Comic Report #87.1 - Big Leaps

Hello again!  I've got a pretty large update since last week. I've been focusing exclusively on working on these comic pages to try to get this scene drawn in a relatively short amount of time.  I'm planning to expand out into more gamedev work soon but after wrapping up the minicomic obligations I wanted to just do this scene for a bit, it's important.  

Last week I only had a rough framework of how I wanted my page laid out, but I've made a lot more progress since then and kinda blasted through the sketch and ink phases so I'll go through and explain the panels I added since the last post.

Going through from the top, the first panel basically worked out exactly how I planned it before.  I've got a reason for Liz to be on the left and Alice to be on the right, but in this panel that sort of complicates how I initially planned to set up the dialogue.  I don't want to make excessive use of word balloon tails crossing over each other but I had thought about Alice speaking first and Liz speaking second, but with Liz on the left she is in the first-speaking location so I gotta do some editing to make that work.  This is generally why I leave the actual specifics of what a page says for the very end, so I can thesaurus it into fitting around my character acting and the space I left for words.

The second paragraph of this page was entirely blank last week.  This is the main chit-chat paragraph of the page.  In good romance etiquette, Liz is opening up by asking Alice about her day, rather than just immediately talking about herself.  In this set of panels Alice gets to talk about how Marv and his crew showed up in the infirmary, and she gets to brag a bit about cracking the ice on the poncho crew's details.  In this first panel here I had originally planned a more complex depth of field background that mercifully ended up not working, so the much simpler shot will save me a lot of time on the background phase.

Third paragraph here is The Segue.  This row of panels had to set up the transition from chit-chat into the big talk, so I wanted it to be smooth.  The first panel is a wrap-up of Alice's bragging from the second paragraph; preliminary dialogue idea here is Liz going "god you're so cool", because really, who could argue?  From the last page to this one Liz has had that white food container next to herself, so on the second panel of this paragraph she's finally like, oh hey are you hungry? I made you lunch.  I have been thinking about if it's better to be like "I made you lunch" or "I asked Lee to make you lunch".  It's been established before that Liz has some fry cook chops from working at Frank's for so long so she could entirely just hop back on a grill and cook up a meal for Alice, and it's the more personal option.  The rightmost panel here is basically as it was in last week's sketches; the background for this panel is going to take a bit of fiddling to get the perspective just right but I think I can make it work easy enough.  

The last paragraph here was the one I'd originally planned as one wide shot but have since split into two.  Last week I just had expressions blocked in but I've made some key adjustments to the layout since then.  In the first panel the expressions are mostly the same as they were in last week's sketch, but I've compressed them closer to the right side of the panel.  This is important both for defining the perspective of this shot and also giving me room on the left side to put word bubbles; in the original layout they were spread out enough that there could really only be one bubble, and I need at least two.  In the second panel here, I changed the planned looking-forward expression to a more reserved looking-down pose.  I felt like giving Liz this expression sorta makes it a bit more unsure or apprehensive, rather than diving straight into the big moment.  She's kinda working herself up to it, and kinda prepping Alice for what she's got to say.  It feels like a natural progression and I'm happy with how this page ended up coming out.

I don't think I can get this page wrapped this weekend but I can definitely get it done by next Friday's update.  Some of these background shots are gonna need a bit of work but I'm also just gonna put word bubbles over a lot of it anyways.  After this page we'll be right in the thick of it, so I'm excited to get to that.  As mentioned above, I want to take a bit of time to focus on these main pages so there aren't huge delays while I juggle other things, so I thank you for your kind patience in the meantime.  I hope this arc is fun to read!  Until next time, take care.