There's a lot of news today:
Firstly, the votes for dialogue for pages 4 and 5 are decided. Page 4 will have dialogue by NeoCarbuncle, while page 5 features dialogue by Xocrates. The number of voters was disappointingly low for these votes - I'm hoping this is some sort of temporary glitch. I'd like to see more people participating!
Secondly, I wanted an art poll for page 6 up by now, but so far I've received only one submission from the tasked Infinite Monkeys. So I'm extending the deadline and making it an open submission - but with a short turnaround. (The reason will become clear shortly.) So here's the task:
The deadline for this open call for art is 10:00 GMT Friday 20 April. Note that is GMT, and this deadline is absolutely strict - art received a minute late won't be included in the vote. If you can work with that, go for it!We have an outline of the next scene of the comic, and the LAST part of the description is as follows:
The ships reform the line. The crew look excited, expectant. The starter's pistol fires. Once more the ships surge forward. Pan back to the start line. Infinity is stationary. There is the sound of an ignition failing to catch.
I have assigned the prior plot material to dialogue writers to flesh out in more detail, but this part is primarily visual, so I'm giving it straight to you, the artists. Your task is to create a page for the comic which shows this action. All the submissions I receive will be voted on to choose the "alpha" canonical version of this page - other submissions will be viewable as "alternate" versions.
You can interpret details as you wish, but the following will be good for continuity and probably your chances in the voting: The best view we have of the Infinity is in Pumpkinetics' page, so it would be nice to follow its design. And of course we have several mutually consistent references for the character appearances now.
Other details like the "starter's pistol" may actually be a radio signal or laser flare or whatever; the ignition failure could be visible as a cockpit error message or something actually blowing up... use your imagination.
Your submitted page must be designed to be 800 pixels wide, but can be any height you wish. You may produce black and white or colour art; if you produce black and white, you may specify that it be coloured by a volunteer colourist, or remain black and white. You should keep a higher resolution version if you produce one.
Submission should be to me before the deadline, in either Photoshop, PNG, or JPG format. Depending on file size, send it as an e-mail attachment, or upload it to a server where I can download it.
Thirdly, I set another art task, although not for voting purposes, and again received not much. So I'm opening this one up too. But the deadline will be a lot longer - you have until 10:00 GMT Sunday 13 May for this:
Finally, the reason for these weird deadlines. I am going on a 3-week vacation from 21 April to 13 May, and will be offline the entire time. So there will be no updates at all to the site during those 3 weeks. Hopefully we'll have a bunch of cool new art for you to mull over though!We should have some cool designs for possible rival ships in the Great Zzybak Race. This task is to draw up reference art for a racing ship.
If you'd like to design a ship, draw up a couple of exterior views showing different details. Feel free to also illustrate the interior if you wish. Your design must be original - not obviously based on an existing ship from science fiction. You may work in black and white or colour.
The submitted designs will not be voted on - they will all go into a pool for use by the writers as needed.
Send your work to me before the deadline in Photoshop, PNG, or JPG format. If the file is huge, stick it on a server and send me a link.