Heh… surprise? Those of you who tuned in yesterday (April Fools Day! Don’t you all know the drill by now?) may have had some snarky things to say about my April 1st announcement that Galaxion would be moving to full colour. Well, as it turns out, the joke was that we weren’t kidding. It’s kind of like how we all like to wander over to ThinkGeek to see what wonderfully absurd items they list for their April Fools Day prank, only to learn later that they’ve put some of those items up for sale after all.
So here’s the deal. For a while now I’ve longed to join the 21st century and start colouring Galaxion, but I’ve been nervous to start. It’s a big commitment, both in terms of time (particularly at the beginning while I get comfortable with the process) and in cost, when it eventually comes time to send this stuff to the printer. I think I can do it now, without interrupting the comic’s schedule. At the very least, I will promise you that I’m going to be giving it an honest try. Since I’m still pretty new to thinking in colour, I do reserve the right to change the colours from page to page while I figure out on the fly what works and what doesn’t, so consistency may be lacking for a while. If you have a better colour sense than I do, or have more practice with working in colour webcomics, feel free to toss in suggestions. I look forward to hearing what you think!
The April Fools messing-with-your-heads thing wasn’t originally part of the plan, but when it became clear that the first page I intended to post in colour was going to wind up so close to April 1st, and since I didn’t have time to make something else, I decided to have some fun. I hope I didn’t aggravate too many of you!
Anyway, here is some more news that I promise has absolutely nothing to do with pranks: This Friday and Saturday, April 5th and 6th, I will be a guest at RavenCon in Richmond, VA. I won’t have a table in the Dealer’s Room this year, but here’s my schedule of panels:
Friday:
- Publishing Your Webcomic, 8pm
Saturday:
- Social Media for the Introvert, 4pm
- From Comics to Webcomics and Back Again, 6pm
- Writing for Webcomics: 8pm
I’ll have some books available for my usual convention-sale prices ($12 for one book, both for $20!), and you’ll be able to catch me before or after the panels. Or, feel free to email me and we can arrange to meet up.
Oh Tara, so naughty messing with us! Also: YAY.
The colors look gorgeous so far.
Purty.
So will the books also be moving to colour? Presumably requiring you to go back at least to the start of the chapter.
Yes, the next book– which is to say, Book Four– will hopefully be all in colour. So yes, I will have to at some point go back to the beginning and colour the opening pages!
You’ve taken your first step into a much larger world.
Geez, I was busy yesterday and didn’t even think to click in here. Would’ve been nice to see the announcement. Your dream sequence from a past April Fool’s Day remains one of my personal favorites, though.
Oh, hey. The color is awesome! Keep up the great work!
Edit: OK, I clicked back one. The color looks great on that page, too! And well played on the timing.
Are you going to start coloring from the veeeery beginning or just the beginning of the chapter? Just curious, especially since from the very beginning would be a huge undertaking. @_@
It would indeed be a huge undertaking! No plans for that right now. Maybe one day.
Hi Tara – The colour looks great! Are you colouring by hand with pen/marker/Crayola (?) or digitally?
It’s digital. I’d like to work in paint or watercolour again, but i need more practice.
This is pretty much what I would expect the color scheme would be for a luxury cruiser since the Galaxion is a converted ship. I like the colors thus far, especially the way you color in the engineer’s “black” hair. (That is the engineer in the lower right?) Fusella’s hair is also close to the color I imagined it to be except less orange and more brown (though that may be my monitor’s display; results may vary, I guess).
I was used to the black and white, but this puts the story into a new realm. Go for it. I would like to see how your nefarious experiments work out. (Insert here your own nefarious mad genius laughter.)
Belated YAAAYs!
I didn’t quite dare to hope yesterday, so I waited with commenting, but now I can let it all out
YAAAY.
Some comics don’t work so well in color, but these two pages are absolutely gorgeous. How much time does the coloring take? Are you going to color the previous pages too? If I manage to get some time on my hand, I might try my hand at doing some of those myself (purely for my eyes only, I’m not nearly good enough with image editors to let anyone else see the results).
Color, good. We like.
My shark eyes! I’m blind!
Love the change to color. It adds a great bit of depth to the pages.
Wow! Looking brilliant, Tara.
Okay everyone is “distracted” by the color but I will point on that this comic also represents a major milestone in that we have finally “linked” the split story lines after a very long separation. In other words, for the first time in a very long time we are back in “real time” with all of the characters, not just a subset.
Who is that person in the bottom left? He is wearing a different uniform than the rest of the group.