Comic Report #75.1 - Staff Meeting

Hello again!  This week I have some main-page progress to share, in addition to another batch of minicomics.  I expect I should be able to get this page wrapped up before next Friday's report, but for now I'll talk a bit about where I am at the moment.

As I've been working on this comic for so long I find myself able to paint it how I like a lot quicker than I used to be.  I don't know if it's just my art style developing into something more efficient or just putting 10,000 hours into making artwork or a combination of both, but I feel like I can paint more quickly than I used to.  Early on as my style developed I would paint overrendered clothing folds and tons of shading in individual strands of characters' hair, but I've learned to draw with bigger shapes and paint them a bit more geometrically, like you can see this particularly well in Lizzie's hood in panel 3.  I think a lot of this sort of streamlining of my art style came as a result of adapting my work for the game we'd been plugging away at for so long, like Lizzie's hair is built from the same shapes I simplified them to when I first started designing her game sprites.  I've always wanted to maintain the particular feel of a painted world for the comic, so I'm happy that even when my work grows and changes it can still retain that feeling.

A lot of my writing is based on my own experiences working different jobs and meeting different people.  The four main characters of the comic are drawn from different aspects of myself, and the characters around them have bits of people I've met on my journey in them.  Doris has a couple old coworkers in her- I want to present her as being very self-assured and confident, but also knowing exactly how far she can push peoples' boundaries.  In the beforetimes she was Lizzie's coworker at Frank's Diner and the one who trained her, but she was also an ephemeral worker who would take days off on a whim, which Lizzie would always be the one to cover.  In a roundabout way she is the reason Lizzie has this tenacious quality of never staying down, since it was her fault Lizzie would be stirred awake by phone calls to come in and work double-shifts.  Doris is a powerful force of will, she is always living by her own will and there's really no shackles that can restrain her.  

As a couple fun design details: former employees of Frank's Diner have rectangular nametags, and former Omni-mart workers have oval nametags.  Also, in terms of the hierarchy of waitresses in Tombstone, the higher they wear their hair in a bun the stronger they are.  Sally, the new hire, has her hair down in a ponytail, Lizzie wears a low-set bun and Doris has a high-set bun with a bunch of pens in it.  It's a super-minor detail but I think it's neat.

As mentioned, I think I can get this page done within this week, so keep an eye out for that!  I'm gonna post some new minis right after this post as well.  Thank you, as always, for sticking with me and supporting my work.  Until next week, take care and be well.