Weekly Update - 42 (Patreon)

Chapter 5 was supposed to continue for a few more pages yet, but, thinking on it a bit more, it's already starting to get a little too long and that last page was a great place to end the chapter on.  Couple that with my recent focus on improving how I do backgrounds, I think I want to take the rest of this month to really polish up a solid full-page end chapter card, kind of like the one I did for Chapter 4.  The rough sketch you can see above...

I've been thinking a lot lately about architecture and the anatomy of Kuserra's setting.  It's popular in post-apocalyptic media for buildings to sorta... tilt over.  In movies and games, skyscrapers are often just kinda... leaning against one another, or leaning over at a 45 degree angle because of critical damage suffered somewhere near the bottom, perhaps.  Looking into that more, turns out real buildings don't ever actually do that.  They're designed to stand straight up, and even a tilt of a few degrees can cause the entire structure to collapse under its own weight, ending up in a big heap at the bottom.  Turns out gravity always wins in the end.  A city that suffers some giant catastrophe is more likely to be pretty flat in the end.

Now, obviously Kuserra is a fantasy/sci-fi setting and there's no hard and fast rule that says my buildings can't lean (they could be made out of some kind of super techno-magic-based concrete for all we know).  Skewed buildings have, like it or not, become a part of the genre.  It got me wondering about it anyway... like... would buildings be able to lean if more than 2/3s of the structure was buried in rubble and wreckage?

Anyhoo, I hope everyone has a happy holiday.  Let's toast to 2021!

Drawing: Page 88 and some supplemental art.

Playing:  Cyberpunk 2077 (yeaaah, I couldn't hold out like I said I was going to... turns out the game is pretty great on PC at least despite a few annoying bugs)