fresh meat, title page

whew! been a while since i had to use all 4 of my color mixers working on a piece. this is the update for the week.

i was really stumped for a title page for this comic, although now that it's DONE of course i have more ideas of what i could've done. i started working on this about a month ago and sketched out 2 other ideas.

this one, the one i went with under the advisement of my wife, isn't like drop-out's title page, where it's from a scene that's going to happen in the story. instead, it's more of a... summarizing illustration of the tone and themes, prioritizing aesthetic over honest accuracy (makes sense, since my wife is more about graphic design than illustration).
i swear to god, though, someone going into this story with no idea about me as an author would probably assume this is a psych ward horror with a soylent green twist.

anyway, the other 2 sketches (forgive me for the messiness):

this was the first concept i had. i liked it because it was going to be "impressive" in terms of detail, but it was also like the one i chose in that it wasn't an actual scene from the story. it's different, though, in that it introduces the cast's existence.
ultimately, i'm glad i didn't go with it, because it has a lot of "bondage" vibes to it, even if it's a more honest representation of how I feel about psychiatric hospitals. the story itself isn't my totally honest feelings about them, either, because those are personal, and it's not a story about me, so it's well enough.
the fact that this was my first sketch of the night, hence very messy, probably also contributed to my wife not preferring this one, but the composition would've been cleaned up a lot.

this was the second sketch. i did one closer to my approach with drop-out; this one's a scene from the story. i probably would have zoomed in a bit and messed with the concept of adding carmilla or tabitha so that there would be 2 characters having a conversation with kim pouting in between them, visually.
it was a much more down-to-earth choice. i'm not sure how i feel about scrapping it! having this as the title page may have warranted a bit of tonal whiplash, because the scene it's injected into is still at a point of tension in the story.

i was also wondering where to drop the title page. i was thinking it would be at the end of this scene, instead of in the middle, or injected in during the scene after, where kim meets part of the cast at breakfast.
i got the idea about directly after the air-locking door closed, though, and it seemed more creative to me, or, i guess, symbolic, in a way.

anyway, thank you for the patience; the week off really helped, even though i sort of started working on things again after about 3 days of sleeping and working off the caffeine and adderall withdrawal.
i also got groceries i'd been too busy to get, and had an eye exam that i've needed for about a year now. i'm getting new glasses in the mail in a week or two, so hopefully it'll help me see what i'm working on more accurately, and things'll get a little less messy.