Never mind, call off the party. Turns out that Fris is alive and well.

Or, uh, alive anyway. Dunno about that “well” thing, since ol’ Fris is looking a little banged up right about now. Still beats getting shot, I suppose, but having an uncontrolled hydrogen fire rage around a high-pressure fusion reactor that has just lost its magnetic confinement capability doesn’t sound all that fun either. Exciting? Sure. But ‘fun’? Eh.

Website-Exclusive Author’s Note:

Servus! Welcome back!

It has been waaay too long, but as promised last time, I finally delivered on something that is certainly new… -ish.

It’s not as complete of a revolution as I would have wanted it to be, but still… I think it turned out rather nicely. I used tons of new techniques, from soft shading to highlighting to ambient colors and some general color rebalancing, as well as a couple new visual effects to make this page look as good as possible and honestly… yeah. I think I’m genuinely happy with the end result.

Now, are there things to criticize on this page? Plenty, especially when it comes to my gestures and anatomy – which still suck beyond reproach – but while I’m still struggling in the shapes and forms department, I think that I at least added some solid improvements to the colors and details of my style. You know, one step at a time.

And with that, I think I’m just about ready to leave off page 26 here. I’ve already got plenty of improvements in mind for the next one, so why don’t I get working on that right away? Oh, and maybe I should also finally finish Rykani Cast Episode #002… ugh…

— AP