Jay Eaton

Runaway to the Stars: Rough Pages 15

Just another morning on Dirtball.

Runaway to the Stars: Rough Pages 14

Very serious scifi lingo for timekeeping in space, here.

RttS: Talita's Apartment Layout

I should probably try and make this in Google Sketchup at some point. For now I'm fine adding clutter until no one can tell my perspective is wonky.

Runaway to the Stars: Rough Pages 13

The left page took forever for clutter reasons and the right page took forever for scripting reasons. This podcast is the closest I've come to straight exposition so far, but it will... have to do... a straight cleaning sequence is kinda too dull, and I might as well introduce the concept of slow space travel and wormhole portals early.

Pay no attention to the boxes of phones. They are c...

RttS: ASL Handshape Classifiers

Some exploration of how I'm going to need to adapt ASL handshapes for Talita's four fingered symmetrical hands... this was fun but really I need to just straight up go through the alphabet and numbers, since the vast majority of handshapes are referenced from those two systems. Also included, some tentative words for the aliens, which I need to do more research for. My vocabulary isn't that big...

Runaway to the Stars: Rough Pages 12

Gillie is very cool and intimidating (according to Talita) (and Gillie).

First scene with Talita's apartment as well! Drawing room clutter... my beloved, and also my mortal enemy. I'm sure I'm going to fret about the details even more in the final pages. She collects wind spinners.

Runaway to the Stars: Rough Pages 11

Two page spread. Shikaviil Port is somehow both huge and tiny at the same time. It's like living in a mostly-empty fish tank.

RttS: Shikaviil Port Town

I thiiiink this is the layout I'm going with for now?

Shikaviil Port is a co-species FIFO (fly-in-fly-out) work town located in a crater on a planet with a minimal atmosphere. The planet is technically called Shikaviil in Tiiliitian and Ixion-3 in English, but the English speaking residents usually call it Dirtball. It was originally a Tiiliitian avian outpost, but the recycling plant was...

Runaway to the Stars: Rough Pages 10

The avians flying in the background are wearing weighted vests for exercise purposes. Dirtball is only about 0.75 Earth gravity, so you have to exercise diligently to keep up your muscle and bone density. Unless you're a human or a bug ferret, in which case you're probably full of artificial genes that mitigate the negative effects of microgravity.

RttS: The Human Temps

I love designing human side characters. I feel like I'm smashing the randomize button in a RPG character creator.

Yasmin is a tailed spacer, from the same genepool as Shyam. Vítor is from the main human genepool, the ears are just one of the random artificial genetic traits floating around in there t...

Runaway to the Stars: Rough Pages 9

Office gossip... the perfect excuse to slip in reproductive biology lore 👁👁

I need to figure out a layout for the plant proper at some point, but I figured I'd block this intro first so I have a better idea of what I'll actually need it to be shaped like. Structurally it's just a bunch of building modules stuck together with air-lock doors to seal rooms in case of disaster depressur...

Stream Requests

A motley assortment of stream requests, feat. another cursed centaur, a  furry in suspenders, the return of slap fight guy, a lovable alien, a  My Little Pony, an orca that chases seals onto land, and an agreeable little creature. My next Patron requests stream will be on July 4th 12PM  EST.

Runaway to the Stars: Rough Pages 8

Idrisah!!! She's on the job, talking to the temps who don't speak Jovian English. Also Ohwitiil, on the job bullying a coworker about 65 times their size.

Avian Office Chairs

Most of the temp office workers at Ixion Recycling are avians, who despite being bird-ish have a weird problem when it comes to sitting. Rear leg perching isn't really an option for them if they want to sit and use their hands. Reclining chairs and futons are common fixtures in their households, but office work requires something more formal and ergonomic. Here the chair cushion sits underneath...

Runaway to the Stars: Rough Pages 7

Please do not attempt to operate a human forklift in the manner depicted. It's probably not a good idea.

Runaway to the Stars: Rough Pages 6

Heart-to-heart. You know how it feels to say goodbye to a coworker you were close to, knowing that your friendship will inevitably dissipate when there's no longer work and proximity holding it together? Yeah.

If the earpiece jack she's holding looks weird, it's because it's made for a ferret ear.

June Stream Requests

EDIT: Slept through an alarm, stream will start at 1:30. Sorry for the delay!

My monthly Twitch stream will take place at 12pm PST on Sunday, June 6th and run for no longer than 5 hours. That's next Sunday at time of posting.

If you asleptre in the Above and Beyond tier, please request now in the ...

Runaway to the Stars: Rough Pages 5

Calcery face reveal :]

I may change his name later, because the Cal/Mel/Tal nickname trifecta is starting to bug me.

Bug ferrets are kind of overwhelming, but that's their whole deal. They also have difficulty pronouncing consonants that require a labial seal, like m, v, p, and b. Despite their fantastic grasp of language, their mouth equipment is not very talented. Avians get away...

Runaway to the Stars: Rough Pages 4

FERRETS!! Deepest apologies to the bug ferret superfans, but they're not major characters in this book. But unless I am murdered or struck by lightning or etc, there will be more books.

RttS: Fancy Outfits

There's a scene upcoming where these three have an Eid party, which is a great excuse for me to dress them up. Fabric folds are both my favorite thing and my mortal enemy.

I've already talked a fair amount about clothes in RttS, if you're curious: https://jayrockin.tumblr.com/post/167442650948/

t...

Runaway to the Stars: Rough Pages 3

Mel looks like a nice PTA mom with a beard... they're the administrator for the industrial section of Ixion recycling plant, though they mostly oversee the indoors portion. A lot of the plant's equipment is automated, so Mel spends most of their day diagnosing busted automated systems and siccing the indoors mechanic crew on them. Talita is queen of the junkyard now that Calcery has stepped dow...

RttS: Ixion Admin Team

They do the paperwork!

Idrisah's device here essentially makes up for the human handicap of being unable to speak two tones at once, a common feature of avian languages. It has a couple different modes, including direct translation (speak English, avian language and captions come out), stenography (attach keyboard device, type abbreviated avian language to speak it), and harmonic speech (...

Runaway to the Stars: Rough Pages 2

Full face reveal! You guys already know what she looks like though. Spoilers much? :/

Gonna be trying to do 6 rough pages a week minimum, for about 200 rough pages by December 31st. Contractually then, I'll probably have to stop sharing around end of July. That is, if I stick closely to my schedule... we'll see how that goes. I'm not great at managing my production rhythm (or my circadian...

RttS Cast Proportions

I was going nuts doing rough pages and trying to keep Talita's proportions consistent to the human characters so I made a reference, featuring some side characters who haven't showed up yet. The only reason Talita fits in the average human building is because she can duck lower than the average human doorframe.

Also, a scale reference for the Runaway ship (art by 2021-05-21 11:05:39 +0000 UTC View Post

Build-a-Pixie

EDIT: This still needs comments for 7 and 9, clothes and an abdomen!

It's time once again to build a creature, this time a pixie! That is, the kind of pixie I like: very buggy! The comments get to decide what parts this beast will have, in order of the numbered list. I just got a new set of watercolors I'm very excited to use, so give me some bright colors to work with >:D

These ...

Terranaut: Rough Pages 41

ONE HUNDRED PAGES. Unfortunately, I now have to declare a 3 month hiatus, since I'm heading into a deadline for the RttS script. So, I hope you enjoy the plane based cliffhanger.

Terranaut: Rough Pages 40

Oh yeah, planes have fuel in them.

The outside bed kind of turned into a dropped plot point, which is something I want to fix during the editing stage after I finish these rough pages. 

Stay tuned, I'm gonna make it to 100 pages tonight even if it kills me.

Terranaut: Rough Pages 39

I keep getting trapped by the feeling I need to make these rough pages more polished, forgetting that, they are supposed to be ROUGH pages... anyways here's like the emotional semi-climax or something of the book

AIRSLED: The whole PDF

For ease of reading, here's the whole PDF for this short story about pre-spaceage avians and a livestock-drawn cargo aircraft. No more scrolling back through the tag trying to read it all! Hope you enjoy!

RttS: Human History Lore

I've avoided developing deeplore for humanity's history, both because I don't feel terribly qualified to divine the fate of current political tensions and because of the overwhelming sense of dread it gives me to speculate about the future of the human race... but, unfortunately it is necessary for telling the tale. Runaway to the Stars is an alternate history with a recent divergence ...