First year in review!! Pt. 2 (Patreon)

Welcome back to my little retrospective of my comic! People had a lot of fun with the first one, so let's just jump right back in. If you missed the first post, it's right here!

And we're jumping right in with Part 01! These pages are kind of interesting, they --
Huh?

I missed some pages?

Hmm...

I don't know what you're talking about.

Anyway, this sequence is a bit corny, but it was a necessary evil -- Show, Don't Tell and all that, but I had to get this info in here somewhere, and I didn't want it to intrude too much.

Process-wise, this is the first time in a while I've done what might be called "inks" for a page, and it might be the last time. While this sequence gets the point across, I was never too happy with how it turned out... and as you might know from later pages, I ended up going a very different direction with these "storybook" type scenes in the future.

Say... now that the comic's been going for a while, is it just me, or do some of these figures look a little more familiar?


And we're back to these two dopes!! A little older, a little wiser, a little cuddlier, a little boobier.

Leo wears glasses now. Fenic's hair is much, much longer -- maybe too long!!! Fun fact, but I actually have a hard time managing Fenic's hair. It's one of the hardest things for me to fit into a composition on any given page -- there's just so much of it! But, as a continuation of the narrative of the prologue, Fenic's hair is a visual indicator of just how far she's come. She hasn't had a haircut since she came out!

Oh yeah, this outfit... originally, I really wanted to incorporate stars into Fenic's design. By this point it's been done to death, though -- so I ended up rounding out the star that was supposed to go on her dress and turning it into a flower!

By the way, this brings the "times I've drawn Fenic's girlbulge in the comic" counter to 1.

Sure, these pages establish some important lore details, but what's really important is that Fenic takes girl pills and wants to smooch cute girls!!!

Okay, okay. I'm not going to be going as deep into the meaning, symbolism, etc of these pages as I did in the prologue. Especially as we get closer to the current date, I'd like to leave a lot of stuff up to the reader's interpretation. It's no fun if I tell you what everything means and exactly why I wrote it the way I did -- I want people to see what they want to see!

On a lighter note, there's a little story behind each of the background characters in the running sequence, and I can tell you about that cuz it'll never really come up organically! 

-The old buff produce cat grampa is the same one you see twice in the prologue. 

-The broom mom and her Kid Whom Just Wanna Play With Mom don't have a very solid story, but... they're my favorite background characters. I love them, they're important to me.

-I don't know who that bat is, but he's always having a crisis. That's why, I call him, "Crisis Bat," in my notes,

-The creepy wolf friends!!!!!!!!!!!!! So, these kids are actually part of a weird, eccentric Market Square-based GANG called "The Smile Gang." They don't get up to organized crime or anything, though. Their mission? To smile and greet every single person in Market Square by name! The Smile Gang is super attentive, and they spend a lot of energy memorizing every single person's name. They sit in a different spot every morning and greet everyone who passes by with a smile. Unfortunately, a lot of people think they're creepy. Why? Well... it's just... somehow, they always seem to know who you are before you've even spoken...?
Also, don't tell anyone, but at least two of these kids look kinda familiar to me...

-It's Fran!


So, we finally meet Elly, Jessica, and Jessica's still-unnamed little brother.

I swear. to God. The "Cool Mom!" pin was just meant to be a one-off gag. I had no idea it would become a meme, or that people would start calling Jessica that forever, or beg me to sell merch of it. Actually, nobody in Market Square can even tell what it says -- after all, they've never seen these weird squiggles. That's not Wildren script at all!

Finally!! Our first little bit of action. Those little "Boss Subtitles" will come to be a recurring theme. We also get to see Fenic with a bit more conscious control over her magic now -- not something she's been historically good at, as we'll find out later.

Are those boyshorts, or just regular shorts? The jury's still out on this one. Jessica's cap disappears in the third page.



God... this flirting is so gratuitous. It exist only for the sake of injecting some gay into the comic. And I'm NOT sorry. It won't be the last time, as you all know well!!
Elly is actually... not an original character!! She's my BFF Eliza's self insert who I love very much and really wanted to fit in the comic somewhere. Unfortunately, we won't be seeing much of her again. But, the plot point she served was indispensable and really helped the flow of the chapter as I was writing -- not a frivolous decision at all!

SO!! These pages mark the start of me trying out some different painting and texturing techniques than the purely flat solid-color look I'd been doing before. I bought a huge number of weird brushes, and I never stopped using them. I've always liked the idea of crisp, cartoony characters with sharp edges on top of a more painterly background, and to this day that's still the balance I'm trying to strike!!

And THESE are the first pages with fully-painted backgrounds! Kind of a stark difference, huh? But it's a leap I'm glad I took -- it gives me a lot more freedom of expression.

It actually turns out that some things are much EASIER to paint than they are to draw outlines and fill in -- stuff like trees, grass, and other foliage can be painted with a few well-placed strokes that would take ten times as long to outline by hand. A pencil or a pen can only draw a line, but paintbrushes come in all shapes, sizes, densities, and textures -- they let you draw not with lines, but shapes!! A wedge-shaped brush with a triangular tip is your best friend when it comes to painting almost anything in nature.

* * *

This seems like a good place to stop for today -- the next few scenes are super dense, and I have a lot to say about the process and my thoughts about them!

Thanks so much for reading as always, and thank you SO much for your support. 

These are trying times, and I know so many of you are feeling beaten down and scared. But if we never stop supporting each other, we'll get through all of this. And in the mean time, I'm going to have plenty of girly gay comics for y'all for many years to come.

I love you folks so much!! Please do your best!!