Author: Novil

Fortunately, Elli’s baby is better again and will be able to leave hospital soon. That means Elli will then be able to work on the next page. I have already received the sketch for page 29 of the current chapter.

Unfortunately, Elli’s little baby girl is currently in hospital. Of course, we all hope for a quick and full recovery, and I’m very optimistic in this regard.

This means there will be no new Scarlet page today, and probably neither on Thursday.

I looked back at the first two chapters of the comic, The Machine of Eternal Summer and A Sky Full of Stars, and collected my ten favorite pages from them. There were 142 pages, excluding the covers, so this collection covers 7% of all published pages. The following selection is listed in chronological order.

You can vote for your personal favorite of these ten pages with the voting widget in the right sidebar.

The Machine of Eternal Summer #1

The first page of the comic is also one of my favorite ones. Elli needed a long time to finish the page since she was occupied with other work, but it turned out great in the end. I particularly like the children’s drawings on the wall and the window with the ice accumulating on the outside. Scarlet also turned out adorable. I spent a lot of time to fine-tune the dialog of this and the next page. Every sentence had to be perfect to immediately catch the attention of new readers.

The Machine of Eternal Summer #10

Marik’s lavishly decorated office gives a perfect impression of his business and personality. You can feel the tense atmosphere as Tibor has to face the menacing loan shark wolf. Their poses and facial expressions are spot-on in every panel. But not only the art is great, I also think that I did a great job with the writing, with clever wording and fluid transitions between the panels.

The Machine of Eternal Summer #13

All three pages of Tibor’s encounter with Viola turned out great, and this is the best one. The coloration of the characters and their clothes looks lovely and the characters’ facial expressions are extremely expressive. It’s only a minor design element, but my personal highlight is the splotch in the background of the 3rd panel. It looks great and somehow perfectly complements Tibor’s crestfallen mood.

The Machine of Eternal Summer #31

This may be the best drawn page of the entire comic so far due to its outstanding page layout. The way the 4th and 5th panel overlap, with the ground of the 4th panel morphing into the ceiling of the 5th panel, is ingenious. It’s also very clever how the vertical wall on the left side becomes a natural panel border for the 5th panel. On top of that, the page features very atmospheric and natural looking lighting.

A Sky Full of Stars #14

After highlighting several pages with spectacular artwork, this one is the first of two pages that stand out mainly thanks to their great dialog. The first draft of this page’s script was already very close to the final version and I was immediately hooked by it. It shows Scarlet’s personality so well and it’s just such a funny scene with Scarlet’s punchline in the last panel.

A Sky Full of Stars #18

I was quite disappointed by the lukewarm reaction to this page with only two(!) comments. I was as fond of the dialog on this page as of that on page #14 when writing it and I still feel the same way. Tibor’s line “That girl, Scarlet. She’s got a few screws loose for sure. But in two or three years, she’ll be smarter than all of us combined.” is a banger and I’m very proud of it. It tells his friends (almost) all there’s to know about Scarlet.

A Sky Full of Stars #34

Lovely artwork for a lovely scene. Scarlet’s bright red hair complements the impressive night sky with the colorful stars perfectly. I wanted to show here that Scarlet doesn’t know everything yet, and someone like Julius with a keen interest in a specific topic, like astronomy, still can teach her something new. It also makes it clear why Scarlet falls for Julius so fast. She wouldn’t fancy a boy who doesn’t share her interest in scientific topics.

A Sky Full of Stars #62

Although one usually avoids to put two directly consecutive pages into such a listing, I have to make an exception for this scene of Scarlet and Tibor exploring a cave. It looks fantastic how Scarlet’s lighter illuminates the area and casts those highlights on their clothes. Having this scene take place in a cave was a very late change to the chapter’s script. It always takes me a lot of time to adjust the word bubbles for scenes in the dark, but the result justifies the effort. Inverted bubbles such as these look so much better than standard black-and-white ones on dark backgrounds.

A Sky Full of Stars #63

Scarlet’s line in the 2nd panel is taken from a very similar line of the character San de Vertis in my fantasy comic Gaia. Scarlet combines San’s ruthlessness with Viviana’s inventiveness and Lilith’s long-term planning skills. Her dialog in this page shows that she probably has a better understanding of her world than anyone else. If there’s anyone able to save Lavarel, it’s her. I also love the drawing of her in the 4th panel with her thoughtful facial expression and the way the lighter illuminates her hair.

A Sky Full of Stars #87

First and foremost, I love how the design of Scarlet’s gun turned out exactly like I envisioned it. The gun has a sleek and modern, yet elaborate and fantastical design that’s not overly complicated to draw. The bold, atmospheric lighting also turned out very well. Last but not least, Scarlet’s happy facial expression and pose in the last panel also couldn’t have been drawn any better. Together with the drawing in page #63 seen above, it’s my favorite drawing of Scarlet in the entire comic.

Ten additional honorable mentions:

• The Machine of Eternal Summer #4
• The Machine of Eternal Summer #18
• The Machine of Eternal Summer #19
• The Machine of Eternal Summer #32
• A Sky Full of Stars #1
• A Sky Full of Stars #10
• A Sky Full of Stars #38
• A Sky Full of Stars #39
• A Sky Full of Stars #70
• A Sky Full of Stars #99

I’ve removed the latest page A Sky Full of Stars 084 because people didn’t understand its context and nothing happens in it that’s important for the rest of the story.

I’ve updated the website:

• The list of characters is now up-to-date.
• The glossary now contains info about all locations and terms that have been used in the comic so far, plus some additional ones.
• All comic pages now feature the transcript of the page’s dialog.

I’ve also added several links to interesting YouTube channels to the Links page:

• Bright Sun Films presents abandoned places and defunct companies. In his second channel Bright Sun Travels, he reviews luxury hotels and cruises in a very entertaining manner.
• Defunctland produces documentaries about amusement parks. Highlights like the history of Disney’s FastPass and Disney’s animatronics are even very entertaining if you don’t care about amusement parks at all.
• Sabine Hossenfelder discusses science news and occasionally also posts longer videos explaining results from quantum physics, astrophysics and related fields. Some of my favorite videos are her videos about nuclear fusion startups and the current state of cold fusion.
• Wirtual is a professional Trackmania player and produces documentaries about the racing game, e.g. he exposed the game’s most notorious cheater (a second time).
• Writer Brandon McNulty is probably the best writing channel on YouTube with numerous tips how to improve your writing skills. Jed Herne gives advice specifically for fantasy stories.

Here’s the rest of my list of recommended YouTube channels:

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