Hellgate again, folks ... a couple of characters who haven't visited these pages in a long time --
Sergei van Donne -- six foot six, blond, blue eyed, covered in muscles, and one of the most dangerous and notorious of the Freespacers. He was cashiered out of Fleet, where he was a fighter jockey, during the incident on the super-carrier Kiev were a big explosion destroyed the data core ... and the next time he showed up it was on a ship called the Mako, double-dealing both sides of the fence, on his way to an enormous fortune. And Ramon, a gunfighter from Marak City, who fancies Sergei something rotten, and who knows his way around the Freespacer space city of Halfway. Now, Sergei has a serious bone to pick with the shadowy villain behind much of the nastiness that's been going on in the Hellgate books, and --
One word more, and we'll be into plot spoilers! All regarding this arc of the story is revealed, and solved, in the first section of the new Hellgate book. The whole book is HUGE, and it divides itself into episodes, which makes it wonderfully convenient from an editor's point of view. I'm absolutely loving this -- which is why you're seeing so much Hellgate artwork at the moment.
You might notice, Sergei has had a bit extra work done since the last time you saw him. Mel was saying a little while ago, he'd like to see Sergei a little more "chiselled" and hollow cheeked. So some tweaks were done, and I think it's a great improvement!
Incidentally, that's the Remendado skinmap, but not the Remendado morphs. I did the face and body myself, and the Remendado skinmap really suits it. He's wearing the Mon Chevalier hair, by Neftis set to "butter," and then styled this way and that. Same kind of deal with Ramon ... that's the HZ Victor Skinmap, with face and body morphs by yours truly. He's wearing the Midnight Prince hair set to "ebony," and both of these guys are wearing eyeballs from The Eyes Have It set, which are real photographic human eyes in high-rez.
We're putting together hundreds of renders illustrating the Hellgate books, and I'll be building a monster website to carry them, and also the fee samples from the books. If you've been on Mel Keegan's website, you'll know that big sections of these books are all yours for the downloading, to whet your appetite. I think it's something like a whole novel's worth, drawn from the Hellgate books alone. What we'd like to do, when the series is complete (one book to go after this, and we're going to move mountains to have it done by Christmas) is to run the text and the artwork side by side, with "turn page" buttons, so you can settle down with your laptop and enjoy a kind of "multimedia trip" through the opening chapters of each book, before you download the epubs and read on.
Back tomorrow with The Adventure of "Photoshop Elements 9," which could also be entitled, "Jade Joins the Photoshop Flock." Hunh?! Why?! WFT?!
All shall be revealed. Tomorrow. Now, I have to write emails and catch up with people who've been waiting for letters from me for a week ... have been sick again. As you know, my health sucks, and it's been one of those weeks where it's been a struggle just to keep breathing, and post a little artwork. Down here in Aus, it's FLU SEASON. Aha! Everyone has it, or has had it, or is getting it. For me, it turned right into pleurisy, and went downhill from there. So --
Back tomorrow with the PSE9 saga!
Jade, 26 June
***Posted by MK because the internet is AWOL. Intermittent crap.
