Fangs: an Elite Dangerous comic

Most of it’s all cosmetic packages. You could get away with just the base game for flying around the galaxy, mining, shooting pirates, etc. but the Horizons season pass thing added the SRVs that let you take a little rover around on planets, along with some other stuff.

New exploration ship is half-way through it’s shake-down cruise (a tour of all 15 discovered Generation ships).

Orca + Lvl5 FSD (Farseer) Range Boost + Lvl5 Guardian FSD Booster = a 63LY jump range.

Next tour will be the Conflux bases, the Hawking’s Gap bases (have done the Formidine Rift bases + Zurara megaship) and then whatever I feel like.

I had to shift things around my desk to put my new PC in (seriously, I can’t get over how I forgot how damn big full-tower cases are :smiley: ) and haven’t gotten around to rearranging the little side-tables I had set up to put my HOTAS on, so I haven’t even gotten to log in with this new machine yet.

Plus side, new machine should be more than enough to drive VR, so if I ever get another little pile of money to throw at PC hardware, I can get a headset and really see what being in a spacehip’s like…

Forget the Orca for long range exploring.

Engineered DBX + Guardian FSD Booster = 70+LY jump range. Woo! (And that’s before using Jumponium or Neutron Star Boosting, too.)

Now I just need to reconstruct my keybindings and X52 HOTAS settings after last week’s screwup and I’ll be laughing.

BTW - @Lee_Ars - I finally got around to reading ‘Fangs’ volumes 1 and 2. Love the work. Double-plus-good-thumbs-up!!

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Thanks :heart:

Chapter 1 of book 3 is awaiting character art. David (illustrator) and I have totally changed up our process and gone all high tech—I’m still basing images around screenshots, but I’m using those as the basis of 3d scenes in Maya, so that I have precise control over the light and shadow. I’m also adding in some animations on some panels in After Effects. Maybe getting a little carried away, but I’ve got an example of the finished product on the “coming soon” page for book 3:

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I cant freaking WAIT!

The enthusiasm means a lot :smiley:

Here’s some behind-the-scenes pix:

Layout and render in Maya

Thanks to the E:D 3d models that are floating around on the web, and thanks to the fact that you can download the student edition of Maya and use it for free (Fangs is Creative Commons, so it’s non-a commercial usage), I can lay out panels in 3D using an articulated character rig for posing. That saves a huge amount of time and explanation with my illustrator—no need to find reference art or poses anymore!

Plus, Maya lets me set up light and shadow more or less exactly how I want, which makes achieving the stark Fangs look a lot easier.

Linework and cleanup in Photoshop

The earlier Fangs editions were done with good ol’ trusty Acorn, which is a fine little piece of software, but unfortunately it just can’t quite do what I want anymore. I’m working on Fangs at 5K resolution, and Acorn was choking to death. So, finally, after lord knows how many years, I finally bought a legal version of Photoshop (or at least a $10/month subscription to a legal version of Photoshop…).

Character art

David then paints over the rig with our Book 3 main character, Alex. (I render the frames in multiple versions, with and without the character rig). I don’t have any completed frames to show yet, but here’s the finalized character sketch and some poses:

Story bloviating

I’ve actually got the story planned out pretty far in advance. Book 3 flows seamlessly into Book 4; there’s another Rahn & Moose “MERCS” interlude between Book 4 and Book 5; and Book 5 is a huge giant finale thing (sort of, with a teeny little narrative hook that could be a jumping off point for another story).

For book 3, without spoiling anything—it’s a story of a pilot who gets marooned in Witchspace, and what happens to her there. There’s a bit of a horror vibe to book 3—I guess kind of an eldritch old-god Lovecraftian type of horror more than jump-scare-Freddy-Jason horror. Witchspace has been my favorite part of the Elite universe since a much younger me devoured the original Elite’s pack-in Novella, The Dark Wheel. The novella painted witchspace in scary, mysterious colors—and the spookiness of it has stuck in my head ever since.

Hoping to get all the character art in and the first chapter published soon. I’m terrified of jinxing things by being any more specific, but hopefully really actually-for-real soon and not “soon”.

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I can’t wait to see Book 3…

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Thank you for sharing the road map! I really enjoyed the first 2 books.

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Anyone here flying by the name of CMDR M.M.Knutsen? (Or something like that…)

Because there are now 3 squadron members. :slight_smile:

There’s another applicant to the squadron but it appears to be in French.

I still have my Chieftain, but I recently picked up another Asp Explorer, fitted her out for mining, whacked up some LTDs, and saved enough to fit a mining Python. Think I may just spend a week or two doing nothing but diamond mining to fatten out the wallet a bunch then start building other purpose-built ships. (Courier, passenger runner, combat machine, etc.)

I have 5 ships that I use:

AspX - retired from exploring and used for small/medium cargo runs
Orca - passenger hauling
Fer de Lance - pew pew pew!
DBX - Long exploration trips, far out in the black
Cobra MkIII - semi-retired, but got used for lots of smuggling and a bit of combat. (And every serious CMDR has to have a Cobra in their fleet.:slight_smile: )

The Python never appealed to me, and I felt the Anaconda was too slow and sluggish for much.

Hey @Lee_Ars, with the COVID-19 lockdowns going on, how about providing an update on the next chapter of Fangs, please?

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So David (my normal illustrator) has had a lot of complex and difficult family issues happening over the past six months and hasn’t been able to continue with the work. However, I’ve found an awesome freelancer I’ve been working with and we are in heavy production on 3.2. She’s actually been livestreaming her illustration work on her twitch channel, if you want to peep at some of the comic in progress. Obviously major spoilers for 3.2, since you’ll be watching the panel art come together. I’m hoping to have all panels completed by the first week in May.

Not sure if David’s going to be able rejoin the project, but if not, I’ll definitely be seeing if Ninjette wants to continue on to 3.3 with me.

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Well, that took a little longer than I was expecting but here we are with a new chapter!

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Is there a update? This is the only web comic i have ever followed.

Chapter 3 is in production, but it’s nowhere near done. David Hall has started a new job and NinjetteNine has been dealing with living in Portland and having people she knows caught up in protests, and my own motivation has been kind of on the floor lately.

But it’s coming—probably not for a few months, but it’s coming! Here’s a WIP panel!

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Thank you so much!!!

Moving @Viking and I’s Elite discussion back into here out of the general game playing thread.

Managed to make about 80M just doing trade runs with the Type-9 today, which was good as it gives me more buffer in the wallet so I don’t have to worry about rebuys as well as let me go a hop out and go buy a 6A FSD for the thing and engineer it, which just about doubled my jump range on it. Now I’m not limited to less-than-8LY jumps fully laden :smiley:

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