Page Deconstruction #5: Moments Apart (continued)

Moments Apart had so much to talk about! So much that we actually had to separate the patreon commentary into two posts! 

Some of you might be familiar with this image! There were several times during past streams where I was looking up colour-references of certain characters by eyedropping from this. For a while this was a good spoiler for the upcoming Daisy birthday chapter, and now you can see it in full here! 

I often design outfits out of thin air and don’t really create a reference page, which is honestly a pretty terrible habit. It means that if I DO regret a design, well too bad!! I’ve already incorporated it onto the chapter! Honestly the biggest motivator to making this reference page was because there were so many different outfits and also.. well, Daisy’s father. I wanted to see him next to Daisy and work out their colour scheme. You can see above him some scribbles, that’s meant to be me plotting out Daisy’s mother’s colour!

It was also nice having this reference because it allowed me to colour-pick. Daisy’s dress went through SO many colour decisions! It was originally white and yellow! I made it white and pink for a while, but the pink looked too fleshy against Daisy’s fur colour, and Souppy ultimately suggested a striking blue. I also thought pink/yellow seemed a bit childish, and Daisy is meant to be a grown-up now! According to her!

One awkward thing about Mike being such a sadsack in recent times is that.. his friends would definitely notice and try to talk to him about it, but if that happened in this chapter, that intervention would create a diversion and push the story in a different direction, maybe not a conversation that should be had now, especially during someone else’s birthday party. There’s a lot of serious conversations in this chapter already, and Mike’s angst could honestly wait, pacing-wise. Especially given Mike’s temper and what I expect to happen if someone DID speak up and ask him what’s wrong (Which is what we’ve now witnessed in High Expectations!)

I’m pretty sure if Mike lashed out (and when it comes to Sandy-related issues that’s pretty much a guarantee), Daisy’s mother wouldn’t take that lightly and it would make things incredibly weird. I can imagine the comic veering in a complicated direction, like Daisy’s mother trying to stop Mike from lashing out, worse-case scenario demanding he leave the party, because ultimately this day is about Daisy. Suck it up for a day. 

So!! One issue that I had when making this page was to stop some characters from naturally being concerned for Mike — one in particular being Amaya.

The original sketch had Amaya looking at Mike with concern, as if Amaya was the only person to notice Mike’s malaise. In the thumbnail I think Sue was staring at Mike instead? But I shifted Amaya’s position in the final page to be across from Sue, rather than next to her, which meant that Amaya had a front-row seat to Mike’s mood. And so I naturally drew Amaya staring with concern. I mean, that’s what Amaya would do.

This made things complicated, because I thought “If Amaya noticed Mike, SURELY Sue would notice too. Sue could NOT notice Mike’s mood”.. so I contemplated having Sue stare at Mike as well. But then that would start shifting the focus onto Mike more, and I wanted Mike to look left out and alone, amongst a huge group of people. I wanted to set that mood, even though the focus is meant to be on Daisy. 

So I had to begrudgingly choose to either have Amaya be oblivious like the rest, or look concerned, but if Amaya looked concerned, then I felt Sue would have to be as well, and why not Daisy next to him then? Why not the others? Kind of a domino effect that would eliminate the meaning I wanted to convey - being with a group of people but also being alone. We’ve all been there. 

So I ultimately chose for Amaya to be distracted by Sue. I feel sorta sad about that, since I don’t think Amaya would be so careless, but Mike is such a powder keg when it comes to certain things that bother him, and it wouldn’t have been pretty. Perhaps we will see that actual intervention soon.

(^ I wrote that final sentence before High Expectations published, by the way. Man these deconstructions hang out in patreon buffer hell for a long time!) 

This was a hell page. You know when you visualise something perfectly, but it just DOESN’T come out that way when put onto paper? (Or in this case.. uhh, the internet)

I thought Daisy came out looking weird, like she was coming off weightless. So I made her curls curl inwards, and that still looked off to me. Originally I finished the page with her curls looking normal, unaffected by resting against Paulo. Souppy was having none of that.

So this was a second attempt at fixing the situation, and you can tell from me eventually editing it AGAIN that I was displeased with this version. Anyway, just showing a different way I drew it!

And that’s the end of that! Hope you enjoyed!