AbbyCapers (WiP-Public): Highway Hijinx! (Patreon)

 (WiP) In this prequel to Elijah Pink's Patreon comic Abby learns (again) that you should save the damsel in distress before appreciating her lest you become distressed yourself!

"Tia" and "the Blonde Bandit" belong to  Elijah Pink and are used with permission!

The Rant (Author notes):

So... I'm really proud of this WiP. And, to clarify, I'm proud of all my work, or I wouldn't post it (as those of you with "peeper"-level access will note, pre 2018) ! But in this case, what I'm really proud of is the transition, composistionally between "Tia, tied to the tree with blonde bandit hiding in the shadows" to "Abby appreciating Tia's assets" to "Abby's in trouble now." Something about how they're overlaid really speaks to me, if only because there isn't any negative space to disrupt the flow. Something that's very obvious in color (where's the "background when Pawson arrests Mercedes?").  But here? It just works, I think, because it feels like a series of "underneath" reveals that also don't force your eye to go backwards. Its mostly a natural progression from left-to-right and from "front-to-back" (and vice versa (back-to-front) as needed, in the last panel) .

The rub is that I'm not entirely sure how I did that, so there'll be a few Abbycapers before it becomes a consistent thing, or more, a consistent thing that is GOOD. 

Something else that's fascinating to me is my "hatching." For those who don't know, Hatching is the usage of lines to indicate shadows in lineart where gradient/cel shading isn't available. Those rows of lines indicating shadows? That's "hatching," and as you can tell, with me and things that are stupid complicated but I like doing (like animation)  I like hatching. 

The thing is, that hatching for pencils doesn't translate to hatching for inks, at least, for me. gives my smooth shapes hard edges, which doesn't work for sexy bodies (or at least, the bodies I like to draw), so all this hatching is going to be replace with shadows when I do the colors. I don't think its work lost or mispent, because it helps me figure out where my shadows are, and better my lining abilities, but I would like to better integrate it somehow into the final product.

I mention it because I think I'm really on my A-game with the hatching in this comic (especially on both of Tia's poses and the bush Abby is stashed behind in the end), and so I'd like to point it out.

What do you guys think?

(PS. Elijah Pink's stuff is really good, and if you like my model, or access to an artist archive and have $5, I HIGHLY recommend it. As you might have guessed, I'm a patron of theirs, and I can only hope this comic sends more traffic their way, if peeps want the context of how Tia ended up that way.)

Seriously, what do you guys think? This is the first time I've done BtS ("behind the scenes") for an Abby Caper, and I'd like to know your thoughts, both on the comic and on BtS in general? It'll definitely be Patreon exclusive (most general/casual audiences don't care unless they're doing general education), but should it be exclusive to the patrons/paid tiers, or also available to the public posts? Let me know in the comments!