Scrapped Page 14 Bonus (Patreon)

So here's a special extra page that I cut from Toph Heavy. Initially Page 13 was supposed to end with a huge "WAAAIT!" in the bottom right corner and this was going to be page 14. Bolin was going to chime in, "You said you were going to tell us how you got so good..." Toph realizes she kept on going without answering that question, and starts a new story. Korra and Asami are frustrated because it was finally getting to the good part. And it begins with a flashback to the Bei Fong estate. 

This page didn't meet my standard of quality so I decided to scrap it. If you look at a lot of my pin up work over the past couple of years, backgrounds rarely play a role. So my skill at putting a character in a place has somewhat atrophied. Setting is important. Manga sometimes ignores backgrounds during moments of character action, but they always spend the time to give you an establishing shot so that the reader knows where the action is taking place. I look at this and think "where the fuck are they, and why are they having this conversation?" That's a huge problem. Moreover, mundane interaction is something I struggle with as well. I can draw people fighting. I can draw people fucking. But fuck just having a back and forth conversation is really hard. It doesn't help that all the figures look bad. Bolin looks dumb, Mako looks bad, Lin looks bad, Korra is ok, Asami looks awful, the backgrounds in the following panels are kinda jank. I really would love to learn the techniques of cartoon background painting. Honestly, this is the least favorite page, and I actually spent days trying to fix it. In the end, I decided that it was just polishing a turd, so I scrapped it. 

But I still want to share it, because of panel 2, that's how Toph is telling this story.