In progress

Perception — comic production workspace

A prestige crime-noir graphic novel (WIP) and the local Cover · Book · Ship workspace that produces it — process and tooling, not a finished comic product.

Project goal

Perception is a two-volume prestige crime-noir graphic novel set in the Vegas underground. Part One follows fallen operative Carl Richards in club Nirvana — grief, attraction, and crime pressure that turn glitter into a trap. The theme is perception: appearance vs truth — who Carl was, who others seem to be, and what the nightlife hides.

This portfolio page shows the production system for that book (cover hub, cast locks, issue ladder, ship reader) while the story is still in progress.

Vol 01 front cover (locked) — the book this workspace is built to finish.

Workspace surfaces

Screenshots from the local estate. Interview demos only — not public CTAs.

Cover hub phase ladder and gate panel on local MAMP — **Cover hub (A–G)** — phase ladder and owner gates for volume fronts.

Perception cast grid from locked Modes character profiles — **Cast** — locked character refs used before panel gens (Book stage prep).

Covers index listing Perception volume cover stages — **Covers index** — volume cover entry points; stages live on the hub, not in the reader.

Bare Perception reader home shell on local MAMP — **Ship · reader shell** — bare for now; lettered pages are not the deliverable yet.

Local Sites hub listing portfolio and projects — **Local Sites hub** — Sites · Projects · Preview workspace beside MAMP comic paths.

Problem

Multi-site web work and a WIP graphic novel share one machine. Without a shared local estate, stages drift, QA is ad hoc, and recruiters only see unfinished pages — not the delivery craft behind them.

Approach

Build a MAMP workspace first (Sites · Projects · Preview · gates), then run Cover · Book · Ship for Perception with the same verify/acceptance/review habits used on MSR programme sites. Ship finished interiors later.

Decisions (skills on show)

MAMP for PHP/WP · Node for tooling. Sites and comic paths stay on Apache; Projects, Preview, and Storage run as owner-owned Node apps beside the docroot — not one tangled stack.
Making catalog ≠ product sites. Projects lists WIP books and demos; portfolio and programme sites stay under sites/ so recruiters never confuse a local hub with a public product.
Machine-checkable “done”. edit:verify, acceptance needles, and review:site gate UI changes the same way MSR themes do — screenshots alone are not enough.
No public localhost CTAs. Cover hub and cast live on this machine for interview demos; the portfolio CTA is this write-up, not a broken 127.0.0.1 link.

Programme

Cover (A–G)

Volume fronts walk a phase ladder on the cover hub: summary → concepts → illustration contract → art plate → font/colour compose → shelf test → typed final. Owner locks at each gate keep approvals explicit (hub UI + Node APIs).
Book (cast · issue / page ladder)

Before panels: locked cast and art-style refs (see Cast screenshot). Then an issue and page ladder — flow review → layout → panel batches — under the same production law as covers. This case study shows that process; it does not present unfinished interiors as the product.
Ship (digital)

Lettering → page pack → in-project HTML reader on MAMP (from Projects — not a public site). Cover stage pages stay on the hub; they are not loaded into the reader. The reader shell is bare for now while Ship is not the active stage.

Local workspace — Sites · Projects · Preview

MAMP serves Sites and comic paths; Projects catalogs making work; Preview runs device/QA checks. PHP↔Node tooling plus edit:verify, acceptance needles, and review:site keep demos recruiter-proof while the book is unfinished.

Status

In progress. Programme tooling and the local workspace are the deliverable here. Finished interiors and a public reader ship wait until the book is ready.

Live paths on 127.0.0.1:8888 (cover hub, cast, reader, Sites) are for interview demos on this machine only — not the public CTA.