A Weekend With Yuka Update (Patreon)

Hey everyone, December is going to be a busy month for me but I'm going to try my best to get some content up here for you all. I normally leave comic preview stuff for the $5 patrons but I figured this update relates to the Weekend With Yuka preview that's been on sale for a while so most people will have the context for this. In case you haven't read it, I've posted it on patreon in the past, you can download it here.

It's been long enough since I drew these preview pages that reading back through them really showed me lots of little bits that I knew I could do better. I posted this before on an itch.io update but early on I felt like I could redraw the cover for lots of small reasons. Here's the before and after:

I redrew both Yuka and Ren and wanted to flatten the colors out to give it a more graphic look. I think they both look a lot better but especially Ren! The mellower colors with lower contrast just look a lot more relaxing to the eyes on the new one and I'm much happier with it now.

The next thing I saw that I wanted to fix was the incredibly wordy and cramped first page. Intro pages have always been tough (not counting Red Muscle intros because theyre continuations) and I just went with something to get the ball rolling. I've since gone back and split the page up into two, hopefully easing you into the setup of the story a bit more smoothly. Here's the original page 1:

Here's the new page 1 and 2:

I wanted to use the split to make it a bit clearer what was happening in this whole prologue. Yuka has been losing control of her work/life balance and finding herself staying up on another late night trying to get work done. I also had more space to expand the drawing of Yuka's dining room table with the miscellaneous items scattered across it. I also made changes to the color palette on every panel that takes place in Yuka's apartment in real time (non flashback) among other palette changes to scenes that used solid white anywhere.

Next, I felt that the page with Yuka's parents felt incredibly empty and bland so I wanted to do something that added a bit more personality to them. I tried to make the panel look like an old photo of the two working as staff at a hotel in hawaii. I also redrew the high school Yuka underneath because her proportions looked a bit weird to me. Here's another before and after:

The next two pages were edited to really clean up Yuka's back story and motivations. I wanted to make it clearer that Yuka was just having her sexual awakening very slowly but it was very formative for her adult life and is a core part of her personality and desires. I redrew the scene of her chugging the beer for no other reason than because the old drawing was bad, haha. Also, her revelation on the next page of being a lesbian was really weak and not particularly believable. I tried to still use the idea that Yuka maybe didn't consider that she could have a relationship with a woman but just out of her own weird ignorance of relationships in her youth. I included a few bits of Yuka reminiscing on moments where she could see the signs of her own queerness that I think do a lot for her personality. Here's the before and after of the first of this set:

and here's before and after of the next page:

The last change I finished was extending the very end of the prologue of Yuka getting frustrated and walking out of the frame. I thought having another panel of her showing anguish on her face both slowed the pace down and gives the moment more impact and also gives a bit more clarity to her mental state going into the beginning of the comic. Hopefully you also get a sense of the camera slowly pulling in too.

I also made a note that I want to change the first sex scene that I wrote (around page 75 or so for $5 patrons) to have an even stronger narrative purpose. Those pages are far from done but I think with what I want to try with them, it should make Yuka's personal character arc more clear. I'll have more to share with $5 patrons when I can finish redrawing the scene.

I had a lot of fun redrawing these pages and it's gotten me really excited to get back to working on this story! I want to work on a few more Bumpers comics with Ami and Frankie first before really picking up steam on this again, but I'd like to really buckle down and get this graphic novel done sooner rather than later. I hope these little updates got you excited for it too, I really love working with these characters and see myself making stories with them for a long long time.

I'll try to have more art and maybe a review or two for this month, thanks for sticking with me!