in the shed sets him up for a fall. Everything depends on those cameras, and I suspect their little stop over by the charging coffins had something to do with her actual plan, not the one the a-hole thinks it is.

  6. Really enjoyed the opening of Zombie Ranch. I like the combination of the western setting with the zombie concept, it gives the story a really distinctive atmosphere. I’m a freelance illustrator and animator, and I’d be interested in seeing how some of these scenes could translate into motion, especially as a short animated teaser or character scene.

    If you’re ever interested in something like that, you can reach me here:

    IG: eve_verse_
    Email: [contact.lilaclines@gmail.com](mailto:contact.lilaclines@gmail.com)
    Discord: Lyralilac_

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558 – Cotton Clad Calamity

What would you call this? Armchair assassination? Merk-from-home?

Well, Suzie ain't dead (or undead) quite yet, so we'll just have to see if his gloating is justifiable.

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

You know, we’re still on hold but I’m tired of seeing my ugly, busted-up foot in the blog entry and I’m sure you all are, too. The exterminator is coming again tomorrow morning for another inspection and hopefully, hopefully we’re going to get an “all clear” at long last.

In the meantime we did at least get our Volume 2 book off to the presses to hopefully meet our November timeframe we promised on our Kickstarter. Yay for already finished art and digital workspace that’s not tucked away in a box or has a box in the way.

Anyhow I figure some of you might be passingly interested in what I’ve been doing all these months since the Kickstarter ended so I wanted to show you a side-by-side of the before and after of an original page vs. the page we sent off to the printer. Here ’tis:

The first thing you may note is the extra white space around the edges. This is added because during the printing process printers want what’s called a “trim,” which is basically extra room around the art so nothing gets cut off. “Bleed” is another related concept and you may still see pages in the book where the art extends all the way to the edge, or nearly so, but most importantly there’s a third imaginary border defining what’s called the “text safe” area and you want to keep all your word balloons within that.

So the art has to be slightly rescaled to keep its proportions and make sure that it looks good when trimmed. In addition, when you’re dealing with a 200-plus page book another factor to keep in mind is the binding. If the white margin on the left of the revised page looks bigger than the right, good eye — that’s intentional. This will be a right side page in the book so I’ve adjusted slightly to make sure nothing gets lost in the “spine” when everything is put together. I had to do the opposite for all the left side pages, and then lined up left and right in Photoshop to make sure they looked properly even.

In addition to that, I made a pass at the text and in some cases like this one even rearranged some word balloons I was never quite happy with. Hopefully it makes for some easier flow and reading. Also, yeah, I added a sound effect. Seemed right, plus there was a chink in the drawing of the tube where it fit perfectly.

If this all sounds like a lot of work, especially repeated over the course of a couple hundred pages, well… yep. But it’s done, and I think I’ll be pretty happy with the end result. Which is important when you’re pulling the trigger on a print run costing well upwards of a thousand dollars!

Now if we can just get our place fixed and cleaned, that’ll be nice, too.