Myst Comic Notes #2: Star Fissure

Warning: Major Nerdiness Ahead

If you know Myst, the “star fissure” is a big motif in the The Book of Atrus and the games.

So in the comic, I’m not showing the cleft full of stars scene until later. But I did want to hint at it. So when I was thumbnailing Chapter 3, I came up with the following:

At the end of the rain scene on page 45, we see the cleft from above. Then in the next panel on page 46, we see a similar sized panel but with the camera looking up, at the stars. In my mind, seeing the two panels in succession composites them into an image of a star fissure.

Then I realized that, when printed, page 45 are not next to each other, but front and back of the same sheet. So I made sure that the cleft panel and the star panel overlapped each other.

I imagined that if you then held up the cleft panel to the light, you could see the stars from the star panel shining through. And it would look like the cleft was full of stars. I was totally nerding out.

I used photoshop and an overlay layer to simulate what it might look like (see photos).

Now that I finally got the [link] copy I printed using MagCloud, I could see how it actually looked. I took a picture holding the book right up to a lightbulb. The effect is not mindblowing, but I think it’s still pretty cool. :)