Comic Report #79.1 - Quicktime

Hello again!  I've been making speedy progress on the next page, and I think I can have it done this weekend, or probably some time tomorrow specifically.  This scene being indoors and pretty close-quarters is a big contrast to the previous page's outdoor shot and crowd scene, so I'm happy with being able to deliver a pretty quick turnaround on this one.  I do have my second covid dose coming up this week, so I might not be good for drawing much more than minicomics for a little bit, but I'll definitely be hitting my target of putting this page up before the big booster shot date arrives.  Today, though, I'll go through my write-up, and I'll probably be back with another one tomorrow when the textless page is ready to go.

This page is Alice's first solo-focus scene where she has her red accents.  On page 600 I gave all the main characters a boost up to red accents, which was something I felt was overdue but needed a big moment to start doing it.  Her hair accessories have evolved over time, from the hat to a single butterfly hairclip that was a bit hard to see at times to the hairclips she has now, which are a design cemented in the minicomics and developed in her game sprites.  It's a small detail but I think she deserves it.

One minor recurring detail in Dead Winter is pencaps.  When I draw pens, any of the pens associated with Lizzie always have chewed-up pencaps, with their little clips bent out to the side.  In the previous scene you could even see a contrast with Doris, whose hair pens were mostly click pens but also entirely unchewed.  When putting Alice in this scene I thought it'd be a cute very subtle touch to give her one of those specific pens.  

When I set up this scene in the 600-block pages, establishing Dr. Pheiffer needing to get his Killa Beez Mix Zune I hadn't decided what track or which artist I wanted to include as background music, but while drawing this page I picked out a good song that I think would work well if people pick up on it and give it a listen.  I'm thinking that I have so much time before my projected end goal deadline that I can add some animation to this page, giving the edges of the panels in the top row some vibration effects to match the bassline and really hammer home the background music of Tombstone's medical ward.  I have some ideas of how I'd want to achieve this, but I think I just did an animated page somewhat recently (oh yeah it was the ring page) so I don't want to overdo the animation effects.  We'll see, though.  The weekend is still young.

That's what I got for you today.  As I mentioned, you'll probably be hearing from me again very shortly since there's really not a lot left for me to paint on this page.  I got one more article to write up following this one, so stick around for that as well.  Until next time, take care!