Comic Report #83.1 - The Setup

Hello!  I've got a good bit of work to share this week!  Most of it was gamedev work, though, so I'm a bit light in the pockets on main comic progress to compensate.  I've hit a big gamedev goal, though, so I can put more focus on this page for this coming week.  For now, though, a bit about my progress up to today!

Painting might take me the most amount of time but inking is the most meticulous part of my process for me to push through, so having just the inks and flats done is a pretty fair check-in point.  The big thing about inking vs sketching is sketches can be fast and loose and free, representing a spectrum of possible states with their raw and unruly linework, but when it comes time to ink you have to take all that quantum artwork and expression and condense it down into an absolute state.  That state still needs to represent a moment in time, rather than an instant, in order to feel alive, so getting the inks just right is very important.  It's also the foundation of the painting to follow, so if it's off then your painting will be off too, and that's no good; I've had to go back and fix some inks when I'm midway through painting a panel and it's a preventable headache.  But anyways, I got my inks down so I'm basically riding downhill from here.

One of the quirks about this page is I kinda sorta didn't draw in any backgrounds during the sketch phase.  I wanted to knock the art out quickly in time for last week's update and sorta just skipped the background-framing part.  I've always put backgrounds in my comic art because it gives the scene a specific sense of place and also gives me context to do actual cinematography with the camera- after all, if there's no context for where the camera is located in one shot there's not a good way to draw it moving to its next position in between panels.  I'm gonna freewheel it on this page so it should turn out alright, I just need to make sure I visualize my perspective well beforehand.

That's about what I have for you for now. I expect I can finish up this page this week, once I get through the first four panels the rest ought to be a breeze to paint.  I got two more articles after this one to post, so stick around.  Until next week, take care!