The Red Muscle redrawn Ch3 WIP 3 (Patreon)

Hey guys! sorry for the silence on here for so long. It's been a crazy July so far, with Anime Expo and my birthday right in the first week I didn't really have much time to work on too many new drawings. I have more Red Muscle WIP pages to share with you all as I slowly chip away at this chapter. Again, each page will have it's old version next to it just for comparison's sake.

We come back to the scene of Ula taking off to attack Scarlet's "home base" but gets stuck in the tree. The biggest reason I felt compelled to go back and edit old chapters was to add a little more depth to Ula's storyline. I know most people joked about how Ula doesn't seem like a bad person much at all, being someone that looks after her employees in chapter 1. I wanted to use this moment here to have the Guppies talk about Ula when they know she can't hear them and to establish that she talks a lot of the good talk but doesn't actually do her part to be a good leader. She's still not particularly malicious here but more selfish and demanding than anything else.

Scarlet still goes shopping and I left that page mostly intact, just fixing panels and making drawings look better. The big change is how Scarlet's imagination plays out when she thinks about eating the new protein bars. I always felt like I didn't properly sell that Scarlet was imagining herself in an idealized form that's way out of line of reality, so this time around imagination Scarlet is taller, buffer, and has a more mature face that makes you think, "that's barely even the same character" which I think is pretty funny. Also seeing Scarlet's perception of romantic banter was a fun change that I think makes the scene feel more meaningful and entertaining. Also, switching up who's holding who makes more sense for Scarlet who wants to be strong and sexy, and I have plans to add a small detail about that at the end of the chapter too which we'll get to.

Scarlet snaps back to reality and I thought it would be funny to have her not really care that much about destroying the aisle UNTIL someone sees her. Other than that, it's just a lot of improving poses and framing of panels.

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As I work on redrawing chapters of Red Muscle, it's easy to feel like I'm stalling on getting NEW chapters out for readers that might feel like they're forgetting what's happening or why they like any of these characters (if they do? I hope they do...). I really feel like I have an opportunity to improve a lot of my storytelling and weave everything together in a smarter and more coherent thing but I'm also trying to balance that with not just redrawing the entire comic over.

I spent yesterday night rereading everything I've made of the comics so far (chapters 1-8) and I feel chapter 4 is the last chapter that reeeeeeally needs improvement and I can finally let go and just print the rest of the comic as is after that. I've been trying to think about storytelling from what I think is called the snowflake method? The general idea of starting to make a snowflake by starting with a triangle and then slowly adding protrusions and cuts to the sides until it looks like a snowflake is a "start broad and have a complete idea/shape from the beginning and add more and more details after when the base is there already". I wrote my basic theme or goal of each chapter down for existing chapters as well as new ones I have planned and it's exciting to see I have clear and concise goals all the way up to a chapter 17!! But doing this method I noticed that I need to fix up chapter 4 still because it's SUCH a mess plot-wise.

I think I shouldn't talk too much about specifics because you don't want to spoil readers from the experience but I have a really solid grasp of what I want out of an ending for Scarlet AND Edgar, Ula is my one hanging thread that I need to fix up next and then I think I can create chapters that feel like they're working towards a solid and developed end goal. I hope people will stick around through this redrawing portion of the comic's lifespan, maybe rereading it (even though I know going back through old chapters of comics is not the most appealing thing in the world), and I'm going to try my best to really pick up the pace of making Red Muscle!

I'll have another update for you soon, see you next time!