Work proceeds apace on Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS while I watch the pages update in The Lair of the Clockwork Book. Here we see Gwen, who is not completely happy about what she’s learning from Doctor Temiar.

"Apace", I think, is just vague enough to suit because in the nature of things I work wildly but slowly on new scenes or characters, then produce the illustrations just as wildly but quite a bit faster; then rinse and repeat. I spent about a week on Doctor Temiar’s office only to find that you’ll never even see parts of it since the final shots worked better if I concentrated on one side of the room.

That’s because here I’m continuing something I’ve played with in the Clockwork Book illustrations, which is to (often) follow the rules of continuity editing as we go from page to page. I’m not welding myself to those rules; in fact with an interactive story like TWO BRAINS it’s sometimes impossible, or at least unusually difficult; but I’m trying; and I am also indulging, I see, in a large number of semicolons; this is due, I am sure, to the fact that I’m re-reading Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin books.

Whew.

Anyway this is part of Gwen’s main branch in the story, which soon after this point splits again into two additional branches in that branchy way these things happen. I started with a bunch of illustrations that come late in the story; here I’ve reined myself in, and I’m much nearer the beginning.

From now through July 5 you can get five dollars off any order at all from The Retropolis Transit Authority, Saga Shirts, and Hot Wax Tees by entering the coupon code STARSAVINGS during your checkout. There’s no minimum order, so that’s five dollars off an order for a single shirt or, of course, thirty shirts, which you’re actually more likely to want.

This includes those brand new (and extremely flattering) Thrilling Tales T-Shirts from The Lair of the Clockwork Book which, once you own them, will be the envy of all your friends and neighbors. Be the first on your block!

Along with all the other things I need to do as I work on these illustrations, at the end of each batch of them I re-render a few in a higher resolution in order to slap them on archival prints, t-shirts, and other gimcracks as Thrilling Tales merchandise at my Retropolis web site.

This time I was more clever than usual, in one way, anyhow: I set up scheduled renderings for about five of the new Clockwork Book illustrations – so that when I got to this point I’d only need to do the Photoshop work on them. That has helped. But these are likely to trickle out over the weeks since I’m also working away at the new illustrations for Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS.

For now, anyway, I’ve added a couple of T-Shirts – The Astro Diner shirt shown above, and another shirt with Osgood Finnegan’s airship. In fact there are also diner mugs and airship mugs, along with a poster and an archival print of Late Night At the Astro Diner.

Along the way I’ve noticed a subtle but annoying problem in one part of the Retropolis store. It’s not a problem for you – not functionally, anyway – but the breadcrumbs and sidebars aren’t doing the magical things they used to do. I have an idea why that is, but I can’t fix it at the moment.

But there it is: some new bits of the Thrilling Tales on neat things, presented almost neatly. More to follow, if on an erratic schedule.

As you see, our friend Osgood Finnegan is sailing off in his airship and that, I have decided, is my cue to switch back to my work on The Toaster With TWO Brains.

I haven’t completely filled the Clockwork Book buffer – I’m constantly banging my head against Zeno’s paradox, here – but in order to do the next two illustrations (thereby to catch up) I’d have to create two new characters. Due to the length of time I’d spend on that, by the time I’d "caught up" I wouldn’t, in fact, have caught up. I’d need to do several more illustrations to make up that time in filling my ever-dwindling buffer of complete illustrations.

It’s just bad luck, really. It’s got to do with what I’d need to build right now. Over time the hours would average out, I’d be happily caught up in all actuality… while the birds sang, and the bees buzzed, and Osgood’s airship would sail on with its favorable wind.

But I’m tired of chasing the buffer. I’m going to swap over to my other story while I’m still two pictures short, and just take a week off The Toaster With TWO BRAINS at the end of its part of the schedule.

If I hadn’t had to model the airship I’d have been back on track this past weekend: but after that, the two new characters are just too much to bear.

This is my decree.

As you’ll see in (um, lemme do the math there, well, okay, I dunno)… a while*, Osgood Finnegan will be making his return in The Lair of the Clockwork Book: older, perhaps not wiser, but certainly more knowledgeable than he was when we last saw him.

This is the first time I’ve created an aged version of an existing, younger character. It was pretty interesting: more so, I guess, since I didn’t do what you might suggest by just retexturing his young head. I wanted to experiment with a new tool that has some nice features and in order to do that I had to start more or less from scratch. So far nothing’s exploded and I’m happy with the results. Fingers crossed.

JhJHGJ Kg;g hgl;ghghfd ssf?

Okay, not a great idea to type with my fingers crossed. Life is so complicated.

My lateness in this part of the schedule means that in order to catch up I need to build a bunch of other new things; that will no doubt push me back even a bit later. Eventually, though, I’ll catch up. The good thing is that I’m doing all of this so far in advance that it hasn’t any effect at all on the publication schedule. The only thing that gets delayed is my temporary return to The Toaster With TWO BRAINS, which I really would like to be working on right about now. But that’s the way it goes.

I’m still working away at the new illustrations for The Lair of the Clockwork Book – mostly – but I had to set aside a little time to finish this piece, an entry for a Starbucks contest at DeviantArt. Really, I had to. I had enough time invested in it already that it would have been wasteful to be more responsible and stick to what I really should have been doing. Besides, there’s some neat swag. And I do like my swag.

Whatever happens in the contest, though, I have plans for at least one of the elements in this picture… because shortly before I got to work on the Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual site I had an idea for a series of travel posters from the Retropolis Travel Bureau. I still want to do those, but the Thrilling Tales have turned out to be a pretty demanding project. So I haven’t been able to, yet.

But anyhow, on the Thrilling Tales front I am indeed gradually filling up my buffer of illustrations for the Clockwork Book, so that before too long I should be able to go back to Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS as planned. But since I’m late in filling that buffer it’s now getting used as I go: in order to have my roughly 32 unseen pages banked in advance, I have to keep making even more till the buffer’s full. The longer it takes, the more I have to do. Math is cruel.

Anyway, at the right is a little snippet from something that’s coming up for The Lair of the Clockwork Book. I know you need proof, and I don’t blame you: it’s because I’ve got these shifty eyes.

Yep, it’s time for another easily comprehended T-Shirt sale at The Retropolis Transit Authority and Saga Shirts: just in time for lawn mowing or machete season, depending on what sort of yardwork you have ahead of you.

From now until Sunday, the eleventh of June, you can save $5 on any t-shirt order just by using the coupon code DOGDAYS when you check out. There are no minimum orders. It’s dead simple. You can order a single shirt if you like and still chop (or mow) a staggering, stupendous, superlative five dollars off its price.

While The Lair of the Clockwork Book isn’t exactly headed off into the sunset, I am just now finishing the last illustration for its upcoming story; you’ll be seeing the new pages over a sixteen week period starting in early June. I’m really pleased with this new series of illustrations and, naturally enough, I hope that you will be, too.

Over the next week I’ll be entering the story data for those weeks’ worth of updates and I plan to revisit two of the pictures that I still think could be made a bit better.

This second series will begin to appear (on schedule!) on June 2. But I’m not quite done in there yet because before I can rewire my brain for Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS I need to make sure that the Clockwork Book buffer is around 32 updates ahead of what’s appeared so far on the site. In a Zenolike bit of scheduling, that’s a moving target: the longer it takes me to fill the buffer, the longer I have to keep at it because the pages are updating as I go. I do expect to catch up to the tortoise before the middle of June. But then I’m no Achilles, am I?

I’m just two illustrations away from completing the next story for The Lair of the Clockwork Book. Okay, make that one-and-a-somethingth illustrations: my computer’s rendering away as I type this.

I’m still not really on schedule; I’ve got a dozen or so more to do before I’ve got enough pages in my buffer that I’ll be able to go back to The Toaster With TWO BRAINS. But I think I’ve made up some of the time I lost when I took about a week each to do two (yep, two) of these pictures. I’m not completely sure why that happened… but there were technical problems, stubborn lighting issues, and what all, which in this case meant that I got ill for a few days in the middle of everything. Those two pictures could be the whole reason I’m running late.

In fact, I want to go back and rework two more before they start to go live at the Thrilling Tales site. Next week will be a busy one, though I realize that doesn’t actually mean it’ll be different from, say, this week.

This won’t show at all to you, of course. It just means that I’ll stick with the Clockwork Book for a bit longer than I’d planned in this part of the schedule, for however long it takes for me to get 32 pages ahead of what’s been published at the site.

As far as what you can see of The Lair of the Clockwork Book, we’re nearly through the story of Osgood Finnegan (which is the first story of Osgood Finnegan, as you’ll see later). I rewrote large parts of that one just before I added it to the site and I’m still a little worried about the fact that it’s different in tone… for reasons that are quite necessary, but which still worry me a little. I’ll feel a little more comfortable when we get started on the one pictured here since it’s back in the "present" of 2039, where I feel a little more at home.

Rusty here is possibly running like crazy because I’m about to start up the vacuum. Robots hate that. Except for those Roombas, anyhow: the alternative would be incredibly cruel. (Unless you’re reading this in syndication, you can click the image to see it embiggified.)

But no! I forgot. He’s running for a completely different reason, which Clockwork Book readers can look forward to learning sometime in July. I guess you could say I’m trying to keep up with him, or at least with something, since I’m running a little bit late in my Thrilling Tales schedule.

That’s not actually a disaster or anything. The first crop of pages won’t run dry till early June, and I already have about ten more in the bank, so it’s not as though the story will pause. The deal is, I need to have about thirty-two unpublished pages ready to go before I can go back to Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS. So it just makes me nervous. You can ignore me, if you like. Most do.

At worst, I’ll get back to Two Brains a week or two after I’d planned.

It can be a difficult schedule, all right. The fact that I’m illustrating two stories at once means that for the time being Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual is a full time job. I guess that’ll be true for as long as I’m doing an interactive and a serial at the same time… so it’ll stay true, I suppose, at least until I’ve finished Part Three of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS. I have no idea what’ll happen after that; Thrilling Tales will then have a three-part interactive story and two completed serials. It’ll probably be time to regroup.