Story Start (nsfw!)
Flames | Chapter Start
Flames | Page 43
Flames | Page 45

Check out a rejected page layout, with extra shots here!

The reference to the shops here was important to me largely because it's one of the last reference to some cut content and ties to two other points in the story. Originally there were more pages prior to this pool sequence, detailing more miscellaneous settings info as Yeltsin chats with Dr. Gravitas during an elevator ride. I got up to 4 planned pages and a centerpiece gag before I started to realize that plus a trip to the shops to buy the socks/phone-holster would add a lot of time to development and shots. Ultimately, I deemed it too minor and cut it. There was one particular key point it was intended to hit on, but that has been incorporated into a later sequence, with one or two shots for the atrium that was going to feature more prominently in those.

Left unexplained as yet is why Yeltsin has a phone when he was given a tablet. Suffice it to say, the tablet is just a form-factor accessory the phone plugs into. Gravitas was going to show him that. Look carefully and you might see the phone embedded in Rederick's tablet sometime!

These three shots also turned out to be some of the longest render times so far. Especially that third one. The waterfall isn't the best-looking and is incredibly expensive, but it's the best I've managed to come up with for that thing unfortunately. That 3rd frame was 16 hours and a discarded 2nd version took 24 hours.