“Striking Sparks” — Page Sixty
Yeah, that’s gotta hurt. Sophie did her best, but he’ll be feeling that in the morning. Once, y’know, he recovers his soul and other minor details.
On the other hand, lifelines delivered! And just in time, too, because that tower’s not going to stay up much longer!
And hey, new February Vote Incentive! Marissa, whose thirst for knowledge knows no bounds, tests the elasticity of caramel. For sound scientific reasons, of course. Click it! It’s educational!
More below!
Bobservations
Sparks and Embers
First of, big holla back to Joseph Kelly of Pepperpot Piper, who gave us a nice mention in his blog. I just love Pepperpot, with its Roaring Twenties atmosphere and Joe’s gloriously detailed oil-painted pages. For some reason I especially love Pepper’s feathered headband, which always seems to retain its flamboyance despite everything she goes through. I see it as a metaphor for Pepper’s own indefatigable spunkiness.
Joe had been doing some burning structure scenes himself, and although I believe he actually hand-paints everything, he mentioned in an earlier blog that he’d been trying to take some reference photos of fire. Well, as an avid fan who just happens to possess approximately two metric buttloads of fire imagery (and more coming all the time) I was more than happy to send him a slew. Apparently he found them useful. High five, Joe!
And of course I shot a lot of new stuff for this page, trying to give the feeling of hurtling fire and embers and brimstone raining down from the sky. Not to mention a badly damaged human trailing ropes. Fortunately, I had Max’s rough to work from, so I had an idea of what would be needed.
Accordingly, I went out and shot some stuff I didn’t already have, at least not in 4K resolution. Ember streaks and hurtling fire, mostly. Had to render and key most of it, which takes forever in 4K. I miss the DV era, I really do. But I do love the higher resolution of 4K.
Max sent over his “Rough Color,” with all the elements broken out into layers (very useful, because it allows me to insert effects behind buildings and people, instead of having to mask around them.) Here’s his rough color page:
And I stuffed effects into it. I think this page had more effects layers than any page we’ve ever done. The previous page was splashier, but a lot of the fire was just a couple of big flame effects. This page was many many layers of smaller effects, including really subtle stuff like the trail of embers and smoke still hanging in the air from Countdown’s flight in Panel 3. I also added the dialogue and balloons; my balloons are rough, but Max cleans them up for me. (He also told me over breakfast how to adjust my settings so the balloons would stop sucking; hopefully I’ll be able to generate final balloons in future pages.)
This page was then sent back to Max, who stayed up all night adding all the shading, detail, debris, motion blur, color correction and finessing to create the final page. He really made our hero look wrecked.
And then — because who needs sleep? — he also whipped out a cute Valentine’s Day themed Vote Incentive of our favorite electrical engineer doing Science. After which — off to a Superbowl Party! Hopefully it won’t be too exciting. He needs the sleep.
And I could make a joke about the Seahawks ultimately feeling like our hero in Panel 5, but they didn’t get beaten that badly. Sorry, Mr. Reaper — this one’s all you.
— Bob out
I wonder how the ability to stop ones heart (effectively making ones self dead) and unconsciousness combine, and exactly how bad of a combination that will be for Max right now.
I assume he will not be able to restart his heart of his own accord at the very least.
Back during the robbery he was unconscious when he jsut restarted his heart. Either he can do it manually, or it happens automatically.
Let’s hope not automatically, or it might restart before he warps back, which presumably would be bad for his body-soul connection.
Bit difficult to “kill” what was already “dead” gents
He’ll be fine, it’ll hurt like all hell when they bring him back, but he’ll be fine
How do you kill that which has no life? All he needs now is the sword of a thousand truths and its all over
The standard answer to that is destroy the body. And an explosion and fall will do a good job of that heart beat or no heartbeat.
Don’t do a ‘Vanguard’ on us, Max!
nah he cant do a Vanguard, he still has a team left 😛
Is it possible to gauge a pulse with your… y’know, never mind. Countdown Man just propelled himself out of a burning building with an explosion, saving over twenty lives. Freakin’ brilliant.
There is so much awesomeness on this page. So much to look at. So much to appreciate.
And yet, with all that, I can’t get past the fire chief’s face in the third panel. It’s just so perfect.
Bob and Max, you continue to amaze.
They’re not safe yet. Remember, if Max returns, the rope returns.
Nah. They sent the rope ahead and shut down the gate, so it’ll stay permanantly.
Gosh… That’s… a lot of a stretch!
I just imagined a fresh dead body getting thrown out of the… 5th? floor of a building with so much force that it flies head over heels like rag doll. The would be a big splat of blood and flesh and little pieces of bone that nobody would be able to put together to a full skeleton.
Max’ armor may keep his body together and even keep him from breaking all his bones in lots of pieces, but still… I’d assume that even if he survives this stunt, he’ll be in a hospital for several months just to heal enough to get up on his own…
Whew.
Don’t forget, from the previous strip, he had some supernatural protection as well, which allows for any variable amount of damage between “none at all” and “splat”.
OK, I didn’t take Sophie into account… On the other hand, she’s a ghost (and a very sexy one if I may say so, in that pose and with her clothes ripped to shreds*) – how much physical damage can she ward off of Max?
*: Hey, Bob & Max, if you are looking for an idea for another vote incentive, how about one heavily based on Sophie clinging to Max-the-hero in front of the fire? I’d vote for that !
Certainly a thought!
On something much lighter – Marissa looks sooo…
ediblecutely rounded all over the place… *____* I’m in love.don’t you just want to unwrap that candy and get to the gooey marshmallows underneath? 😀
“Science” is awesome! 😀
(though not quite how I recall it from science class in high school.)
Thanks guys!
It’s really great to see everybody voting and helping increase our rankings at topwebcomics.com- obviously we’ve learned what kinds of Vote Incentives are preferred and the best way to keep them coming is to vote!
You know, now that the fire department’s busy with the rescue harness and not watching, it would be a wonderful time to teleport Max back to HQ, don’t you think?
The team tried to test Max’s deadvision in the lab, but did they ever try testing his deadvision during a teleport?
No, they haven’t. We’ll be delving into that sort of thing more in the future.
Interesting… the “Hard Target” advertisement is offering a “boring to read” tutorial on how to have “psychic sex.”
O_o
First, may I say thank you for whitelisting us on your adblocker? 🙂 Every little bit helps.
And yeah, I get that one too. I have no idea what it is, but they seem to be advertising a lot lately.
I’d say you’re welcome, but I don’t believe in adblockers. That’s just rude to independent content creators. So I don’t have any adblockers 😉
Besides, if I had an adblocker, I wouldn’t be to curiously raise my eyebrow to these bizarre ads. I’m not clicking it, but I’m amused by the idea of what they’re selling.
You are correct, you can’t check a pulse with a thumb. You will feel your own pulse as well — defeating the purpose. Unfortunately the firefighter is in the completely wrong position to check a neck pulse which is done from above, behind or across. A wrist pulse is fine, and ankles work too but are trickier.
If you instead have the firefighter check a wrist, then he could place the one arm across the chest, that could trigger the the recall since they can observe Max’s orientation. My concern is the jar big enough for him prone or reclining? Can they adjust his rotation to fit in the jar?
Or he was checking to see if he was breathing? Maybe?
Protip: Don’t look to webcomics as a source of medical knowledge 🙂 The script said “Lying motionless and steaming. A fireman is checking his pulse.” I’ll cop to not having done a lick of research on if you can use your thumb to check a pulse- because I wanted the fireman to use his thumb.
That’s a great tip, Max 😉
Re: the alt-text, it certainly wouldn’t be very surprising if the firefighters followed a news report from within the room they were trying to break into, detailing the conditions and actions of the people they were trying to rescue. Even if they don’t have support personnel tasked specifically with keeping tabs on the media during an incident (I sure would, if I were head of the fire department), a friend or family member who saw the initial report would most probably call and draw their attention to it.