And so ends this particular little story arc.
Ten got to finally have a face to face talk with Don, Tattle got his/her wish to be there when Ten came in for questioning, and Don got absolutely nowhere with anything, but did get to ingest copious amounts of tea.
I figure this is a pretty good spot for me to leave off for a few weeks.
Two, in fact. I’m putting the comic on a two week hiatus, so the next update will be August 3rd.
I’ve got so much going on right now, I really want to take a break. Have a few days to kick back and enjoy summer, go to a friend’s wedding, work on some art projects that aren’t scheduled.
I also really, really want to work on some comic things that are going to take a bit of time. Namely, revamping the way I handle the lighting. I’ve been trying to reintegrate highlights and deeper shadows into the comic for a few weeks now, but there’s only so far that burn/dodge will take me (and burn/dodge is kinda lazy/crappy looking for what I’m trying to do anyway.) So! What I’m going to do is remake my color palette — Make sure everyone and everything has the same kind of lighting going on (as opposed to Ten’s brownish shading, the blueish shading I use for white things, and Kiva’s inexplicable green undertones.) Don’t know how that happened exactly, but it’ll be fixed and the result should be a much prettier, more cohesive visual story.
I might also do a little minor tweaking of facial expressions and anatomy, but we’ll see. If anything I’llt make the jaws a little less angular and give the eyes reflections. Maybe make the hands a bit more… better? There will be many experiments over these upcoming weeks.
The good news is that I’m not abandoning you guys during this time. If anything, you’ll see more comic-related things than ever before because I’m going to be posting most of my drawing experiments as vote incentives. As in on a daily basis! New things every day, so be sure to vote! I’m actually really looking forward to this. There are lots of things I’ve wanted to draw that won’t come up in the story for a looong time, and various lighting changes to play with. Mostly it’s about improving the comic because I have this vision in my head of what I want it to look like and I think I know how to make it that way. I just need time to sit down and do it. Revamping the color palettes of a few dozen characters and even more background objects takes time y’know. ;)
I’m also hoping to use the time to make ads for Project Wonderful and finally start advertising my comic online. So… maybe soon you’ll see some familiar faces around when you’re reading other comics. :D
I know the big white banner off to the left is pretty visible, but I want to remind everyone about the art/writing contest. You’ve got until August 2oth to enter.
Thanks for reading!
~~~
Progress towards the next bonus page: $1/$20
(Donate any amount of money by clicking the ‘donate’ button in the left sidebar. Each time we reach $20 in total donations, I’ll post another bonus page of extra story.)
Geneseepaws
avsaroke
Don than spent the next six hours crying and sleeping.
Wow. I think that is the best drawn “if looks could kill” face I have ever seen.
Hehe oh god, those facial expressions are just the best thing.
I feel like Tattle has made things worse for Ten. Not that s/he probably cares too much, things are more fun this way.
I wonder too, if s/he has any altruistic Ten-dencies, or if s/he Ten-ds to just play everything as a game for her entertainment. That might be her -In Ten Did- goal? Maybe Don doesn’t want to find out. Maybe Jovi In- Ten- ds to find out the truth.
Hehe… Evil!Ten from the vote incentive is now my avatar. He is adorably evil, and would probably stroke Malaiki while carrying out his Master Plan ™ and cackling evil-ly like a proper B-movie villain. ^_^
Dude, excellent Icon. I’m impressed.
Haha oh man it made me so happy to see someone use some of my artwork for an icon. I think this is the first time it’s happened!
Can’t be Ten, only Two Eye-Pits. Ergo –> Female, … I can’t prove it, cause we can’t see the elbow spurs, but hey, I CAN count to five, (just not consistently).
Oh gosh, you’re right! I didn’t even read the description of the incentive, I just glanced at it and thought she was Ten ’cause of the shape of her head and skin tone.
Hmm… This is actually really exciting if she’s who I think she is. xD
Who do you think she is?
I think she’s one of La and Li’s siblings. Vaga would be the most amusing, but also the least likely. Plus, the eye color doesn’t match page 62 (a number of assumptions in play here; also, eye color is hardly an obstacle to a god, but w/e).
It could also be La and/or Li more corporeally manifested, but again, that’s doubtful. If they could manifest so completely, they probably would’ve by now, just for fun. Plus, her smirk is much more mature than La’s, or especially Li’s.
More likely is either their older brother or sister (why am I ascribing gender to dark, amorphous shadow creatures >_>). I’d lean towards their sister, ’cause the brother looks to be more of the distant/observant type, while she seems more willing to get involved. As for who’s who… I call the one on the right in your “Siblings” picture the sister. The one on the left could be either gender (and again, GODS, but w/e), but I get a more withdrawn, analytical feeling from him.
If I didn’t over-think that response enough, I could go back and throw in some conspiracy theories if you’d like. I was going to suggest aliens, but then I remembered what story I was commenting on.
If I was going to base the answer on eye color alone, instead of being reasonable and considering that gods could manifest any color they darn well please, it’d have to be Sakar. I don’t really have enough of a feel for Sakar to come up with the likelihood of him manifesting just to observe Ten, and seeing as your depiction of the gods in Ixion had Sakar scowling the Scowl of the Angry and Wrathful Sun God(tm) instead of the unnamed female’s “the-game-is-on-this-oughta-be-exciting” smirk, I’ll leave the likelihood fairly low. We’ll see how this goes. ^_^
Also, despite the fact that the “Siblings” picture names them as “demi-gods of night”, I still wanna say that the eldest is Vaga, not Nox. Until it comes up in the comic (or you Joss my silly theories), we have no way of -knowing- for sure, so although it’s poor form to let emotions dictate our theories, I’m gonna say that Vaga’s more likely ’cause I like him more. Screw domains, or the fact that the god of death and guidance would probably work alone; the image I have in my head of Ten having a conversation with Vaga outweighs all facts that point in the other direction. xD
And after all that, final answer (subject to change). Ordered by likelihood [0-10, impossible to certain]:
Sister (6), other supernatural being (4), Nox (3), Vaga (3), Sakar (1), La and/or Li (1), natural being (<1).
Even if I'm completely off-base, we get more information, so this is really a win-win. ^_^
I can’t tell too much without giving the story away, but I will tell you it’s none of the above, though the face is the face of one of Ten’s sisters.
Huh. Well, like I said – at least it’s information. That means the next round of guesses might be slightly closer.
is she Akiba perhaps?
come to think of it, has Akiba been introduced yet?
or the cloud/shadow/mist thing from before?
Ooh, hadn’t thought of that! It definitely could be the cloud. ^_^ Akiba hasn’t been -officially- introduced, but we have seen her, all the way back on page 110.
I had kinda assumed it to be Ten’s sister and atributed the eye color to being full blown stryders.
avsaroke already said it wasn’t one of his sisters. it does
have his sisters face though.
When I said sister, I was referring to someone else. It could be full onset Stridor’s. We don’t know enough about the disease, I was just assuming before that coloration like that would be supernatural.
O.K., here’s the story: I’m old, I don’t have many friends living ATM. Few read web comics. Comic Rank shows Kahmith (SoG) to have about 175 readers. Really? This strip?
So! Let your budds know, put out a shout, tell your budds and peeps, family, hell – tell people you like if you won’t tell your family. But loft a flare for Our Dear Artiste Avsaroke. Please? This strip is so deep and complex it deserves, nay, obligates you to assist its conversion of humanity to ,… ah, … oh, … The same thing we do every night, Pinkie.
That is S&P for sad and pathetic. Really, 175 readers? After all the time and energy Avsaroke has put into this? S&P.
Agreed and done
Aw you guys.
I’d love it if you wanted to pass Shades onto your friends! 175 readers seems pretty good to me (I like to look at it as an all-time high!), but more is always better.
Just found this comic today (well I guess yesterday by now)
Have read it through 3 times, I’m a rather fast reader, to find anything I’ve missed, anything I didn’t quite get at first, making connections (you seem to excell in forshadowing, by the way.)
I have to say. This has already won its place as one of my favorites, and I hope to see more of this soon!
Wow, three times? That IS crazy fast! XD
Thank you so much for the kind words. There’s plenty more story on its way – I usually update every Friday.
the only thing you need to know about the story is, if something goes not quite right… its probably Tattles fault, even if he wasn’t even remotely involved.. its still his fault some how
And if it wasn’t Tattle’s fault, then Don will blame Ten. … or Ten AND Tattle.
Better late than never
Panel 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF_6gI0xHzw
Hahaha yes!
Hm, I also think I just found what Don was trying to do to both Tattle and Ten:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI3NoBeNwfk