Unfaq Vol 4

And welcome to episode 7's edition of "questions nobody cared about in the first place," or, "unfaq."  I consider these to be a sort of "post-mortem" for the episode so let's get on with the rambling.

Episode 7 - Revenge of the Waitress

So you might ask, "who is this waitress and what's up with her?"  She was a minor character from episode 1 - a waitress, as you might expect, and certainly not a Sith Lord - who worked at the Street Meet Cafe.  The Word Smith kind of trashed the cafe a bit and now she's out for revenge, more-or-less.  I don't recall why I decided to bring her back, I suppose I wanted to tie back to the first episode at some point.  Some may also recall the waitress from an interlude during episode 6.

I did a number of design sketches when working out the title page:

From the looks of it, I more-or-less went with the first sketch (upper left) though I used a different pose.

If you ever asked yourself "where exactly does The Word Smith take place?" this episode should make it fairly ambiguous.  Page 1 starts off with an exterior shot of the PAC at the University of Waterloo, page 3 shows an interior shot (technically the fencing scenes are also interior shots though I wasn't working from any specific reference photos for those) and Waterloo Town Square forms the backdrop for pages 5 and onward (minus the flashback page.)

In this episode we also finally get to see The Pen in action for a fencing match, even though she was first implied to be a fencer way back at the start of episode 2 (some fencing periphenalia is also visible in her room in episode 4).

On pages 1 and 3 we can see what I referred to as "the cheering squad."  They're basically a few friends of The Pen who, at this point, don't have actual names.  I did a couple of design sketches for them:

Page 2 is the first of two flashbacks, this one showing some of the events of episode 1 from the perspective of the waitress.  Once again we see a pair of hitodama floating above the waitress in the final panel - these are things one sees periodically in anime and manga.  The "memory cam" thing is meant to indicate that we're seeing things from the waitress' point of view and that the recollections might not be 100% accurate.

On the first panel of page 5 we see the business woman and her daughter who have shown up periodically through the comic (we haven't seen them for a few episodes).

Random trivia:  the combination of the waitress' "Prepare to be served!" on the first panel of page 6 and her Tray Volley attack makes me think she might play volley ball.

And speaking of page 6, one might notice that I drew in the whites of the waitress' eyes on that page which isn't something I've typically done (at least not since episode 3 probably, I think...)  I decided to not bother with that on subsequent pages.  The only one who routinely gets the whites of his eyes coloured is The Word Smith, and even then only when he's wearing his mask.

Page 8 is the second flashback shown partly from the point of view of a shadowy figure who has been seen before.  The sequence in the middle tier was meant to be similar to that at the end of episode 3.  Dun, dun dun.  Things might be afoot.

The cheque that The Word Smith is writing at the bottom of the page is presumably to cover (at least some of) the damage he caused.  This is meant to (hopefully) make him seem a bit less of an ass, especially since insisting that The Pen leave her tournament (as he did in this episode) is rather jerky.  I think he's a well meaning individual, he just gets rather hyper-focused on language related issues at times.  I had a bird fly off with the cheque because, well, it amused me.

And that brings us to the final page!  Nothing too much to say here as it's  just wrapping things up for the episode.  The waitress realizes she didn't really care about that lousy job after all and she and The Pen call a truce while The Word Smith continues to do his own thing.

Anywho, that's all for this episode's unfaq.  As mentioned previously, episode 8 will mostly like start sometime in January so in the mean time,

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Jupiter Power

I was going to write up the episode 7 unfaq today, but I was skimming my sketchbook this morning and realized that there were some design sketches that would be good to incorporate into the unfaq.  Unfortunately, I didn't have time to scan them in this morning so instead I'll post the unfaq tomorrow or maybe later tonight (probably tomorrow.)  Instead, today I'm posting an interlude.  Here is the sketchbook version:

Whilst it is a bit late for Hallowe'en, here we have The Pen cosplaying as Sailor Jupiter.  You can tell it's Sailor Jupiter because of her choice of footwear, or by looking at the colour version.  I suspect that The Pen would be more likely to cosplay as Malie C, if she were to dress up as one of the Senshi, it would be Sailor Jupiter because she is clearly the most awesome one.

Anyway, that is all until tomorrow's unfaq.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Run for the Finish

Could it be?  The final page of episode 7 of The Word Smith is now online, which sees another page completed in just one week!  This just goes to show that I can get a page done a week when I try and don't actually procrastinate too much.

As mentioned previously, The Word Smith will be on hiatus until the new year, resuming sometime in January, or possibly February, depending on how busy I am in January.  There may be some interludes in the interim, but I am not promising anything.

I am still planning to post stuff in this blog from time to time in the interim.  The episode 7 unfaq will be next week and the week after that I may wax philisophical about this PhD thing I'm currently embroiled in.  After that, who knows!

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Turn Around

Wow!  It's only been a week since my last post!  It seems I can get these things done in a week if I don't procrastinate too much.  What this means is that the Penultimate page of episode 7 of The Word Smith is available in the usual place.  At this rate, I may even have the final page of the episode up by this time next week.  Here's hoping, anyway.

And that is all for the moment, it would seem.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

A Bunch of Words

Page 7 of episode 7 of The Word Smith is finally up in its rightful place.  The page took longer than I'd intended and I have no excuse - it sat sitting mostly finished for a couple of weeks whilst I was distracted by other things and/or lazy.  I wonder if I'm getting project fatigue... 

Anywho, there are only two pages left in episode 7 and I'm hoping to get them both done relatively quickly - by early November at the latest, with any luck.  After that, The Word Smith will probably go on hiatus for a little bit.  Partly so that I can recharge my batteries, partly because I'm expecting to need to devote a bit more time than usual to school stuff and partly because the holidays will be coming up quickly at that point.  But, we'll see when we get there.

And for now, that is that.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Skunk Hat

This short post is to inform the internet that the lastest page of The Word Smith is now online.  It is a page which contains a number of panels, each of which contains a juxtaposition of words and images (note:  some panels may, in fact, be wordless.)  These panels are arranged in a deliberate sequence in order to construct an ongoing narrative that is at least somewhat coherent.  At the very least, it is not deliberately incoherent.  Your kilometre-age may vary.  The writer of this post in no way endorses the wearing of skunks for hats.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Lets See if You Know How to Handle It

Well, this page has taken longer to draw than expected (it was kind of a pain to draw), but it is now up in the standard place.  Expect future Word Smith updates to be sporadic (possibly moreso than they have been of late) as I may need to shift more of my time to research in the coming months.

And that is all for the moment.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Brevity is the Soul of yada yada, lets just make a post title that's longer than the actual post because it's something to do and there's nobody who can stop me, mwahahahaha! Narf.

The lastest page of The Word Smith is up in the usual location.  Go read it, because that's what it is there for.

Otherwise, nothing else to say today.  Short post, yo.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Cleaving Vans

I have recently returned from a short trip to Vancouver for a short conference.  The conference itself was ok:  there were some interesting talks and some not so interesting talks and some talks that could have been interesting except that their presenters were not.  On the whole, I find sitting through two days worth of talks to be rather trying to the patience, regardless of how interesting the talks actually are.  My overall take away from the conference was, I think, that I'd like to have the chance to go back and visit Vancouver again for an actual vacation wherein I'd actually have some time to do something other than attend a conference.  That will, however, have to wait until I have the budget for it.

As it was, I did have some time to walk around the downtown area a bit - I went through Gastown and walked along the Waterfront a bit.  Nothing too exciting, but it is what it is I suppose.  I would have loved to have gone hiking somewhere but there was, alas, no time for that.

The trip back from the airport to my humble abode was... interesting, for some definition of interesting.  I took one of the out-of-town shuttle services and ended up in a vehicle with just the driver, an elderly gentleman who was otherwise retired, and one other passenger, an elderly lady, also retired.  And O. M. G., they were both stereotypical cranky old people.  Well, cranky might not be the right word, but I ended up listening to about an hour of nearly constant "Young people today and there things..." so, yeah, stereotypical old people.  Also, super awkward.  (None of this was targetted at me, I should say, but still...)

Anywho, I shall cap off this post with a few pictures that I took around Vancouver.

A couple of views along the waterfront.  There's actually a nice bike path along there with places to rent bikes that I would have liked to have had the time to take advantage of...

A plaque along the waterfront that amused me.

The Water Street Cafe in Gastown.  I include this since I used a picture of the cafe as the model for the Street Meat Cafe in episode one of The Word Smith - I hadn't realized that it was in Vancouver originally, I was just looking for a picture of a "street corner cafe" or something to that effect.

This is another picture from Gastown.  Featured (in theory) is the steam clock which is some sort of landmark or something.

And finally, here's a building downtown on Robson Street that's associated with UBC in some capacity.

Well, that's all for now.  Work will resume on The Word Smith in the near future, though there's no set timetable at the moment.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Pagination

The latest page of the Word Smith is up in the usual place.  It took a bit longer than I had expected to put this page together, for no particularly good reason.  The next page will likely not put in an appearance for another two or three weeks on account of me being out of town for the latter half of this week and, thus, I shant have a chance to work on it until I get back.  Alas I have no buffer or filler to post in the mean time so followers of The Word Smith (like, one or two people tops) will have to suffer.

And that's all there is for now.  Stuff will happen when it happens.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Flashback

The second page of episode 7 of The Word Smith has taken a bit longer to finish up than expected, but it is now online.  This page is a flashback to episode 1, so maybe go reread that, or not, whichever works best for you.

In other non-Word Smith news, it has recently come to my attention that the new Sailor Moon series (called Sailor Moon Crystal) has started airing (to speak of flashbacks.)  The series is a reboot (but not a ReBoot) and hews closer to the original manga in terms of overall story/pacing and art style.  Only the first episode has aired thus far (it's airing the first and second Saturday of each month with the second episode going up tomorrow) but I enjoyed it.  The nostalgia is strong with this one.

Anywho, that's all for now.  Next episode of The Word Smith will be up whenever.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Forecast

It looks as though the first page of episode seven of The Word Smith is up in the standard location.  It is a page wherein things happen.

In other news, it is wet outside today.  Enjoy.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Best Served Cold

It's Canada Day!  If you do one thing on Canada Day, you should go watch some fireworks.  If you do two things you should, I dunno, just enjoy the day off or something.  But if everything else falls flat, you should go check out the title page to the seventh episode of The Word Smith, which makes it's exciting debut on this national holiday!  If you don't, Sir John A. would be disappointed in you.  Or maybe he'd just get drunk(er).  Either way would be a remarkable feat since he's long dead at this point - my point being, don't sweat the small stuff.

Or something.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Unfaq Vol 3

Well, it's a bit later than I had intended, but it's time for the next volume of "questions you never had in the first place."  Nothing much to ramble on about right now so lets dive right in.

Episode 6 - Literary Criticism

The T-rex on the title page is inteded to be the same one that appears in both episode 2 and 3.  There really can't be that many T-rexes just wandering around, after all.  Also, why does that one guy have a snorkel?  He just does and reappears throughout the episode (along with most of the extras on the title page.)

The computer that The Word Smith uses inside the Word Cave is a Commodore PET, with an extra cooling tower.  The text that appears on the screen is various random things from a natural language processing text book that I have - it's not just gibberish!  It just has no particular meaning when mashed all together like that.

The first exterior shot on page 4 is based off of a branch of the Waterloo Public Library.  I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out which one, exactly.

The whole Dielight thing (page 5) is, of course, meant to be a spoof of Twilight.  The text on the book may be a bit hard to read so here it is in full:
Dielight
- A Tale Of -
Sparkly Zombies
And Other Things
With Sparkles!

And beside the zombie:
Can't See!
Too Many
Damn Sparkles!

For the record, I'm not really a fan of zombies, I think they're kind of boring.

The reveal on page 6 where the villain of the day is actually The Pen's mother was something that just happened whilst I was working out the details of the episode 6 script (it wasn't in the overall outline.)  I don't recall why I went that route, I think it was just an idea that popped in my head whilst I was working out dialogue.  Fun-ish fact:  I briefly considered making The Word Smith The Pen's father, but decided against it.

Of course page 8 has a Sailor Moon-ish transformation sequence (with sparkles!)  I based The Author's outfit on actual 80s workout clothes (according to a google image search) and there's actually more garish/ridiculous looking stuff than what I went with.

I believe I mentioned it in the page 9 blog post/comments, but it bears repeating:  drawing crowd scenes is annoying.  Coming up with a relatively unique look for that many people can take a bit.  And me being me, things sneak in like ducks on peoples' heads.  Also, if one looks in the lower right corner of the last panel (ie, the one with the crowd scene), one may notice a couple of cameos of characters from previous episodes.

The pose that The Author gets stuck in is based on a real gymnastics pose, though I've probably not rendered it entirely correctly.  Gymnists are freakishly flexible.

And this episode also starts to hint at the overall plot of the comic (yes, there is one!)  Dun dun dun!

Whelp, that is all for this volume of the unfaq.  The script for episode 7 is basically written (minus some dialogue and editing) so I'll be looking to resume the comic in the next week or two so stay tuned!

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Dun, dun, dun!

And with the latest page of The Word Smith in the usual haunt, episode 6 now comes to a close.  The comic will be on its usual between episode hiatus for the next month or so as I finalize the details for episode 7 and possibly do some other stuff.

I may post some other stuff here in the interim depending on motivation and whatnot.  So until next time...

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Hadanaginuffzort! (Troz)

Hello Word Smith tolerators!  The penultimate page of episode 6 is up in the same place it always is.  I'm  going to see if I can get the last page of the episode up a bit quicker than I've been posting pages of late, but no promises.

In other news:  nothing!  At least, nothing I feel sufficiently motivated to say anything about at the moment.  Stuff is really rather routine 'round here right now.

Freak out,
-TFitC

A Post Rises From the Grave

The next page of the Word Smith has snuck unto the interwebs at the usual location.  Notes from this page:  drawing action sequences is hard and gymnasts are freakishly flexible.  Very much so.

In other things, here is a picture from a recent hike:

And that is all for the nonce.  Tune in next time for the continuing, exciting and somewhat odd adventures of THE WORD SMITH!!!  (dun, dun, dun)

Freak Out,
-TFitC

The Post Attacks! The Post misses, no damage!

Right.  So.  New page of The Word Smith.  Same Wordy place.  Same Wordy chanel.

Short post today because stuff, not that I am really given to long, drawn-out posts these days.  If The Word Smith continues on its current every other week schedule I may try to do something different here on the off-weeks.  No promises.

It seems rather windy out today.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

A Page Approaches!

So...  the next page of the Word Smith can now be found in the usual place.  The page was actually finished back in the middle of next week, but I kept forgetting to copy it over to my laptop so I could upload it.  Not that I necessarily need to upload it from my laptop, it's just habit 'n stuff.  Also, it's looking like the posting schedule for The Word Smith is likely going to be every 1.5-2 weeks which means it's going to take longer to finish the whole thing, but may be more doable overall on my end.  We'll see how things go.

And because I haven't posted anything from the sketchbook in a while, here's a thing I don't think I've posted yet:

Other than that, everything is fine.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Delayed Delay Was Delayed

So the latest page either just took longer than expected or I was more distracted than usual (or both), but the next page of the Word Smith is now online.

And that's about all there is to say about that!  Exciting times, I know.  Tune in next time when I shall endeavour to say something.  Nothing of any real importance or anything (heaven forbid that I should actually say anything of substance) but something!

Freak Out,
-TFitC

A Short Post

Just a brief post today to inform the internets that the next page of The Word Smith is now available.

That is all.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

And We're Back!

We now resume the regularly scheduled episode of The Word Smith!  New page found here.  Of course, when I say "regularly" I most likely mean "sporadically", but what can you do?  Whilst I'm going to try to get back into the once-per-week update schedule, it may be a more "it's done when it's done" type of thing.  Not, I'm sure, that there's anyone waiting with bated breath for the next page, but whatever.

In other things, FASS is over again for the year.  I had to wear a suit and tie as my costume this year which was quite traumatic, considering I haven't worn a tie in six or seven years and it's been even longer since I've worn a full-on suit.  As a result, I felt the need to draw the following, warning of some of the many perils of wearing a tie:

It was quite cathartic.

Whelp, until next time,
Freak Out

-TFitC

Recap Episode

As part of gearing up to resume The Word Smith, I put together a short "recap" of episode 6 so far which at the typical place.  Of course, one could just go and reread the previous episode pages, but whatever.

Since this week is FASS week, there probably won't be any new pages for The Word Smith for another week or two yet as I get back into the swing of this whole semi-regular comic update thing, but things should be resuming in the near future.  And there was much rejoicing...

Anywho, here is the pencil version of today's recap:

And here is the pencil version of the previous interlude:

And with that,
Freak Out
-TFitC

Do do... Do do...

Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the internet...

Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeak!!!!!!!!!!

Marked for Stuff

And hello again internets.  The time has come for another Word Smith interlude, which can be found at the usual place.  I was going to post the pencil version, but blogger seems to be throwing a bit of a hissy fit right now so I'm going to hold off for the moment.  Hopefully this won't persist or it may make me rethink posting images here in the future.

Anywho, there's unlikely to be anything in this space for at least the next couple of weeks as an important deadline is bearing down on me like a moose with headlights.  Hopefully the Word Smith will resume with actual pages not too long after I'm on the other side.

Freak Out,
-TFitC