Or more specifically, as it relates to The Dualist, as both are under the ATC umbrella. Another "when DCR is coming back" musing.

I started DCR during the production of Chapter Four of The Dualist because I wanted to keep pushing forward with comics work and couldn't - I was hamstrung by render limitations at the time. Limitations I've long since overcome, if the pace of the current Mastering effort is any metric. I've been able to keep up on The Dualist at an acceptable pace and as such I haven't had time for DCR in a long, long time.

Hell, the last story strip is over a year old.

However, I'm more or less "done" with The Dualist - I'm currently Mastering the comic, doing a final runthrough in which I'm fixing renders, rewriting dialogue, rewriting entire scenes, fixing continuity, de-ham-handeding the foreshadowing, strengthening the cohesion between DCR and the rest of the universe, and pulling out or reworking anything that comes across as grossly pretentious. It is A Kind Of Hell, but it's work that's rapidly paying dividends, and I should be done with my repair work at some point in August. I hope to have hardcopy by October. When I have hardcopy, The Dualist will be Done and I won't be touching the story again, beyond re-uploading it into the CMS.

That leads to What's Next, which impacts both DCR and Transitional Voices, the continuation of The Dualist.

After The Dualist is actually really honest-to-gid finished (by which I mean I'm signing hardcopy, shipping books, etc), it'll be time to dive back into modelling and design work - there's a font I need for both DCR and TV, a couple of space vehicles for DCR that will make useful additions to scenes of TV and later books, and there's a bunch of electronics modelling I need to do for either Whitehouse's rig or the bridge of the Daedalus which will then be reused in whichever environment they weren't tailored to. I'll be modelling the interior and exterior of Allegheny Center Building 7 so I can get shots I won't be able to get any other way. I'll be modelling tchotchkeys that will be reuseable across the entire series. In short, I'll be busting out polygons like a fucking madman. I have a basic list of everything I need in order to get moving with TV.1 and DCR.2 and will be tackling those bits first.

While I'm doing that, I'll be finishing DCR.1, then editing and tweaking DCR.1 for presentation (possibly doing extensive edits to decopyright Whitehouse's apartment - I don't know yet), then uploading it to the ATC site and possibly doing a limited run hardcopy. The first chapter will run longer than the rest - the idea was to do DCR as seven or eight 22 page chunks, but I'm currently on around page 17 and still have a good eight to ten pages of material to cover. The rest of the chapter is outlined and was scripted, somewhere - but I can easily do a better job of it from scratch at this point. The remaining chapters are all outlined and need to be fully written, expanded, revised and cut back down to run in the space I'd like them to run.

Given the projected page count, if all resources are available (which they won't be), DCR can be busted out in two years at the rate of one strip a day. This doesn't factor in my desire to shift formats from single strip to "sunday strip" (or "double stacked" format so I can fit a hell of a lot more dialogue into a page, but it's a reasonable figure and it can be hit. It can be hit in less time if I throw myself into it full tilt, but that means putting TV in cold storage, and I don't want to do that - what I want to do is to take the rest of this year to finish DCR.1, prep for TV and DCR.2, get rolling on DCR.2 and then - hopefully - get rolling on TV at some point in Q1 2008.

So, regardless of what happens with any of the above scheduling mutterings, I'll be back on DCR in a matter of weeks and should hopefully be able to finish the first chapter before pumpcon rolls around.

Maybe I'll be able to start up again before the second anniversary.

Regardless, more comic as soon as I can fit my head around something that isn't the Mastering of The Dualist.