I have no idea where to start, so I suppose I'll just jump right into the middle of it. After all, poking your toes in the water doesn't do anything but delay the inevitable shock of freezing cold that gives way to relative warmth anyway.

It wasn’t until earlier today that I realized there hadn’t been a Brand New Episode of Deception Pass since September of 2008, and honestly that left me with a sick, sinking feeling in my gut. I’ve been worried for a long time now that I’d let things linger too long, that way too much time had passed since anything was posted, so why would anyone still care about this stupid story? Truth is, a hell of a lot has changed since then. Things I won’t get into, things that are and aren’t so secret, things that do and don’t matter. At the end of the day, as pathetic as it seems, this story still keeps playing out in my head, and I want to keep telling it for myself if for no one else.

From the first time this story started -- back in the dark ages of my early teenage years -- it’s gone through changes. This will be one of the less dramatic changes, since in the past these transformations usually involved us destroying worlds and starting all over again. All that’s happening here is a change of narrative and a new tool for illustration.

Obviously, it’s been a hell of a long time since I’ve dabbled in the realm of TS2. TS3 feels much more comfortable to me now, despite lacking the utter control TS2 offers. In the last few days, I’ve discovered that there wasn’t so much lost in TS2, and quite a bit gained. Scenery, lighting, complete control over the environment, the hands alone… I could go on, but I’ll spare you. If this makes you uncomfortable, I’m sorry. I just can’t stand to put myself back in the blocky world of low poly and unexpressive pixels. I’m willing to make do with fewer, prettier pictures as opposed to more, perfectly controlled images.

Anyway…

Despite the pathetic amount of time I’ve been doing this, I’m still not used to having an audience of more than one. I guess in some ways, that’s not exactly a bad thing…

In the mean time, I’m still working my way through getting this beast of an episode finished up. There are still a few scenes to finish writing, but I’ve made amazing progress on the visual side of things. Still, it has to be said that having to rebuild almost an entire town takes quite a bit of time. The original sets for Deception Pass were built over several years, whereas with this current episode (which takes place in way too many places, it must be said), I’m building things on the fly, which is a huge time suck. With luck, I plan on posting it all… well… eventually.

I’ll stop myself from babbling on and on at this point. I’ve uploaded a gallery of pictures that, while not as composed as the ones I put together before we launched Season Two, are still (I hope) interesting and worth looking at.


[ several random pictures ]