Pastel Defender Heliotrope

PASTEL NEWS ARCHIVE
For December 2007

December 24th, 2007

Nearing Year's End

It had been my wish to complete Pastel Defender Heliotrope by the end of this year, but it looks like that probably will not happen. It is very likely that there may be a few more pages in January, simply because I was unable to draw comics so many weeks the past month or two. The best laid plans of Mice and all. Still, I nearly made it, and it is not long now before I can put Pastel to bed.

I am dearly hoping that I can make the ending of Pastel feel good. That's all I want, just for it to feel good, to have some tinge of being satisfying, and to round things up with a sense of closure.

Beginnings are easy. Middles are not overly tricky. But the endgame, the ending, oh, that's the tough one.

It's easy to end things, it is the greatest difficulty to end them well.

I am not saddled with the same mistakes, nor the same demands, as I was with Unicorn Jelly. Doing the ending for UJ was very complicated, because I had forgotten some of it, and because the ending had to be of a certain type - the story needed both an ambiguous, philosophical conclusion, yet also needed a rousing definitive triumph. Those two things basically are opposites. Additionally, I was so damn burned out after three years of drawing pixels with a farging mouse that I could not stand to even look at my monitor anymore. Oh, it was hard, back then, to finish that monster.

My solution, for better or worse, was to have two endings. The ambiguous ending for the main story, and a rousing ending to an epilogue, which takes place a great span of time after the time of the main story, to show how things worked out. I have very mixed feelings about how I did, even knowing it was a difficult task.

With Pastel (and To Save Her) I am free of any constraint. I am on my own, and working with vastly more kindly tools. I don't have some damned muse making the rules. And I don't have some weird philosophical thing I have to get across as a result. I'm just doing science fiction here.

So I should have it comparatively easy, right? You'd think so.

I am very confident of my ending for To Save Her. For me that is a done deal, it just needs to be put down... some time a few months hence.

But Pastel... Pastel I am nervous about. All I see right now are all the mistakes I made with the entire story. I have to keep reminding myself that the confidence I have about To Save Her is entirely because of what I learned doing Pastel. Heliotrope has been an education for me, learning by doing. I've done a lot of experimental things during the course of Pastel Defender. You might have noticed... from changes in art style linked to the plot itself, to all manner of pushing myself beyond my limits... especially in regards to camera angles and anatomy. It's taught me a lot, but I have to tell you.... Pastel has more than a few pages in it that just make me cringe. Just cringe.

Still, I never promised anyone I was great... just determined as hell. I've never said I am particularly good - quite the opposite in fact. I did promise one thing though, to all my readers - and that is that I would finish what I start.

I keep my promises. That's not an issue unless I drop or something.

I just want, I just hope, I can do a decent job of it, that's all. I don't even need to have it be super, just so long as afterwards... I, and you, can close the last page and go; "Ah. Done." And feel OK about it. Ok would be fantastic.

Gah. Just gotta buckle down and do the best I can and let things fall where they may. All anyone can do, in the end.

December 27th, 2007

Character Height Model Sheet

LynziGraye on the Forums asked about the height of the characters, so I decided to post the height model sheet for To Save Her. It's a little sketchy, but maybe others might find it interesting, so I will put it here, too:

PASTEL DEFENDER HELIOTROPE
By Jennifer Diane Reitz

A Part Of Jenniverse.com

Anti-Spam Address Image
To contact Jennifer you may use either of the above addresses.
You may have to type them in yourself, if your browser does
not support Javascript. Otherwise, click on the button!

LINK FREELY
You may link to this site freely!
You may FREELY use any JENNYVERSE title image as a link button!