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TRDL 2011 Series No. 81 – Clea

TRDL thom — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 04:34:07 +0000

TRDL 2011 Series, No. 81 – Clea
Third Rail Thrills No. 70

This was done for the TRDL R3 Jam, the subject being the theme ‘Sorcerers’. I chose Clea, lover and partner of Dr. Strange, Sorcerer Supreme.

I loved the look of Clea growing up, usually only glimpsing her in weird dusty back issues. Something about all the circles on her leggings. Instead of just using rings, I used some concentric circle patterns that have more complexity. You can see the ‘propaganda poster’ version here, above, and also a Third Rail Thrills version below, for science!

You can read more about the process on this pic after the jump…

Artists, come join us on R3 and submit to the jams! The R3 Illustration Jam offers new characters weekly, but all jams remain open so you can contribute to any that you like, here:
http://www.thirdraildesignlab.com/forum … m.php?f=27
or in the TRDL-R3-WeeklyJam group on DA, here:
http://trdl-r3-weeklyjam.deviantart.com/

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You can find a larger version here and here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Background:

The Clea of my youth, by Paul Smith. Graceful, as Smith’s women always were.

Original pencils, exploring what pose and leg positions I wanted.

I was after a sort of lounging pin-up pose without being especially sensual. I had the leg kicked over the other like this originally, but it wasn’t reading well to my eye.

Skin and face, straight away.

I wanted to do the whole outfit in the lush purple-pinks first, and then darken parts afterwards…

Shade applied, higher saturation here.

Highlights. It would be a nice monochromatic costume, actually, left like this.

To find the right black for the tights and top, I started with straight black and then began to soften the color to find a good very dark purple. It’s supposed to be black, but I wanted more cohesion.

This was the color on which I settled.

This pattern was created using a custom brush designed by Sudds on dA, which can be downloaded here.

From there, it was about assembling the propaganda poster theme, a vintage ad for ‘Magi Exotic Teas’… couldn’t get GOB out of my head, either.

Thanks for reading!

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Finit-e Scene 04 is Live

TRDL thom — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 18:11:41 +0000

OK, it was 80% done by May 2009, and it took another 18 months or whatever to get to the finish line, but Scene (Chapter) 4 is now live on http://www.thirdraildesignlab.com or http://www.finit-e.com for your immediate enjoyment. Remember you can use the online comic reader interface or download a PDF or CBR for local copy reading, use on your iPhone or iPad, or printing. I recommend starting from the beginning to get refreshed on what’s going on, but however you choose to read it, when done, give me your comments here in the link below:

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=19775

You can also read the Annotations/ Behind-the-scenes stuff here,
and read the new character dossiers here.

Finit-e is a graphic serial about the nearly-now and the dawn of the supernormal. It’s a comic with equal parts espionage thriller, police procedural and science fiction adventure. It’s also the first comic under the TRDL imprint.

Please enjoy, hell yes!

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TRDL Finit-e Graphic Serial: Dossier – [Klein]

TRDL thom — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 08:29:10 +0000

View a hi-res version of this file here!

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Name: Mitchell Klein
Affiliation: Central Intelligence Agency
Classified Designation
Birth: Miami, Florida

Most Recent Surveillance:

Kittering Tower
SoMA, San Francisco, California
UTC/GMT 19:450 [ local: 12:54]

Mitchell Klein is an operative with Classified Designation Status, whose previous assignments were recently sealed as part of an agency-wide stonewalling tactic employed by CIA Acting Chief Montgomery Stephenson, who publicly opposed many of the protocols adopted in the wake of the Global Counter-Terrorism Initiative hearings. Stephenson argued that greater transparency with regards to past and present assignments of field operatives would put sensitive deep cover operations at greater risks internationally, and allow the CIA to become dragged into the political realm domestically. While his actions are being tested in the courts, at the present time all service records for CIA assets are unavailable.

Mitchell Klein was born in Miami, Florida, the third child of a British imports advisor and an American Naval officer. He spent most of his childhood living on military installations throughout the Caribbean, and received his primary education in London and later a degree from Oxford, before returning to the United States and entering the law enforcement field as a Coast Guard officer, before his recruitment to into the Agency. He is fluent in several languages. He was last observed off-duty in the vicinity of Kittering Tower, during a GCTI national security crisis response exercise in the South Marina Downtown District.

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As the Finit-e graphic serial progresses, more will be revealed about the characters involved, and as such, their dossiers will be expanded here. Check back after each Scene is published for more information! Or misinformation…

You can read the Finit-e graphic serial on-line, here: Finit-e Graphic Serial Web Reader
And you can download the PDF or CBR files here: Finit-e Graphic Serial Download

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

TRDL Finit-e Graphic Serial: Dossier – [Webb]

TRDL thom — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 08:28:44 +0000

View a hi-res version of this file here!

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Name: Nick Webb
Affiliation: Central Intelligence Agency
Classified Designation
Birth: Des Moines, Iowa

Most Recent Surveillance:

Kittering Tower
SoMA, San Francisco, California
UTC/GMT 19:450 [ local: 12:54]

Nick Webb is a senior operative with Classified Designation Status, whose previous assignments were recently sealed as part of an agency-wide stonewalling tactic employed by CIA Acting Chief Montgomery Stephenson, who publicly opposed many of the protocols adopted in the wake of the Global Counter-Terrorism Initiative hearings. Stephenson argued that greater transparency with regards to past and present assignments of field operatives would put sensitive deep cover operations at greater risks internationally, and allow the CIA to become dragged into the political realm domestically. While his actions are being tested in the courts, at the present time all service records for CIA assets are unavailable.

Nick Webb was a promising young athlete, named one of Iowa’s brightest new football stars at the High School level, going on to play for the Long-Haulers before recruitment into the NFL by the Dallas Cowboys. He played for four seasons, before a neck injury forced him into retirement. He joined the Agency after being recruited from the Chicago Police Academy, where he was nearing graduation. He was last observed off-duty in the vicinity of Kittering Tower, during a GCTI national security crisis response exercise in the South Marina Downtown District.

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You can read the Finit-e graphic serial on-line, here: Finit-e Graphic Serial Web Reader
And you can download the PDF or CBR files here: Finit-e Graphic Serial Download

TRDL Finit-e

… Read on for more awesome...

TRDL Finit-e Graphic Serial: Dossier – [Bryant]

TRDL thom — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 08:28:14 +0000

View a hi-res version of this file here!

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Name: Kieran Bryant
Affiliation: National Security Agency
Communication Assets Team
Birth: Providence, Rhode Island

Most Recent Surveillance:

Marina City Towers
Chicago, Illinois
UTC/GMT 21:50 [ local: 15:50]

Kieran Bryant was the seventh child born to a wealthy Rhode Island shipping magnate, but the first to follow a career path outside of the family business, attending Yale University and immediately entering government service after graduation with honors. Naturally athletic, he was recruited by the BI but chose to accept a position with the NSA, first as a signals intelligence analyst, and eventually as part of the Communication Assets Team, an experimental unit involved with extremely sensitive forward technology field-tested before granted widespread implementation agency-wide. He was last observed entering the Marina City Towers residential lobby, building 2.

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You can read the Finit-e graphic serial on-line, here: Finit-e Graphic Serial Web Reader
And you can download the PDF or CBR files here: Finit-e Graphic Serial Download

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!… Read on for more awesome...

TRDL Finit-e Graphic Serial: Dossier – [Graves]

TRDL thom — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 08:27:47 +0000

View a hi-res version of this file here!

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Name: Sarah Graves
Affiliation: Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Deputy Director of Inter-Agency Affairs
Birth: Manhattan Island, New York, New York

Most Recent Surveillance:

Marina City Towers
Chicago, Illinois
UTC/GMT 21:50 [ local: 15:50]

Sarah Graves was one of six children who were rescued alive from the Staten Island Ferry disaster, and received national praise for her help in saving the lives of three of their number by helping them stay active in the freezing waters as they awaited assistance from nearby vessels. She received a scholarship to a prestigious private school in upstate New York partially as a result of her notoriety, and went on to study Law at Yale University. She passed the bar and entered private practice with a small civil rights firm in Queens, before becoming Assistant District Attorney in New York, a position she held for only eight months, due to politically and culturally irreconcilable differences with other on staff, including the District Attorney, who was under investigation for inappropriate professional conduct with one of his clerks. She returned to private practice, becoming the youngest partner at Howard, Hurwitz and Graves, a firm specializing in government misconduct cases. To her surprise, and that of the legal and political community both in her home state and Washington, she was tapped as the new Deputy Director of Inter-Agency Affairs, an appointed position created to assist the Joint Intelligence Chief, a position formed as a result of the Global Counter-Terrorism Initiative Protocols. The Joint Intelligence Chief acts as an advisor to the Director of National Intelligence, specializing in coordinating intelligence assets in an increasingly complex agency system. The DD position also serves a dual role as a liaison with similar positions in each of the major intelligence agencies, in a system designed to allow more accurate corroboration of asset data and improve the information flow from them to the JIC, on to the DNI, who advises the President. Graves was brought in by newly-named JIC Neal Waterhouse, a former Washington State Senator who worked with Graves and her office on a high-profile state court overhaul. Waterhouse replaced the first JIC, Phinneas Marks, who reportedly committed suicide. Graves reluctantly accepted the position, with no Washington experience and less interest in partisan politics, but has yet to be sworn in officially. She was last observed driving into the parking radial of the Marina Towers residential complex.

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You can read the Finit-e graphic serial on-line, here: Finit-e Graphic Serial Web Reader
And you can download the PDF or CBR files here: Finit-e Graphic Serial Download

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Finit-e Chapter 4 is Almost Here

TRDL thom — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:33:44 +0000

It may seem like this project languishes, but moonlighting over a full-time job was hard enough before kids. Now I’m squeezing it in wherever I can on top of other TRDL commitments. But the good news is that Finit-e Chapter 4 is almost ready!

If you haven’t read the first three chapters in awhile, don’t worry: when Chapter 4 is released, it will be added to the cimpiled collection of the book so you can read from page 1. However, if you want to catch up earlier than that, here’s a refresher on where to get Finit-e and what options you have:

Finit-e is a story of the nearly-now, and the dawn of the supernormal.
It is the first comic under the Third Rail Design Lab banner, which we tend to refer to as a graphic serial because it is designed to be read both scene by scene on-line and in a collected volume in print later. The story is set in a familiar timeline, much as things look today, but near-future, with a more dystopian edge to it. The context of the story will become more clear over time, but the tone is espionage, and it focuses on the admittedly less action-oriented side of events as much as it does the action itself. As a fan of good espionage thrillers and heist dramas, I’ve always been interested in crews plotting their crimes before they execute them, and the action itself being reasonably thought out and complex. I like not seeing the complete picture at first, and growing into understanding the story as it develops, so the Finit-e book is written similarly. I hope you stick with it! If you like Heat and the Bourne Identity, I think you’ll like this as well.

http://www.finit-e.com

You can read Finit-e either offline via a PDF or CBR format, or on-line using a comic viewer on the TRDL site. The package is updated as the story is published so download the latest version. The PDF/CBR can be downloaded and dropped into your iPad or Kindle, etc, from here:
http://www.finit-e.com/finite/downloads.html

The comic reader is designed for web viewing. Pages are thumbnailed in chapters on the left, along with links to bonus materials, such as annotation files for each scene (I’m a dork) and a matrix of the Cast including dossiers.

Pages can be zoomed, etc and you can get to the PDF from any page in case you want to cut and run.

As you read, you see a WHO? icon appear alongside the page when a new important character is introduced. This sends you to the Matrix page..

An example of the Cast Matrix. Those characters not yet revealed are in silhouette. Yep, large cast. Those that have been, as the story progresses, are revealed. Clicking through reveals their heavily-redacted dossiers..

Here’s a sample dossier. For science.

The first chapter is in print in the back of the first TRDL Sourcebook 1.0, as a bonus, and the book as a whole will be collected after more chapters are released. Each chapter is a Scene, much like a film. Some are longer than others.
Take a look, and let me know if you have comments! Don’t forget to read the annotation pages if you like that sort of thing…

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TRDL Finit-e Graphic Serial: Dossier – [Parish]

TRDL thom — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 01:44:49 +0000

View a hi-res version of this file here!

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Name: Roland Parish
Affiliation: Senior Executive, SOKAK Corporation
LM AS Development
Birth: Honolulu, Hawaii

Most Recent Surveillance:

RAES Field Station, Division of Arges Group
Location: 340 Nautical miles from the Somers Isles
UTC/GMT 14:27 [ local: 10:27]

Roland Parish is a Senior Executive with the SOKAK Corporation, a Japanese-Chilean conglomerate and leader in cybernetic and exo-skeletal hardware enhancements. His Odoshi system is considered the flagship of the company’s several competitng programs for active deployment. He was last observed at the RAES Field Station near Bermuda, conducting a facilities tour along with General Grover Darville, a State Department Attache and SOKAK-loyalist.

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You can read the Finit-e graphic serial on-line, here: Finit-e Graphic Serial Web Reader
And you can download the PDF or CBR files here: Finit-e Graphic Serial Download

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!… Read on for more awesome...

TRDL Finit-e Graphic Serial: Dossier – [Darville]

TRDL thom — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 01:23:24 +0000

View a hi-res version of this file here!

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Name: General Grover Darville
Affiliation: State Department Attache
Post-Conventional Logisitcs [PCL]
Birth: Boston, Massachusetts

Most Recent Surveillance:

RAES Field Station, Division of Arges Group
Location: 340 Nautical miles from the Somers Isles
UTC/GMT 14:27 [ local: 10:27]

General Grover Darville is a high-ranking advisor in the State Department, his role primarily being Attache for the Post-Conventional Logistics program [PCL] a secret initiative conducted through the United States government infrastructure but off of the Congressional record and without oversight. The PCL initiative includes participants from all areas of the government, though accountable to the Office of the President, a secret mandate created by President White to combat the suspected growing threat of technologically advanced operations under concurrent development in Russia, China and the Indio-Pakistani Complex. He was last observed at the RAES Field Station near Bermuda, conducting a facilities tour along with a representative of SOKOK Corporation, a hardware and advanced cybernetics developer in favor with influential members of the PCL as the future of the shadow program’s mandate.

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You can read the Finit-e graphic serial on-line, here: Finit-e Graphic Serial Web Reader
And you can download the PDF or CBR files here: Finit-e Graphic Serial Download

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!… Read on for more awesome...

TRDL Finit-e Graphic Serial: Dossier – [Royal]

TRDL thom — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 01:13:02 +0000

View a hi-res version of this file here!

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Name: Stanford Royal
Affiliation: RAES
Deputy Director of Special Projects
Birth: New York, New York

Most Recent Surveillance:

RAES Field Station, Division of Arges Group
Location: 340 Nautical miles from the Somers Isles
UTC/GMT 14:27 [ local: 10:27]

Stanford Royal is Deputy Director of Special Projects [DDSP] for RAES [Research Arm of Emerging Sciences,] a division of the Arges Group, the world’s largest private intelligence and asset management firm. He has risen rapidly through the RAES executive leadership, after being recruited into the company by Arges from his role as a spycraft advisor for the French and Israeli governments while under the employ of Javelin Logistics, a private intelligence group later absorbed by Arges in a hostile takeover. His primary responsibility has been the ongoing management of Project Draco, which was developed for, and supplied to, the United States government as part of a secret initiative, on the part of the Americans, to develop a viable post-conventional military wetworks capability. However, the ongoing relationship between the United States and RAES, whose contract to maintain Project Draco has under review, has strained, with the Americans intending to manage Draco internally, without RAES advisers or technical teams on American soil. Royal has been involved in a secondary line of Draco development, Designation Chrysalis, which he intends to see as the replacement for Draco, in the event the program fails under American stewardship. He was last observed at the RAES Field Station near Bermuda, speaking with DSP following a facilities tour for General Grover Darville and a representative of SOKOK Corporation, an Arges rival in hardware and advanced cybernetics.

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You can read the Finit-e graphic serial on-line, here: Finit-e Graphic Serial Web Reader
And you can download the PDF or CBR files here: Finit-e Graphic Serial Download

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!