Update notice, November 15th:

Last week I was on time, but this week I’m not, for a rather silly reason — I forgot to bring my pens and pencils when I went out to my studio/labour camp. The weather was bizarrely warm and dry, so I painted some walls and did some repairs instead. There will be a new page tomorrow night! :3

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Yay, finally an update on schedule …

And wow, Sam Leighton from the East Gateshead Community Photography Group was so kind as to send me a copy of their publication on the regeneration scheme! It contains a lot of very interesting and useful photographs that will help make chapter 9 even better. I just wish it had 600 pages instead of just 60. :o)

Okay, this week’s page is late again, because I spent the weekend doing heavy manual labour at the place which is actually supposed to be my studio that will save me from, among other things, my flatmate’s noisy door that makes me jump involuntarily if I’m deeply focused on something (which is kind of bad when I’m inking).

From now on I’ll post slightly larger pages, since I can’t seem to stop myself from drawing in much smaller scale than when I started this comic, 14 years ago.

Evening watch is from 8 PM to midnight. (That may not seem like staying up very late, but they get up before dawn, maybe at 6 AM or so.)
The other night watches are midnight watch, from midnight to 4 AM, and morning watch, from 4 to 8 AM. Aeron is on watch from 8 AM to 8 PM, with two 2 hour breaks that they call lunch watch and dinner watch. Willie, Seraphine, Samona and Shannon rotate on these five watches. Eva doesn’t stand on watch, because Shannon won’t trust her alone with the ship … It took a while before they would let Willie stand on watch, too.

Broad reach is when the ship is at a 90-180 degree angle towards the wind, which is the best angle for sailing.

Yeah, I try to do research on proper sailing terminology, but probably real sailors would just go WTF when they read this comic … I’m not even trying to give a realistic portrayal of sailing, okay? V`(oo)´V

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Speaking of Willie going back to Gateshead, I just realised that the story takes place right at the beginning of the big changes done to the Gateshead quayside, where among other things the Saltmeadows nieghbourhood, a huge scrapyard and a traveller’s site were torn down to make way for things like the Baltic Arts Centre, the Sage Gateshead International Centre for Music and the Gateshead Millennium Bridge. Argh, this is such an opportunity to show a bit of what it was like back then, if only I can find enough research material! The Gateshead council made extensive documentation of it, but the book and the video seem to be out of print now. Will I really have to go all the way there to view them in a library? At least part of the photos from the documentation project can be viewed here. Some other pre-changes photos can be seen at iSee Gateshead.
Also, it seems that the Chandless flats, which her neighbourhood is based on, will be torn down at some point now.

Raah, I can’t believe it took me all day to ink this page.* Also, I’m ashamed to admit I inked the first panel. (;_;) The perspective in the second panel is from hell, too. I should just stick to comics with talking heads in sand dunes. (-_-);
*Recalls an old review of my comics that went something like this: “It’s really in the complicated drawings that Tinet excells …”*
Okay, now I feel even more like a failure. (;_____;)

It helped me feel a bit better that I found a Russian LibriVox volunteer with a really cute voice. ♥ Here are his audio files, in Russian and Belarussian. Unfortunately all of them are rather short …

By the way, I may have identified the childhood experience that traumatized me into being obsessed with Russians. I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but I was in pre-school or 1st grade. My mum took me to see a concert with Russian folk music at our local small town theatre/cinema. For some reason it was only me and mum. There was just a handful of other people at the concert and we were sitting in one of the front rows. One of the singers was a young dark-haired man who I thought was quite handsome. During one of his solo songs he looked at me, and I started to try to imagine what it might be like to be older and have him as my husband or boyfriend … :3

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* Admittedly I did interrupt my work for a couple hours because some guy sent me a fascinating email about a foundation that will work to preserve the old Mongolian livestock guard dogs and promote the use of these dogs to cope with wolves and other predators. He asked me where I had photographed some of the dogs in my Mongolian doggie collection, and it was such an interesting request that I spent quite some time retracing my travel route on Google Maps …

Okay, I gave in and split the EPIC SHIP LOADING SCENE into two different shots. Combined with the sloppy rushed inking, it’s now less epic than originally intended. Oh well.

Recently I saw a film for a change that I actually liked for the most part, in spite of the rather Christian thematics – Children of Men. It has a pretty decent plot, likeable characters (even the main character!), and, most importantly, lots of doggies and kitties.

Oh, and this has got to be my greatest dream job: collecting whale poop with the help of a doggie. (Thanks, Ainur!)

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One fun way of testing whether a fictional couple is perhaps too gender stereotypical or stupid in general is to try swapping the genders. I did that with Eva and her boyfriend Ting Yay from her spinoff comics once (as part of a DeviantArt meme), and it was kind of fun, though I do prefer them with their original genders.

What about Willie and Aeron? …

I was a bit worried that the age difference would be more disturbing this way around, but with the personalities they have it’s just fine.

Heh, maybe I like them even more with swapped genders. :3

Update notice, October 18th:
EPIC SHIP LOADING SCENE is kicking my ass. But the page will be done tomorrow for sure. V`(oo)´V

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Okay, I had to read through chapter 8 so far to check if anything had actually happened in the story. And I was surprised to see that, yes, some things have actually happened in the story. Phew.

Chapter 8 has always been a big blank spot in my drafts, summed up in something like “Willie makes up her mind”, but I never knew exactly how it was going to happen. Now that I’ve actually gotten to this part my brain just randomly keeps vomiting up all these chunks of story that I have no control over but that do seem to be working somehow.