Tonight is a continuation of a vector bitmap thirteen days ago. You might remember that this character was inspired by FFX Titus. I have a poster of him in this pose on my window. I think that the symbol will have to go for use in Scene 5 Page 5. We don't want Square or people who like Square to think less of JF just for my simple jaunt into unoriginality. I'd like to mention that this skin is 256x256. Who does 256x256 textures anymore these days? I'll tell you who: me. That's who. You can't get simplicity and softness with higher resolution textures. I have to use lower resolution textures just to take out the jaggies. One would thing that using more memory would make something look better, but that's only in the case that you have something to show. I do not. A person is a person and little more. I could give people striped t-shirts, spikes on their clothing, or whatever, but I don't want to. JF has strict standards that something is not to become more complex than it really is. None of the characters here are supposed to be major fashion hounds or tv stars, so they should wear normal clothes and have flat color faces, simple lips, simple eyes, circles for irises. Even that gets far too complex when in a real comic. If I could take out some detail, I would. But the detail that is too much is usually the background. I want to show really important stuff in the background, but I just cannot without stretching JF into 10 pages per page. Of course, that would allow me to put more detail into animations, which currently lacks heavily. I'm thinking about it. How can I put more animation detail in without making it stupidly long? Today's lesson! I think that should be that simplicity is created by solid concrete ideas. You start with a box, you add lines, circles, boxes, curves. Then you color it in and there it is. But if you want simplicity, you have to remember that knowing what you want is more important than doing what you want. If you cannot control your hands, control your mind. It is, in fact, your mind that controls your hands. That's my main thing in all of my artistic work. I cannot seem to learn how to draw well and the drawing tools all confuse me, but my clarity of mind allows me to consistently create what I intend, by trial and error. Luck has little to do with it. My main friends: perseverence and statistics. My hard drive can tell you that a large number of monkey can produce JF given a long enough time span. But one weasel - me - can produce JF in a small time span given his intelligence and cunning.
Last time you saw DA9, I called him DA4 and he had his hands in his pockets. They were there for a good reason. He was warming them up for his special move: "Subdermial Flames". DA9 is a martial artist and thug for a very weathy gun syndicate. The same one that Jav is at war with in Scenes 1 and 5. DA9 is standing around talking to three of his friends on floor 1 of Sensei's Dojo Apartment. One of his friends is DA8, shown last night. They don't use any weapons, but you saw what use two shotguns, a pair of customized pistols, a grenade launcher, and an uzi were, right? Deadly weapons are deadly weapons. Bigger deadly weapons mean jack. Less-than-lethal is just a phrase tagged onto items that take more time to be lethal. Really anything and everything is lethal in our world. We cannot protect ourselves, nor can we hope to stop it by murdering the world. We can, however, work the odds so that the likelyhood of death is lower. Lower than what, I cannot say. What I am trying to say is that JF makes the point that a well-trained body and mind can master any obstacle, no matter how violent. Superman has nothing on Javantea. Javantea has the power of science, technology, and martial arts on his side.
Greetings, as promised, here is Scene 5, Page 4. If you missed it, yesterday was the magnificent Scene 5, Page 3. Page 4 will be easier to understand with Page 3, 2, and 1. And if you have not read Scenes 1-4, I emplore you to. Javantea's Fate may seem disjointed except for the common theme of violence, but I tell you that all of it is more than necessary. In fact, it deserves far more than what is there. I'm planning on redoing the entire comic next year or so. But if you read Making Of JF everyday, you'd know that. Of course, I've skipped three or so, so it's not exactly daily, but 121 vs 3 is a statistically probable event. In fact, I'm so sorry about missing the other day, I'm doing one today even though I shouldn't (since I don't do Making Of Pages on days that I post actual comic material). It's not up now, but it'll be up around midnight or so. By the time you read this, it'll be up here.
Yesterday, I skipped Making Of JF because I was so lazy that I forgot. I watched Traffic on DVD and I searched the web for anime until 2 AM and Making Of JF totally slipped my mind. Accept my apologies as well as Scene 5 Page 3. Page 4 is finished, laid out, and compressed. I just don't want to let people who read JF daily to miss Page 3 if I post Page 3 and 4 at the same time. We all know that's a big no-no. I'll post it tomorrow at 6 PM. I'll also tell the people to look at this page, so that hopefully they don't skip this wonderful scene. JF came together a bit tonight. I sat down and did some work after watching Muppets from Space on DVD. Yes, I own it. It is one of my favorites. Duh, JF is 3d puppeteering, The Muppets are a huge inspiration for me. The audio commentary on the DVD is not any good. If the director would have given his secrets, I'd be very happy. Not that lack of good commentary detracts from the high value of the movie. But back to JF, I decided to really put in effort. It's mainly because I feel so bad about not giving Making Of JF last night and not doing Page 3 as soon as I could. Page 3 has been possible for a week at least. All I did tonight was: add death animations for DA 3 and DA 6, do the directing in AS3D Manga Director, and do the page layout in AS3D Manga Producer. It took a good three hours, but it was not too hard. It was extremely rewarding seeing all of it come together. I often am afraid of trying to get someting fleshed out too soon and getting it all wrong. Work in AS3DMD does no good unless all the models are really well done and ready for action. Same with AS3D MP. Making a page layout is hardly useful if the pictures look terrible. The lesson for today is get those silly animations done quickly, get into AS3DMD and make it happen. One of my main problems was overexposure and underexposure. That's a huge problem in 3d. You can see how some images are all one color, very overexposed. Some images, though are very dark, very underexposed. The problem is that the light model is very unrealistic. Believe it or not, the physics is too "real". When I say real, I mean true to simple equations. The reality is that very few real light sources act like point sources. That's all I use. So imagine a scene with a 100 Watt light bulb in your room and look at pictures of people taken in that room. There's very little room between underexposed and overexposed. That's what I'm having trouble with. So what I try to do is make it a pair of 20 Watt bulbs across from each other. That way, it actly more realistic with dull lighting all around instead of a bright light in the center of the room. It also gives a decent shading system in my opinion. It's not Jet Set Radio, but maybe one day.
