Chapter Four Inking Begins!

THE SEAL IS BROKEN,
THE INKING HAS BEGUN

First, thank you for your patience while I review two familiar points for anyone who's new:

1) Now that we're done with pencils — which were never very legible — I will remind you that there will be spoilers in the images I share during the inking process. If you want to avoid spoilers, I typically only post full pages in the image carousel above, which is easy enough to avoid. No one has commented either way re: spoilers, though, so maybe this is all a non-issue. :)

2) This is my first inking post for Chapter Four, so why am I starting on page 10? Because I get better at inking with each page I complete, so I save the opening pages of the chapter for when I'm good and warmed-up. The difference is almost certainly unnoticeable to anyone who is not me, but at this point it's a tradition or a superstition or both.

FIRST OFF, A RECOMMENDATION

I watched the Dreamworks animated feature THE BAD GUYS. It's got a great look! I know SPIDER-VERSE gets all the press for being stylish, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the animation in THE BAD GUYS deserves a similar level of acclaim, despite not being as superficially flashy. It's very distinctive. Anthony Holden was on the vis dev team; I think you can see a lot of him in it. I'm looking forward to a sequel with a quirkier story, maybe a little more weirdness.

SECOND OFF, ANOTHER RECOMMENDATION

My friend Richard has been banging on about the Adam Buxton podcast forever and I finally took him up on it and started listening. At first, I was annoyed by all the "jingles" Buxton sprinkles throughout the show. Now I love them, though this may be because our toddler dances to them when I play the show out loud. Few things are as funny as seeing a three year old do a little dance to a song whose refrain is just, "like and subscribe, like-and-subscribe."

Mostly I like it because his interviews feel very human. For example, during his "Ramble Chat" with bigshot author Isabel Allende, she wants to see what Adam's dog looks like. "Put her on Zoom," she says. He indulges her, and they talk about dogs for a little while. Only an idiot would later edit that out of the show; it says so much more about the character of Allende than any hard-hitting questions would reveal. And besides, I think I like hearing who people are more than what they think. Tune in to be surprised (maybe?) by how down-to-earth Paul McCartney sounds, too. It seems impossible that anyone could keep a level head after being part of The Beatles, so I was pleasantly surprised.

OKAY WHERE ARE THESE DRAWINGS I WAS PROMISED

Yes fine. I'll admit to being nervous about starting to ink. I re-drew a few panels here and there — I'd argue they needed it, but I might have been procrastinating. Took a long time to get going on this first panel.

But then, WHAM

We're off to the races!

One of the things I re-drew was this tattoo guy (below) who's part of the pirate lineup. His previous iteration was too bland. On the other hand, his new iteration maybe went too far in the other direction. I… don't like him. He gives me the willies. I don't know why. But that's a good thing. We want people getting the willies.

I also wanted to re-draw another guy in that lineup, but couldn't be bothered to erase and re-draw, so he gets his own page. Sort of a Roman gladiator meets crab meets coral-and-barnacle sea growth.

For the longest time, I've had a little post-it note floating around reminding me to use conch shells as a sort of boxing-glove thing. The notes says to "see Q.I." (the British panel show), but that's it, and I don't know what I am supposed to see the show about. Not that it matters — "conch-shell gauntlets" as an idea does not require elaboration.

Yeah, the sea growth idea is maybe stepping a foot into PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN but too bad. It looks too good. I'll give it all an iron metal sort of look, like the crab-claw grappling hook from Chapter Three. This guy will get added to the rest of the lineup digitally, though I'm not sure how much of him is going to fit. Here's the two pages all together:

If you are wondering where the emblem is on the pirate flag, I am also going to add that digitally. It will almost certainly be easier to do that way. Right?

Finally, I really like this panel of Captain Lear yelling.

Gonna be a lot of yelling in this chapter. Maybe I'll put a supercut together at the end.

- - - - -

After a week of inking, here's what the stacks look like:

(Left: pencilled pages. Right: inked pages. Also pictured, bottom-right: my printout of all of DD4 with revision notes.) :)

I think I've successfully regained my inking muscles. Now all I need to do is remember to clean my brush before I am just about to drift off to sleep. Twice this week I have been at the kitchen sink at midnight, groggily swizzling the ink out of a ferrule.

I will be back next week with more inked pages for all of you lovely people!

Until then,
I remain,
superficially flashy,

TC