10-08 Update Artist's Commentary (Patreon)

Chumi, who is Generally Enthusiastic about Most Things: Hi! Wow, look at this month’s update! The first update of them all, a momentous occasion marked by some silly courtroom shenanigans! Believe me, it’s so exciting to get rollin’ again. Hope you’re just as –EXCITED as we are! We’re cooking right now, and it sucks that we can’t show you everything immediately, but MAN… Anyway, it’s nice to see some callbacks to previous panels, right? I think my pals on the team did an amazing job on these, seeing Terezi up to some silly NONS3NS3 brought back some warm, nostalgic fuzzies.

Kim, gay: And what a hearty update it was to kick off the comeback! The first thing y’all probably noticed coming back to Terezi here in the Meat timeline is that she has a spankin’ new outfit (again?!) The previous fit was definitely fun and very Terezi-core, but we figured it would be the smart decision to streamline her outfit in a way that would be more feasible to redraw for many future panels to come. (I mean, the artist had to draw her for about a WHOLE 30 panels just here! That’s already a whole lotta times to redraw the same design over and over!)

Kim: I helped pitch the new look for her design, and immediately the creative crew already loved the direction we were going with. There were a few subtle iterations of this that floated by too– like what if she also had a tie? Or a bolo tie? Suspenders, or no suspenders? Her initial design also implied she still had a coat too, but it wasn’t really all that relevant for this update. But, maybe it’ll come up later– who knows! The world is our oyster. To have a coat.

James, Director: I really wanted Terezi to have a simplified down design, but also still look a little like a lawyer. So I asked for suspenders.

Chumi: You were correct!!! Suspenders look slick on her. A new outfit for a new phase of the comic!

Andi, a humble virtuoso of the canvas: Agree with the above. Her outfit was so fitting for her. I couldn’t imagine it any other way. Kim did an awesome job cooking it up!

Kim: And we couldn’t have asked for a better artist to start off this update than Andi! I remember as soon as they presented the sketches to me for this update, I was already blown away with their vision. They captured the visual vibe of Homestuck perfectly, I hardly had any notes for it. Here you can see the initial boards they pitched below– you can even see how some small things changed and what stayed! I always think it’s so fun to observe how things evolve during the production process from the original idea to the final product, hehe.

Andi: Beginning our artist rotation for the updates, I volunteered to draw the first Terezi panels. Truth be told, it was a little intimidating! Considering my take on the new art was going to set an example for the future of the art style. Us artists had long talks about it, we explored how the new style can be both economic and whimsical. We thought it would be refreshing if we tried to maintain the charm of the old HS1 style with a bit of our own styles mixed in. I’m happy to see that it really hit home for some people. Once it was time to start working, James handed me a really interesting script to begin thumbing. I thought, “Woah, a courtroom scene. Reminds me a lot of those little Hivebent moments....” Then I smirked, realizing I had the opportunity to violently hammer that little nostalgia button in the deep crevices of your brain lobotomy style. As a Homestuck old head of sorts, I am prone to indulging in a lot of oldies but goodies, but I think this time it was VITAL that I include something that would convey that Terezis’ old habits are still there, she is an adult now, but we still get glimpses of the old Terezi we know and love. I got some comments about the animation and how they said it felt very homestuck-y. That is one of my favorite things to hear considering I studied the HS1 gifs for an unreasonable period of time just to achieve this. I really want the animation to have these janky jitters and abrupt cuts between sprites and movement.

One of the funny things about that though is that our AMAZING technical helper Wunkolo (programmer/artist/animator) helps us with some animation work once in a while, and we worked together on the panel where the bucket creature was kicked into the sky team rocket style. This one was going to actually be a lot smoother. As artistes, we don’t really think about how jank Homestuck really tends to be! Making things look shitty is an art form in itself. So here was the original frame rate:

This is MUCH too smooth and PERFECT to qualify as a Homestuck animation.
So, we got some advice from professionals: “MAKE IT MORE CHOPPY!!!!!!!!!”

There we go, chop it up baby, make it a whopping 15 fps. Sometimes homestuck has to look like a powerpoint slideshow, ya feel me? Who thought janky animation took this much effort…. *wipes brow*

I am going to make sure the rest of the comic can maintain these little animation traditions with a touch of stupid.

After finishing my half of the first update, it was then time to see what was cooking up with John and Sollux. The art for that was just so visually stimulating for such a brief interaction. It really enhanced both their charms, including the little exasperated hand to the head that John can do when he’s just perplexed. Haven did awesome! (As per usual 😏) I’ll hand it off to Mr. Foods to share the genius.

HAVEN, Mr. Foods: Hi guys, I did the art on the second half of the update!

HAVEN: The start here has John walking through a tunnel towards the light, creating a nice parallel with the previous section finishing with Terezi speaking to John's corpse in the wallet. During the production phase of that update, we were talking about Terezi having a back and forth with an unseen party and I wanted the reveal to be Terezi literally speaking to John’s corpse propped up against a tree or something.

HAVEN: I made this image about it, but people thought it a tad morbid so it got nixed! :p

JAMES: At first I wanted him to be a skeleton. I started calling him “Dry John.” This lasted about 15 minutes, but I still call him Dry John in the work chat and people know who I mean.

HAVEN: This is the big reveal. Sollux, the Gamer. The prompt was something like “sollux-male-living-space.” Luckily, I’ve been thinking about “sollux-male-living-space” for years now, and I had this edit made that I could quickly build off of.

Chumi: Sollux, what a guy. I love their exchange. Good on him for calling John out for being sorta weird. I think you should be more worried about other things instead of being so nosy! And I always forget he’s like… 40 years old! Isn’t that crazy? All of our favorite characters are middle-aged now, at least in one timeline! New outfits, new-ish style, old characters we love, a new game to play, and new things to come… This is all such a marriage of the new and the old, it’s kinda beautiful. I hope you’re ready for it all, because I think we’re making something great. We are making it happen, and you all better be there to see it! 🫵

HAVEN: Here he is in full force gaming, getting down on DK country looks like. I think this was a toblerone wish we wanted to subtly address. I think someone wished “I want Roxy to be a Donkey Kong Country fan” and it went years without ever being addressed… until now.

HAVEN: I like John sitting here kind of sheepishly with his knees together like that. In the sketch here, Sollux was gonna be way more sloppy, sandwich out on his chest and it's starting to all fall apart, but he just can’t give a shit.

HAVEN: Panel arrangements here ended up being switched around between iterations of the update. The bottom panel with the Vriska knockout callback was originally first, with the dramatic Sollux with doom symbol in the back going second.

HAVEN: The final punchline of the update here was a request from a team member that Sollux also played Sonic CD. I think Sonic CD’s soundtrack, or songs that sound like Sonic CD, have been associated tangentially with Sollux for a while so we’re, um, what's the opposite of lampshading something? Well, we’re showing that he’s into that shit.