Aww man, imagine how awesome it would look if he was in a pitch black room! Just enough red light to illuminate part of his (probably pissed off) face looking at you. I am now praying that is going to be a dramatic panel later in the comic <3
In other news, I totally giggled at his nose sticking out over the bed. There is something very old-cartoon-villain style about his pose in the last panel, I love it.
Oo, that would be fantastic! I can see it right now. Not even his entire face visible… only just enough dimly illuminated parts to see, as you said, that he is incredibly pissed.
I, too, pray to the great goddess Beck that this day shall come!
I have a fetish for folded hands!!! Or at least I have it since I read this awesome page!
And also for scary glowing red eyes and big noses apparently! x)
A lovely page, adore the panel transitions, poses, angles, details, and coloring. I’m delighted it wasn’t updated yesterday, because it made for a great birthday surprise! ;) Thanks for being awesome, Ms. Beckey.
Schtein, your creepiness just makes you more lovable! Like an angry, ex-drunkard, socially-inept teddy-bear! :D
…this just hit me. Does Schtein perceive grayscale based on the full visible spectrum, or just one component colour (small range of wavelengths) or what? Since his eyes glow red, I am sort of thinking that he perceives only the red spectrum, so pure blue and green would look black to him…
If his eyes reflected the red wavelengths, then he would see all colours *except* red. But these artificial eyes do not reflect, the pupils glow by themselves. Built-in LEDs?
Makes me wonder how the cybereyes work; probably not like human eyes, with light rays passing through the pupil and the eyeball onto the retina, but more like the compound eyes of an insect, with thousands of photoreceptors, tiny sensor cells embedded into the eyeball of the cybereye and below that a layer of processors that collect the data and do a preliminary processing before they send it on to the electronic/biological interface connected to the optical nerve.
That way Schtein would not be blinded by his own glowy eyes and it explains why the pupils do not visibly shrink or dilate. Maybe the red ring is for perceiving ultraviolet or polarized light, which Schtein hasn’t noticed because so far he#s mostly been underground with artificial light. Or it’s a built-in infrared illumination for seeing in the dark. (But if the eyes were able to see in the infrared wavelength, thermo-optics, Schtein would have surely noticed! Eh, maybe he wasn’t told how to switch it on.)
Since these eyes are a prototype, if I remember correctly, I wonder if these eyes were ever meant for humans in the first place? Perhaps they had been developed for Terminator-like robot drones, and the medics thought, ‘What the heck, that’s the best we have, let’s stick them into this guy and see what happens.’
Real cybernetic eyes work like cameras. They have CCDs that capture light in three distinct wavelength ranges (red, green, blue), then process the results into a form the brain can understand.
I’d imagine his eyes are similar, but perhaps with just one CCD (or multiple of the same type), capturing just a small range of light. You’re right though, the eyes, regardless of why they glow, probably do not look for red light, though for a different reason – the red glow would produce a lot of noise if the CCDs are for red light. More likely, they look for blue, green, or some other range of colours that’s not near red.
But since Schtein hasn’t complained about faces looking weird (if he saw just blue/green/blue-green stuff, then most faces would look quite dark to him in comparison to other things he was used to seeing as the same value as skin). So, I guess he does have CCDs for all the colours and sees a “realistic” (think B&W photo) kind of RGB, not filtered. There goes my awesome theory, lawl.
You guys are nuts in a way that I love. I will be honest, I’ve never put this much thought into how his eyes work beyond what they’re made of, and how they’re powered. It’s just not that important to the plot HOW they work (and also I just don’t know enough about the subject anyway).
But this was an awesome little thread to read, nonetheless.
Red looks darker in black and white to us because it has less energy than the other wavelengths we perceive, so when the intensity of light is turned down, red is the first to drop below our perception threshold. It’s entirely possible that his eyes are more in tune to red than human eyes ;D
In most cameras, there are half as many red and blue sensors as there are green filters to simulate how our eyes perceive more green rather than the higher (blue) and lower (red) energies. I wouldn’t discount his eyes being totally different from that. Heck, I think it’d be really cool. Maybe he sees everything in IR/NIR (check out infra-red filter photography).
This is the coolest page to read late at night with all the lights off. Fantastic work. Something with his glowy eyes would make a marvelous wallpaper…
MONITOR COLORS aren’t what you think they should be, eh?
There are online tools to help you calibrate your monitor so it displays the proper colors. I did a quick search and came up with some links that looked good:
It’s not a question of calibration. I do calibrate my monitor quite often to make sure the levels are all correct. It’s that it’s flickerig back and forth between red and blue. Especially while I type. I have to kind of physically shake the monitor to get it back to normal. I just need a new monitor. It’s a very old. It has some burn in, even.
You can find a perfectly good CRT monitor at garage sales for $5 or less! Now’s the time of year for them, too!
Also check out businesses that are updating their equipment. When my library renovated, it auctioned off its monitors, and I got an entire lot of 19 fully functional CRT’s for $2. That’s $2 for all 19, not $2 each.
Someone with your talent deserves a properly functioning monitor! It’s vital to your beautiful work!!
A while back I was about to look for possible updates of this comic at my institute, where they have decent, top brand equipment, compared to my cheap laptop.
It was a gasp moment, I thought this comic was well drawn, but damn, how page 43 looked gorgeous. Like an actual sunset, how the lights are already on, but the reddish sun is still is a little brighter. None of this effect shows on my regular monitor.
I began reading this comic two days ago, and so far I have reread both chapters more than two times each… Everything about this comic is great, the way you build your characters, the way you make the art attractive whether it’s in color or not… Just EVERYTHING!! I have read a TON of webcomics out there, and I have to say this is my favorite by a long shot. Keep up the amazing work! *long comment FTW*
I’m having bad luck finding the other reference, which makes me sad, but I would like to mention how much the character designs have solidified since chapter one. =)
I know I’ve been a bit late a lot lately. Real life keeps throwing shit at me. Everything crappy seems to happen in a row. (except the cat, the cat is awesome).
There is going to be a comic this week, it’s just a bit late.
The cat’s done holding me hostage, I think, since there are now more people here to watch it.
oh god his eyes gave me a shock too. Weirdly my next thought was it would popular at a rave.
That would be an awesome piece of fanart.
/plots
Okay, this made me crack up and laugh out so loudly my fiancé had to ask what was up. This is brilliant, and now makes me question whether the good Dr Schtein will ever, ever have sex.
And whether he could use them as laser pointers to play with marcus…
I dunno, but I bet he’s probably pretty irritating in theatres now! He can’t help it. :(
Aww man, imagine how awesome it would look if he was in a pitch black room! Just enough red light to illuminate part of his (probably pissed off) face looking at you. I am now praying that is going to be a dramatic panel later in the comic <3
In other news, I totally giggled at his nose sticking out over the bed. There is something very old-cartoon-villain style about his pose in the last panel, I love it.
He looks like a gargoyle! ;-) The kind that sits on medieval churches and stares down balefully. Not the cartoon kind that flies around.
Oo, that would be fantastic! I can see it right now. Not even his entire face visible… only just enough dimly illuminated parts to see, as you said, that he is incredibly pissed.
I, too, pray to the great goddess Beck that this day shall come!
I notice that he’s not wearing his gloves. Is that on purpose or did you forget them :p
He doesn’t wear them while he’s sleeping. That would be really gross.
Ah, simple subtle humor, nothing better..well except dry humor, I love that sarcastic intellectual stuff.
Beautiful job with the lighting, including the red light from Schtein’s eyes on his pillow.
I have a fetish for folded hands!!! Or at least I have it since I read this awesome page!
And also for scary glowing red eyes and big noses apparently! x)
Hahah, awesome. This comment is going to look really weird once my update tweet disappears off the sidebar. :D
BUILT IN LAZER POINTS, FUCK YES!
But I seriously cracked up at this page, enough so that people were giving me freaky looks. <3
Heh, at least he has some sort of intimidation factor on his side.
the glowy-eyes effect is nice! (scary nice)
Kilroy was here
heh heh I was thinking that the whole time I was drawing it. A really angry, spooky kilroy, anyway.
…He reminds me of ceiling cat.
Gotta say, I love this comic.
FOMG.
When I read your comment.
I stopped.
And made this:
http://cheezburger.com/View/3741655552
Oh my God. I love you. This made my night.
AHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Made my night.
fffuuu Schtein will never need a flashlight again
*night light I mean XP
So, Beckey, do you believe in the “big nose, big…” theory for Schtein?
Hahah what. Probably not!
WHOA. Does this mean that in the dark you can see Schtein’s eyes through his eyelids? That would be awesome if you could.
A lovely page, adore the panel transitions, poses, angles, details, and coloring. I’m delighted it wasn’t updated yesterday, because it made for a great birthday surprise! ;) Thanks for being awesome, Ms. Beckey.
Schtein, your creepiness just makes you more lovable! Like an angry, ex-drunkard, socially-inept teddy-bear! :D
…this just hit me. Does Schtein perceive grayscale based on the full visible spectrum, or just one component colour (small range of wavelengths) or what? Since his eyes glow red, I am sort of thinking that he perceives only the red spectrum, so pure blue and green would look black to him…
Well that’d explain the shading style of the comic, actually.
If his eyes reflected the red wavelengths, then he would see all colours *except* red. But these artificial eyes do not reflect, the pupils glow by themselves. Built-in LEDs?
Makes me wonder how the cybereyes work; probably not like human eyes, with light rays passing through the pupil and the eyeball onto the retina, but more like the compound eyes of an insect, with thousands of photoreceptors, tiny sensor cells embedded into the eyeball of the cybereye and below that a layer of processors that collect the data and do a preliminary processing before they send it on to the electronic/biological interface connected to the optical nerve.
That way Schtein would not be blinded by his own glowy eyes and it explains why the pupils do not visibly shrink or dilate. Maybe the red ring is for perceiving ultraviolet or polarized light, which Schtein hasn’t noticed because so far he#s mostly been underground with artificial light. Or it’s a built-in infrared illumination for seeing in the dark. (But if the eyes were able to see in the infrared wavelength, thermo-optics, Schtein would have surely noticed! Eh, maybe he wasn’t told how to switch it on.)
Since these eyes are a prototype, if I remember correctly, I wonder if these eyes were ever meant for humans in the first place? Perhaps they had been developed for Terminator-like robot drones, and the medics thought, ‘What the heck, that’s the best we have, let’s stick them into this guy and see what happens.’
Real cybernetic eyes work like cameras. They have CCDs that capture light in three distinct wavelength ranges (red, green, blue), then process the results into a form the brain can understand.
I’d imagine his eyes are similar, but perhaps with just one CCD (or multiple of the same type), capturing just a small range of light. You’re right though, the eyes, regardless of why they glow, probably do not look for red light, though for a different reason – the red glow would produce a lot of noise if the CCDs are for red light. More likely, they look for blue, green, or some other range of colours that’s not near red.
But since Schtein hasn’t complained about faces looking weird (if he saw just blue/green/blue-green stuff, then most faces would look quite dark to him in comparison to other things he was used to seeing as the same value as skin). So, I guess he does have CCDs for all the colours and sees a “realistic” (think B&W photo) kind of RGB, not filtered. There goes my awesome theory, lawl.
You guys are nuts in a way that I love. I will be honest, I’ve never put this much thought into how his eyes work beyond what they’re made of, and how they’re powered. It’s just not that important to the plot HOW they work (and also I just don’t know enough about the subject anyway).
But this was an awesome little thread to read, nonetheless.
I know, I know. ;-) The eyes work by the power of Coolness. I’m fine with that. It’s just that I’m a biologist and I love to speculate.
he will only get laied by the fetish chicks now. No one would want to see that while having sex.
but i guess he could do it doggie style. . .
You mean the sort of fetish chicks that star in the sort of fetish porn Dr. Schtein watches?
This page is beautiful. I don’t really know what else to add to it, it is everything a comic should be.
Honestly, if my jail partner had glow in the dark eyes, I’d be happier. Yaaay, fear of the dark.
Haha! Love the last panel, great composition and lighting! :D
folded hands! My oddly specific prayers have been answered.
So… glowing eyes, does this mean Schtein has perfect night vision (literally able to see in the dark) since the source of light is in his eyeballs?
And man I love how freaked Jayjay looks in that last panel. :D
Your coloring gets better and better, I do say. BRAVA MY DEAR, BRAVA.
Jayjay’s reaction cracks me up. and now Schtein is like Zombie from Hanna is not a boy’s name! I wonder if he could read by them too?
OMG you’re right!
Naw, I don’t think they’re that bright. Plus he probably can’t see red light like that. Red looks pretty dark in black and white.
Red looks darker in black and white to us because it has less energy than the other wavelengths we perceive, so when the intensity of light is turned down, red is the first to drop below our perception threshold. It’s entirely possible that his eyes are more in tune to red than human eyes ;D
In most cameras, there are half as many red and blue sensors as there are green filters to simulate how our eyes perceive more green rather than the higher (blue) and lower (red) energies. I wouldn’t discount his eyes being totally different from that. Heck, I think it’d be really cool. Maybe he sees everything in IR/NIR (check out infra-red filter photography).
This is the coolest page to read late at night with all the lights off. Fantastic work. Something with his glowy eyes would make a marvelous wallpaper…
This is wicked. That sort of expression in the last panel would go nicely as a ‘I saw what you did there’ tag.
aaack! love those glowing eyes! can they see in the dark or something??
That hairy arm looks like my arm.
MONITOR COLORS aren’t what you think they should be, eh?
There are online tools to help you calibrate your monitor so it displays the proper colors. I did a quick search and came up with some links that looked good:
http://www.wikihow.com/Calibrate-Your-Monitor
http://www.momentskept.com/MonitorCalibration.htm – Scroll down for light-dark images that tell you at a glance how far off your monitor is.
http://www.displaycalibration.com/
http://epaperpress.com/monitorcal/index.html
Hope to hear if this works for you!
It’s not a question of calibration. I do calibrate my monitor quite often to make sure the levels are all correct. It’s that it’s flickerig back and forth between red and blue. Especially while I type. I have to kind of physically shake the monitor to get it back to normal. I just need a new monitor. It’s a very old. It has some burn in, even.
You can find a perfectly good CRT monitor at garage sales for $5 or less! Now’s the time of year for them, too!
Also check out businesses that are updating their equipment. When my library renovated, it auctioned off its monitors, and I got an entire lot of 19 fully functional CRT’s for $2. That’s $2 for all 19, not $2 each.
Someone with your talent deserves a properly functioning monitor! It’s vital to your beautiful work!!
A while back I was about to look for possible updates of this comic at my institute, where they have decent, top brand equipment, compared to my cheap laptop.
It was a gasp moment, I thought this comic was well drawn, but damn, how page 43 looked gorgeous. Like an actual sunset, how the lights are already on, but the reddish sun is still is a little brighter. None of this effect shows on my regular monitor.
I love this! Especially that last panel.
Oooh, awesome! :) The colors in this one are great. The last panel would make a perfect desktop image!
the eyes i must have them
I am expecting my new favorite character to show up again :P
by which I mean, of course, the hairiest arm.
I began reading this comic two days ago, and so far I have reread both chapters more than two times each… Everything about this comic is great, the way you build your characters, the way you make the art attractive whether it’s in color or not… Just EVERYTHING!! I have read a TON of webcomics out there, and I have to say this is my favorite by a long shot. Keep up the amazing work! *long comment FTW*
Wow, thank you very much. :D
Don’t sound so surprised! A lot of us feel this way!
Hairest arm is hairest.
This is officially my favorite page, of any comic, ever.
Also, intentional Killroy reference?
hahah one of two, yes. I forget where the other was, somewhere back in chapter one.
I’m having bad luck finding the other reference, which makes me sad, but I would like to mention how much the character designs have solidified since chapter one. =)
http://www.stringtheorycomic.com/comics/pagethirtyone/ ahh here it is, last panel, all the way on the right.
No comic this week, the new archnemesis of people waiting String Theory updates, Colonel Rutherford Q. Buttons is holding the artist as his hostage.
I know I’ve been a bit late a lot lately. Real life keeps throwing shit at me. Everything crappy seems to happen in a row. (except the cat, the cat is awesome).
There is going to be a comic this week, it’s just a bit late.
The cat’s done holding me hostage, I think, since there are now more people here to watch it.
Ok i like the effect, but having glowing eyes would hinder being able to see. It’d be like having a constant flashlight in your face. /nitpick
hahah, well, you better tell that to every cartoon/movie that’s ever had robot glowy eyes. :D
I want eyes like those. See in the dark but i wonder what powers them.
Oh fuck, they glow XD
Oh,wow,took me forever to actually read the comments and see his eyes were glowing!! That just makes me love ’em even more xD