Page Deconstruction #1: Guest of Honor

Time now for the first page deconstruction post! In this series, Veronica will summarise the most interesting pages from old chapters and explain some of the process that went into making the final thing! Let’s start with Guest of Honor!

Page 11: There are many pages in Guest of Honour that were primarily written by Souppy. In particular, the scenes with Paulo and Daisy wandering around the con before Daisy finds her idol. I recall feeling a bit uninspired at the time and not wanting to make a generic “HEY GUYS HERE ARE SOME TOKEN SILLY ANTICS AT A CON TO ESTABLISH THE SCENE BEFORE WE GO TO ACTUAL PLOT” so Souppy took the wheel in trying to do some of those comedic pages.

We clash when we are writing — I like to exaggerate and he likes to be subtle. As a result he will criticise dialogue that seems too silly to the point that it may seem “out of character”, and I will criticise him for writing so vague that nobody will understand what he’s getting at.

As you can see in this sketch there was a bit of fighting in the final three panels, there was something drawn in them initially, but I got irritated because of how I didn’t understand the joke — or thought it was too vague, and if I’m too stupid to understand what Souppy is getting at, how is anyone else supposed to understand? Paulo is trying to make a joke about the high prices of the food, but he’s pushed away by the continual flow of people. CONS ARE BUSY!!!

There were edits of this sequence after its update, I at one point got so mad at the subtlety that I really wanted the second-to-last panel to have Paulo all “What” like.. “wait why am I being pushed away”, but Souppy thought that killed the joke. So I kept the original dialogue but kept his expression as shocked and annoyed.

CREATIVE DIFFERENCES!!!!!

Page 35: LOOK AT HOW MANY EDITS THE SECOND PANEL WENT THROUGH. I’m really angry that Souppy combined the sketch layers for a good amount of chapters.I actually had separate sketch layers for the sake of preserving sketches I liked/found interesting because I’m a mental hoarder like that, but Souppy combined them :l Imagine the outrage I felt when I found out about this. I didn’t know that was happening, so we get mangled garbage like this. (I’m sorry! I didn’t know we’d ever use these! —Suit) 

But this shows the amount of infighting that happened with that panel (Also how much I fought with perspective). Paulo was shaking his hands dry in Abbey’s direction in the original sketch, and Souppy argued with me about it because he interpreted it as Paulo aggressively shaking his hands to wet Abbey up. That interpretation baffled me. Paulo is far away from Abbey!! It wouldn’t reach! He’s just shaking his hands innocently, he’s a shitty person towards Abbey, but not THAT bad!

But I ultimately agreed with Souppy because if he saw it that way, maybe other readers would. So I altered it accordingly. It required me to redraw a lot of Paulo, which annoyed me, BUT I SHOULDN’T BE LAZY. IT IS FOR THE GREATER GOOD. 

Page 36: Fourth-panel Abbey had a lot more detail in his face, but Souppy suggested I simplify it and honestly.. that was a good suggestion :-[ He looked really boxy for a while, though I remember at the time arguing against it because “PERSPECTIVE TELLS ME OTHERWISE!!!”, but nah. You can still make it look.. in-perspective while maintaining a simplified style. It’s hard to juggle. (Before it was redrawn, I kept thinking of this (nsfw) :-[ —Suit)

Page 48: LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE IN THE SKETCH AND THE FINAL PRODUCT!!! There was an original beat panel of Daisy looking around as a sorta.. wanting to make sure she can FEEL THINGS about the present in privacy, but Souppy didn’t like the pacing of the sequence. And I ultimately agreed with it, there’s many times where I add a lot of beat panels and it’s.. okay to not have them!!

If anything it can be a bad habit, like it’s easy to make a comic where every other panel is a character staring before they say something. I do that A LOT and I’ve been conscious about it for a while. Souppy thought the two panels told all the information, though to me it makes Daisy look a bit selfish hahahah, the middle panel was signifying that she was making sure she had the privacy to longingly gaze at the present, which implies it should be something she should hide. GUESS NOT!!!!

Also: you can see I wanted third panel Paulo to look sad for a moment, but it was changed to a smile. No melancholy!!!! I guess!!!! There’s too much of that at the end of a lot of chapters!!!!

And that’s it for Guest of Honor! There’ll be several more like this coming! We’re queuing up a bunch to come out monthly so there’s no long gaps like we just had after setting this blog up! So look forward to it all!