For today only – in what may be a misguided celebration of Pearl Harbor Day – you can get 25% off all of my archival art prints at Retropolis and The Celtic Art Works.

You don’t have to do anything to get the discount except, now that I think of it, ordering an archival print. D’oh. You do have to do that.

Today is also the final day of a free shipping offer on my T-shirts and hoodies from The Retropolis Transit Authority, Saga Shirts, and Hot Wax Tees: get free Super Saver shipping on a shirt order of $20 or more with the coupon code 2011SuperFree, or blow out all the stops and get free Standard shipping on an order of $50 or more with the coupon code 2011StandardFree.

The shipping offer on shirt orders runs through midnight Mountain Time, while the 25% off sale on archival prints runs a little longer – Midnight, Pacific Time.

What began as a frenzied effort to make a bunch of characters that I can use in crowd scenes for both The Lair of the Clockwork Book and The Toaster With TWO BRAINS has unexpectedly turned into a whole new character creation process and, along the way, a whole new generation of character models. I’m excited about this even though I continue to worry about my Thrilling Tales schedule.

Because the object structure of my male heads is different this has meant repeating a lot of the setup work I’ve done for my women. But I’ve also done something new and neat that nearly works as planned – more on that below.

It started during the summer with tasks that I sprinkled in between my Clockwork Book illustrations. I created a series of very low resolution clothing objects and used Mudbox to sculpt them into much higher resolution models. Then I exported them in high and, um, less high versions. I completed the materials and textures on the high resolution models, then baked that texturing and the higher res normals into my medium res objects. (I did this in two different image resolutions, so I could switch between textures depending on how large a character appears in a scene).

Since then I’ve been working on new character heads that use morph targets for their expressions. More importantly, though, I’ve been working on the process for creating those heads so that it’ll be much easier to make new ones now, and the results should be much better.

A morphing character head consists of a base object – the head in a neutral state – and a bunch of other variations on it with expressions or other changes. So long as the structure of all these heads is exactly the same you can dial up one expression or another on the neutral head. In effect you have a single head that you can vary as needed.

Some of the things I’m doing involve changes to the objects. The simplest of those is lowering their resolution. Now, making changes to morphing objects is extremely tricky. You have two choices: either apply those changes to the neutral head after the morphing modifier – which is perfectly safe – or apply the exact same changes to every version of the head before the morphing modifier. Some modeling changes just can’t ever work on the raw targets. Some work most of the time. Some seem to work all of the time. As I work on my modifiers, I have to test them repeatedly. And it’s also important that these changes will work in the same way on every new head I make.

But the results are worth it: ideally, I can create any male character head and apply the exact same changes to it. After all that initial work what I have is a much more streamlined system to use over and over again.

Like I said, polygon reduction was the main thing I was interested in – but as of this morning I have a usable system for doing something completely different.

Switching to morphing heads makes some things more difficult. In the past I designed a style of headgear that’s very common in Retropolis: a kind of form-fitting cowl, like an aviator’s helmet, that hugs the head and wraps around the chin.

When my characters were moving their heads and faces through bones, this was no problem. The cowl would be skinned to the same bones as the face and so it would move as the face moved. But the switch to morph targets meant that couldn’t work any more. The entire face would be moving in a way that the cowl couldn’t follow automatically.

So what I set out to do was to create an object modifier that would cause the cowl to grow out of the head. However the head moved, the cowl would grow out correctly because it would always be based on the current state of the head – and remember, that ought to be any head. By doing it this way I could apply the cowl to all the morph targets, if I liked – they’d still have an identical structure once this same change was applied to all of them. But along the way I thought of something much smarter.

By adding the cowl modifier after the morph takes place I could have my morphing character with headgear; if I turn off that modifier, though, I have the exact same character without the headgear. Slap some hair on the head and I’ve got my guy both ways.

And it almost works perfectly. I’ve been referring to my cowl-growing process as "a modifier", but in fact it’s two modifiers that get applied in sequence. There’s still something wrong when I apply the second one – I’m finding that I have to finish the process by hand, once, for each new character. But even if I can’t sort out that problem I have a nearly automatic process for growing a Retropolitan aviator’s cowl right out of any new male head I make.

Sometimes, I feel really smart. This is almost one of those times.

Now I just need to crank out a few more of these guys before I have to go back to work on the last of the illustrations for The Lair of the Clockwork Book. There aren’t as many to do in this batch, but I know they’re going to be difficult ones. So, you know, I worry.

Here we have three more of my not quite generic ladies of Retropolis; I could go on and on, and I’d like to because this is the stage of character work that I really like. I’m trying not to think about what I’ll go through when I skin them to their bones, since that’s the part that I emphatically do not like.

Still, since their faces and hands are taken care of already the worst is probably behind me.

I guess I should believe now that I have all the generic costume parts I need even though I would always like to have more. I do still need to turn out a similar number of male characters. That Clockwork Book clock just keeps ticking.

In the meantime I’m just about a home page away from launching my new site, The Celtic Art Works. That one will do for my Celtic art merchandise what the Retropolis site has done for my retro future: it gathers together all my Celtic design products from Celtic Art & Retro-Futuristic Design, Saga Shirts, and Ars Celtica so that I have a single shopping site where all that wonderful stuff is presented together.

I had meant to finish The Celtic Art Works at about this time last year – but since I didn’t start it until this summer I seem to have missed that goal. It really has been a pretty big job – but sometime this week, anyway, it ought to be done.

As a side effect of all this recent work, I may finally redo my Ladies World Domination Society T-shirt soon. It’s been asking for an update for months now, and armed with all these Retropolitan ladies, well, I probably won’t be able to hold out much longer.

Well, it’s not really all about the ladies; but they’re what I had to drop into this picture.

During this round in which (theoretically) I’m working on Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS (while also catching up on a web project) and in which (actually) I’m building character assets like mad because I need so many folks in the background for upcoming scenes not only in TWO BRAINS but also in The Lair of the Clockwork Book, while still, truly, catching up on that web project, and – as I see with some dismay – constructing overlong sentences that just won’t die, I have been practically incommunicado because my nose is pressed so firmly into my monitor.

But I’ve done great, though undetectable, things: I’ve completely revamped my work flow for creating female character heads, with much greater controls over their expressions, and every one of these new heads uses the same object topology so that if I really wanted to, I could probably morph them from one character to another. This involved some difficult work over five days – not counting making the actual heads you see here – but it’s the kind of thing that will continue to help me out in the future. The new system worked so well that I even rebuilt my Gwen Hopkins character’s head completely from scratch, since she has a lot of upcoming scenes in TWO BRAINS.

Male heads, on the other hand, are still ahead of me; I have to redo that preliminary work for them because their object topology will not be the same. But happily I still have the original (though incompatible) data for Nat Gonella’s head, and I’ll eventually be rebuilding that one with the new system, too.

But it’s not all about the heads. I’ve also finally done some 3D sculpting work that I actually like for clothing. I’ve turned out a bunch of different base garments and a number of texture variations on them, with more to come, so that you won’t think everyone in Retropolis shares the same clothes. This new approach involves high and low resolution versions of the garments, where I’ve built them completely in the higher resolution and then baked their textures and normals into low resolution versions of the same clothing. I’ll even have the higher resolution clothes there for use in some of my really large renderings.

So this period of a few weeks is just about all concerned with what, in a perfect world, would have been pre-production. I just don’t have the luxury of doing all that work at a more sensible time, when I’m not still under the evil eye of my schedule. Because for as long as I’m doing a serial I am always under the schedule’s evil eye.

The bothersome thing is that this work – though it will benefit TWO BRAINS – is coming out of the TWO BRAINS part of my schedule. The publication schedule for the Clockwork Book makes it a cruel master.

I just need two of me, I guess.

Anyway, it’s back to more of the same and some other stuff. I ought to get back to The Clockwork Book in a month – it would be better to do that even sooner. In the meantime, I’m an asset building machine.

After a couple of rounds of testing this morning I’ve got page update notifications for Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual now up and running on Twitter; it’s a little less optimal from my end than the RSS feed, but it should work perfectly well for the rest of you.

I don’t know yet whether I’ll use that Twitter account for anything else, but if I do I promise to tweet responsibly. Meaning, no OMG THIS COFFEE IS HOT. BUT NOT TOO HOT. JUST REALLY HOT. Sort of thing.

With that extracurricular task I think I’ve finished off my current round on The Lair of the Clockwork Book. Like last time, I’ve never caught up the entire sixteen weeks I like to see in the buffer – I’m at thirteen weeks, now – and I think this is a lesson of some kind involving math, hours, Achilles, and a tortoise. I’ll figure it out.

And just as I did last time around I’m stealing the missing days from Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS, poor thing. Having a running serial really does make it difficult to keep that second story on track. Being as we’re in the time of year we’re in, I’m also going to have to spend some time doing holiday refits for my other web sites; so TWO BRAINS, with its illustrations just a third done (so far!) is about to take another hit.

I guess the good news that when I return to The Lair of the Clockwork Book there will only be about twenty-five more illustrations to go – although when I remember that I wrote crowd scenes into the finale, I question just how good that news is. In fact I somehow wrote crowd scenes into my upcoming pages for TWO BRAINS, as well. How I managed to get those matching mobs right up against each other in the schedule is a whole different question that should probably involve therapy.

The Space Patrol and I are each hurrying, to the best of our ability… pretty much as you see here. I might or might not be falling over myself the way they’re doing: you be the judge. To assist you in your judgement you can click the image above and see it swoop into an embiggened state.

Try as I might I can’t seem to get more than ten weeks ahead of the latest page in The Lair of the Clockwork Book. By the time I finish a new illustration you’ve all caught up with me – and there I am, exactly ten weeks ahead of you again. I can’t see myself speeding up any time soon because most of the remaining illustrations are going to be a challenge.

Still, one way or another I really do need to get about sixteen weeks ahead of what you see at the Thrilling Tales site, so I can pack the Clockwork Book away for a bit while I catch up on other things – notably, Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS. This is just about exactly what happened on my last Clockwork Book cycle. I guess it’s sort of a pattern.

I’ve been turning over some thoughts about the serial that’ll follow The Lair of the Clockwork Book. That’s still a few months away, but it makes sense to know where I’m going early. And often. So far… hmmmm.

Anyway, it’s back to the grind again, if by "grind" we mean the latest picture. With more Space Patrolpersons! And bonus hovercraft!

If you wanted to shake a stick at a bunch of calendars, well, this might be too many of ’em. I’m trying to decide if this is a gaggle of calendars, or maybe a passle of calendars, or (I hope not) a lamentation of calendars; it might be a spiral valley of calendars, or even, possibly, a conspiracy of calendars.

It is, anyhow, more calendars than any one of you is likely to need. But like someone I knew once said, "It takes all kinds of flowers to make a garden". So maybe just one or two of these would look good in yours. Next to the hydrangea, I think.

So, as you’ve guessed, it’s calendar season once again: that season when you get to spread twelve months of wall decoration and timeliness, not to mention dentist’s appointments, out in front of you so you can admire just how much time and novocaine lies ahead. And as I do every year I’ve tried to give you options, there, from the Thrilling Tales to Retropolis to Celtic Art and vintage graphics.

A special note this year is the new "Lair of the Clockwork Book" calendar, from my ongoing serial at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, with airships, rockets, robots, and the Clockwork Book itself.

Sometime last week I started in on the illustrations for the third (and final) act of The Lair of the Clockwork Book. When, exactly? No idea. It’s all a blur. But here we are with an invigorating cup of tea, so maybe I’ll remember later. In the meantime, clicking on the above picture will begin its unstoppable, relentless embiggification.

Captain Bonnie Scarlet is one of Tallie’s favorite clients. The stories Captain Scarlet trades to the Clockwork Book are, Tallie’s sure, second to none; and while her need for secrecy makes her visits rare this Captain of the Space Pirates will join Tallie and the Book in, let me count ’em, um, around January.

Captain Scarlet will be with us almost to the end of the story… and so will Tallie’s Foreign Legion cap, which I’ve now decided is the finest hat she’s got.

There won’t be much time for hat-juggling as we near the end of the story: things get hectic once we’re sure what the Book is after and why, and quite a few threads will manage to weave their way back into the story as Bonnie Scarlet discovers just how the Clockwork Book hopes to succeed. There will be ballistics; there will be frantic televideo calls; there will be gravity. Also, there will be tentacles.

Did you make it all through the summer without remembering to cover up that torso of yours? Jeez, I can’t take you anywhere. But just in time for the long weekend I’ve got a tempting sale on t-shirts from The Retropolis Transit Authority (including the Thrilling Tales T-shirts!), Saga Shirts, and Hot Wax Tees.

Until September 6 you can save a ginormous $20 on any order of $75 or more. Since the three shops share the same shopping cart that means you can split the difference between Ctheltic Cthulhu, Nat Gonella’s Ray Gun, and a Jitterbug or two. Which ought to have you covered*.

All you need to do is enter the ridiculously long coupon code OhYeahLngWkends and then you can nurse your tired typing finger(s) while basking in the warm afterglow that you enjoy when you’ve saved scads of greenbacks. Provided, of course, that your backs are green**.