Knifing to your success through failure (Patreon)

Here's a little success story about me failing a page, but then turning it into one of my favorite page layouts - which incidentally also happened to coincide with completely different subject of my current ruminations.

So, here's my initial take on a page from the middle of New Knife's #1:

My basic page idea was about Honza (the old dude) circling around Chal (the young dude) - and I do mean panels of Honza's motion literally doing 90 degrees angles around him. But then I suddenly decided to end the page on a nice moody close-up of Chal's face, the base idea went out the window, because now there was no spac eto complete Honza's rotation around the central panel. And as I was literally dragging my knuckles through the page, too stubborn to get rid on the close-up I liked so much and knowing perfectly well that the layout just doesn't work now... I finally said "fuck it" and decided to ditch the gimmick. 

And - voilà!

Not only did I manage to salvage a dying page, but I ended up with  probably one of the most nicely balanced layouts - one that works really well with pretty wordy rough dialogue placement, and has plenty of space to breathe while  effectively still being a page of talking head.

***

Now, to the solid black/screentones dilemma that I mentioned in first paragraph; it's pretty interesting how my current obsession with deeper, but more nuanced shadows and reflected lights a-la Richard Corben and Cam Kennedy begins to show up in my public commissions, but it's actually informed by my comics work. And it goes both way - while penciling pages and thinking about them in more complex terms of masses and tones (and how shading could serve storytelling and composition), I actually get to the place where I could be more confident in deeper blacks, too:

The final page will probably be inked somewhere between the two approaches - like, panel 1 could definitely use more deep black, and last panel screams for the dramatic halftone shadow - but in some places where I would've been uncertain abut which way goes best, I could now actually see how it works in both ways.

God, I'm so excited for this comic... Just give me strength and opportunities to actually make it happen.

I need a win!