Comic Report #85.2 - Over The Mountain

Hello again!  This week I made a bit more progress on this page.  I'm still bogged down with critical do-or-die work on my gamedev job which I am looking to wrap up before the end of this month so apologies for the slow progress on this page.  I've got a minicomic update to share today as well; I only have two more minis to go to hit my target of 100 minicomics, once that is done and once my gamedev helltasks are done I'll be able to work with no limiters, and that will also line up with this page being done and the next scene of the comic being on the table.  I'm sort of stuck at the moment but I'm imminently close to breaking free of a -lot- of pressing obligations at an absolutely perfect point in the main comic's story, so I'm excited about that.

Inking is always the most tedious part of making these comics.  Sketches can be fast and loose and painting can be fast and loose but inking always needs to be careful and precise- good inking can save a bad paintjob but a good paintjob can't save bad inking. This page ended up being somewhat dense with characters, with three of them in every panel and the big crowd in the middle shot, so getting that out of the way this week was a big achievement.  Painting the page from here should be relatively downhill, it's just a matter of me finding the time to actually do it.

Normally when I ink and flat-tone a page I will just have one layer for inks and one layer for the tones.  On this page, though, I made a separate layer for the background figures in that big middle panel.  I'd thought about if I wanted to put them in the background in the way I sometimes often do- just no-outline painting them in fresh- but I kinda want them to be crisp and clear so I actually inked them like normal.  I just made the ink outline a bit lighter so when I get to that shot the contrast can separate it from the Mayor.  It'll make a lot more sense when I get there.  

That's it for now.  I'm in the last 10 days of my hell month but I will be making progress painting this page so next Friday I will have something to share with you.  Thank you again for your patience with this one, I promise once this is in the can the stuff to follow will be worth it.  Until next week, take care.