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Stories and Features

• Sad Heart's Shadow - Part 1 (7th February 2006 - 32 pages)
• Sad Heart's Shadow - Part 2 (26th July 2006 - ongoing)

Main Characters

Sad Heart's Shadow

The Sad Heart Part of the A.U.S.S.I.E. fleet of space craft, dedicated to explore, map and terraform extra Sol worlds for colonisation. A "Re-Constitution" class vessel.

The Crew of the Sad Heart The Crew of the Sad Heart are all A.U.S.S.I.E. staff. Led by Captain Montague Shorrock, they generally try and get the job done and home in piece.

The Zero Set Team Subcontracted out by A.U.S.S.I.E., the Zero Set Team are responsible for making a thourough survey of worlds, and initiating procedures for terraforming. The are: Andrew Merv, Coordinator, Elvira Tamon, Main Exobiologist; and Ernest Rivers, Ace pilot.

The First In Team The First In Team are also subcontractors, and are expects in detailed mineral and resource exploration and exploitation. There are: Simon Kirby, Coordinator; Kasumi Leymouth. Structure Analyser; and Sylvester Bancks, Mining and demolitions expert.

The Ambassadors Representing both A.U.S. and Nor-Am interests, these two are technically in charge of the situation with "the shadow", an anomoly created by the "artifact".

The Bloogles Despite being the first aliens to have contacted Earth (and have since begun trading and visiting it), not much is known about the Bloogles. They have a language which at first note seems incomprehensible to Humans. Luckily there are also several sub-species (the exact number is as yet unknown) and one, the Poogle, is able to act as translator. What are the Bloogle's motivations for cooporating with exploration of the shadow? No one is quite sure.

Development Background

The first Future Imperfect sstories I drew were for an A.P.A. called The Phantom Zine, which I also edited. The zine lasted about a year until it died due to disinterest. I did about four installments of a story called "Orion, Son of Tau Ceti" which was a pun on a gaming zine I used to run called Tau Ceti.

Most of the action takes place in "near space" which is about a radius of 40 light years from Sol (Earth's system). "Son of Tau Ceti" takes place in the 25th century, whereas "Sad Heart's Shadow" is set (mostly) in the 22nd. A key element in both is the "Bloogle Wars", but just read and see."

The name Sad Heart's Shadow has a history. Back in later 2005 I was extremely depressed and had experiencing an "artist's block" with my Honours at university. I created an extra Live Journal account, mostly to write depressive stuff and bad poetry. I tried this for a while, and it didn't make teh depression any easier or break the block.

Then I revamped the journal to try doing a webcomic. I had long wanted to dabble in web-comics and experimental (to me at least) computer comic art. Originally it was going to be called called "SAD HEART'S SHADOW: the adventures of Tasb0t and Poogle in the 29th Century". The idea came to me as I was driving to university. The names just came out of thin air, and the night after, I had a dream about the story. TasB0t and Poogle are charcters that would be introduced in a story about the spaceship Sad Heart and the anomolly called the Shadow. You'll still meet them in Sad Heart's Shadow, but the adventures of Tasb0t and Poogle in the 29th Century will be another story.

I also did a version of Thud and Blunder on LJ as well. Then, I got a ComicGenesis account. This made a difference. Live Journal is OK, but there's no inbuilt storage for a free account, and it doesn't have automated archives and links. Comic Genesis did, and I knew that such an account would be a permanent home for such stuff. By now, doing web comics had lifted that creative block. Whereas Thud and Blunder was all reprint, only the first two pages of Sad Heart's Shadow used old art - the rest is all original.

The artwork was intended to be a mixture of hand-drawn/scanned and graphics tablet drawn sources. I bought an A4 graphics tablet a while ago and have yet to (as of February 2006) learn how to adequately use it. This is a good excuse. The other thing In restarting the strip at Comic Genesis, I've redrawn and relettered the first few pages. It gets better as it goes on.

Also see the Future Imperfect...
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