{"id":3485,"date":"2014-07-21T10:13:23","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T14:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/?p=3485"},"modified":"2014-07-21T10:13:23","modified_gmt":"2014-07-21T14:13:23","slug":"back-to-the-illustrations-for-slaves-of-the-switchboard-of-doom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/2014\/07\/21\/back-to-the-illustrations-for-slaves-of-the-switchboard-of-doom\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to the illustrations for Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom"},"content":{"rendered":"   <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/grafx3\/blog\/Slaves_of_the_Switchboard_of_Doom_Chapter11.jpg\" alt=\"Chapter 11 illustration for Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom\" width=\"501\" height=\"371\" class=\"img_wide_open\"><p>My brain&#8217;s polygon-melting beam of inspiration has turned back to the illustrations for <em>Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom<\/em>. Which is to say, I&#8217;ve had my coffee.<\/p>\n   <p>The whole polygon-melting thing, which admittedly is a little much, really happened a few days ago. But it&#8217;s only now &#8211; now that I have new stuff to show for it &#8211; that I feel like it&#8217;s official.<\/p>\n   <p>This illustration for Chapter 11 gives us a view of a robot showroom, where the indentures for new robots are sold to the public. Indentures? Robots are persons, and we don&#8217;t approve of owning persons. Unless we&#8217;re a <em>villain<\/em>, I mean. So an indenture is like a loan that finances the robot&#8217;s manufacture: when the robot works off the loan, he or she becomes a free agent. And, usually, a member of the Fraternal League of Robotic Persons.<\/p>\n   <p>This is one of three illustrations that needed a whole bunch of robots; I&#8217;m working now on the third of those. Looking back, it seems that I modeled about a dozen new robots for the story. That&#8217;s a little hard to measure because I built one of them far in advance, so he&#8217;s shown up in a few places already; and then there&#8217;s another who turned out to be a specific character I want to use later, so he&#8217;s gone back on the shelf. But technically? About a dozen.<\/p>\n   <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/grafx3\/blog\/Slaves_of_the_Switchboard_of_Doom_titlepage_small.jpg\" alt=\"Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom: Title page\" width=\"264\" height=\"414\" class=\"img_hang_left\"><br \/>&nbsp;<p>I have just four more chapter illustrations to do. I also have six that will be taking a trip back to the shop for a little more work. After that, a pair of two-page spreads of character portraits; and then the illustrations will be done.<\/p>\n   <p>When? Probably some time in September. I think.<\/p>\n   <p>So it&#8217;s some time in September (I think) when I&#8217;ll try to figure out how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/2014\/06\/30\/slaves-of-the-switchboard-of-doom-the-terror-of-the-slush-pile-and-more-robots\/\">Phase Two<\/a> of the project is going. Early indications are good, but not conclusive.<\/p>\n   <p>The book has two chapters that still worry me a little. Chapter Two probably wants my attention in an editorial, voicey, copy editing kind of way. But the eleventh chapter&#8230;.<\/p>\n   <p>There are times when you want it to be <em>possible<\/em> for a reader to understand something in advance. To make that happen, it can&#8217;t be <em>impossible<\/em> to get it; but it should also be possible to miss it. I&#8217;ve handled one or two of those elsewhere in the book, but Chapter Eleven still worries me a bit. I reworked that chapter quite a bit in my latest (fifth) draft. I&#8217;m a lousy tester for the problem because <em>I<\/em> already know what the reader might start to suspect . That&#8217;s an area where I hope for some new feedback during Phase Two.<\/p>\n<p>I just can&#8217;t pretend that I&#8217;m a new reader any more. The fix for that? New readers.<\/p>\n   <\/p><p>But in the meantime: more art!<\/p>   ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My brain&#8217;s polygon-melting beam of inspiration has turned back to the illustrations for Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom. Which is to say, I&#8217;ve had my coffee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-slaves-of-the-switchboard-of-doom","category-thrilling-tales","category-works-in-progress"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}