Comic Report #100.1 - Pane-staking Work

Hello again!  This week I managed to get the inking phase finished and started painting the next page of the comic.  I had a bunch of pencilwork I needed to pin down between last week and today so I'll go through it like any other Friday.

There are a couple details on this page that have been challenging to sort out.  I think I mentioned last week about handling the first panel in a way that conveys the moment without being overly gross about it- I feel like using the broken glass motif helps out a lot but even now that I have the panel mostly painted I'm like, is that a bit much?  I got some time to mull it over.

I actually did a bunch of moving around of my figures in the third panel.  I wanted to convey Shiba Inu firing off his shotgun in a sweeping motion, with the two shots missing Monday and hitting the comic panel, shattering the rest of the action sequence.  I needed to make sure Monday diving out of the way couldn't be interpreted as him being in the way of these two shots, as there is now 3D lines in space conveying their direction, so I ended up pulling him more to the right for that shot.  The semicircle being shot out of the couch helps pin that shot into space, I think.  I'll probably put some overlay on top of Monday's lower half to sell him as being sufficiently dove for cover.

Part of my original idea for this page was to sell an action sequence without going through pages of meticulous detail, to try to capture it as a recollection of fleeting, shattered moments, which was where the shattering pane idea came from.  I had it blocked in sorta roughly last week, but one of the main goals I had was to convey specific moments even though the panels are fully separated.  The big shard on the upper left has Monday using the semicircle shot through the couch to assume where Shiba Inu is and fire back at him.  Keeping the theme with Greyhound in the first panel and the overall presentation of the page, I tried representing these shots landing as broken glass panes as well.  

Following this there are three or four shards on the upper right representing the next "moment" of panels.  Bulldog is firing his Thompson through the couch Monday dove behind, so he goes overtop.  This was an old trick I used a lot in Team Fortress 2 or Halo or whatever other shooter- if there's a big rock between you and someone else and you're playing the "are you gonna go left or right?" game, the best answer is always to go over top, because people rarely look up as much as they look to the sides.  I wanted Bulldog to burn a lot of his ammo so there's some more holes where he shot through the wall at Monday and he's also firing pretty thoroughly through the couch.  A small detail about this panel: in the very early pages of the comic Monday used a switchblade knife before he started using his butterfly knife.  Since this comic takes place in that era I thought it would be fun to bring back the switchblade as a super minor little detail.

The bottom row of panels close out the flashback, with Monday diving overtop of Bulldog and Bulldog lifting the muzzle of his Thompson just in time for it to click empty.  Now that I'm at the end of this scene I am thinking back to something I think I wrote a while ago: when Lizzie was fighting the Hornets outside Tombstone I think I'd mentioned how a Liz fight ends up being different than a Monday fight.  A Liz fight doesn't want anyone to get killed, she is battling and the choreography is a lot of maneuvering and landing blows that aren't ultimately fatal, but a Monday fight is fairly succinct, lasting maybe a page and a half and that's it.  This page is definitely a Monday fight, and I hope I can land the tone of what that is without dropping the ball.

The last panels of this page had some revision from last week.  I had drawn Monday holding the documents in his hand, but he's also holding the folder in his hand, so I'm like, okay, how is Monday holding his flashlight?  I want him to tuck away the documents for later, since that's like the whole point of the flashback in the archives, but he still needs his secret sneaky flashlight.  My solution was to put it in his mouth.  When he turns to look back over his shoulder, the flashlight pivots in his mouth so the beam doesn't flash out the door behind him.  I was having trouble getting his lower-facial expression just right, so this ends up making it a bit more fun while serving all my design goals all the same.

My birthday is coming up soon and I'd rather not have this page hanging over my head, so I'm gonna focus more heavily on the comic.  I have some gamedev stuff in the wing to share but I'm gonna let that mature a little and once I get this page done I can share the fun gamedev details.  For now it's back to work, so have a nice weekend.  Also, let me know in the comments if that first panel still hits a little too hard, I'm really thinking on trying not to overdo it so I appreciate the feedback on if it's a bit much to lead off a strip with.