dupe

catharsis, page 10

hi. i did a twitter poll about whether sketches were something people actually wanted in these posts or not, and it seems like people very much do want them, so i'll upload them, and the thumbs, when i have done them for a page.

this one was rough to draw out. i ended up redesigning felix's crutches after looking into HOW exactly one gets from sitting with only one leg. it's just never really something i've had to think about. so i looked it up, and that took a couple of attempts for th...

catharsis, page 9

as a note, for the next 2 weeks, catharsis will only update here on wednesdays (same for the public updates) to give my hand a break without eating through more of my buffer.

with that out of the way -- this is the page where i realized charlotte was coming into the scene imminently and i wasn't transitioning to dusk fast enough at all, so the lighting changes fast. i tried to ease into it as much as i could, regardless.
i'd also been having a hard time keeping pace while needing to ...

catharsis, page 8

hi y'all. i completely forgot it was thursday and i was supposed to do midnight commentary. i will type the commentary for this in a little bit; right now i have to go pick up my dog's medication refill after feeding her and giving her her other medicine (which they are going to be refilling late, awesome). have the page for now so you can at least see it, haha.

EDIT: alright. i've always had a soft headcanon that felix is autistic, making them more prone to sensory overload -- here, th...

catharsis, page 7

hey! we finally move out of felix's place of work. i opened with izzi here because the beginning of this scene will nod toward more elaboration on the plot to come -- or, core components of the plot: izzi, and felix's drastic reactivity to perceived peer pressure.

i really wanted to change the first panel to something a little more comprehensible, but ultimately decided it wasn't worth the amount of time it would take... i've had, not a lot of free time since i got settled into the new ...

catharsis, page 6

sorry y'all. i was enraptured by the new pokemon game and forgot the update was supposed to happen at midnight, lmfao. i will write up the commentary for this page tomorrow morning, lest i ruin my sleep schedule any further than an hour ahead.

EDIT: okay. the last bit of exchange here is why my brain drew a parallel between norm and nero. you'll probably notice where it lines up later. for some reason, i thought a series of less and less enthusiastic "okay"s would be funny, a...

catharsis, page 5

i really enjoyed drawing the panels for this page. fun stuff, but of course the one drawing the art would enjoy drawing headshots.

the basic idea that felix lies, and premeditates it, even if there might be some obvious immediate negative consequences has been established by the previous pages, and this page establishes that felix also tends to make it worse for himself in the process of compensating or trying to draw attention away from said lies. really, all that's left to add to the ...

catharsis, page 4

initially, the first three panels were part of the last page, but it added up to nine panels... and the beats were a little odd anyway.

i had felix "bluescreen" here for a second because i wanted to draw attention to the fact that he did not in fact remember his speech, despite practice. he quickly goes off the path of his plan once faced with norm's judgment.

i'd also like to clarify at this point that felix's position at his place of work is swing manager. what is a swing manage...

catharsis, page 3

this page is definitely a rough one in terms of pacing. i ended up sloughing off the 2 extra panels for a maximum of 8 to smooth over the pacing of the next page, due to the fact that the next row of panels was a 3-panel sequence with a visual structure that prevented me from splitting them up.

--let me back up: maybe you noticed that these pages are pretty short compared to my old pages -- some of drop-out's pages were over 40 panels long! fresh meat's hypothetical maximum was supposed...

catharsis, page 2

now we can see that the trick to the opening shot is that felix is talking to his reflection. what the audience sees first is felix's reflection rather than felix himself. you can notice this immediately from the first page if you look closely at his name tag, where i made sure to write his name visibly backwards in at least one panel.
this super fucked with my head to work on, because i had to mentally flip his markings back and forth, lmfao. sometimes i still look at it and kind of have ...

catharsis, page 1

hi everybody. it's time to start catharsis. the comic will be a week ahead of public updates, after polling the preferences people had for the gap between patreon updates and public updates -- it can make a big difference, since a lot of discussion happens after the public pages release.
updates will be midnight on wednesdays and fridays (so like... the late night of tuesdays and thursdays) on patreon; noon for the public. this first page is a little early, but the next update will be midn...

folie a dupe: asexual

it was a sex shop... that's what it was... i wanted to do a shorter strip -- mostly i was too tired to draw anything else, and expected my hand to be too pained to draw anything for long.

september 2022

hi everyone. i haven't made a tried and true update image in a while, and i used to make one every month, and it feels bad!

i moved to illinois in august and it was the messiest move i have ever experienced due to a variety of factors that were entirely out of my control. a lot of it is still up in the air, but the housing itself is secured.

the weather is a lot nicer here. on the flip side, no clinics want to take me in as a patient. i'm paying for a therapist and psychiatrist ou...

[BIG SELF-HARM TW] folie a dupe: transition of power

i've claimed a lot of my folie a dupe strips depict psychological events that are important to me; this one is arguably the most important exchange i could depict. it was the last time i harmed myself physically, on purpose. soon after that, i started to write drop-out.
there was really no going back from it, even if the desire were there; to hurts, it had never occurred to actually challenge dupe, and the last exchange in this comic changed the power dynamic between them.

in the pin...

folie a dupe: scar of self-awareness

this took forever. i started it in march. it was probably even earlier as an experienced event. at this point i feel pretty negatively about it, but the ending is fun. it'll probably be cool to look at once the cringe reaction wears off.

subjects for the next side comic

i don't have a huge pot of ideas here, but i'd like to know interest in what characters the next side comic should be about. it won't happen for a while, after i move and catharsis is rolling out smoothly and consistently. 

do you still think about it, page 35 [sketch] [end]

well, it's finally over. i'll be working on the edits necessary for drop-out, so i can finally put that to rest, and then i'll be starting work on catharsis in earnest.

ironically, i don't think i have much commentary for this page! this comic was really different from how i pictured it initially, but that's par for the course for comics.... it was really enjoyable to build on characters who already have established stories.

for the video game -- it turns out ants just pile up the...

do you still think about it, page 34 [sketch]

this page is super sloppy. i gotta tilt lola so the camera angle where she flops down stays on the same axis, among other things. 

so, i was watching a video about the complications of writing mentally ill characters, and, i didn't like it. regardless, at some point in the video, the person talking mentioned that suicide is frequently a "last resort" option in the mind when someone feels that they have no other options and no control over their life -- self-harm is, just as frequen...

do you still think about it, page 33 [sketch]

so i uploaded these pages to ko-fi, and i noticed that they're numbered wrong... i'll fix it after it's finished. ;_; i skipped page 25.

this page has as much going on as it can have. it's been really challenging to keep the camera engaging while they talk. there are tons of beats necessary for the tone, too, so there's no solution by just speeding up the dialogue to require fewer frames. i can't say if i've handled it well or not, but there are at least a handful of moments in the scen...

do you still think about it, page 32 [sketch]

eh, i finished this last night, but i needed to add bubbles and do commentary and it was just a little too late for that.

this page is a LOT of medium shots of lola. i'll talk a little bit about her: i think she's the kind of person who thinks everyone can benefit from making art. i think she also assumes that, usually, the creation of art is highly personal, and will yield personal insight -- ie. if you told someone to make some art, they would make art about their feelings or opinions...

do you still think about it, page 31 [sketch]

for conversations like this, i have to resist the urge to add ellipses at the front of a lot of the dialogue, lmao. even with long pauses in the actual panel content, a bubble with an ellipsis has different implications from one that doesn't, even though on a technical level it's only supposed to indicate a pause.
i was really beside myself about whether sugar's "sometimes" here should have that ellipsis -- it usually indicates lying or hidden motivations to a reader in comics. i went with...

do you still think about it, page 30 (sketch)

not much going on on this page -- it really has the necessary beats and moves the conversation along. maybe i'm not trying hard enough! the next page is supposed to be a little more than headshots and the like.

lola's depression has obviously fared a lot better than sugar's; the unfortunate part of what this means for how her half of the conversation is read is that she's giving the "right" answer for just. not being depressed anymore. which isn't necessarily true. she'll talk about mak...

do you still think about it, page 29 (sketch)

the title drops like a hammer on this page, haha. glad to get back to work on finishing up the sketches for this.

sugar pulling her tail in so that lola can't see what it's doing is something not initially in the script, but the rest of the conversation doesn't really note her tail at all, so it felt fitting. i imagine that as much as lola is aware of sugar's body language, sugar is aware of cues lola can take that she's upset.
in this case, lola will obviously notice sugar pulling i...

FaD strip: can't remember

i've been working on this for. weeks, now. started it near the end of april -- just under a month. i don't plan on fully coloring this like the cage, but i would like to add some more details and maybe splashes of color -- mainly backgrounds in panels where they should be, speech/thought bubbles, a carabiner that i always carry around missing from the entire strip, and fixing up panels that are blurry due to resizing. i'll do that in my downtime if i feel like it though; for now i just want t...

do you still think about it, page 29 (sketch)

the game sequence was complicated. it still needs much refinement. the game is based on a mix of rain world and sim ant, some hollow knight in mind... mostly rain world. the basic concept art for the characters: 

i wanted the game to look similar to actual games... it bothers me when games in fictional stories seem like they were made by people who've never played one before... i wanted t...

do you still think about it, page 27 (sketch)

i have to ask myself what this page adds to the comic. it could have cut to the next page just as fluidly. i think it relieves some tension with humor, establishes some continuity in the characters, and, i guess, solidifies that they think about each other. lola thinks about sugar enough to cook solely so sugar doesn't have to do it. sugar thinks about lola's art and wants to look at it when they mention they're making it.

still, there's some, ambiguous, instinctive feeling of "pacing" ...

do you still think about it, page 26 [sketch]

we have dialogue now... i thought i'd get a lot further into the scene here, but such is the nature of comics.

i was thinking sugar should just grab a ton of onions since lola didn't specify, but because they come in those like 5 lb bags, that would be most intuitive. it's not one onion, but it's not excessive. she is using a reusable bag for the grocery.

lola's also wearing a larger low-value shirt because painting is messy. she uses watercolors primarily, but still, sometimes in...

do you still think about it, page 24 [sketch]

the last panel feels a little too heavy-handed (no pun intended) for my taste. we'll see how i feel about it tomorrow -- either i'll notice it's actually fine, or i'll redraw the panel once i figure out a better way to frame the goal of having sugar bear these weights on her shoulders. i wanted it to throw back to this panel, in its own way: 

the closure between panels 3 and 4 feels a lit...

doodle dump 12

it's been a while...

here we have commissions, some art for stream requests, some personal doodles, and animations i've either sketched or finished for the dupe in the corner of my stream overlays.

not much else to say -- i'm glad i've been able to draw this much, even if it feels like not a lot of personal art time compared to a few years ago, where i could sketch or color a 15-panel comic for the weekly update, and then draw a folie a dupe strip from start to finish as cooldown....

do you still think about it, page 23 [sketch]

first of all, i learned there are safety protocols to removing latex gloves in medical settings. i am glad to have serendipitous learned this while looking for glove references. that's what's up with the strange way she's removing gloves, though. i wanted like, a sensory release of tension, in the rubber, to release the tension of her workday symbolically.

i think lola texts sugar at the end of her work shift normally on the dot like she does at sugar's lunch break. in this case, i imag...

do you still think about it, page 22 [sketch]

originally, in the script, sugar was supposed to see A LOT more bottles of toxic substances in the supply closet. in fact, i can just post the part of the script this was.

she disinfects her desk with a 5 liter container of sodium hypochlorite (bleach). on the next page, she returns it to a room of chemicals, and stares at it for a moment. she turns around, and looks at a bottle of sodium azide solution (should look intentional, not accidentally spotting it). she's visibly conf...

2022-04-07 01:06:15 +0000 UTC View Post