TCM April 2010

TCM: What can you tell us about Tamerlane since we last spoke two years ago?

GD: Well, not much has happened in the world of Tamerlane since we last spoke: I agreed to help work on the Farragut Animated Adventures and it became a much larger project than I expected pleasantly so- But that diverted me from the world of Julie Cochrane for a bit. However, as Farragut approaches completion, so does The Champion. I'm right now working on the final few pages of drawing. Then it's just a matter of putting in my ziptones, and wrapping up the pages. I am hoping (Fingers crossed!) that I'll be ready to release the completed episode by mid-May at the very latest.

TCM: At the end of issue 2 of The Champion, the Tamerlane is in a bad way, is this is the end the Destroyer Tamerlane, or will they get out in one piece?

GD: Perhaps not in one piece, per se, certainly not unscathed or unchanged. Just like any good Starfleet captain, Julie will pull her ship through. The Little T is a tough old girl!

TCM: Has the time, this project takes up changed from the around 100 hours you stated in our last conversation?

GD: Yes. There are some surprises in store for the last issue of The Champion that required some additional work. I decided to use a 3D program to help with the one thing I dread: Backgrounds. I can do them, but I don't enjoy doing them, and they take way too long for me to do. So now I let the computer do the backgrounds. But this does mean I had to stop, build all the sets of the Tamerlane in 3D, and then restart. Because I was going to be replacing the handdrawn backgrounds in favor of rendered ones, though, I felt compelled to model them myself, so it is still all my work. It was very time consuming, but very worth it. It's also a one-time thing, the models are all built now so for the next episode, they will be ready.