Comic Report #102.1 - Lighting in a Bottle

Hello!  This week I focused heavily on this comic page above other obligations because I really want to get it posted on Pride month, and I expect I should have it finished some time this weekend.  Since this was a painting heavy week I get to post a bit about painting  today, I have some gamedev stuff to share but I'd like to get back to finishing this comic as soon as possible, so I'm gonna save the gamedev writeup for next week so it's a bit more substantial.  

Since time passed in the comic that means it's night time, and that means I get to paint really nice outdoor night scenes for a bit.  I honestly like painting night scenes more than day scenes, reason being I get to make highlights pop so much more when the contextual local color is a darker shade of grey.  What that means is when I'm painting my figures or my primary details the highlights on them stand out a lot more from the background and appear brighter, which makes the style of art I do just look nicer.

One of the other things about night painting is that you get to play with light sources a lot more.  Because there's not as much ambient light, all those highlights on subjects that pop in the dark come from a few strong sources.  The first panel of this page is a good example of that- the lighting in the street comes from one of the floodlights behind the Leungs.  Not only does the spotlight cut an interesting shape in the background but the way it hits the characters means I can model it around them and really contour their depth and form.  That's really the fun of it, is the 3D modeling with limited, strong light sources.  In the coming pages I'll get to do a lot more of that too, but it's probably gonna take me this page or so to warm up to getting it just right.

Big Kiss is underway so I am gonna just get back to it and get it drawn up as quick as I can.  Again, I'll be aiming to have this page posted this weekend, and then I'll have some more gamedev work to share next week.  I've got some big gamedev juice in the tank so once I finish up the comic I'll be rounding that out a bit more for a nice juicy update next Friday.  Thank you always for your kind and patient support of this project!  I will be back shortly with a textless update for you.