Hey everyone, I know things are super crazy right now, I hope you’re all doing okay and staying safe. Drew and I are self isolating, he’s a frontline internet technician and he was potentially exposed to the virus in a customer’s house yesterday. Just to be safe, we’re staying inside for the next 14 days, we’ve got food and other necessities so we should be okay.
I still plan on finishing chapter 11 (you can read more details about this on a public patreon post I made recently). However, I’m having a pretty difficult time focusing on the comic right now. I do plan to try to get back into it soon to take my mind off things. I’ve started on page 423, but I’m not sure when it will be ready, I’m hoping sometime in April. I plan on updating sporadically during this time until I feel I can focus better.
Anyway, this post is mainly to share some details about the remake of the comic seeing as today is Terra’s 11th anniversary. I’ve been making a lot of art behind the scenes for a while now and wanted to showcase some of it here, the main bit being the poster for volume one that you see above. I’m still developing the exact look I want, my style seems to be shifting the more I learn from online courses, so I imagine it will look quite a bit different when it’s launched than how it looks right now. One of the bigger changes is that I’ve redesigned the Varelien species, I ditched the head tails in favour of them having almost luminescent looking hair. I figure hair gives me more variety with character design, so I thought it was the right choice.
This art is quite old, but it shows a few different ideas I experimented with:
I also wanted to share some character portraits of Lex, Grey and Rick. I’ve painted them semi-realistically before, but I find that I’m starting to slowly moving toward the style I want for the remake.
You can click the image for a closer look.
One of the biggest things that had always bummed me out about volume one in particular was the space scenes, back in 2009/2010 I really didn’t know much about digital painting, so I relied on stamp brushes and free online images to make up most of the space art. I’ve learned a lot since then when it comes to painting space art/environments (and I plan on learning more in the months to come) so I’m super excited to be able rework some of those older concepts.
Here’s some art I made recently of Lavinia:
In addition, here’s a pic of the surface of Titan that I made a while back:
The remake will have a slightly different name, I wanted to separate it from the first version, but also wanted it to remain familiar, so I’ve decided to call it Terra Incognita instead. Seemed fitting for a sci-fi (even though I thought of the name while reading Moby Dick :P). I’ve rewritten quite a bit so far, it’s by no means a shot for shot remake, neither is it a complete reboot with a completely different story, it’s just a more concise version of the story I’ve wanted to tell all these years. Basically, even if you’ve read volume one recently, it will be different enough to feel like a new experience.That’s pretty much all I have to share for today. There’s a new vote incentive for Top Web Comics, it’s a preview of page 423. Thank you all so much for reading, it means the world to me. Take care of yourselves during this difficult time and stay safe!
