Comic Report #99.1 - The Long Road

Hello again.   This has been a challenging week for my art on all fronts but I am happy to report that I have made headway through some harrowing obstacles.  There is basically just this page and another page before I reach the end of this flashback scene and resume modern times so I am excited to get there, but hoo boy!  Let me tell you about it!

It took me a bit of time to carve through the inking phase of this comic just because of how many figures there actually are on this page.  I don't remember if I mentioned the volume of Dudes in the writeup about the sketch phase last week, but actually putting ink to pencil really emphasized for me just how densely I filled this page.  Inking always takes me a bit of time to make sure it is clean and precise, but now that I'm through it I think I should be able to carve through the rest of this page's painting obligations.  

One of the panels I changed from last week's update was the sixth panel, with the boys watching the peephole change.  I am thinking how to paint this to really convey that it is one peephole switching from being illuminated to going dark, most likely by using background contrast to emphasize the difference.  I also made changes to the last panel; in the original sketch I had Monday just pointing his gun at the gunman bursting through his door, holding it steady with two hands.  This felt a bit too "ready", as the last time we saw this scene from his own perspective he was pulling his arm up defensively away from the blast coming through his door.  In this final inked version he is sort of pulling his gun up underneath his defensive arm, to help it feel more spontaneous and reflexive and less planned and steady.  The end results are still going to be the same, though.

I expect I should have a lot more progress on this page for next week, please bear with me as I claw through this slog of a layout, I should have it ready sooner than later.  Thank you as always for your kind patience, we're almost back in real time again, and then we get to move forward with the story.  I am excited to get to the pages to come.