Comic Report #97.2 - Slow Elevator

Hello again!  I'm going to be realer than I've ever been on this journal: I could have had this page ready for today but Elden Ring dropped and I had to sort that out this week.  I did make progress through a thicket of figures on this page, and I expect I should be able to have it finished up this weekend, posting it online on Monday at the latest.  

The middle part of this page was probably the hardest part, since it had such a high concentration of bodies to paint.  But, in spite of my distractions, I did manage to chew through that segment so running the first pass on the last panel shouldn't be difficult, and then it's just a background pass and some lettering and it's on to the next page.  I have been having a lot of fun painting these pages- my art style has become pretty sleek and shapey lately so, since this is such an old pull I'm trying out a looser painting style more akin to my earlier pages to see what I can take from it.  In my previous pages I think I haven't been hitting as high contrast as I used to, not adding brighter light spots that were quite as bright as they could have been.  I think I'm still not hitting whites as white as I want to so I'm gonna go back and make another pass at what's already there as I work on the final panel.

Regarding painting style: one thing I tried to achieve on this page is to have a different lighting style inside and outside the elevator.  In the lobby there is a nice overhead lighting but I am trying to make the primary light be the light coming in through the front door, since that's a bit more dramatic.  Then, in the elevator, I switched to a stronger overhead lighting.  I think there might need to be more reflected light, since the mirrors all around the elevator interior would produce a more all-encompassing glow, but I can make those changes when I get to painting the mirror backgrounds.  Those are going to be fun, by the way.

A note on design: for this page I'm introducing three new characters who have retroactively "always been there" but were never seen in a prior sequence.  Just as a fun detail I thought I'd create their designs based on kinds of dogs.  The gentleman in the suit has a kind of Shiba Inu vibe to him, the fella in the hat is a bit of a Greyhound and the guy in the bowtie is something of a Bulldog, sorta.  It's not super literal but as I was just inventing people to fill out this ill-fated team I thought about dogs and out they came.  I might use this technique more in the scenes to come.

That's it for now.  As mentioned above I can get this page finished up this weekend.  I think I have broken the worse of Elden Ring fever but I don't feel -too- guilty about it since a lot of other people caught it too.  Thank you for your patience!  I'll absolutely be posting again before next Friday's update, so until then, be well.