Tue Aug 12th 2008
The rescue discovery of the
I've recently been very much interested in things completely other than my old, basically already finished comics, but I did get back to fixing pages now. If only by adding those previously skipped pages 46-48. Not much to compare about them.

Page 46:

I find the old version incredibly amusing, and I don't quite have the words to describe what's so damn funny about it. But it is silly, right?
Marko's parents still speak in that sort of dialecty way I didn't base on anything I've actually heard people talk in. So whatever specific real accent you're hearing in their speech is accidental, this is just what sounds right in my head for people whose dialogue stretches the textbook English a little further than I usually make it stretch.
Anything you native English-speakers think I should correct I should correct, so tell me and I will.

Fri June 27th 2008
Rocks to the chest
So, first off, I said I'd make more of a song and dance about those unexpected setbacks I mentioned about a month ago once I'd found out more about them myself, and here we go. I don't have cancer. Which is good, so never mind the whole thing.

I skipped four pages this time. 46-48 because I seem to have lost the paper onto which I drew the second and third panel of page 46 and want to upload the scene as a whole once I find it. 53, because I still haven't figured out what to do about it. I will do something. Also, any changes to pages 49 and 55 are just due to being rescanned, so you're getting a very small batch of embarassingly amusing comparison pictures, it seems.

Page 50:
I did originally want to show how Orvi figured out which one of the apartments in the building Rei went to the previous night is the one she lives in, but couldn't pull it off with the tiny space I left for those panels. I think I somewhat got it now.

Yes, Rei's ducttaped a piece of black plastic bag over the letter slot.
You may have caught a glimpse of this fact on page 43.

Page 51:

By now Rei has considerably fewer moments of not looking like herself,
but this face I didn't like even right after I drew it.

Page 52:
Since I bother to draw silly backgrounddetails, I might as well not resize them into sheer indecipherability. The wall scribbles are only in Finnish, though, so I'm not sure if you really cared much. The cat poster says "Have you seen me?"

(Well, have you now?)

Page 54:

Read the #51 caption a second time.

More any some time now.

Fri June 13th 2008
Civilian dreams fill the mornig breeze
The rest of chapter one is done! Let there be much rejoicing!
(I'm not stopping here, though)

Page 34:
The background was a picture of crows on a rooftop I originally made for a different purpose and which didn't really fit in there, so I took it off. Orvi's expospeak also has more space now, and her eyes are more symmetric in the last panel.
I guess there's no point in mentioning it anymore when I've done something to Reiska's face.

Page 35:
And now the subject of plastic surgery gets to be Rei's knee. It was too high and made the leg seem too long anyway, so now it's not bent.

Page 36:

Page 37:

And now I actually didn't redraw Reiska's face in the third panel (nor did I give her such treatment in the next page). She's finally getting there with the sunken cheeks, and in this case she also happened to have the rest of her scraggily fugly look down already, complete with a correctly sized nose.
Apart from trees, I also enjoy the drawing of clouds a lot.

Page 38:

For some reason I had covered my marker shading with the splatterpattern. Not the way to go.

Page 39:

The entire background got redone, and reduced in the containment of chaos and marker shading (the latter being found only in Juksa's skin and hair now). Mr. Hakulinen now has company (whose behaviour may or may not reveal things... and Tassukorva is very vague because she's not introduced yet at this point) on his debut (and only) appearance, and no longer sports a strangely dark skintone (not to mention facial expression and body language quite as retarded and a neck quite as giraffesque). After all, he's supposed to be a bit on the pale side, even, being a redhead. And I never remember to give him stubble. Goddamn me.
The next page was, as you may have guessed, not changed at all.

Page 41:
Orvi wasn't entirely herself, and I decided the second panel doesn't really need a Merpio wing.

Page 42:
The last panel, which I now split into two panels, was actually a pretty nice picture. But since that's all it was/is, it's better suited for Picturage than a comic page. It's now where it belongs.

Page 43:
Reiska's apartment was too clean, and everything in general too smooth, so I added some texture and grime. The coat and hat got attacked by a scan of coarse watercolour paper, the paint topography on the doorframe is from an acrylic painting, and all the random sprinkles of mess are from photographs of dirty plates. All found in my resource folders again.

Page 44:
The second panel was inexcusably uninformative. What's supposed to happen during this page is that Reiska, who we have been shown in the previous page to be rather upset, for a reason we're discovering now, takes off her coat and hat, rushes to shut the blankets she has for curtains, and promptly falls asleep once she feels at least moderately safe.
All of a sudden she didn't look even remotely scared and stressed, or in a hurry anywhere. Or even like herself, for that matter. I also made the background for the last three "panels" darkish instead of white, because it had been extremely easy to not be sure whether Rei shuts or opens the curtainishes. Now the room is more obviously less lit than before.

Page 45:
Here too. And note the nose.

Fri May 30th 2008
Crap in ways other than the obvious, of course
Well, I didn't get the first chapter finished, there were some unexpected setbacks, more on which once I find out how far into the rest of my life they'll have an effect.
But I bought a new scanner, and am adjusting myself to using it. There are two pictures in the Picturage that are scanned with the new thing, tell me if they look like crap on your screen.

Tue May 20th 2008
The update texts are getting quite long again, and I'm not even whining about movies yet
Six more pages. I'll try to get the first chapter fixed by June, as in June all kinds of busy-making stuff is expected to happen, and I'll probably not have time to fix pages of old comics then. I'll get back to this with the beginning of chapter two when I get back to this.

Page 28:
In the end, I actually changed very little seeing as myself and some of the most points-out-confusing-things readers agreed that Orvi's flashback story is one of or the most unnecessarily confusing scene in the comic. I had Orvi carry on with the narrationspeak from the previous page and indeed made her describe what all you readers can see she's doing. Maybe now you'll even understand it and see how instead of having taken off that sweater somewhere between pages 27 and 28 and then laid herself down on a bed she found somewhere in the horse spirits' apartment, she's telling us about what she did last night.
Oh, and don't take that the wrong way - it's not your fault if you didn't get it before. And the changes being as subtle as they are, do tell if they're not sufficient. I'll not be surprised.

Redrew one face, because it was flat and chinless.

Page 29:
Orvi and Marko's conversation was downright stupid, so I only left in the mention of hags and harrows. Because you can't ditch hags and harrows. I also managed to squeeze in between the two middle panels another remark from Rei, and it's up to your judgement whether it's joke tautology or a necessary detail in the development of character relations.

You may also notice I liposuked Orvi's neck a bit and made the rain look less like a slapped-on filter (because that's what it was but is no more).
And some other stuff.

Page 30:
Contrary to any belief influenced by awareness of my affection for paining the world with tons of dialogue, this has always been one of my personal favourite pages. Now it's even more so with the photo-raisins replaced with marker-drawn ones. I'll not use photographs of raisins anymore, unless they're in a photo in the comic, too (in other words, just page 6).

Page 31:

"Change is good", says that kung fu-knowing baboon in The Lion King, and here's a perfect example to show how right he is about that.
Allright, moving on...

Page 32:
Behold, a lesson in how to change a cartoon character's expression by just changing his eyes.

Well okay, I did change some wrinkles around the eyes, too, but mikigaq müslicamel. In general Mursantero looked far more mean and pissed off on these older pages than he actually is.

Of course, some other characters continued to suffer from even greater difficulties in looking like themselves. Orvi had a hobby of vaguely resembling an amoeba, and it appears I'd actually already redrawn that one Rei face before.

Oh and then there's that thing.

Page 33:
I'd already rescanned this page once in February 2006 (in the same resolution as the newer pages, even! yay!), as the very first version of it just was so very atrocious I don't even have a copy of it anywhere anymore (no wait, I do! on a CD somewhere... gotta look for it sometime). The main annoyance had been that leafspeak background pattern - I mean, the lack of it, because I didn't make the pattern until when I was drawing page 93 (it's made from maple, lady's mantle and clover leaves I scanned, apparently at my grandparents', as grandma's maple trees had some sort of disease that caused those blotches I considered cool enough to include in the pattern). Instead of that the background was littered with some last minute cross-hatching thing, which mostly just made everything even more indecipherable.
But yes, you'll not get to marvel at the old pattern here, as the old version in this comparison picture is indeed from the 2006 rescan.

But that was too easy, wasn't it! An already rescanned page!
So after a while of listing the things I'd still like to change about the first panel (Orvi's too short, the horse spirits are positioned wrong compared to the fourth panel of the same page, the speech bubbles have a hard time fitting into a legible order when the other picture elements are placed the way they are...) I decided the quickest thing to do is to just completely redraw it. Now you can see that leafspeak pattern better, too, and of course I rewrote the inexcusably awkward dialogue from scratch. The last two panels were left in the state they have been for the last two years and three months, though.

Actually, I could summarize a couple of no-nos from the dialogue bits I've changed so far.

1. I tried to say everything in a way as different as possible from the way everybody else has said it.
Which is a no-no because it actually became an end in itself and ended up sounding very forced. I mean, seriously, every once in a while it's okay to just use a boring old "hello" when greeting people, there's no need to come up with some wittyironicsociallycommentatinghumorouspoetic replies for every time someone wishes you good day. For example.

2. I tried to give as little information on the going-ons as possible because I didn't want to "reveal too much yet".
So when something finally started to happen, hardly anybody was aware of even the things I would have wanted to be obvious by then. It's not like I edited in any huge infodumps or something, it just seems very questionable now to classify things like "how much time has passed between this and that event" under "spoilers". When characters who know the same things talk to each other in private, of course there's no need for them to sound like tour guides just because they want the reader to know what they know, too, but it's also quite unnecessary for them to speak in downright code language making it impossible for the reader to even understand what's the topic of their conversation (unless they're some goddamn secret agents or something... you know what I mean).

Well, that's my current two cents, I guess.
Don't do what I did, eh?

Tue May 13th 2008
Panther's beer
And now it's just five fixed pages. I have trouble with sticking to schedules I make for myself in case you haven't noticed.

Page 23:
Markers! Yay! Well sure I'd already got to use them in the previous page, but the markering in that one is more just scribbling around to see what they do, I'd shaded Orvi's hair with every marker I had and all (nowadays everything pretty much has their own shading colour, Orvi's hair for instance is a marker called Shock Pink, and Rei's is an even more poetically named Coral Sea - so they actually have pink and green hair in the coloured version!).
Not much was changed:

Page 24:
I kind of liked the dramatically thrown-open door (though it opens outwards) and suddenly and inexplicably SD Reiska, but I did see fit to close the door (the horse spirits can pass throug it, after all, so why would they open it) and grow Rei a bit (though she's still smaller than she should seem from that angle, but then she wouldn't fit as nicely into the panel).

And that has to be the cutest Rei ever (to whom I for some reason didn't give any breasts?).
Quite scary. The speech bubbles were also in perfect chaos.

Page 25:
Another pagesix-esque shitload of work, this one. Seeing as I didn't just redraw nearly all the faces, I had to draw the maps, too. Yeah, can you imagine! All on my own! Don't you think it's pretty darn unreasonable that in a comic I'm taking all the credit for I actually have to do everything by myself instead of using other people's work without their permission?
Because yes, I actually had just copied existing maps of a convenient size and called it done.
Shame on me.
Well, that straying from the path is now fixed, and hey, you won't tell anyone, right? It'll be our little secret. So then, I drew with vectors (in Freehand, though I didn't have it yet when I first did this page, but ker-blah) the closeupped maps and with pens the ones seen from further away.
And had a jolly good time again in that familiar "as long as I don't have to do this too often" kind of way.

And these changes pictured above hardly need much of a caption.
Teehee, Mursantero was so short.

Page 26:

What did I tell you about sucking at perspective.
It's not flawless now, but at least the gang looks considerably less like a bunch of cardboard cones. And that closeup of Rei's face is less screwed up.

Page 27:
Let's all make fun of Mursantero's klingon nose and missing upper eyelids.
Yes, I redrew him completely again.
And gave him a facial expression.

The old version may have had more rain, but I must have outgrown or something that desire to blur things until they explode. There wasn't really supposed to be anything close to a storm, as Rei soon makes sure we know, so why would it look stormy in that picture.

To be continued.

Tue May 6th 2008
Räkänokat rannoilla roikuttiin
Since I'm already making before'n'after pictures, here's how I show and not tell what I still did to page nine. Thanks go to Moonie.

Fri May 2nd 2008
Well actually it's already Saturday here, but anyone
who's bothered by that can contact tech support or, I don't know, Dr. Phil
And the next batch of ten makeovered pages, except that it's a batch of twelve.

Pages 11 & 12:
The changes aren't very entertaining or dramatic, as these didn't have any outdateable faces or dialogue. #11 did have some experimental and crappy digital editing, but #12 had hardly any need for an asap fixing at all. I do think both got better, but I can also relate to anyone who possibly liked the old, kind of more subtle page 12 better.


By the way I've noticed I like the texture of paper surface quite a lot, and I tend to leave it visible whenever I can instead of smoothening the big monochroic areas into even more monochroic ones. However, it's quite a bitch to do that when you've used watercolour for shading, because as we know, printer paper wrinkles, and so I've resorted to using artificial flavoring instead of natural aroma. Somewhere in my resources folders there's a square image file full of seamless printer paper surface pattern, and I'm happy to apply it to desired parts of images with the help of selection and bucket fill (set to fill pattern) tools and a layer set to multiply. Ecstatic, almost.

Page 13:
As said about page 8, the wings gave me a lot of trouble at first. Here they not only showed up hardly at all, but also overlapped things that should be between them and the "camera".
Of course I also crooked Mursantero's nose.

Page 14:
Nothing was redrawn, the dialogue got rewritten, but just the words were changed and the messages exchanged were kept the same. In the old version you could have, among other things, interpreted Kommakko's lines in such way that he's angsting about oh why oh why couldn't we save that poor human. You can still read it like that, but not so much, I think. I guess those of you who have already read the rest of the comic may have found this page a little confusing in light of later insight on his character.

Page 15:
Mursantero talks more now, but yes, you versed veterans of SsOS are very correct in pointing out that Mursantero is indeed very fond of talking. I also completely redrew him in the second panel, as he just had no reason to look the way he did in it. And neither did Kommakko, who looked strangely surprised to see the crows get startled by Merpio's arrival. Of course he's not surprised by that!
Instead of trees and leaves the fourth panel now has the first closeup on Merpio's feet (or one of them), where you may or may not observe some slight curling up around grass (which is a reaction rather similar to how three pages later Rei clenches her fists, Merpio doesn't have fingers).

Page 16:
And then we reach one of the comic's most bizarre... I mean ARTISTIC pages. Somehow I was able to stretch out into an entire page and chipchop into some collage of lyrical pictures the event "Rei gets back from work and goes in the door". And no crime there yet, but was it really necessary (you can assume the answer's no from my totally unbiased tone and the fact that I already changed it, but hey, mocking your younger self is fun, so bear with my rhetorical questions... I mean giraffes) to use not one but two pictures to show Rei is checking how low the sun is? For that matter, did the page need even one? I let her look at the watch, but I placed it in her pocket instead of wrist, because that strangely octopussish panel is the only one in the whole comic where Rei has a watch anywhere at all (as far as I remember).

Page 17:

Page 18:
As promised, I didn't do much to this one. Just the obvious.

Page 19:

Allright, now it's Orvi.

Page 20:

On this page I also learned a lesson again:
don't shade with yellow, it's too light and hardly shows up in greyscale at all.

Page 21:
After shading the last panel I'm more sure than before of that I'll never make a comic I'd have to completely colour/shade digitally. It was fun, but with watercolour and markers I can go on for as long as 265 pages (apparently) while I'm sure I'd get tired of this after two-three pages. Not my thing, although I think I did a pretty swell job on this oneshot attempt.

And behold, the speech bubbles no longer crowd the entire background, where I'd actually bothered do draw some crows only to cover them with unnecessarily large bubblage. You see, there wasn't any more dialogue before than there's now -there was less! Among other things, I'd completely left out (because I ran out of space) the originally intended note on how terribly smart it is to go meet some online friend offline when you believe them to be a grown-up man and you're an 11-year-old girl yourself.
This is how Rei and Orvi's first coherent face to face conversation was supposed to go. And now it goes like it.

Page 22:
The second panel Orvi looked more "fat" than "kid", and that had to be corrected (she got to keep her original nose, though). At this point Rei was beginning to slowly take a more her-like form, but with Orvi I was still just getting used to drawing her, which is to be expected since miss Lilavati got an eight pages' headstart.

Did you know I suck at perspective? I may occasionally get it to look right, but that's dumb luck. Anyway, that floor bothered me right after I drew it, but until now I just hadn't bothered to fix it, and probably didn't even know how to do that.
And I got to draw screenshots again. The horse spirits' computer's desktop wallpaper has cats in it! Hee!

Hee. There. To be continued.
I'll possibly still make a speechbubble placement related change to page nine tomorrow. Or one of these days.

Tue April 15th 2008
Also some boob jobs were performed, but the results were quite the opposite of what's usual
It's my birthday tomorrow, so I'm giving you presents: I've finally deuglified (the correct usage of that term is debatable, considering my concept of "ugly") the first ten pages of the comic (including the first cover, although redoing that didn't quite fit into the 15th day anymore). Mostly I did some rhinoplasty on Rei and sometimes Mursantero, but once I got the hang of it, a lot more was also tinkered around with.
Some more detailed information follows, for those interested, as I think it might even be amusing (for me at least, since it's the perfect excuse to be shamelessly ohso nostalgic and ewwlookhowshittymydrawingsare).

Page 1:
This page with its multiple Reiskas may be a little confusing, but I like it, so I only changed the bits that bothered me because of their having been made at the time when I had less skill to handle this kind of stuff. Those goddamn raindrop ripples, which were originally highlighted with airbrush tool or something.

Now I made use of what I shade with on the early pages anyway: watercolour. And I did indeed decide to use just the materials I had access to when I first drew the pages, which means I'll save my markers for later. Sure the paper's getting wrinkled, but that's okay, since unlike back then, now I actually know how to use an image processing program.
And of course I gave Rei a bigger nose. And chin.

Page 2:
Speaking of which, I really couldn't draw the kind of haggard facial features Reiska has, could I. Even with a little try she ended up looking disappointingly much like the dainty girlie a 20-year-old female lead is expected to be.
I could blame this on the phase when I experimented with mimicing the collective cartoon style of those known as japs, and I should, but that phase had a lot of benefits too, so I'll be Elina the Merciful and pardon the damn thing.

That older face really isn't so badly drawn, if I do say so myself, but it just happens to be somebody else's face.
In any case, miss Lilavati has served her purpose, as one reason for her appearance is that I needed practice in haggardness for the good of one other character from a future comic, old pictures of whom also lack adequate amounts of nose, exaggerated angularity and sunken cheeks. That person's supposed to have even more of all that than Rei does.

Page 3:
I'd forgotten how many of the early pages were drawn each panel onto its own paper. I don't think that while scribbling down the panel contents (I didn't draw the actual panel borders - fortunately) I had any idea how to organize them into a page, so I just slapped something together and was content, perhaps even genuinely so. I mean, I'm pretty happy with my newest stuff now, aren't I (but ask me again in five years).

It's a bit of a mystery why nobody pointed out the confusing speech bubble order on this particular page, I don't think I'd get it right myself if I didn't know. So I learned something today, newbies pay attention: if you're making a comic page in the way described above (it can be done properly too, after all) and like me aren't too sure of how you want to place the panels, don't draw the speech bubbles with the pictures. You'll se why when you're enjoying the edit-off and redraw-digitally pastime.
Also - you did notice I redrew Rei completely in panel four, didn't you? What the hell kind of having just escaped elven clutches facial expression is that supposed to be? And she had a too tiny nose.

Page 4:
I deliberately tried to keep the last panel as close as possible to the way you've already seen it, but otherwise there are facial upgrades around by the lots and manies. And Rei has what she should have, after the previous page: a noserag. Mursantero's eyes were a tad funny and he didn't have his own nose. From here on I'll also start making biggish changes to the dialogue, as at least the Finnish one was very "hi we memorized these lines for the school play". I don't know why I used to want my characters to speak godawfully strangely.

Page 5:
Those of you who remember that Kommakko used to comment on the doorbellringer two pages later instead of now and that it used to be so that he hadn't even heard the bell at all, are remembering correctly. Why wouldn't he have heard it? Sure Rei was right next to the door, but on page 18 (which I'll try to change only very minimally, once I get there) she's sitting at the same computer (chatting with LeenaP, and don't we already know who that is) and she hears the doorbell just fine. I say that's just bullshit. And because I don't think it's the kind of bullshit that has much to do with the actual plot, I'll take out the shit part if that's fine by you. So now they're consciously ignoring religious minorities, which is excellent.

Page 6:
This was the most toilsome page to edit so far, as I also had to rescan that photo, which meant I first had to find it, and I also needed raisins, which I had to buy and photograph. And let it not be said that I'd really be spreading around some "don't eat raisins" propaganda, 'cos you know what I did to them after the photoshoot? That's right!

I left out from the zooming"panel" that picture from behind Rei and Kommakko's backs, because what purpose was it really serving anyway? I prefer the vector-drawn, more comprehendable screenshot of what Rei's actually doing with that mouse she requested for.

Page 7:
I went and redrew the third panel... or actually I finally went and drew a third panel for this page at all, because is that really a proper panel?

No, it's not. And hey, you see that? I reduced the speech bubbles a lot! What with being able to incorporate the same dialogue into the previous panel with all the nonsense about the doorbell now out of the way. And now there's a crow too, which would be foreboding, if it was in any way possible for someone reading the comic for the first time to come to the conclusion at this point that well of course, the crows are dangerous too, why the fuck would they not be!
Kommakko and Rei changed the direction of their gazes from staring blankly straight ahead to staring each other with an are-you-thinking-what-I'm-thinking kind of shock. They were a little crosseyed, and anyone who takes a second look at the panel could tell that the computer screen they were supposed to be staring at is too low for them to be staring straight ahead if that's what they're looking at.

Page 8:
On which nothing was redrawn! Just some things were edited.
Mursantero's eyebrows are no longer attached to the lashes of his upper eyelids, and he as a more hislike nose.

This is also the page where I not-so-successfully tried to figure out how to make a layer transparent. You change the opacity. Say it with me: OPACITY. Yay.

Page 9:
Like page three, this also needed some rearranging. The page was filled with all kinds of experimental doodad like pentooled background patterns (which I left in, but made less distracting) and oh my Greitzhok - pompously pretentious wannabe-funny sound effects like "door-sound". Those have their time and place, but it's not SsOS #9.
And the font was horrid. Blech.

I redrew Orvi for the first panel (included is a sample of that pentooled background pattern).
I mean look at it, you can't even see her eyes.

Page 10:
Guess what I changed (the only thing I did).

Yes! A winner is you!

Anyway, this is to be continued, meaning I'm planning on giving the whole first chapter a similar treatment, and some pages after that, too. So keep reporting the things you notice and think I should fix (in pages I haven't fixed and pages I already have). I may not agree with you, but the chances are good.
The fixed pages are quite a bit larger than their old versions (which may cause them to appear stretched or otherwise nonfunctioning, but that should go away once you hit refresh), and my plan also includes making all the pages narrower than 500 pixels (and some that are wider than that) bigger than they are now. I also made the links bigger by a size, because indeed, why were they so small to begin with.
I know that at the moment the fall between the already fixed and not yet fixed old pages is a great and shuddering one, but that's temporary and I hope you'll tolerate it. Maybe it'll even serve as a wakeup to the harsh reality of how crappy some parts of the old pages really are and inspires you to inform me of alllll of them. Wouldn't that be nice.

And then the world gets saved.
Good night.

Tue April 1st 2008
The day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three-hundred and sixty-four?
Yeah, April fools!
Of course, none of you were fooled, which is good because then I won't have to spend the rest of the month explaining why the sequel didn't start.
There are two pictures, one of them being a larger version of that poster you've already seen (that is, if you're one of those more intelligent creatures who linked and bookmarked either iperyys.net or iperyys.net/ssos like I've told you to do instead of iperyys.net/ssos/en.html or something... but if you missed the joke, it's there in the picturage). More on the poster in its description, I don't think it's necessary to repeat it here.

Fri March 28th 2008
So that's how it is. Some twist, that ending.
Now it's over.
I thank you all who have helped, inspired, just generally cheered up and entertained me along the way, this thing wouldn't have gotten this far without you. And mushy mush blah blah. No, thanks for real.
I have a crave to type some intellectsy closing speech about how much I've learned, but I think I'll save that for later, as I doubt I've really learned shit just yet. Taking some distance and looking at what I've done should do the trick. But speaking of that later, the updates don't end here, I can't abandon this creation into the big wide world to live on its own until I've cleaned it up a bit, can I. So I'll be redrawing some parts of the older pages (but not any pages completely), rescanning and re-editing them (well, I kind of have to, since some of them are 72dpi in their highest resolution, and that's just so ghastlily amateurish I can't leave it be - and in the process of scanning, re-editing also becomes mandatory), fixing some of the early, more awkward dialogue a couple of notches towards understandability and just plain non-shittiness. Stuff like that.
You can still help me, as a detail you find bothersome most likely bothers me, too. Let us go forward fix it together.
Oh, and now there are no such things as spoilers. So anything you need to ask me, you can ask and expect to get an answer to. Though if there's nothing you're confused about (which I doubt), I guess that's fine too.
There are three new creature articles in the fyi, along with some name explanations. How's that for a twist ending to this update text (and this sentence for a comedy relief).

Tue March 25th 2008
What the hell are they even talking about anymore
And two more pages.

Fri March 21st 2008
Frigate
Page 262, on which a largeish group of extraordinary gentlecreatures presents itself, Sointu joins the jolly band of pleonasts, and Orvi reveals she has finally figured out what she wants to be when she grows up. I'll put a list of all the guest star appearances at the end of this chapter, but until then I'll let you enjoy the guessing and recognizing, because that sort of thing is enjoyable.

Tue March 18th 2008
A sudden realization at nine pm
Eek, I almost forgot.
Indeed (said Tiuku and dropped dead), I promised to show you the lumelemus, and there they are. There are six of them, and they are in the picturage.

Fri March 14th 2008
Näettekö te Harrin kävelevän siinä
Page 261.
Thank you all of you who submitted a picture of Lumelemu, I'll upload them on Tuesday for everyone to see. The next page will be up on next Friday.

Tue March 11th 2008
Sskdjhlfkflskdfgkrgoer!
I don't like this page (the twohundredandsixtieth, already) too colossally, I managed to completely botch up the speech bubble polacement in the first two panels. Oh well.
Speeching and bubbling of speech bubbles, you may have already guessed and noticed that Otter Soldiers (which turned four years last Sunday, by the way) intends to Die As It Has Lived - prolixly.

I put a new picture in the pictures.
It's behind the thumbnail that leads to those character meme things, in case you remember (third to last of the pictures drawn by me, in case you don't).

Fri March 7th 2008
Viidakossa kävelee
Where the men ride the sheep can't dine.
I was told.

Tue March 4th 2008
The Ultimate Final Contest of Dessstinyy
Page 258.
On which we meet the horse spirit Voiksitsgytriö, more information on whom can be found in the Picturage and the Informationage (for your). And there is also a picture that isn't Voiksitsgytriö.
And the horse spirit Lumelemu (again, see FYI) is mentioned, but not seen.
If by Friday next week (March 14th) you manage to draw me a picture or write a description of what you think something called Lumelemu should look like, you'll get to appear on the background in this comic (well, you or your character if you have those things and would rather grant them the honor). The time is short, I know. But... the time is short, there aren't too many pages left that I haven't already drawn.
If nobody participates, that's fine too, I'll be stuffing the rest of this chapter full of people and critters familiar to myself and perhaps some others anyway (so it's possible that you or your character have already made it there, but if that's the case, no panic, it just means you're a better person than average and you get an extra cameo).

And in case it was still unclear to some of you a couple of pages ago, it should be so no longer, that the ones doing the adventuring on these recent pages are Orvi and that Sointu of Myötäjättiläinen.
And Tassu of Korva.

Fri February 29th 2008
And so we change vehicles
Page 257, which is, so far at least, the only page of this comic that I used some sort of light desk to create (the markers don't get along with pencil, so I couldn't put the sketch for the wispyre wader on the same paper). Although not the one made out of an old aquarium, I haven't gotten around to making that yet because somehow fetching that aquarium from the garage is a quest nearly impossible to embark. This one was just a wooden board with a window in it (which my brother had apparently intended to make into a wall of a computer case at some point) and a flashlight underneath.
No, I won't jokingly refer to a certain 80's secret agent whose less-known first name is Angus. My invention is more ingenious than his.

Tue February 26th 2008
Everybody loves timeskips
So that's how the sixth chapter begins.
And I'm sure everyone's terribly disappointed by how the last chapter, which by all reason should have had the most gorgeous cover since it's the last cover there'll be, doesn't have a cover at all.
Kind of. Since it's just black.
And it doesn't even have a name! Such a hoax!

Fri February 15th 2008
It happens
My God! What have I done?
(Wanna play god? Never been this easy! Just answer the question)

Yes, that was chapter five, and I'm sure you'll tell me what other things it was in addition to that. But the comic is not over, expect to see chapter six starting on the 26th.
Happy Valentine's Day.

Tue February 12th 2008
Photosynthesis uses light energy and carbon dioxide to make triose phospates (G3P)
Then some fighting. Page 250 (have you noticed I've started mentioning which page is new with each updatetext, it's good for the archiving).

Fri February 8th 2008
Now that was some plot twist
And page 249.
Yeah, Orvi. We already guessed that almost two hundred pages ago.
There's a new picture in the pictures, by the way (a drawn-by-me one).

Tue February 5th 2008
Pikemen and salmonwomen
Page 248.
"Not me"? Who then? That's the question, Hamlet.
(Honestly, are you going to let me get away with calling you names like that?
Tell me off, I dare you.)

Fri February 1st 2008
And I'm stomach again.
Two pages, their numbers being 246 and 247.
I also rearranged the picture section a little, but only a little.
Let's see how many of you still like Merpio enough to want a plushie of him after this chapter is over.

Tue January 1st 2008
I also cleared the update log again as it was getting too long already
I put the picture of Susikki, Reiska and Orvi that was in the christmas calendar into the picture section, and for those of you who missed this other thing, see here. And the forum is a little prettier now, which you may or may not have noticed already.
I guess I won't be making any more updates on the comic or on the anything until February, as I might as well have my christmas vacation now or I'll end up never having one.
See you then.

Or, see you in the meanwhile if you're waiting for an expression of interest in social activities from me, I went a bit hermitsy for the holidays it seems.