Chapter 3, Page 33

*July 2 edit* THANK YOU for your understanding re: the schedule slip this month! Everyone who is paying for me to make comics (ie all Patrons) are already probably aware of the delay already, and can read the pages that were meant to go up in June now on the Patreon regardless of pledge level. Yes even that guy who is pledging $.01, you cheeky bastard.

Everyone else will start seeing these updates either here or on The Meek starting on the 5th! July is going to be massive update month to make up for June, so I’m looking forward to it and hope you are too~

-Der

DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG WE’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR YOU BUDDY

even tho it’s a flashback it’s nice to draw it/him, haha

I’m back! and alive! from an art retreat and a 2-day vacation in Portland. My first break in about 2 years, and it actually turned out spectacular. I got really pumped up being around such incredible artists, and frankly I needed a break. Very grateful to have been invited and to have the chance to talk to other art people in person for once. If you’re a curious creeper and want to see some (mostly puzzle-related) shenanigans you can look at the retreat tag~

For Patreon we are getting back in the swing of things with a LEVi concept post, since he’s now officially in the comic after 1.5 YEARS jesus christ. Additionally, I’m bouncing back as fast as I can from my hiatus and will be sending out Patron emails tonight so the new crop of supporters can get their name and laurels up on the support page! Expect that email soon~

Today’s bonus art: a view of my layers panel. This page got out a bit later than I wanted because the file was so large I couldn’t do gradients without waiting 30 seconds T__T;
*edit* TWC is broken as hell right now so you can vote if you want but the image is here

Without further ado, lets announce the winner of the contests!!!


Random word winner: Benny N! Congrats on being randomly picked, and congrats on piecing together the correct word, which was Nili Fossae! Nili Fossae is a really cool location on Mars; possibly one place where a future lander may find preserved examples of organic molecules in the clay. I hope you all enjoyed playing and poring through the Mars map :]

win1

Boyfriend’s choice: Cardboard Thrip by Jennie! BF’s comments: “I picked this due to the effort, creativity, realism, initiative and excellence. It is the most exciting entry I could throw into a blender. Worldstar.” …He still hates thrip unfortunately

WIN2

Author’s choice: Eat you up by Okafrags! I could only judge this contest by how many times I went back to open the tab and look at it again… this one just had the slightest edge due to the freakout Thrip. I want to note it was a close decision, the other strong contenders being mommy thrip by Ainsley, hello my honey thrip by Derkasnake, and dance thrip by Roqi.

[Art winners, simply drop me a line at my gmail (shingworks) and we’ll go from there to get you your prize icon! Benny I got your email already so no worries]

Thank you so much to everyone for playing! I’m sorry not everyone could win, because I truly loved every entry… to thank you for your work, your thrip (with attribution and metacomments) will remain in the hall of fame forever~

67 Comments

  • skellagirl

    Aw, you were in Portland?? That’s my home! How did you like it?

    Also yay LEVi! I love the little sparkles in his light-stream

    • shingworks

      Portland was great! I really loved it, perfect weather while we were there too. Mostly walked around a ton and then drank and ate a ton of barfood out of some misguided sense of justice for calories burned, haha. Will probably be back~

      • Rev

        Oh snap! Was this Portland, Oregon or the East Coast Portland?

  • Askance

    Love that smile!

  • Localized

    LEVi is adorable!

    (also that’s a lot of layers)

  • DukeBG

    I’m so happy to see LEVi

    • DukeBG

      P.S. LOVE that refraction of light in the liquid!

  • DukeBG

    By the way, a note about Spore creature. In case someone owns the game, you can load this creature for youself by drag-n-droping the original PNG into game (they store need data in the file).
    …I might as well try it myself some time, should be fun to play the game with it.

    • Roqi

      If you create a thriving Thrip civilization, I want to see it.

  • Nooooooo! Mummy Thriiip!… I mean congratulations for the winners, but I hoped for that one.

  • I wonder how LEVI knew Kallakore was a person?

    • LameFox

      At first I thought this might mean he was smart enough to guess, but on second thought, curling up in a corner probably doesn’t say too much about intelligence. Maybe he’s just been saying that to every animate thing he meets down there.

      • Cthulhufish

        This is my preferred interpretation lol.

        “HELLO! MY NAME IS LEVi, WHAT’S YOURS?”

        (255 seconds of awkward silence)

        “OH. SORRY TO BOTHER YOU.”

      • shingworks

        It’s true T__T; Probably anything that moves.

        • Wood

          NICE TO MEET YOU, Thrip, AND HOW ARE YOU TODAY?

      • Aroel

        Ya know, his programmers probably assumed any animate thing Levi meets in a Martian cave would be a lost human. So to an extent that makes sense.

      • youhappynow

        My first thought was to wonder how much operational time LEVi spends on making sure that every moving thing that crosses his path isn’t sapient.

        • Tim F

          My first thought to wonder how LEVi didn’t lose his sh*t and zoom back to the closest repeater as soon as he detected a trace of humidity. Could Mike have really programmed out his fundamental mission directives?

          Also, diffraction! I might be the only person who freaked out when Miyazaki represented anti-lock brakes JUST right in Spirited Away. I have a special fondness for people who put that kind of attention into their art.

  • Leon

    I guess you’ll need a new shell now, Der XD

  • David

    Refracted light in a comic strip
    -> Shing is a Master

  • Ceceoh

    Such a gorgeous page, and the start of a beautiful friendship. Though it is sad that a ‘bot has better social skills than its creator.

    • shingworks

      Haha. Technically Mike doesn’t work on LEVi itself, just the parts that pertain to the geoimaging functions.

      • brad

        I thought Ceceoh was referring to you.

        • David

          Ohhh, the burn!!!

        • shingworks

          fatality

        • Ceceoh

          Hey! I resemble that remark!

  • Echo

    How do you pronounce LEVi? Is it lee-vi or leh-vee?

    • shingworks

      Same as this!

      • DukeBG

        Dem easter eggs in the names!

        • shingworks

          Maybe too many XD

      • Ava

        “Bye bye, little bot that can fly / Flew the LEVi down the crevvie and the crevvie weren’t dry” ?

    • Derkasnake

      It’s pronounced Leviosaaaaaaaaah

  • Lora

    BEAUTIFUL light effects in that water!

    Aww, LEVi is so cute and friendly.

  • Avernus

    …is there any chance of that first panel being sold as a print/poster one day? Because it is so stunningly beautiful I kind of want to cry (and also wallpaper my house with it)…

    • shingworks

      Haha, possibly… I did work on it a while though, I guess I can put it up as a Patreon wallpaper for the month :]

  • Glew

    Hi! My name is Levi too! Yay, BFFs!

  • Asterai

    MIKE used EXISTENTIAL ACCUSATION.

    It’s SUPER EFFECTIVE!

  • dat REFRACTION

  • Also oh my GOD the little happy face on Levi.

    • Ceceoh

      I just want to pinch his little LED cheeks!

  • Victor

    With that sharp an angle of refraction, that is definitely something denser than water. You are a total science nerd.

  • weh

    Wait. Is that it? Is there no more? Am I caught up?? It can’t be!!!
    OK, so. Wow. Der-Shing, you’re amazing?? You manage to write both the darkest social realism and the most fantastical science fiction, all whilst displaying a clear knowledge of a broad range of scientific principles…. And that’s not even touching on the amazing art.
    I have never read a webcomic so fast in my life. I am hooked, this is definitely the best thing I’ve read in a while. Seriously. Thank you for making it exist!

    • pastry

      totally second this comment!

  • Alan

    Flashback? More like flashLIGHT! 8-)

  • Armorat

    Aaaaand…now in my brain LEVI has the voice of Catbug

    • weh

      NO STOP THIS IS MY HEADCANON NOW

      (weird. i caught up with both mare internum and the bravest warriors comic book series today! coincidences.)

  • Also, I don’t know if you have access to a wide-gamut AdobeRGB monitor, but damn, the color on these recent pages are deep and vibrant on one. If you don’t, I wish you could see.

  • Jasmine

    Love the comic and love the characters! Everything is just so amazing. I don’t even know how you manage to draw water because it’s giving me a headache just contemplating it.

    All your colours are incredibly vibrant and it makes me want to jump through my screen. Thrip and I would be besties for sure.

  • Treeish

    KK looks so forlorn here…I can’t imagine a sentient staying sane, but alien psychology may not be much like ours. Still, we know it doesn’t end well for LEVi – it’s times like these I want to take a break to create a binge buffer, and spare myself the suspense, but no will power for that!

    That first panel is so wow…hope you had a super break :)

  • StClair

    For added, ah, fun, remember that all of this is being told with hindsight: Kallakore knows English now, and can tell Mike what LEVi was saying, but at the time all she knew was that she’d been woken out of timeless darkness by this alien… thing shining a bright light on her and then burbling and beeping incomprehensibly.

  • Derkasnake

    Thank you for the mention, Der Shing! Being called one of the strongest contestants by you is a huge compliment to me, eheh.

  • spottedspeck

    Congrats to Jennie and Okafrags! :D
    Levi’s little smiley face is the best thing ever.

  • Corgis!

    And that was right before Levi killed them all–no, I’m sorry that’s incorrect my apologies.

  • I don’t comment often enough… but “Yay! LEVI!”.

    Also, while your art is amazing and cool and tends towards the scientifically accurate/plausible… this is a first in my entire experience: OMG! It’s the proper diffraction of a light beam in water! I have *literally* never seen any comic artist (or *any* ‘entertainment’ artist outside of a science textbook) depict diffraction before… you are the first ever, so far as I’m concerned!

    It’s a silly thing, I know… but it just goes to show how awesome you are!

  • Royco Cup-a-Soup

    What’s going on with the lack of updates? Is my browser screwy? Is the site broken? Is Shing dead?!

    • Sunflower

      Shhh, shhh, there now. Der-shing’s fine, just (as she notes on her other comic, “The Meek”), really slammed by life.
      The Meek’s latest page is somehow thematically appropriate: http://www.meekcomic.com/comic/5-10/#comments

      • David

        Shing is a girl?

        • Sheridan

          Wait. Wait wait wait. Are you saying that there are webcomic artists who are *male*?!

    • shingworks

      100% human error as it turns out I can’t do 2 months of work in 3 weeks, haha. Updates resume on the 5th, or you can read the detailed update on the Facebook page. Sorry for the brief lull, just been too busy/ stressed to look at this page for a week or so.

  • Memes

    Don’t take this the wrong way, But I personally read Levi in Claptrap’s voice.. It fits strangely well.

    • CosmicStresshead

      So was I… which is really odd because just now had to look up who Claptrap was. That was weird.

  • Tadrix

    Hey, Der-Shing, are you all right? Such silence is scaring (and I’m genuinely concerned about you xD).

    • shingworks

      Haha, thanks for asking. I’m usually very active on Twitter if you need to get a hold of me or confirm that I died (I am probably dead if I do not update twitter for more than a day). I have been swamped with various things this month but posted a detailed sched update to the Facebook just now if you want to read that. TL;DR tho is comics resume on the 5th.

      • Tadrix

        Oh, nice to know, thanks

  • Grant Williamson

    Comment?

  • spottedspeck

    I thought this dialog reminded me of something XD
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve1RhkMioPQ

  • Sheridan

    We see the caves now all lit up and beautiful. Here with Levi they are dark. Did the ‘system’ only kick into gear once KK was active?

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