catharsis, page 6

sorry y'all. i was enraptured by the new pokemon game and forgot the update was supposed to happen at midnight, lmfao. i will write up the commentary for this page tomorrow morning, lest i ruin my sleep schedule any further than an hour ahead.

EDIT: okay. the last bit of exchange here is why my brain drew a parallel between norm and nero. you'll probably notice where it lines up later. for some reason, i thought a series of less and less enthusiastic "okay"s would be funny, although the first one is on the last page.

i really liked this page because it again showed felix as a little less. woobie. something i'd like to be grasped about felix eventually is that he's developed a habit of self-effacing to avoid punishment, as a survival mechanism at first, now a deeply ingrained habit that i wouldn't necessarily qualify as integral to his personality. ideally, i'd like it read as unintentional, or at least unconscious -- a pattern, but naturally occurring, like a flower's petals, rather than carefully placed pickets creating a fence.
this is very difficult because humans tend to believe others' mistakes indicate personal flaws and moral failings while excusing their own mistakes as contextual. to be more specific, they see their own mistakes as accidents, and others' mistakes as intentional. so, felix's flaws are easier to read as intentional.
the other half of the difficulty is that it's a character trait i really, really hate in other people in real life. they completely shut down any adult conversation after causing harm by acting harmless and forcing you to coddle them. i don't understand how they don't see their own pattern, and it's impossible to point it out to them meaningfully when they revert to a state of helpless victimhood any time criticism happens. i constantly have to check myself to not exaggerate the behavior in felix and try to see his own point-of-view. the hardest part for me is not understanding the unawareness, but i'm doing my best.

the logo was challenging. this was the first logo i designed myself for a comic of mine.  here are a couple of the other concepts:

and the concept sketch for the actual logo:

the first concept there makes the black bar more obvious -- it was supposed to be like a redaction. when the bar in the final logo was too tall, it removed the intentionally disorienting tangents between the upper letters and lower letters. i decided i preferred the latter, as it felt more high-concept, i guess. 

i also decided on no title page for this comic... it just felt too serious. i can't complain about changing it up and not falling into a formula with these comics. the title page was more serious in tone, and it was drawn at least a year before the script was finished. 

also, the last part of this overview of the story in general is: felix lies for extremely stupid reasons--