Been busy here. Drawing. Walking. Cooking. Out cat Babette was sick, but seems to be recovering (I was very concerned). Tomorrow going on a morning hike, as the weather so amazingly slips from summer into autumn… and then back to the desk. 🙂
John Hampshire, who runs the drop-in modeling class al the local community college was on sabbatical last semester, and so Tuesday night was the first model-drawing studio I’ve done since December. Was totally psyched. It’s been so long, I just wanted to play around with various ways of inking, and form and shadow. A little rusty, but I’m pleased with the result.
Interesting to note that aliens have red blood…
Hemoglobin is still the most practical metalloprotein for oxygen transfer we know for a large, active, highly intelligent vertebrate. Hemocyanins are inefficient, and if none of the aliens have oxygen-based metabolisms that kinda puts a damper on the stories that can be told. (We also know of relatively few viable alternatives for animal life, so there’s that.)
I just love that IKEA furniture exists in the future.
@Marianna
Shouldn’t that be ‘in space’? The story isn’t set that far in the future.
Though it would be interesting if Earth’s third major export [after Darkhuenium and russian tea cakes] was IKEA furniture.
@VincentG ooh, you made me Google. Human blood is red because we used iron atoms in hemoglobin to transport oxygen around the body. But some species on earth have blue blood because they have hemocyanins which use copper instead of iron. So aliens could easily have red blood, but they don’t have to. I guess all of our aliens have breathed oxygen so far. Which makes sense because oxygen is highly reactive, and you need to release a lot of energy to keep a creature moving at the pace this comic demands. Science is cool!
Interesting coffee table design. (Stability is overrated in coffee tables.) 😉
The murderer motive ‘Now ‘I’ have all the mudbeads MWAHAHHAHAA!’
Now why did this happen?
Great start, Christopher! Thx also for the live model sketches B-)
Someone needs to stop cutting onions next to Emily. And next to me, too.
VincentG: I actually find it more interesting that people assume oxygen-breathing vertebrate aliens (not sure if Garzun is a vertebrate, though) would have a different-colored blood. They are very likely to have proteins similar if not identical to haemoglobin.
shot with a gun?? not phasered?
“Shot with a gun?”
“Star Trek Rules.” A lethal phaser hit can result in someone falling to the ground dead, or disintegrating into thin air. The effect depends entirely on the dramatic requirements of the scene (for example, you can’t have a long dying speech in someone’s arms if you just vanished into a glowing cloud).
Bullet holes: Highly dramatic and effective, and works with “lying down on the job” line. Pile of Growp-style smithereens: Not so much.
@TB, smart man, exactly. Although I have fairly established that lasers can’t do that, so I have yet to decide precisely what the murder weapon was. I have a few options in mind which work with the script.
@Nathanyel
there are some vertebrates on earth that do have green blood despite using hemoglobin too. Like this Lizzard: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/30/why-do-mysterious-lizards-have-green-blood/
Biliverdrin is to blame in that case. using that as example i would say Hemoglobin is just the most likely cause for red blood. Could be any number of other chemicals too.
@amanda:
Since Humans can roam freely on the station i would assume that the air is breathable and free of to humans toxic chemicals like an excess amount of Methane, Chlorine, flourgas …
So imho its fairly reasonable to asume that they breath Oxygen in some way.
“Medibot! Patch them up!”
“I can’t. They’re … dead”
“PATCH THEM UP OR I’LL MAKE YOU NEED PATCHING UP!”
“I have a few options in mind…”
There are a lot of cool options that would work with those wounds.
A spiked tail, for one, as in “Alien.”
Heck, Joss Whedon could come up with two dozen creative ideas for a lethal chest wound while standing on one leg. Probably including impaling someone with a wooden leg.
Frank, I think these two people may be beyond the “mostly dead” point. The wounds Pierrot and Emily got before their “resurrection” were more peripheral than “giant hole in chest.” But who knows? It has been less than ten minutes, and a lot depends on the varying biologies of different aliens.
Mr. Spock was famous for coming up with biological differences to explain why he hadn’t been really killed in various episodes. “I might have known he’d turn up something like that.” – Dr. McCoy
Again, lots of plot options. 🙂
It is nice to see Emily value her subbordinates so highly.
Now to ask whether Kipk and Garzun were in the same state ten minutes ago when they checked…
@ChrisC, TB: People trained in firearms can tell when a loud bang is or isn’t a gunshot usually, so if they had been phasered wouldn’t the other guards have likely recognized the noise as well? Instead they simply heard something “Suspicious”, like they didn’t know what it was (For example, a projectile weapon in a setting where they use energy-based weapons).