Comic Sketches: February 2020

Post-EOA2 is over now! Now we're into Intermission 2 Side 1! Not a troll to be seen. Just a bunch of nostalgia and homages for miles and miles.

For clarification, I don't really consider a "side" to be equivalent to that of an "act". It's more like a section of the story that's needed in order to fully comprehend another section of a story. So I2S1 will be needed to fully understand what we learn in I2S2. It's less that it's moving the story forward so to speak and more providing context for the other "side". Regardless, as was promised, we are having fun.

But these sketches are less fun, as they feature those pesky trolls who ruin everything they touch. We cannot escape them. We can only hope to live with them. Let's just get this over with.

A lot of people asked what exactly happened to Lefty, and if she is actually dead. Well, she certainly isn't ALIVE that's for sure. She essentially is returned from whence  she came, and dissolves into Doom essence. I'm not going to name names but it's pretty clear who she got all that from.

This unlocks Edolon's ALCHEMIC POTENTIAL, as he is also Doom player. There are questions to be gleaned from this though! Why did it happen so quickly for Edolon when we know from hit game Snowbound Blood that becoming an alchemist is a pretty strenuous process? What does this mean for other Doom players if tossing Lefty in did something to the balance of essence? The hell was actually going on between Serpaz, Lefty and the cult before this point? These questions have answers! But not ones that matter right now.

Finally we get to meet someone who has been hinted about both in and outside of the comic for a while. Seinru makes their big comic debut, doing the thing that they do best: make it sound like they are in the right and that you're letting them down by not doing what they want. 

This puts a lot of the antagonism Edolon displays earlier in this act into context, without really giving him a justified out of responsibility. Still, it seems he wasn't very interested in playing the role that he's currently in during this flashback. But the look he gives earlier when reaching his true power certainly seems to imply otherwise. What is the truth?

These outfits were designed by Heather. They are garbs specifically used by the Harbingers for special occasions. Like making sacrifices to open rifts of unreality, or deciding to level strongholds in their favor. I'd love to see what their Casual Friday's are like. You KNOW that Weird Al is all about improving his soul eaten fans approval ratings. 

This is basically the casual Harbinger outfit, bearing the wonderful Dr. Screwball Jones mascot head and a long, classic black set of robes. This is partially due to use wanting to hide the Necron reveal, as he's undercover, but it will also do wonders for us later. As now we don't have to design an unruly amount of faces and horns for every single cultist.

The inclusion of the 5 times E3 Award Winning Game, Snowbound Blood's cast in the comic was in play from the start. By this point we had hoped to have the game finished by now but an expanding scope along with production issues ended up not allowing us to have that luxury. I think it still works in our favor though in a way? It still creates intrigue for where both stories are headed towards in the future, and why exactly it's so important that it is effectively mandatory.

Arch Nemesis' film format is a direct parallel to White Noise's television format. It's a mix of a standard film projector and an RGB videotape projector. Videotapes in VE are another very important visual motif, and there's been quite a bit of discussion about how it differs from the other settings this cosmic game of telephone has to offer. I don't want to toss my hand into that ring just yet, but I think it's safe to say that this comic has quite the love for timepieces.

Where are the sketches for the flash? Where are the other panels from I2S1? Well, Xam is an absolute fucking monster on the page and did pretty much all of it without ANY sketching. So we won't have too much to offer for I2S1, and we're going to have to compensate with something else in the upcoming month. 

We're considering showing the sent commands we thought to use but opted out of and describing what we would have done in those panels? But if you guys have any alternate suggestions, feel free to comment on this post or make a suggestion in #patron-chat on the Discord!

We do have these original, more gritty versions of SS and DD's character splash screens though: 

These are slightly more in line with what the flash is based around, which is '[S] MIDNIGHT CREW: ACT 1031' from that one alternate probability where the Dead Shufflers are mobsters. It was edited to fit more with the vaporwave/citypop visual influences we decided to run with, in order to fit with VE's hauntological themes.

We're out of time on this post, so come back at the end of next month and see what we have in store then! We'll be passed the 3/22 threshold and who KNOWS how that's going to go at this point! I sure as hell don't!

Make sure your property values are in check out there!

- Austin