The Sleeper's Den

Ha! this is nice, isn't it. Last week I was actually on time, but technology failed me and my page didn't get uploaded. This week, everything is in working order, but I failed to finish my page on time. I really shouldn't have made wild boar sauce (4 hours until it was ready, and I did not even hunt the boar myself!) when I had a page to finish.

I have been out of sorts. Last Saturday's episode of Doctor Who, Sleep No More, was the first episode I have seen that I thought actually bad. I mean, I have seen some so-so episodes; it's not a perfect series by far. But a really bad episode - that's a first. I'm a bit shocked.

Anyway, better late than never: page 186.

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Arthur has pulled the sword from the stone. Having, in one swoop, freed several British slaves as well as the Irish warrior Morholt, Arthur and his men now try to make it home before they get caught by a Saxon patrol. But they haven't got far when they run into King Pellinore of the Jutes. Pellinore, fascinated by the fact that Arthur has succeeded in pulling the sword from the stone where everyone else has failed, proposes a deal. He will support Arthur's claim to the High King's crown and put an army at his disposal. In return, he asks that Arthur give him and his people land. Arthur asks his Jutish and Irish allies to swear an oath. Meanwhile, Cai and Arthur's parents are worried sick, and begin to notice some funny business in their own house...




Concrit is still and always welcome :).

New page next Sunday! (or so we hope)

THE STORY SO FAR:
( Part I: The Darkest Hour )
( Part II: Sunrise )

Had a super busy weekend - almost forgot to post!

Quickly pressed Pause on "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe", where Christopher Eccleston turns out to go to the same dentist as Hercule Poirot...

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Arthur has pulled the sword from the stone. Having, in one swoop, freed several British slaves as well as the Irish warrior Morholt, Arthur and his men now try to make it home before they get caught by a Saxon patrol. But they haven't got far when they run into King Pellinore of the Jutes. Pellinore, fascinated by the fact that Arthur has succeeded in pulling the sword from the stone where everyone else has failed, proposes a deal. He will support Arthur's claim to the High King's crown and put an army at his disposal. In return, he asks that Arthur give him and his people land. Arthur asks his Jutish and Irish allies to swear an oath. Meanwhile, Cai and Arthur's parents are worried sick, and begin to notice some funny business in their own house...




Concrit is still and always welcome :).

New page next Sunday!

THE STORY SO FAR:
( Part I: The Darkest Hour )
( Part II: Sunrise )

Hello, do you remember me? I'm this person who used to post new pages of some Gawain comic regularly. Aheheh. I have an excuse though: I downloaded Windows 10 a fortnight ago and it broke my computer. So not only could I not use my computer; I also spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to fix things, finding a computer guy who could help me, and calling said computer guy back because the problems hadn't been solved (in fact he couldn't reproduce them at his workshop). Turns out they were driver-related, and I'm just not in luck, I have to try and make do until the problems go away when the makers of my internet link thingy, my printer, my tablet, my hub and goodness knows what else finally post driver updates. Ha bloody ha.

So yes. There was no posting, because no computer and/or internet, and no drawing, because efforts to restore computer functionality. Joy!

Anyway, I can use my poor traumatised computer now, though I have to unplug everything whenever I leave the room, and I did manage to squeeze out one page for today. It's not a great page, but it's a page. Here goes.

***

Arthur has pulled the sword from the stone. Having, in one swoop, freed several British slaves as well as the Irish warrior Morholt, Arthur and his men now try to make it home before they get caught by a Saxon patrol. But they haven't got far when they run into King Pellinore of the Jutes. Pellinore, fascinated by the fact that Arthur has succeeded in pulling the sword from the stone where everyone else has failed, proposes a deal. He will support Arthur's claim to the High King's crown and put an army at his disposal. In return, he asks that Arthur give him and his people land. Arthur asks his Jutish and Irish allies to swear an oath. Meanwhile, Cai and Arthur's parents are worried sick, and begin to notice some funny business in their own house...




Concrit is still and always welcome :).

New page next Sunday!

THE STORY SO FAR:
( Part I: The Darkest Hour )
( Part II: Sunrise )

Well! My computer was being obstinate; I almost thought this wouldn't get posted! But here we are, a bit later than I had hoped...

***

Arthur has pulled the sword from the stone. Having, in one swoop, freed several British slaves as well as the Irish warrior Morholt, Arthur and his men now try to make it home before they get caught by a Saxon patrol. But they haven't got far when they run into King Pellinore of the Jutes. Pellinore, fascinated by the fact that Arthur has succeeded in pulling the sword from the stone where everyone else has failed, proposes a deal. He will support Arthur's claim to the High King's crown and put an army at his disposal. In return, he asks that Arthur give him and his people land. Arthur asks his Jutish and Irish allies to swear an oath. Meanwhile, two people are worried sick...




Concrit is still and always welcome :).

New page next Sunday!

THE STORY SO FAR:
( Part I: The Darkest Hour )
( Part II: Sunrise )

Sorry about the lack of update last week! I'm still struggling with the writing for this part :/. I think I will be able to get next week's page done...

***

Arthur has pulled the sword from the stone. Having, in one swoop, freed several British slaves as well as the Irish warrior Morholt, Arthur and his men now try to make it home before they get caught by a Saxon patrol. But they haven't got far when they run into King Pellinore of the Jutes. Pellinore, fascinated by the fact that Arthur has succeeded in pulling the sword from the stone where everyone else has failed, proposes a deal. He will support Arthur's claim to the High King's crown and put an army at his disposal. In return, he asks that Arthur give him and his people land. Arthur asks his Jutish and Irish allies to swear an oath...




Concrit is still and always welcome :).

New page next Sunday!

THE STORY SO FAR:
( Part I: The Darkest Hour )
( Part II: Sunrise )

As promised: three pages this week! Didn't manage a fourth, sorry - it was far too hot! In this weather, drawing is no fun :(. Too sweaty.

I think I can say that I can make one or two pages for next Sunday, but none of what comes next has been written yet, so a short hiatus (for writing) is a possibility. I will do my best to avoid it, but I make no promises...

***

Arthur has pulled the sword from the stone. Having, in one swoop, freed several British slaves as well as the Irish warrior Morholt, Arthur and his men now try to make it home before they get caught by a Saxon patrol. But they haven't got far when they run into King Pellinore of the Jutes. Pellinore, fascinated by the fact that Arthur has succeeded in pulling the sword from the stone where everyone else has failed, proposes a deal. He will support Arthur's claim to the High King's crown and put an army at his disposal. In return, he asks that Arthur give him and his people land. But for Arthur, matters are not that simple...








Concrit is still and always welcome :).

New page next Sunday!

THE STORY SO FAR:
( Part I: The Darkest Hour )
( Part II: Sunrise )

So! Last Tuesday I had my illustration class "exam". I had to bring all my assignments, display them on a table, and then my teacher (Stijn) and his colleague (Other Stijn) had a look at them and gave comments. My teacher didn't say much as he'd already given me his comments on each assignment previously, but he listened to what Other Stijn had to say. And that had a bit of impact on the fate of this comic :p.

Other Stijn looked at my things and basically said, "yes, okay, nice, if a bit classic." When he arrived at my pencilled first comics page (this one), he couldn't place it, as clearly it wasn't an assignment, so I told him about my comic. He didn't like the page much and made fun of it, saying it looked like a Christmas card. So I told him about my difficulties in finding a style I like for the final look, and I showed him my current comics notebook with the brown and sanguine inked sketches. And at that he was all, "I LIKE IT!!11! Why don't you do the whole thing like this? Keep the size! Keep the colours! Do the sketchy thing! You could have it published on yellowish paper just like this notebook! You should totally keep the notebook look!"

And my teacher looked at me a bit cross because I hadn't shown him this particular notebook (I'd shown him the first TDA booklet because that is where the story starts - but you may remember that the quality of those pages was quite a bit lower than what I have been producing recently), and now he thinks I should completely go for the comic next year and produce him a definitive page a week, just like I produce a page a week on this blog.

So um, I guess that is the pencilled style out of the window (I am ... not too sad about that), and the prospect of one old and one new page each week, next year. I am not sure yet how Stijn is going to supervise and correct the new pages if I am going to do them the sketchy way, because I don't really see how this way of working leaves room for correction (the reason why it moves so quickly is because all the mistakes stay where they are and I barely use any reference). Maybe he'll have me redraw stuff and do cut and paste? I don't know.

Thoughts? Opinions? Please share!

Meanwhile: new page.

***

Arthur has pulled the sword from the stone. Having, in one swoop, freed several British slaves as well as the Irish warrior Morholt, Arthur and his men now try to make it home before they get caught by a Saxon patrol. But they haven't got far when they run into King Pellinore of the Jutes, who challenges Arthur to a fight, gives him a good beating, and then wants to be friends. Yep.




Concrit is still and always welcome :).

New page next Sunday!

THE STORY SO FAR:
( Part I: The Darkest Hour )
( Part II: Sunrise )

Page 170 is a day late, sorry about that... What can I say: I worked on my school assignment four days out of five last week, then fell ill on Friday, probably out of pure relief because my assignment had been handed in on time :p. And though I had started on page 170 during my lunch break on Tuesday, I had to start all over again because I couldn't get the page layout (which was supposed to be more spectacular than the present version :p) to work. My weekend, then, was SO BUSY with social stuff (yes, I'm a hermit, but I'm obliged to attend Hermits United from time to time :p) that I made no progress at all. In fact, I'm already relieved to have found the comic at all, because I'd mislaid it after my 'work during your lunch break at a restaurant'-thing. Go me!

ANYWAY: look at the page number! It's page 170! If you take into account that The Darkest Hour was 119 pages and The Sword of Kings 11, that means that page 170 of Brothers & Sisters is ... page 300 of this comic. That's not too bad, is it? Of course our hero is still only 11 years old, but, well, I have a lot of setting-up to do. It will get better. Really :).

I would have done something special like a giveaway or something, but the page count has taken me a little bit by surprise. I'll do my best to think of something, though :).

***

Arthur has pulled the sword from the stone. Having, in one swoop, freed several British slaves as well as the Irish warrior Morholt, Arthur and his men now try to make it home before they get caught by a Saxon patrol. But they haven't got far when they run into King Pellinore of the Jutes, who challenges Arthur to a fight, gives him a good beating, and then wants to be friends. Yep.




Concrit is still and always welcome :).

New page next Sunday!

THE STORY SO FAR:
( Part I: The Darkest Hour )
( Part II: Sunrise )

Whew! That was close. There was almost no update today. The reason is... Well, if there had been no page today, I would have told you that I have spent the time I could spare last week and this weekend on one of my dolls - a very cute dollie called Amhar, who is Arthur's natural son. I have had Amhar since...last autumn, I think? and I'd never done anything with him, due to the move, plus art school, plus comic. And making doll clothes is fairly labour-intensive for rank amateurs like me.

That is all very well, you will say, but since you are on a schedule for the comic, you could have prioritised it, no? It is supposed to go up every Sunday, and you keep people waiting, and nobody is waiting to see the outfit of your stupid little doll.

To which I reply, I know that, but you see, I had to prioritise the doll clothes because until I'd finished them, my sewing machine is on the kitchen table, and all my scissors and needles and patterns are on it too, and so for the last week I have been eating off a tiny corner of my kitchen table, surrounded by heaps of sewing stuff. And I'm a little bit sick of that.

To which you, quite rightly, say, But you have a study. Isn't your study one of the largest rooms in your flat? Weren't you supposed to sew there? I mean why on earth are you sewing in your flipping kitchen?!

To which I say, um... Well, the thing is, I still haven't sorted my study (because I hate sorting, and I HAVE sorted the rest of the flat, oh do give me a break), and my desk is a mess and all, and until I have cleared the floor there is no room for a sewing table, so there is no other surface I can used except my kitchen table. And I really want to clear my kitchen table now.

And you say, "...Right. So we nearly had to wait another week for your stupid page because you are too lazy to sort your study. You've moved in there in, what was it, December last? It's MAY. Shift your lazy arse, woman. Jeez!"

...Yep.

So I drew this page after having sewn Amhar's coif and shoes. I drew the page in a record time of two hours. So apparently I can be quick. Aheh. To be sure, that was only possible because it had already been scripted (or re-scripted, three times, but whatever).

***

Arthur has pulled the sword from the stone. Having, in one swoop, freed several British slaves as well as the Irish warrior Morholt, Arthur and his men now try to make it home before they get caught by a Saxon patrol. But they haven't got far when they run into King Pellinore of the Jutes, who challenges Arthur to a fight. In which the Sword of Kings...breaks.




Concrit is still and always welcome :).

New page next Sunday!

THE STORY SO FAR:
( Part I: The Darkest Hour )
( Part II: Sunrise )

...I'm hungry. Posting this, then off to cook my dinner :p.

It took me a while to iron out the rest of this episode - the confrontation between Arhur and Pellinore, that is. After that, we're off to Hector's house to meet ... some people ... and discover ... some things, and then we can get back to Gawain. You have probably forgotten what he even looks like! My poor beebee.

***

Arthur has pulled the sword from the stone. Having, in one swoop, freed several British slaves as well as the Irish warrior Morholt, Arthur and his men now try to make it home before they get caught by a Saxon patrol. But they haven't got far when they run into King Pellinore of the Jutes, who challenges Arthur to a fight. Has Arthur bitten off more than he can chew?




Concrit is still and always welcome :).

New page next Sunday!

THE STORY SO FAR:
( Part I: The Darkest Hour )
( Part II: Sunrise )