davebarrack
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Grrl Power #1328 - An accidental outing
🕑 Added 2025-02-06 11:00:15 +0000 UTCThank you for the support! You guys are awesome!
Sciona wouldn't give herself away like that under normal circumstances, but she really doesn't remember the encounter with Sydney in the basement. Or... mostly really doesn't remember it. Chrona's kinda-sorta timeloop didn't quite work as expected, and it left some artifacts in its wake.
So the art took a bit of a... you know, I was going to say "a bit of a hit," but I don't dislike the simpler art. I actually really like the more anime-ish stuff. It's just really hard when I'm coloring not to add more layers of shading and then do another pass for highlights, then an ambient occlusion pass, then a reflected bounce light pass. Or I could just type "make pretty girl big boobs" and have an AI artripper do it for me in 5 seconds. It's impossible not to feel like a lifetime of art skills have been rendered meaningless in the last few years, but... I still might look into some AI images for the occasional background. Like if the choice is between me drawing a stocked aisle in a grocery store and drawing 2,000 bottles of shampoo all lined up on the shelves across from 1,300 boxes of cereal all in perspective (because this store has soap and cereal on the same aisle) and having to spend like 6 hours to pencil all that in then ink it then color it with the shadows of the shelves above each row of products falling on the products below - or I could type "make grocery store soap and cereal big boobs" and have all that work done in a few seconds. It's hard not to feel that's a better use of my time.
Right, so the point of what I'd started to say there was we're at the stage of taking care of my mom that we've all concluded that she's going to move in with me and my wife. Which involves selling her house, buying a new house that can better accommodate all of us, moving nearly everything in her house to the new one, then fixing up our house, selling it, and moving nearly everything from it to the new house. And that is an absolute ass rogering amount of work. I met with the realtor today, scheduled a guy to come take measurements for new carpet, did grocery shopping, picked up "letters testamentary" papers from the attorney, which is the "this will is good and has been executed" paperwork - and admittedly, I should have picked those up about a month and a half ago, but I am kind of terrible at doing... things? If you've ever emailed me and it took me two months to respond, well, let's just say that Task Avoidance is part of ADD that I never knew had a name. It's like Professional League Procrastination. Really, it's "procrastinate until you legitimately forget you have something to do, then three weeks later go, "Oh, shit. I should get on that thing." then "Hah hah, Tom Servo said something funny on the perpetual MST3K streams I've been watching since two thanksgivings ago and I have every moment of the show memorized at this point, and now I've forgotten about that thing for another two weeks."" I know I'm using a lot of clinical terms there but hopefully you get the drift.
Anyway, then after dinner tonight, I filled 9 and a half bankers boxes with my mom's old cookbooks. Basically I spent less than half the day actually working on the comic, and probably every other day for the next two-ish months will probably be like that for me. I'm really hoping to avoid reverting to stick figure theater if at all possible, but the last two times I moved burned the considerable buffer I had when I started the comic. So we'll see.
Once we're all moved in, my wife will be able to help out a little with my mom. Not that I'm going to foist my mom's care on to her, just that she'll be able to at least do the occasional errand and some (okay, most) of the cooking instead of me doing basically everything. I do some cooking normally, but really the only things I make are gigantic breakfast omelets and puerco pibil. I can grill up a steak or do pork chops or whatever, but usually if I'm asked to take care of dinner, usually that means hitting up Grubhub. But that's because I like eating samosas, and have no idea how to make them and would not have the patience or time for it anyway. (Best way to eat samosas is to dip them in extra korma sauce. Yeaaah, that's the stuff.) Essentially, I'm assuming that making samosas is super involved and takes an hour of prep work before they even go in the oven. In my mind, this is how all cooking works, even though I know it doesn't really take that long for most recipes.
Here's the part where I assure you I'm working on nudie vote incentives but I don't know when it'll be done. Hopefully after all this house stuff settles down I can get back to a proper monthly (cough) schedule.
Comments
Reigys
Indeed. Lol
Reigys
Interesting
Merle Blue
Ah yeah, given Sciona's new body's powers
Triad Draykin
I'm having trouble figuring out the chemical handshake thing. I think I've figured out that Sydney... I think lucked into not taking it because of wanting to cross her arms in response to 'I know who you are'?
Eric Loken
Makes sense. Maybe he could use a stock photo? Put it through a filter to make it look 'cartoony' and blur the brand names, maybe going in and putting fake brand names on some of the more visible boxes. Don't know how viable that would actually be, just tossing an idea out there.
Mathew Aaberg
Probs but as a southpaw I say just leave it.
JasonAW3
Not if Sydney is discreet about calling Max... OK, ya got me... When is Sydney EVER discreet?
Czarzhan
Could that be fixed by mirror-flipping the art?
eddi_TBH
"Dawn breaks over Marblehead".
eddi_TBH
Try to inhale between guffaws. We'd miss you.
eddi_TBH
She gave that up before she found the orbs.
eddi_TBH
She just flashed back to who killed her recently. And almost did again. Time to slow walk over to Max and clue her in.
eddi_TBH
They probably are not to be found putting the money where their mouth is anyway.
eddi_TBH
And even then consistency is near impossible to attain. Even an identical input will produce more variants.
eddi_TBH
Even some weekly breaks. Whatever you need.
eddi_TBH
Sciona's exit will be in two. She is in no place to shoot her way out.
eddi_TBH
All the results start as weird, from what I've seen. The lazy do little or nothing to correct the machine's errors. The better keep resubmitting the best result with some small changes until they reach the "Fark it, close enough" stage. Someone like Dave would end up spending more time on those shelves than if he copied and traced a real picture of a store shelf. Now if there was 3D software that could do that, he would have a better way to simplify the operation.
Dave Barrack
Maybe Sydney is holding the flight orb in her right hand after flying down from the... nope - there it is floating above her head in the first panel. Okay, honestly it's just so I could show Sciona's chemical handshake. And also I didn't even think about which hands they were sticking out.
Erin Palette
Why are they both offering left hands to shake?
Tristan N Milner
Sydney's interest in boobs is the only Freudian Sapphic thing I'm detecting. Dave, you could touch up and then use AI images for some bad drug trip scenes. Use for intentionally bad imagery is their only acceptable use.
Mark Magagna
"because this store has soap and cereal on the same aisle" I suspect there's a store on the space station where that's true. The owner is of a species that comes from a planet with a rather alkaline atmosphere. Cilantro fits right in, for those who have that gene. I'm not sure I want to shop in that store mind you.
Person
Pretty sure that was a deliberate "fantasize about killing you" portmanteau.
Eric Loken
Deflection wasn't a bad tactic, although deflection only typically helps in short term, and people realize afterwards that the other person avoided the question. Of course she then pooched it by the interaction of her psychotic nature and a case of weird semi déjà vu. Also: -- or I could type "make grocery store soap and cereal big boobs" and have all that work done in a few seconds I don't think "soap and cereal big boobs" is going to give you the result you are looking for. If you're _lucky_ the boxes and bottles will just have models with big boobs on them. But most likely you would get a very weird result.
JasonAW3
Yeah, know what you mean... The last US presidential administration was a real terror...
JasonAW3
Ah yep... She figured that one out... ETA of Arc-SWAT, probably about 3 minutes...
JasonAW3
It's amazing when the director of a movie gives out a recipe and shows you how to make a dish shown in one of their movies...
Thisguy
Well if you’re training it, make sure it doesn’t give it to others. But again, probably only works if you’re making your own AI, because AI developers really like to share.
Jeremy
Please take care of yourself. That us a lot to deal with. We will be here.
Forecaster
Some artists use simple 3D models for backgrounds that include building exteriors or inheritors, at least as a guide. In blender with some tutorials I bet you could produce some pre-cartoony renderings. And a big advantage with that over resorting to AI is that they'd be consistently re-usable.
Stefan J Neylon
Recently!?
Hugh Eckert
Sounds like your life has really blown up. Please prioritize self-care. I'd be fine with a 1/week for a while, or whatever works best for you.
Tim
ADHD POWERS, EARN YOUR KEEP!!!!
Jared Juetten
Also, Task Avoidance is a BITCH and I hate it.
Jared Juetten
I actually really love this art style from you! But I've enjoyed most of your shifting art style over the years. Keep them coming!
Ampws
That would be nice. I've been downloading a few 2x pages every time I come here.
darkuncle
Right there with you on the caring for parents thing; I feel you. Give yourself grace in the midst of all that.
Richard Riley
I 100% agree with Magraal. Also, please consider that dropping to one comic a week is both reasonable self-care and something we will mostly all support at this time. The few who don't, don't deserve your time and effort to begin with.
Rob Wright
Ai also steals your inputs for use in its modeling and gives it to others
William Elliott
Mmm, Puerco Pibil... I haven't made that in a while...and that movie is the exact reason I made it in the first place!
Thisguy
I wonder... If you exclusively fed your own background art into an AI generator, and then used it, it could work as its still you. Of course, I doubt AI works like that, as unless you have your own personal program, most AI stuff has the internet feeding into it. And you probably need a LOT of art to properly train it...
Adam C.
I really appreciate the not overly-shaded art.
Kevin Wright
Man, I get you on the taking care of family stuff. My dad passed a bit over a year ago, and between helping my siblings and mom handle that (at least mom is in decent health and I have health) and my wife’s uncle passing a few months ago with basically no other family, so we’re handling his estate, we’ve barely got time for anything. Then there’s the existential dread from, uh, unprecedented times. The Nazis, elected and unelected, currently in power, I mean. Know this - your comic provides a needed respite from that.
Magraal
yeah personally I'd rather see a literal photo that has been blurred a bit than some janky AI
Dave Barrack
Providing the pre-patreon double sized pages is something I've been meaning to do. Maybe I can do that after thing settle down.
Czarzhan
Oh, I missed that pull-back in panel 4.
TotalBlazing
Generally speaking, I wouldn't recommend going with straight Ai backgrounds. Feel free to use Ai imagery for inspiration, or as a base to draw your bg on top of. I like it when you put Easter eggs and references into your backgrounds. Also, I'd much rather a comic that takes a bit longer and is 100% you, than something that comes out quickly but is 20-45% ai
Justaguy
Hope things go well with the paperwork/house/mom stuff.
Derek Leader
"recently" being eight years ago in our time.
Bear C. Brown
I’ve cared for relatives. Godsspeed and good wishes to you.
James C
Fortunately, she seems to have snatched her hand back to huff at 'snooping', so didn't actually shake it....
Ampws
Hi, I was rereading the earlier pages and wondering - is there any way to do a zipped download of 001 to 800 of the 2x pages. I have all the 2x pages and specials from pattyron starting about 780 before that I was regularly visiting your website. I still do every so often to keep you in the top ranks of TWC.
John C Butler
Best comment I've seen regarding AI so far, paraphrased, because I can't remember it exactly, "The promise of AI was that AI would do mundane tasks like cleaning the house and doing the dishes to free us to to write and do art. The reality of AI is that it writes and does art to free us to do mundane tasks like cleaning the house and doing the dishes."
Greg Morrow
I hope that everything goes easier for you than you fear. Moving and elder care and samosas, oh my! If you need to take a break or drop down to a one-day-a-week schedule for a while, it would be churlish of any of us to be anything but "yes, do what you need to do"!
Czarzhan
My first thought when I saw the last panel was, "Is that a realization reaction, or is she starting to feel the effect of that handshake in panel 3?"
Michael Obert
Seems the cases of foot-in-mouth disease are spreading. Freud would have something to say about that too. . .
Marc Vun Kannon
How does Sydney tell the difference between hyper-realistic dream sequences and her real life anymore?
Thomas Dorner
Yes, and the stab killed you, Sydney.
Michael O'Driscoll
If that is how she blows her cover, I may die laughing 😃
Sir Butcher
Small typo on the second to last panel: fatasize instead of fantasize :)
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