Comic Report #88 - Let It All Out

Hello again!  Last time I said I was probably going to focus on gamedev stuff for this one day between the comic updating and now, and I did do that (so keep an eye out for the gamedev post to follow this one!), but I also had some time and I was like, you know what?  Let's keep the momentum going and knock out that other page sketch.  

I didn't get the backgrounds all sketched in but that's fine, I got the meat of this page plotted.  This page is extremely important to get right, so fortunately I had it thumbnailed a few weeks ago when I was planning the previous page!  The planned layout for this page is a series of wide panels with lots and lots of space available.  Vertical panels can feel cramped at times so I am making sure I've got a lot of room to build a good word flow within each panel.  As always I know the thrust of what I want the words to say but I don't have the specifics tacked down right away, that's something I'll be doing when the art is all in place.

I've drawn the first panel as sort of the initial setup for Lizzie's confession.  There are a few ways I can approach this and I'm really working out which is the best one- I almost don't want to share all those specific possible directions so the final page still has something to look forward to, but I can talk about themes.  There are essentially four people involved in this page's events taking place: Liz, Alice, Trevor and Monday.  I want to try to keep the focus on Alice, since I think lamenting about other people when you're trying to talk about your feelings towards the person right next to you doesn't really hit the same.  Liz is thinking about Alice so she should be keeping her centered.

The second panel has a very specific hand pose, isolating her bare ring finger.  I think it is fair that the matter of her former engagement is addressed in some way since that has come up earlier in the comic so it's A Thing hanging in the air.  Monday had triggered this revelation in the context that Lizzie had not been fair to Alice in searching elsewhere for her loved ones.  I might tinker with this panel for a bit but I am thinking about how or if I should fit that sort of admission of overlooking Alice matches the flow or if keeping it strictly to her feelings for Alice is best.

I wanted a nice dramatic up-angle shot for panel three.  This panel is condensing the energy of whatever I write in the previous two panels to prepare for the Big Delivery.  I drew a pair of birds flying together in the sky, if I keep them I'll have to be sure not to cover them with a text box.  I'm deciding if it would be better to make them ravens or Cooper's hawks, which are common in the story's New England setting.  

Panel four is the big delivery.  The aim of this page is for Lizzie to wrap up her feelings, and this panel is her delivering them to Alice.  This is why I feel like keeping the narrative focus on her is an important consideration- if Lizzie is on about her old flame with Trevor too much that's not really about Alice, and it wouldn't hit quite the same.  I really tried to design Alice's expression in this panel to convey a very specific set of feelings, and the dialogue is going to need to match the delivery for that kind of response.

The bottom paragraph of the page is all for Alice.  She's having a big emotional response and I want to capture that and convey it to the reader.  The camera had been on Lizzie in the previous panels but when it focuses back on Alice I want to convey just how big a deal it is for her.  Of course she has something of her own to say, but that's a setup for the next page.

There aren't a whole lot of panels or characters to draw on this page so I should be able to get this done in fairly short order, like maybe this week and into the weekend after next Friday's post.  There isn't too much but the camera does point up and down the river and there are a whole bunch of little buildings to paint so that's going to slow me down a bit, but this scene should not drag on for too long.  

Thank you as always for your patience with my work.  This scene is the culmination of a very long arc and I'm happy to finally be here.  Until next week, have a nice weekend!