Page 12 was posted on 10/22/2006.

Well, there it is. I finished the prologue. This was the first milestone that I set for myself for this herculean project I call NODE. In case I haven’t mentioned it, the story is really big and I’m still calculating how long (i.e. how many pages) it will take to tell. Hopefully this prologue will whet appetites enough for folks to at least stick around a little longer and see what this is all about. It's daunting to look at the scope of the project I’ve set out for myself at the beginning, but meeting this milestone (and on schedule no less), makes it a little easier to take.

This week was also nice because the comic has seen a really nice spike in traffic since it was mentioned in the popular webcomic blog Fleen. I’d like to thank the Fleen guy thoroughly, because quite a few people have clicked through and checked out the story. It will be interesting to see how many come back for more.

Page 12 was great to make for all the reasons that I just mentioned. However, I spent less time drawing it than I planned only because I started flushing out the script for chapters 1 and 2, and that took away some drawing time. I don’t want to skip a week while I ramp up for the next chapter.

I made some last minute changes to the storyboard for page 12. Specifically I changed  the first panel to show a wide shot of the room and the crumpled paper on the floor. Originally this was split in to two panels that showed Kaiper pondering the situation and then turning toward the paper. I made this change because I felt that we needed a simple shot confirming to the reader that Perso had indeed left the room and that doctor was in fact alone now. I also wanted to more clearly establish that the note was sitting on the floor, since the changes I made to page 11 eliminated the action that showed Perso crumpling it up and throwing it there.

The prologue in all is a bit different than the original outline and other treatments that I’ve created for it. It just occurred to me that perhaps I should post the original written treatment for this story so people can see how it has evolved. Hmm. Overall, I’m happy with the results of the prologue. It’s strange to see something that’s only existed in my own mind for so long, spilled out over 12 pages. It's even stranger to hear that so many people are digging what they see. I need to be careful, or I might just become addicted to this whole storytelling thing.