Comic Report #99 - A Breakthrough

Hello again! I've been on a roaring streak of gamedev animation lately but I did want to get the next page started for this week's update. I am really on an animation hot streak though so there will be more gamedev updates to follow, but for now let's focus on the comic!

This page is the one that ties this flashback onto the previous flashback it's building on.  The events of this page coincide with the events of page 36, so the dialogue is more or less already written.  This page does, however, continue beyond the point where Joey Basso interrupted Monday's sleep the last time this scene played out, carrying on into the page to follow.  

The last time we saw this moment it was from Monday's first-person perspective, but this time the camera is in the third person so we could see the rest of the moment from the other side of the door.  For this page I get to draw Classic Monday again, who had a sort of sloppy suit with an untucked shirt and a skinny black Ska tie.  I will also have to remember not to draw the scar on his right cheek- he got that feature from his fight with Frank and they have not actually met yet.  I also used to draw his hair with more and smaller spikes, it kinda simplified over time so I'm drawing it the old way for this shot.

With the camera pulled back you can see more of Monday's apartment interior, which means I have an opportunity to stick more details in there.  I have a friend who loves to collect masks to hang on the wall, so I decided that's a cool thing to collect and put some masks up on Monday's wall.  I have a tengu and an oni mask blocked in right now but in other shots I could probably add some more.  I'd never really thought about it but Monday would definitely be a mask collecting kind of guy.  

I had a bit of trouble coming up with a shot for the last panel of this page. I know in my mind what I want it to be- greyhound bursting through the broken door with Monday readying a shot on him- but I had a bit of a time trying to hash out how far the camera focus should be and how greyhound should enter the room.  I'd originally thought like, the door would be broken so he could burst in with guns drawn, pointed forward or down like he expected Monday to still be in front of the door, but drawing him entering with his guns out didn't make sense, the door still needed to break, so I ended up drawing him shouldering through the door.  I will probably give a few of these panels another pass to increase the action feel to them but otherwise this should be a pretty straightforward page to paint.

I am excited to get this little mini-arc wrapped up and get back to the present, so I should have more progress on this page to share next Friday.  I am also close to hitting a milestone on colorizing game sprites so I also want to work on that, but I think this week I am going to strike a balance that leans more towards the comic than the game, just so I can get this in the archive and move on.  Thank you as always for your patient support of my work.  Until next week, take care.