Richard Rudge

"I'm your biggest fan, I'll follow you until you love me"

Lady Gaga - Paparazzi, portrait by Richard Rudge.

Take a walk with me down a mysterious path, won't you?

It’s been awhile since GALACTIC SCRAP COLLECTOR ended, a webcomic that I spent almost two years writing and drawing, and while I’m debating the route to go with a physical printing of it, I have to go forward to the future. So with that being said...

New project announcement! (I’m imagining a lot of air horns and crowds going wild right about now)

WAYFARER is a science fiction short story series focusing on Abigail Quinn as she lives through her cybernetically enhanced 5000 years of life. With a focus on technology, society, and and finding a purpose in life when given such freedom. The series will approach a large range of topics, with the series becoming more science fiction the further into the future Abigail lives.

Here’s a little about Abigail and WAYFARER as a whole:

Abigail Quinn had worked hard to achieve her dream of becoming an astronaut. She was fitted with a cybernetic augmentation that would extend her life to survive the journey. She would travel further than any human would have travelled in space at that time.

Her plans changed however, when that was taken away from her.

Now she has 5000 years to see the world, the universe even, to reclaim what she lost and so much more.

Abigail is curious, empathetic, and always striving to go forward. Always looking for adventure, fighting injustice and simply to help those in need. She lives by a mantra that she doesn’t know everything but she can always learn more.

Abigail is our eyes into the future, seeing the world and the universe change as she stays the same, seeing society rise and fall many times over.

Wayfarer is thoughtful science fiction, contemplating what it means to be human in an increasingly artificial world, how the universe will open up to humanity in the next 5000 years, and what happens when the limitation of lifespan is taken away.

Wayfarer is a journey 5000 years into the future through the eyes of one person, one short story at a time.

Abigail Quinn appeared in final third of GSC, Abigail is a character I’ve had developing in my head for a while. And with my new ongoing project WAYFARER, I’ve finally found a place that fits her well.Wayfarer is a digital and physical comics project, with Wayfarer: Closure being the first printed issue being released May 15 2017. With webcomic short stories beginning to be published online shortly after.

Wayfarer: Closure follows Abigail as she goes on a roadtrip across a future America to see a location of historic importance. Seeing the sites of the Nevada desert, chatting about self driving  with truck driver Teddy along the way.

Wayfarer: Closure was written and drawn by Richard Rudge (me), with interior colours from Riley Jones.

Today I posted the final page of GALACTIC SCRAP COLLECTOR, a science fiction tale that follows a working class family trying to survive underneath the shadow of galaxy spanning corporations. Which you can read yourself on tapastic here. From some rough calculations, it’s been about two years since I started, and an interesting ride all told.

My original intention for GSC was to follow Keira and her family as they did their job, lived their life, but in this bizarre and otherworldly setting, picture a kid riding with their dad as they do plumbing or maintenance work. But it morphed into something a little bigger. The context of the state of their society formed around them, the wild west of factions and corporations doing whatever they wanted in space, free of any kind of regulation. The same kind of freedom that let’s Keira and family survive day to day, but let’s larger forces dictate what happens on a galactic scale. It became a bigger adventure, where I could explore a topic just a little bit, Keira and her family being focal point, taken along for the ride.

Here’s some early sketches of Keira I dug out from the vault ( a fancy term for a folder on my computer ) The biggest difference is I removed her goggles as her character and job became a bit more defined, this original sketches are more of a post apocalyptic survivor type character. She became a little less raggidy.

GSC also started out in black and white, and a silly format, which I only changed to a standard comic format for the third (final) chapter. Which I think says a lot about my confidence in my own work since beginning the project. But it also brings a problem.

Here's some early work on colouring the first two chapters. 

This blog post is called the END, but I want GSC to have a lasting permanence, and to do that I feel the first couple chapters need editing so they have some coherency with the later chapters. While not a total revamp, I’ll be do a lot of tweaking adjusting, adding a new panel here and there and absolutely adding colour to those first chapters. I’m proud of what I’ve made but can’t help see all the things I need to improve on.

After that It’s thinking about a physical copy and getting it on comixology and things like that, getting it to a wider audience than the fine folks who have been reading GSC so far. I’ll be doing editing updates on here as I go and try to give a rough timetable of when GSC will *actually* be finished.

GALACTIC SCRAP COLLECTOR

THE END

GALACTIC SCRAP COLLECTOR

When will I see you again?

GALACTIC SCRAP COLLECTOR

A Place to Run Free

GALACTIC SCRAP COLLECTOR

Hey! You're Still Alive Aren't You?

GALACTIC SCRAP COLLECTOR

Employee of the Month

GALACTIC SCRAP COLLECTOR

At Least he brought a Gift

“Alt night at your local”

Galactic Scrap Collector

A Taste of Fresh Air.