Comic Report #126.1 - Going Easy On Myself

Hello again, thanks for waiting for me. This week I've got the bulk of this page drawn together, and after I knock out the last panel I can get it inked and flat-toned before my trip to Chicago for Combo Breaker. I'm going to be away from home this weekend so I don't think I'll be able to post an update next Saturday, but I'm hoping to have progress towards a finished page on the week I come back so a mid-week update next week will hopefully make up for it. I apologize for the disruptions in the rhythm, but it's been for a pretty good reason. I'm excited to talk about that,

I've mentioned being at Combo Breaker with a build of Dead Winter's game a few times- if you're coming through and want to try it out hit me up on the Lucky Raven discord so I can find you there- but before I go there I needed to make sure I had all of the critical assets for Kitsune Tails prepared for the rest of the team to implement while I'm away, so they're not left hanging. I spent the past month or so pushing hard on that, and I'm happy to say that I've gotten all my major art tasks complete. I've got a couple little nice-to-haves I need to draw but all the assets are there to ship our complete build, so if you've been looking forward to that, you can rest assured that it's Definitely Happening Soon. I feel a bit bad putting Dead Winter comic work on the side to focus so much on that, but it needed to get done and we got it there. It's a huge weight off my shoulders and a big task off my plate, so ramping into the upcoming Dead Winter scene I'll have a lot more time to focus on the comic pages, so I can render them as best I can.

It's a bit tricky for me to hop between all the different projects I work on. They all have a different style and a different approach, and it takes me a day or so to switch into the rhythm of working on that particular style- whether it's animating the Dead Winter game, painting the Dead Winter comic, drawing Titan Garden characters, or making assets for Relicverse, or animating Kitsune Tails sprites, I need to remember how I was approaching that particular task before I warm back into it. Some of them are easier than others, like jumping back into Kitsune Tails spritework is fairly easy, but leading back into Dead Winter comic work is a lot more high-fidelity, and usually takes me a bit longer to warm back up to the right mental space. That's part of why I needed an extra day to get this Patreon prepared. I'm really looking forward to taking a breather, I've been cooking trying to keep everything up in the air. I'll also be really happy to finally put a game I developed in people's hands. That's coming up real quick.

Regarding this comic page, I think I translated my intent in panel layout into the actual page pretty well. My process involves using character acting, body language and camera movement to convey the idea of a page, and the words I don't usually have set in stone until the very end, after I post the textless version. The specifics of the words are malleable, and I'll usually thesaurus something to make sure the text fits in the space I left for myself, since I have a bit of an aversion to putting word balloons overtop of my character art. This is gonna be a bit of a wordy page, where Liz shares why she isn't objecting to a Monday idea, so giving myself nice roomy panels ensures I have the space to put a bunch of Liz words in my shots. I think about them differently, so I prepare for them on their own terms.

Liz is a bit more verbose than Monday; when I write Monday things I tend to write what he says in short little bursts of sentence. He might occasionally say a bunch of them, but his speaking style tends to be brief and pointed. Lizzie, in contrast, likes to paint ideas with her words. She frames things and contextualizes her ideas- she actually has two modes, whether she's internally narrating or speaking out loud. Narrative Liz is extremely flowery in her language because it's all just thought, it's just the ideas swirling around in her noodle. Spoken Liz has to endure the limitation of speech, of actually saying things, so her spoken ideas are often written as a more naturally-spoken version of the ideas she wants to say, like Narrative Liz dialed down a few pips, with more vocal breaks in her expressions. Either way, she needs a bit more space than Monday does.

That's where I'm at for now. I hope to have this page done by the end of the month, and a lot of the painting is going to happen when I come home from Combo Breaker. If you're gonna happen to be there and you want to say hi and try our game, hit us up on the discord and we'll figure it out. I won't be around next weekend to post another update, so the textless page is probably gonna be the next update on here. Thanks for sticking with me! I'm real excited to get Kitsune Tails out the door, and I'm hoping you have fun with it. Personally, I think it's real good, but you'll hopefully hear about it when it drops. Until then, have a nice week!

Oh yeah, it's my birthday coming up this week too, I'm looking forward to spending it with friends in Chicago. Catch you later!