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DEVELOPMENT OF CHAPTER 3 - in blind excursion

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Anyway... SKETCHES!!!







with little of stories...

We know that after Doctor Dodd said there are something worst out there than what he was doing. That where I introduced Ulom the Cannibal into the tale as a ravaging flesh-eater hell-bent on eating our heroes no matter what. Somehow, he can eat large objects too like it was no business, just to give our heroes one more obstacle to overcome. How to stop him? The FREEZER nothing better than freezing him in his tracks. Odd is that freezing Ulom is the direct elemental opposite of burning Doctor Dodd.

How nice.

Afterward or during that period, we would finally met Kelen. Some of you may see her as overly brash and bitchy person (and that was due to my inability to expand her characters... that will be fixed later.) That aspect is important, just to give you a bad tastes toward her since some people are not willing to help each other but for themselves. Same with Daniel, although in his more hideous form than what we seen. And finally, we have Quo the Manager. I always meant to introduce him at the end of Chapter 3, but how would he looks like? Simple and complicated, so the very simple appearance of one-eyed Slug would do the trick. Of course we will see him in Chapter 4 where he would need our helps. With what? That's for you to find out.

Enjoy the sketches 8)

EDIT:
I forgot to do the character!

Ulom is one of the most trickiest characters I have ever drawn for the story. How can I demonstrate the insectoid beast being ravenous and mad? Sickly thin figure is one. But what about the face? I tried adding a huge mouth to it, but that really didn't works (and the huge mouth instead goes to the bottom of the face as you see in the story). Then I saw some picture of spiders with some pinchicers and they looks hungry to me, so that idea was a perfect fits with Ulom. The "hair" antennas are still used since they're mangled up nicely, representing the Ulom's fractured mental state.

Kelen was also a tricky one. I always imagined her as just a head with tentacles, but from where? Originally they're suppose to come from her mouth or eyes, but that would make her character a bit more creepy and detached, so I had the tentacles coming from her neck instead, keeping with the morbid vibe of what's happening to the people around Ener and Maddox. I wish I could make her bit less bitchy and bit more of a person. Live and learn, man.
And about Quo... well, I will explain more about him next chapter because we barely scratched the surface, so I will leave it as that.

And finally... the EYE. Also one of the hardest characters I drew, but I found the final sketches just about perfect. I always imagined it looking at our heroes from safe distance. But what is it doing? Don't know. Will we see it again? I am not sure. Perhaps.

Story is going on the roll with Quo's appearance... I hope Chapter 4 will be just as satisfying.

DEVELOPMENT OF CHAPTER 4 - significance of endeavor

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SKETCHES TIME!!!



Of course... aside from the ever-morphing Light Void, the real star (or enemy/boss) of the chapter is the monster you guys lovingly refer it as Tentagib. The odd thing about Tentagib is the inspiration behind its creation: my greasy hairs curled up in beautiful yet repulsive fashion. I wanted to use that visual form behind the basis of monster, but how to visualize it in more complete body? I tried spider-like body, but that's been overdone. Octopus/squid as well. I combined both to make it a monster of my own creation. And made it insanely powerful, yet beatable.

I always intended for our heroes to fight against it in epic climatic battle because it looks exactly like the type to scare our heroes and push them to brink of death. Too bad that it got crushed under the Rail Cart.



And of course, I always wanted to start the chapter with a bang, hence the first encounter with Tentagib and that poor soul that you guys discovered to be named Loeb. Of Empathy in the Light Void is starting to become a very very dangerous place...



And of course, there is the puzzle segments. If you look carefully, it shows a very different path than what you read in the chapter. It would be too complicated to describe it all, but I changed the puzzles progression before starting Chapter 4 because of fears from how Chapter 2 fared with the puzzles. Chapter 4 became very tiring to me with solving a lot of puzzles (and rewarding because of great commands to do). Good thing is that I already prepared the next several chapters to have puzzles toned down somewhat. Of course, you see the early sketch of the scary lady Yeyni. There was a scene involved her scaring Maddox (alone) and pinned him to floor, hitting him to near death before Ener came to his rescue and kill off Yeyni. I rejected the scene because it would be too scripted. Instead, I followed your commands and we got better scenes!



And here we have is the Rail System! It the place where lot of expositions, revelations, and climax starting to fall in place and jump start the unraveling of Situation. Yes, I am afraid our friends are stuck in outer space or Vast Reach as they called with no helps nearby. They're entirely on their own. It didn't helps having Tentagib breathing down their necks with clear killing instincts. You can see the storyboard scene for battle to keep the action under control while changing few of things to fit with command. The sketches of Tentagib were so good that I directly imported from the paper to computer. Too bad that it got crushed it under the Rail Cart, though!



And we ended off the story at Rotunda of Section B where our heroes discovered their objective: the ORANGE BOX. Interesting fact: I always meant to reveal what the contents of ORANGE BOX is, but you guys decided to wait until our heroes return to Quo. That's fine, I can push the revelations later And the ending scene show Ener collapsing to floor with Maddox rushing to help, blacking out before ending with the usual TO BE CONTINUED. Two things changed: one was that you guys had Maddox hugging Ener, comforting him and encouraging him to stay away. I liked those commands and it made for more touching ending. The second change is that I added the revelation at the end with memories of Ener reading the story to Foer in which Ener first thought up of while trying to piece together about the Situation.

And that story is called A' L L U K I N.

And how's that relevant to the entire Situation?

DEVELOPMENT OF CHAPTER 5 - and their entanglement

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NOW

IT'S

TIME

FOR

SKETCHES!!!









After the epic-filed action and intrigue that is the Chapter 4 (and the slightly messy puzzles too), it time to slow things down in Chapter 5 with... INTERACTIONS! Well, of course the whole story is interactive, but I always wanted this Chapter to be very character-heavy and humor-filled with tense dread in the air. I moved away from limited exploration and choose-your-own-path of Chapter 4 into fully-realized freedom of Chapter 5, set inside the Xenobiological Agriculture Dome. Crafting a biological setting is something I been looking forward to for a long time and I felt proud of this.

This setting allows for freedom of exploration and plot progression not only in character interaction, but also brief and epic action scenes. Yes, you touched the machines too many time and that blew up in your face (literally). Yes, you let Yeyni lives because there's no command to kill her off. Yes, you guys also didn't save Daniel right because Ener chopped off his head too early, in which Ulom ate it all along the Lobi Palms, which leads to Iranch the Tentagib eating Ulom that still contains Daniel in its bottomless stomach, which caused Daniel to suffer in extreme paralyzing pain from the macabre interior of the Iranch.. all leading Daniel to be eaten by Iranch.

Actions have consequences.

Now about the characters...

Daniel

Kelen

The Engineer
 (aka EYE)
Teyri

Yeyni

Quo

and host of many new characters

I teased the potential for heavy character developments in Chapter 3 and I think I nailed down nicely in Chapter 5, making this one of my personal favorites next to Chapter 4. Also, you guys played so awesomely that I decided to treated you with early, yet important, revelation: the cause of entire Situation is indeed the SPACE RIP TECHNOLOGY that is part of the Experiments on the ship.

Now that the Core is going into slow meltdown mode... time to up the stakes.



Also, I want to comment on the design of horribly mutated and un-mutated beings.

Kelen is supposedly shown as horribly twisted beast with variety of limbs. That's difficult to draw and would blend in too much with the background. I kept the tentacle-neck element from Chapter 3 and expanded it, adding more gross tentacles all over her body while keeping the eyestalk from the sketch. I felt the final design in the story is pretty much perfect.

Also... once again, the mutated form of Ulom is very difficult to envision. I originally envisioned the long and slender plant-sprout-like creature with huge gaping toothless maw. That's not scary at all... I kept the long slender body, stretched it to near paper-thin thickness while keeping and twisting the Ulom's insect head and adding more teeth/mandibles. Much better and much more scary.

The Quo's un-mutated normal form is something I always wanted to keep it simple and pleasant, offsetting by its complex history and ambitions and cigars Here's how I came to Quo's normal design:

Slug

+ Ghostbuster's green ghost

+ Bloo from Foster Home for Imaginary Friends

+ Jabba the Hut from Star Wars

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= Quo



All right... I been teasing too much with Elouf's lack of appearance by including him in Chapter 4 and 5 as bare mentions. I always wanted to show this picture that seeds mistrust between Elouf and Ener. What's going in this picture? One of previous chapters already explained what happened... Also, does Elouf has a deeper role to play in the story or is he merely a side character like Wooli and his team? Also... I promise that Elouf will indeed return to make full appearance (alive and well) in Chapter 6.

Along with few other...



Peace.

DEVELOPMENT OF CHAPTER 6 - austerity of grandeur

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And so, Chapter 6 finally came to its end...

Before I go deep into my regular post-chapter thoughts and developments, allow me to personally describe what Chapter 6 achieved to be as a summary in just a couple of words:

FAILED SUCCESS

Despite the fact that the Chapter is completed where I am extremely satisfied with, there are too many of nagging things about the Chapter that truly dragged it down as far I am concerned. The success lies in the fact that I fully delivered the complete Chapter in unique format that I always wanted to try and did so with satisfaction. I always wanted to try my hands on developing a faster-paced, action-packed Chapter that would push my capabilities into direction where I never went to before. In the tense situations where our heroes has to venture through the maddeningly warped debris to save the Of Empathy ship is the kind of story I wanted to tackle for a long time. I was honestly pushed to my utmost capabilities to deliver the story with hosts of different locations and characters to create a huge sense of tense progression and I felt extremely accomplished from what I did with the Chapter.

I am also satisfied with a new set of characters to work with, mainly everyone's favorite poetry-speaking spider and everyone's reviled blasted-to-bits douche. I did works with supporting characters, such as with Kelen, Daniel, Elouf, and Engineer, but I felt it is time to truly expand the cast of characters to join our heroes in racing against time to save their ship. Now Ener and Maddox aren't truly alone anymore and that's a huge development from just a simple first Chapter that only shown just three characters. As for the settings of the Of Empathy within the Light Void, I went beyond what I thought was capable with this peculiar environment. The settings in this Chapter is my absolute favorite yet with host of truly gnarled wreckages of the ship floating in the blight that is the Light Void. I am eager to see what kind of settings could be produced for the next Chapters.

As much as I enjoyed doing the Chapter with huge satisfactions, there are some nagging flaws that must be addressed:

Firstly, this Chapter WENT ON TOO DAMN LONG (time-wise in 4-5 months D:).

It is purely the faults of mine with lot of stuffs going on in my life, constantly interfering with my drawing routines and my thought-process of how to best develop the next scenes. Doing the faster-paced action-filled Chapter for first time in the series didn't really helps as I often had to stop and think about the how to create scenes with appropriate amounts of plot development, pacing, and apparent realism. The time-limit also put a lot of pressure as I have to figure out how to make the story goes as quick and smooth as possible without going down to 0:00 and triggers a true Game Over. Gladly that didn't happens, though we did have a couple of close calls. Let me say that this sort of destruction-countdown-for-story-intensity WON'T BE USED EVER AGAIN for rest of the series, for our own sakes. Originally I would do this again if this Chapter went well. Since that wasn't the case, I will have to throw it out for good. Although, I did enjoy doing fast-paced action and would like to do that again sometime down the road, just that it won't be as extreme as this Chapter.

Also, I read some of your complaint about Maddox's constant bitching.

In some case, I will have to agree since his reactions was quite off putting and seemly out-of-character. I won't say which one, but I know where your criticisms are directed. When I first wrote how he would reacts, I thought it was fitting. Then it got repetitive and tedious and for that, I wish I could go back and alter some of that so that he would reacts to certain events with more respect toward others with less-stressed tone. Some of his other frantic reaction scenes are just the way I intended and would leave it as that. Some scenes are also dragged out, like Loeb's standoff in the CORE, but that was intentional. Other scenes such as the one where he was properly introduced in the COOLANT CHAMBER was overwritten with expositions just to extend the drama. I would like to polish that up and cut down on the dialogues. Also, again I apologize if my English is difficult to understand as I am trying my best to make their dialogues as clear as possible, especially with Ka-Ley's poetry dialect. At least Maddox is there to interpret

That pretty much summed up what I felt about this Chapter.

But is it my best Chapter yet? In my opinion, yes it is. I sincerely hope that you enjoyed this Chapter too, even if it took 4-5 months to complete it (2-3 months just to finish the ending D:)

Now the Chapter's development!









Interestingly, I came up with an idea for Chapter 6 that it should be different from other 5 chapters in the sense that it should be much faster with extremely dire situation that should be resolved as fast as possible. I always wanted to do this for a long long time because for most of 5 chapters, our heroes been stuck in very limited sections of the Of Empathy where they can explore, interact with characters and stuffs, and become exposed to some important plot expositions. I decided that the best way to do with faster-paced story for Chapter 6 is to have our heroes travel across many different sections of the ship and through the Light Void to reach their destination. You can see the results of that in the Chapter. As for the story, I originally had the CORE to be mysteriously become destabilized where our heroes has to twice race through the wreckages of the ship to fix it. I decided to cut that idea into the first half or third of the story because having that throughout the entire Chapter felt too cheap. There would have to be a REASON why the CORE is destabilizing.

And so the idea for Chapter 6's villain was born into our hated douche, Loeb.



Much about the Light Void for future Chapters were already written, but using Loeb would add few more to what the Light Void and the Of Empathy might actually be and why they're there in the first place. I thought about what this villainous character should be like and suddenly I thought back to Chapter 4 when that poor unnamed sap sacrificed himself in that explosion in attempt to kill off that Iranch the Tentagib. He would be the perfect villain for this chapter where he's trying to destroy the whole ship just to escape from the ship's sadism and their supposed immortalities. Like Doctor Dodd and Ulom, I had lot of enjoyment doing such a deranged unstable character, yet I never did his sort of character before, being borderline urging-for-attention type. Even if he's such a douche and a huge bother, I enjoyed doing him.

Loeb's not the only one I immensely enjoyed developing… the one I felt stoles the show is our favorite poetry-speaking spider, Ka-Ley.



If you noticed in my preliminary sketches, there is no traces of anything spider! That because I originally had the Chapter to be tackled only by our two heroes. Then I thought about it carefully… Our heroes doing all the dirty works wouldn't be fair so others should join the quest to stabilize the CORE. Also, the CORE is located in the Engineering section. You would have to possess a myriad of engineering skills and knowledge to properly interface with anything in that Section. Since neither Ener nor Maddox possesses any sort of skills required to interface with CORE's control panel, I had to introduce an Engineer character who would helps them.

Enters Ka-Ley the Arachnid!



I briefly introduced her in Chapter 5 with another group of survivors / explorers trying to get their way through the ship. That way, she would later serves her purpose in Chapter 6 and thus, formally introducing Ka-Ley as a fully developed character. It was during Chapter 5 when I had a funny thought that an adorable-looking spider could be an Shakespeare-style poet with artistic approach toward life. That idea struck hard and I stuck with it ever since with lot of zany dialogues from Ka-Ley being the most creative pieces I ever written (being proud and arrogant to say, at least ) I have to say (with bit of regret) that Ka-Ley is a more perfect foil to Ener and Maddox than Elouf could ever hopes to be. Now that Elouf is back, I hope to develop him properly in the next Chapter.

About the next Chapter, I can confirm two things:
- Chapter 7 will returns to the roots that made Chapter 1-5 fun to explore and interact at your own pace. We won't be engaged in fast paced actions anytime soon, you can take a deep breath and sigh in relief
- The A' L L U K I N, who or whatever that is and why it is related to the Situation… will be fully revealed in Chapter 7.

Can't wait for it.

And that's it for the sketches.

Hope you enjoyed them.



I don't have a timeline for Chapter 7 yet, but I hope to start it sometime SOON when I am ready.

A truly fashinating insight into the formation of an epic story. Thank you for yet another entertaining read as we wait for the continuation.

I told you...
I told you can complete to repost all the remaining chapters before Submachine 9 gets released.

Congrants AK!

Finally!!! Congrats, AK!
I will compare all chapters with our backup files for more errors and missings.

BTW, AK, did you save old discussion thread?

ENIHCAMBUS wrote:I told you...
I told you can complete to repost all the remaining chapters before Submachine 9 gets released.

Congrants AK!

And I still lost that bet xD

Sublevel 102 wrote:Finally!!! Congrats, AK!
I will compare all chapters with our backup files for more errors and missings.

BTW, AK, did you save old discussion thread?

Unfortunately, nope.

WHY???

It was over 100 pages!!!!!! I don't have the kind of time and willpower to hoard every single posts and pages and keep them in format that can be read and edited easily.

Well, at least (I think) I have most of the discussion thread pages.