[S] Murrit: REW/FFD - Part 2

Hello, everyone! Eddie here once again to finally bring to you the rest of the promised REW/FFD animation commentary. We got a little caught up with life and such last month, as you could probably tell by the lack of June updates, but no more! Happy to report we are so back and ready to rumble.

Before we get to Segment 4 proper, I'll just drop a quick link to the animatic again for ease of reference. Alright, let's dive in!

SEGMENT 4

This segment was boarded by me, with sketches being split between Xam (for alt!probability shards) and Diz (for the silhouetted Murrit and Gusion). Xam also took care of the finalization of their own shots, while Victoria was the one who did that for the rest.

Now, this segment had some considerable changes from the storyboard you saw to its final version! I admittedly had a little trouble figuring out how to go about depicting this part - I wanted the visual of Alt!Murrit smashing through the different probabilities to look cool and impactful, because it's a very sick concept, but ended up getting a bit lost in the weeds there. The allotted time for that transition was barely a couple seconds long, and trying to come up with complex motions for that part just wasn't leading to a good read of the action. So, in the end, I figured it'd be much simpler to just throw that aside and make that shot a mirror to the one we see at the start of the animation, with our True!Murrit peacing Tee Hanos out. They were not lying sometimes less IS more.

As a little bonus, here's some sketches of an even earlier version of this shot! It was scrapped for similar reasons as the one in the animatic video (transitions taking too long), but I did manage to more or less figure out how I wanted to shards to look. I think the final version ended up being kind of a mix of those two ideas, with murrit just fading away instead of having any complex panel-breaking action going on!

On to the actual sketches:

It truly is mind boggling just how many different visual styles Xam managed to shove in there in a distinct way. My personal favorites are the Calvin & Hobbes, Night in the Woods and Garfield shards, they're so charming! And I think the shattering in the shape of the Time symbol brings everything together in a very elegant way. When the framing device is literal am I right

Aren't these shards just lovely? There's mostly no deep, metaphysical meaning to the choices in media we gave little nods to here, the logic was basically just what seemed like fun at the time! Well, that, and some of those shows have had some kind of aesthetic or thematic association with Murrit in some shape or form, lest we forget their Eddy Filler profile icon or their kin onion.

Remember the cast's kin onions? I do. One day we'll get around to archiving those somewhere accessible and I won't have to dig through Austin's media tab on twitter in order to find them like an uncivilized animal.

I'm not sure how many people noticed, but this panel was an actual, honest-to-god 3D scene, built and modeled by our ever-innovative overachiever Victoria!

AUSTIN: This is one of the shards with a bit of extra meaning to their inclusion! This Alt!Murrit is specifically meant to be Alternian Murrit, or Tetrarch Murrit. It's also supposed to be a nod to the old 3D Hiveswap art style, before they switched to the 2D visuals found in the actual releases of the game.

It still boggles my mind that she volunteered to pull this off. 3D is the work of the devil. Nevertheless, Victoria wanted to shout out this blender plugin, which was apparently very helpful when it came to getting that 3D pixel-y look right. As a sweet bonus, she also offered all the files and textures she used to build the scene in a quaint little .zip, which you can find at the end of this post, just for you guys! In case you want to mess around with 3D Alternian Murrit or something, go nuts. You're welcome.

Ah, the Fullmetal Alchemist and Panty and Stocking shards. I wonder if Murrit is a closet non-hentai-anime enjoyer? Just own up to it loser. Everybody is watching anime these days, it's okay. You don't have to make a whole thing about it.

AUSTIN: The Panty and Stocking Murrit is also a reference to an old bloodswapped Murrit design I came up with years ago. Certain elements of it ended up being used for Sabine's final design later, funnily enough. The initial idea for what eventually became the retrogauntlet is also there.

I always enjoy a a good opportunity to feature the denizens in the comic! This is actually the first time we're seeing Gusion outside of track cover art, can you believe it? You know what, let me take this opportunity to show off some concept art that Heather made aaages ago - I'm not sure if those were ever publicly posted, but if they were they have undoubtedly long been buried under a tall, tall mound of discord messages and/or twitter posts. Behold:

Sick ass tail. It's too bad we haven't managed to show this guy off in full just yet, but perhaps one day...

Anyway. For these scenes of Alt!Murrit interacting with her giant soul-twin dragon thing, the idea was to switch to a more stark, silhouetted visual, both as a way to keep things more symbolic and to not have to show anything concrete in regards to Purifying. Our main characters from the true timeline are a long, long way from any of THAT nonsense, so this gives us the liberty to still figure out the details of the process later without locking us in any specific direction, with the added bonus of still keeping the mystery alive for our audience.

Hm? What's that? You didn't know there was more to it than opening your arms and absorbing a big fucking mystical creature's heart-ribcage into your own chest? Well, duh. Why would we ever make anything simple in this comic????

Ah, Danganronpa. You really can't escape this damn video game in this comic. I think it's funny how Xam decided to keep everyone's horns for all of these EXCEPT for the Ed, Edd n Eddy shard. One can only speculate as to the workings of these complex creative machinations.

(In Alt!Murrit voice) It's been one of those days... Pass the Denizen Heart-Ribcage!!!

I mean, you simply cannot do a style-swap smorgasbord of pop culture references centered around Murrit and NOT include the Gorillaz look in the mix! This funny cartoon band is embedded deep into the Turkin DNA. Shoutouts to Plastic Beach, one of the albums ever.

This is a very simple shot, all things considered, but I still find it very impactful. I think Alt!Murrit's expression here turned out lovely, and it's a fantastic buildup and lead into the next scene - an intimate little beat before the bombastic reveal of the next Segment.

Hey, speaking of!

SEGMENT 5

TYSON: This was actually the first segment I boarded (about a year ago now)! Holding a directorial role for this animation was a huge learning experience for me and I definitely would've planned out this sequence differently if I was doing it today. It was easily the most ambitious and messiest of the boards I finished, and it had a lot of hangups because of it - many assets from Seg 5 were the last to be finished and imported in. That being said, it was extremely fulfilling to see my vision (as haphazard and ambitious as it was) followed through and finished with the help of so many incredible people! I'm so extremely proud of how it turned out. Diz and Xam were the MVPs here, there's no way this section would've been executed in the same way without their help.

(Tyson's trying to be humble, but he did a fantastic job through and through on such a massive undertaking and everyone on the team loves working with him very much.)

TYSON: Sketches were done by me and Diz, with backgrounds being tackled by a handful of different artists that I'll mention when relevant.

And here's the moment everyone's been waiting for.

That's right baby, it's the PURE SELF DESIGNS!!!!!

TYSON: This huge cast shot was tag-teamed by Diz and I! He sketched over the characters from the positions that I roughed, and we both took half the cast to render. Positioning was tricky - I like to keep character relationships in mind for big cast shots like these, but some of these weapons took up a lot of space. It was hard to tell how the color values would look next to each other until after they were rendered, so some of the character positions got swapped around for the final shot. Charlotte helped out with the awesome background here.

As for the outfits and equipment themselves, I don't think I need to tell you all that this is one of the reveals everyone was THE most excited about. Fuck it, EVERYONE gets an outfit reveal at the same time. Except for Murrit, who needed to feel special and stay ahead of the curve. Anyway, Heather, Diz and Eph really knocked it out of the park with their design powers combined. I just love how all of their personalities really shine through here, so many inspired decisions! So much panache! Wow!!!

The general guiding ethos here, as I've previously touched on in an earlier commentary post, was to create a love letter to the much beloved "fancy tiers" from the Homestuck fandom heyday. It's why the Pure Selves all have such unique clothes, despite a few vague similar elements that are repeated across classes. But before we start diving into those individually, let's take a gander at their concept art (you can find Murrit's concept in the link above).

HEATHER: The pure self designs were a lot of fun to work on, both here and as different iterations have been progressively revealed, like when we first saw the pure self Dead Shufflers and pavlovians. Let's dig into their design rules a little more: maybe you noticed, maybe you haven't, but no two pure selves of the same class look exactly alike. That's because we wanted them to be more focused on the individual characters right off the bat, rather than just the class on its own. So for the outfits to still have cohesion, I started making a rough outfit base for each class as a general guideline on how it would be shaped. Some have resemblances to their Homestuck counterparts, some take small inspirations from other places. These outlines will still be used as a starting point for any other pure self designs we might yet see in the future.

HEATHER: On top of that, each aspect will always have the same special "active power" add-on, as it comes directly from the respective denizen. For example: the Hope halo from Bathkol, the little blue and yellow Light orbs from Af and red back Blood spikes from Wormwood. With those two things in mind, I can then start working around those bases to come up with something that feels unique and fitting for each character! Laivan got the fun hunter-esque bone look mixed with a traditional knight armor piece, Occeus got a sort of stitched up plague doctor outfit and Sova got an outfit reminiscent of the Songbird!

It is also every Page's god given right to have a silly little hat. Jentha's outfit was obviously a callback to her look during her flashback sequence, but after talking it over with Heather we figured that it was a little too close to her baby clothes. So I made some adjustments to better reflect her realized disposition and personality and voila! You have the final outfit. I enjoy how it kind of looks like shounen protagonist superhero clothes a little bit.

Of course, we would be remiss not to also shine a big ol' spotlight on the BALLER weapon designs made by Diz and Eph! These versions of our heroes are meant to be at the very top of their game, with all the best loot and gear available to them, so a lot of care went into creating suitably Cool and Epic weapons to match their killer new outfits. We'll start with Eph's designs, which they previously discussed in the VEcord. Take it away, Eph!

EPHEMERALD: The HIGHER POWER came to life from a single thought: what if, instead of a mere mace, Taz had a fucking gigantic spiked wrecking ball that she could control with her mind? Naturally, my next thought was attaching the Higher Power to a heavyweight champion belt, studded with beautiful gems and depicting a split-up version of Taz's sigil. Originally, the symbol in the middle was Taz's cult makeup, but we felt it would work better if it was something else. Her PsyOp's symbol did the trick! The name was a pretty easy fit, too: after all, it was me all along, Austin. Lastly, as for why the ball looks like that... I think a yin-yang deal is fitting for Taz's nature, don't you? Perhaps there's also something to be said about the cast of our game (hopefully) succeeding in their quests where other housetrapped individuals may have failed.

EPHEMERALD: As for the ARMISTYX, it was inspired by Soul Hunter's Kishin Hunter technique, the most powerful of the Witch Hunter moves used by scythemeisters. (Please note that I haven't actually seen Soul Eater, I was given special instruction in this case by the Bartman.) It manifests as a gigantic blade in the shape of Arcjec's sigil, colored in exaggerated, flaming hues reminiscent of his blood. My other big inspiration was Problem Sleuth. I had Death's scythe in mind — peep the stick it's attached to and the weapon's name. "Armistyx" was the Combat Operandi which the Sleuth used to obliterate Death's scythe after half a dozen GIFs of him turning it into whatever the hell he wanted. And speaking of, perhaps this Armistyx, too, can transform...

EPHEMERALD: Ah, THE BIGGEST BOPPER. Where would we be without it? At this point, Serpaz has reached the ability to interface with hammerspace itself, able to pull any comically oversized object she needs out of thin air. But this weapon remains her favorite, and how could it not? I like imagining that the hammerhead can poof out of existence if Serpaz wills it, leaving behind a telescopic staff with this freakish cartoon glove attached. Maybe it can be slingshotted out like one of those toy hands that stick to walls. Oh, and if you press Up+A while wielding it, you can do the Biggest Bopper Flip; though it takes a while to charge, it's the most powerful attack in the game that isn't one-use! Any similarities to Talald's own Boppers are completely intentional.

EPHEMERALD: Now, the LONGINES SYMPHONETTE is a very special shield. Just look at how silver and sparkly it is! I was inspired by the watch of the same name, and you might've also heard it from the They Might Be Giants tune Birdhouse In Your Soul: "Bluebird of friendliness / Like the Longines Symphonette, it doesn't rest", hence the symbol for a musical rest in the middle. This Symphonette in question was a classical music program, which I felt made it fitting for Sova's hands. I guess she has a birdhouse in her soul after all. Anyway, the Symphonette (the shield, not the musical program) absorbs the energy of all the damage it intercepts, and when it's at capacity, Sova can unleash it in a counterattack — the rest turns into a single powerful, crystalline note. The shield can also turn into a beautifully theatrical suit of armor, but this remains to be seen in practice.

EPHEMERALD: CHEMOTHERAPY might be my favorite out of all the designs I've made. The genesis of the idea came years ago, when I envisioned an even crazier version of Doc Scratch's de(u)dly magnum: a sleek, white rifle powered by the Green Sun itself and capable of firing a one-hit kill cueball. So, of course Laivan would get something like this. He's got rifles, he's got a Green Sun pendant… he's got actual animal parts stashed somewhere, I'm sure. The bone is indestructible, and the flesh and sinew creeping up the barrel pulse in tune with the light of the Sun. Though I haven't played World of Warcraft, this design was partially inspired by the Serpent's Bite, a decidedly animalistic weapon.

EPHEMERALD: The ANNULAR ECLIPSE is a set of detachable nuclear-powered Furby™ scissors. How else could I possibly describe it to you? For the record, when I say "detachable," think Kill La Kill, which is obviously the main design inspiration for this weapon. Both halves can be separated and wielded independently from each other, functioning like way cooler swords. The actual blades are pretty stubby, but nuclear-powered isn't a meaningless descriptor — Jentha can pour her innate radiation into it, giving the weapons the golden, crackling blades they so rightfully deserve. I was heavily inspired by Jentha's extended flashback, conceiving of it as "what if young Jentha's nuclear hazmat suit was a pair of scissors and had glowing Furby eyes?" It has a pretty neutral grey color scheme when inactive, but when properly powered, it gets the super-saturated colors of Jentha's full power.

EPHEMERALD: VIRULENT VINDICATION, taken from the song of the same name, was one of the last weapons I designed: a wine glass whose inside extends outwards, creating a long, thin pole. The weapon is so transparent as to be almost invisible; the only sign it's there is wine sloshing in the glass. (Yes, Calder drinks it at his leisure.) And as for the pole: Calder can conjure up any blade he wishes on its length. A halberd, a machete, a chainsaw, a javelin, a rapier, a hauberk, you name it. The blades are forged from solid void, indestructible and requiring no energy Calder's part — after all, void carves itself out of reality all on its own.

EPHEMERALD: Ladies and gentlemen, the THIRD EYE BLIND, initially named FRONTIER PSYCHIATRY. That boy might need therapy, but he needs an ultimate weapon even more. Seeing as Occeus uses lasers, an idea that got floated around at first was giving him a lightsaber! I still think this would be awesome to see, but I had a different idea in mind. Occeus's visor (and third eye) is probably my favorite bit of character design in the whole main cast, and so I knew I had to accentuate it with this weapon. The result is a cross between Noxious, the Pyro, and Cyclops — a weaponized gas mask whose visor, an angular representation of Occeus's three eyes, is constantly holding back the hellish blood lasers at Occeus' disposal. If he taps the buttons on the side, then all hell breaks loose. You know, since it's blood lasers, that kinda makes it Brimstone? Like, from the Binding of Isaac? Huh.

EPHEMERALD: Since anything can happen, Albion can obtain the WHITE MOOD RING! This one was honestly a bit of a no-brainer to me: the mood ring had two clearly defined end-states, with it turning white when she merges with her guardian and turning black when she "loses any power she once had." The white mood ring seemed to be the best choice for this epic final battle. I drew a sketch of her letting loose a massive hyper-beam from it, but really, I think the sky’s kind of the limit. Of course, in the DC Comics continuity, the White Lantern Corps are the ultimate embodiment of life, with its rings able to resurrect the dead, annihilate the Black Lantern Corps (re: zombies), and even harness the powers of all the other Lanterns. To elaborate any further would mean I'd have to read paragraphs of comic lore which, uh, I'm cool with doing for Vast Error, but can't really be bothered with for decades-long superhero shit.

EPHEMERALD: You know, the Duodechaxiom might be super fucking cool, but why stop there? Murrit didn't. Enter the PROBABILITY GAUNTLET. This might not come as a surprise to you, but my original idea was to straight-up give them the Infinity Gauntlet: obviously, it would have been Tee Hanos's doing. For obvious reasons, I decided to totally invert the design. It went from gold to purple (fitting for Murrit), from wide and stout to sleek and long, and from having six stones to just one, the Time Stone which Murrit created under Tee Hanos's guidance. The gauge at the top might look a bit familiar — it's a stylized candy corn, representing the gauntlet's ability to channel the outermost fringes of probabilities. Well, maybe Homestuck isn't exactly "fringe" to Vast Error, but whatever, you get the idea. Also the arm-hole-thing is a gear. I imagine it spins around when the gauntlet's in use.

And with the certified Eph weapons out of the way, let's move on to the Diz creations!

DIZ: Dismas's weapons were kind of spur of the moment. Eph brought up the idea of fusing his and Murrit's strife specibii into a single weapon (or two I guess, because it's dual wielding?) so I played off of that. They're made of obsidian, because obsidian is my favorite rock and the shapes are cool as fuck. It's as shrimple as that.

DIZ: I thought the idea of a staff having two points of magical focus instead of just one was really neat, but obviously that didn't work out in the end because the skull had to be there. Something I don't think I saw anyone catch onto was the color of the flowers on the skull's head! It's violet, partially a reference to Ellsee's road to recovery art, but also a reference to the ultimately Tragic Yuri that is Alt!Murrit and Alt!Ellsee.

It is, indeed, the most tragic of yuris. RIP.

Whew, that was a lot of concept art! But we are now ready to get back to just kidding there's more of it.

It's time to dive into the secondary cast's alternate looks! We are simply overflowing with carefully crafted fashion decisions and aesthetics over here.

First off, here's these guys, penned by Yours Truly! The whole idea behind the probability that Alt!Murrit comes from is that this is a reality where everything goes as well as it possibly could for these characters to ally themselves in the end, and yet... it still fails.

So! The starting point for Edolon is that this version of him had a much less turbulent relationship with the Executive, and did in fact inherit Corporate as his official successor, becoming a practitioner of Alchemy in the process. I wanted to make him look closer to both Clarud AND Sestro, so there's design elements borrowed from both of their canonical looks, he's a lot more put together. His sigil also worked very nicely as an upside-down version of Sestro's characteristic sigil clasps, so that was a serendipitous bit of mirroring! Following a similar logic, this is a version of Sestro that never had to deal with the burdens of responsibility our Sestro did, so he looks a lot looser and more casual in his fashion choices. In my mind, Sestro and Edolon ended up having a sibling-like relationship similar to Ellsee and Arcjec in this probability.

Alt!Hamifi, on her end, never ended up being partnered to the Corporate heir, so I figured she would take on a much more strictly bodyguard-focused role in this probability, instead of the more administrative position she has in the canon one. I didn't want to change her outfit too much because it's extremely Hamifi to me, so I only made subtle changes that made her look a bit more combat focused than the flowy sleeves and delicate slip-ons she usually sports.

As for Seinru, I operated more on the basis of vibes for his fashion choices, since we don't really have a glimpse of what he'd wear outside of the usual cult garbs. Alt!Seinru never got involved with the Mora or the Harbingers either in this 'verse, so the idea was to come up with "civilian" clothes for them. I figured they'd felt like someone who'd enjoy flowy, loose fabrics and skirts, so I kinda just ran with it.

DIZ: These three originally didn't have alt designs, but I thought it would be strange if they looked exactly the same in this probability, so I was like, I'll just design slightly different outfits for them with my own spin. Turnin's isn't much of a departure from their normal design, and Racren I just... put in the outfit I wear in Splatoon 3 and color swapped it because I thought it would fit his personality lmao. Talald had to be changed from the jester-y look that I originally drew because of her lack of cult involvement in this probability, which I discovered existed when I asked for feedback. Then, I thought it would be nice to put her in some 60's-70's inspired fashion because I was getting really into that when I was working on this project, for some reason.

Okay, NOW we're done with concept art stuff for real. We made it. Congratulations to all involved.

TYSON: After Diz finished the alt! B cast, I whipped up a colored rough for the crowd behind them to send off to Xam, who did an INCREDIBLE job rendering out this massive group, along with the next 2 backgrounds!

These two beautiful shots were the joint brainchildren of Tyson, who did the original sketches and some color thumbs, and Xam, who finalized it for the animation. The idea was to really sell the sense of sheer scale of the battle taking place here, and drive home the fact that you can't beat Gaiaeon in a direct confrontation. Puny little mortals simply don't stand a chance against a nihilist deity bent on universe-erasure, no matter how many of them there are. They are like ants to him! It was also fun to bring back the carapacian battleships, they add some flying nautical flair to the whole thing.

TYSON: This is one of the most ambitious backgrounds I've done for REW/FFD! I started it early on in production in order to set the desolate mood and colors for the rest of the scene. Xam saved my ass by helping last minute with the skull render on this shot, along with the rest of the skull close ups. That touch of realism they went with wasn't intended at conception, but it was an inspired choice on Xam's part. Really helped hammer in the grim tone of it all.

And who DOESN'T love a desolate battlefield scene, strewn with various symbolic shattered weapons?

This is the part where the tragic yuri we mentioned before comes back to haunt us! Very straightforward framing, but I think the poses and motions are simple and effective here, doing their job to communicate the feeling we wanted. (The feeling is tragic yuri)

TYSON: The timing on this shot was the one I was most unsure about in the boards. Another shout out to Joy for absolutely nailing it (along with everything else in this animation)!

TYSON: I struggled immensely with the character positioning on this scene. Thank you to Diz for streamlining and rendering Alt!Murrit, and Victoria for helping with the background!

And yet, WHAT a shot! I think the motion here shaped up beautifully, the sketches themselves are already very fluid. Huge fan of the top two where Alt!Murrit is recoiling in horror. Very expressive!

This has just turned into me gushing about other people's art but like... look at it! These shots feel almost comic-esque to me. They're giving Dark Horse with the angling, intensity and stark shadows. You love to see it.

TYSON: The background featured here before the zoom in was actually one of the easier ones, frankensteined from a couple other scenes with the addition of a Goop Overlay.

Only Tyson could make a series of sketches of a single leg look this dynamic. Animators, man.

TYSON: Easily one of my favorite shots in the animation. Diz and Xam brought the intensity of the scene to life through their character art and backgrounds, respectively.

Again, WHAT a dynamic shot. Our intent for this entire segment overall was to channel this desperate intensity into Alt!Murrit's movements and expressions, with very stark angling and foreshortening wherever we could fit some, and the final result is, I think, a frantic dash of sequence.

Hey, speaking of frantic dashes, let's take a look at all the places Alt!Murrit is running off to!

SEGMENT 6

TYSON: The Segment 6 boards were originally drafted by Lupa and refined by me! I tried to keep the Gaiaeon-Alt!Murrit sequence interesting by pitching it from a few different angles, since we'd already seen it play out in the comic before, as well as keep the temple shots engaging as the music wound down. Diz and I took over sketches, while character art and backgrounds were largely handled by Don and Xam respectively.

Tyson really knocked it out of the fucking park planning this little sequence here. He's strangely proficient at coming up with gorgeous compositions that involve egregious amounts of stuff blowing up and things being destroyed in general! Our debris guy for real.

One little detail I particularly enjoy is how you can see the Gaiaeon Goop slowly overtake the bigger portion of the screen as Alt!Murrit moves through the player planets. There was an effort to unify their VERY disparate color palettes, which was accomplished through the shared usage of that ominous cloudy sky and mostly leaning on pink/purple toning throughout all of them. We also thought it'd be a nice touch if, in their last moments, Alt!Murrit tried to evade Gaiaeon's gaze by hiding away in the planets belonging to the people closest to them. Alas...

...We already know how that story wraps up. In the end, the only place that can hold out for a little bit longer is one steeped in VOID. 

TYSON: Ciro absolutely rocked this background from the color rough I passed off to him.

And that perspective distortion! Wheeew. Love how that lighthouse turned out, it looks so freaky.

Oh no, the Goop approaches...

The composition here makes Alt!Murrit seem so tiny and vulnerable, literally standing in the middle of Gaiaeon's looming shadow. Things are not looking up! Unlike Alt!Murrit, who is in fact looking up.

AT HER IMPEDING DOOM!!!!

The moment has come. It's time for us to say our goodbyes as we sunset Alt!Murrit for good in an extremely unpleasant way. She was not with us for a very long time, but what a hell of a time it was. Godspeed, soldier.

TYSON: LOVE how Xam rendered Gary here, very haunting. I really had no idea how to tackle the burning/dissolve effect outside of just manually drawing something for it, so I'm extremely grateful for Victoria having figured out a way to work around it. Unfortunately, Gaiaeon's glitch effects had to be cut for the site release, but that's the price of HTML5.

Too massive for our puny site to handle.

And after all of THAT, we are safely back to the confines of the true timeline with a cheeky bit of shot-mirroring! The motion from here on out is considerably more understated, but the creative use of foreground objects and fun camera angles is going to help us with the comedown from such an adrenaline-filled segment. In the business we like to call this a DUTCH ANGLE.

Very crumbly backgrounds here. Oh, this is actually the first time we get to see the inside of one of the mysterious temples found on Laivan and Murrit's planets! They're specific to the Space/Time people, and we can assume they also share a similar interior structure. Though I doubt Laivan's temple follows the exact same Dune/Mad Max/post-apocalyptic tropicalia tech-nonsense aesthetic we can find on Murrit's. 

And the camera stabilizes! Time to find out what the entire point of this animation was about, with that suspiciously familiar shape there.

Oh uh, it's Mimesis! Looking directly at you through the Duodechaxiom and finally, for the first time ever, having some sort of direct contact with our players. Surely this bodes well for everyone.

TYSON: One of the other things that unfortunately had to be nixed due to time constraints was the Mimesis eye actually looking around for this shot here. It would have been super cool, but we had a bit too much on our plates already. You can still catch Lupa's rough animation of it in the boards, however!

Aaaaaand that is IT for the entirety of the Murrit: REW/FFD animation commentary! Sorry this took a bit longer than expected to put together, but hopefully the sheer amount of goodies will make up for it. It was very fun to revisit our past work, I think it's definitely the coolest looking thing we've made for the comic so far!

TYSON: I can't describe how much effort and time was put into it, from so many individuals, on all fronts. It means the world to have your support, along with reading this little behind the scenes we did for it. Thank you so much!

Well said. Thanks for reading, and we'll be catching you next time!

Stay cool, folks.

- Eddie, Austin, Tyson, Heather, Diz and Eph