fresh meat, page 45

this is the first time i've done a dark/night scene in a long time. i've tried in fad strips before, and it never works out because i keep sketching it on a white background.
the problem is that outlines aren't real. outlines are abstract exaggerations of edge shadows to denote solid form. sometimes i'll draw details in the sketch (like clothing folds) that i know i'll be toning down during the rendering phase because a black outline just implies too much depth -- too dark a shadow.
for a long time i considered using LIGHT colors on top of lines "cheating" because it "didn't make sense"... now i use them all the time. i tend to conceptualize these lines as the abstract exaggerations of edge lighting: a very common phenomenon in real life, but not very common without a man-made light source. i also conceptualize it personally as an abstract representation of the refractive error my eyeballs make. i have astigmatism in both my eyes to varying degrees in addition to the myopia, which causes a specific kind of colored blur around objects. i didn't know that i had this until last year when i paid for my own optometric care for the first time (out of pocket... >_>). then i got glasses that corrected this blur to a large degree. i still frequently "feel out" legibility based on how i tend to parse things that i can't see well, so sometimes the techniques i use in lining aren't necessarily demonstrating real things that light does as much as the way that my brain tries to translate what my weird eyes tell it.
i don't think the night lighting was 100% a success, but now that it's done, i don't think it's 100% a failure either. i definitely had several ideas in mind for what i could do, but what i did was just the fastest here. i might experiment and study results a little later to see what fits best with the workflow i do currently for comics.

anyway... this page is two scenes merged together again. i was thinking of cutting it altogether, but... i can't really explain why i didn't yet. sometimes i just feel the instinct to keep something in based on a gut feeling.
if i had to rationalize it after the fact, i'd say that it's probably a good breather in the pacing, and it established that kim's roommate is gone... (spoiler alert) she's going to be moving wings in the next scene, so this provided closure for her stay in the overflow wing, and it also softened the unbelievability of the back-to-back events by essentially faking out a staff member's interference with kim beforehand.

the staff member here is a hybrid between a raccoon and a fennec fox. as a note, a lot of hospitals have staff with flashlights. my first hospital stay did not. complete pitch black except for two lights that were above the counters at each end of the hallways near the exits.
i don't know how any of them saw anything during the night shifts but i rationalized it in the canon by choosing species with exceptional night vision.

tangentially, the pills referenced in the cup are seroquel, a bar of xanax, wellbutrin, and lamictal.