Development Diary - May 2019 (Patreon)

Harrow!

I'm happy to announce that at this time of writing, I've finished drafting the first 6 pages of Meatier Showers 2019. These 6 pages make up the first story arc of the series, titled, "Catching Up" - where we basically check in with the main cast to so how they've been and what has changed over the course of my 1-year hiatus.

While starting on the inking phase, with each revisit, it started to dawn on me that the gag for page 1 just wasn't working out. For those of you who are fresh to my new process, I only have 4-6 hours per week on Sundays to work on Meatier Showers, due to my day-job commitments. Having already reached the inking stage, at least 2-3 weekend hours had been invested on page 1, and it was with great reluctance that I finally decided to scrap the page, in favor of a stronger, more focused opening using the subsequent page 2 as the new first page.

Let's go over what happened:

Flat Punchline

Continuing from where we left off from last month's Development Diary, Page 1 had seen some amendments particularly in the last panel. The gist of the gag is that Pridestar is taking into a webcam. We don't know where he is, but he's doing his usual routine of putting up a good show for audiences, At the very last panel, we reveal that he's actually at a computer store, using a demo unit to do all his cam slut business. A store attendant then prompts Pridestar to leave.

Originally, this page was intended to set up just how aloof and socially out-of-tune Pridestar is. The jam with Pridestar is that he's so good at what he does professionally as a stripper, that he doesn't know how to behave outside of that professional environment. While at this point, the gag seemed to serve that purpose, a lot of the punchline relied heavily on one trick - concealing information (the whereabouts of Pridestar) and the revealing of said information.

For the most part, the sudden appearance of a complete stranger an "extra" character at the last panel was very abrupt, sudden and confusing - Who is this person? Was that Groover? What is going on? I tried adding an additional panel where a mysterious hand comes in from behind to tap on Pridestar to see if that helped with the flow of information... 

Not only did the additional panel failed to contribute or save the gag, but it added to the visual clutter of the page. It was already very busy with all of Pridestar's dynamic poses, there was not enough breathing space for dialogue and made the top half very claustrophobic. Despite all the attempts and sacrifices, the amount of effort invested in this page was starting to become disproportional to the comedic payoff from the gag itself - something which I have to painfully admit, for the most part, was really lame and uninteresting. The reveal relied heavily on not telling the audience where Pridestar was. Without that, he's just a loon sitting naked at the computer store, and how funny was that really in the grand scheme of things? While it added little to character development, the addition of a completely random, non-reoccurring extra character, on the very first page of a series designed to introduce the full Meatier Showers cast to new readers and returning fans was high risk, detrimental and really not worth all the trouble.

Ultimately I made the executive decision to kill the gag and the page, and improvise with the remaining material I had in this story arc. For more on that, be sure to support my Patreon project, Meatier Showers 2019. Towards the end of the month, patrons will have early access to the page adjustments I've made - turning page 2 to page 1, and generating another 2 pages out of 1 to fill up the gap. Confusing? It'll make more sense when you see the pages!

If you find all this behind-the-scenes production stuff interesting, you'll want to join me on the rest of my journey HERE!

Production Schedule Updates

Not sure what you're in for? Check out my production schedule here from current to past (completed) Patreon projects!

Stay tuned end of this month for more comic page updates!

Snares,
May 2019