Swole Mates Page 06 - Draft & Iterations (Patreon)

Harrow!

Thank you for your patience! For a good 2 weeks, I had found myself stuck at page 06 despite having already plot out some preliminary thumbnails earlier. The key issue I encountered while transitioning from page 06 - 07 based on these earlier thumbnails was that page 07 was effectively repeating similar story beats that could've all been compressed into page 06.

The main gist is this: Pridestar is preoccupied "helping" Snares close the beach. He turns around and much to his surprise, Snares is growing larger. They have an "exchange" and Pridestar decides to shuffle Snares to the changing rooms by the beach, where an earlier scene in page 07 repeats this - Pridestar trying to block the toilet entry, with Snares growing in the background using an over-the-shoulder shot of Pridestar. Pridestar acts surprised again.

In my mental fudge, I'm not sure why I repeated the beats twice. I might've been wanting to switch scenes to get the boys to a better location for more intimacy, while wanting to milk the sense of surprise for Pridestar. Eventually what happened was that for 2 whole weeks, I lost my momentum until the breakthrough I had in mid Sep with the new set of thumbnails and story edits. In this stream session (which I'll share end of the month), I made some panel swapping to make way for page 07, and toned down Snares' growth so that his size progression is more gradual over a wider spread of pages.

Initial Draft

For all my thumbnails and drafts, I usually start with what I call "placeholder" images, sketches whose main purpose is to show the shape of the characters and "block" them out on the page to get a feel of layout and composition. I like the general energy here. I only work in detail if there's an expression or moment of significance, like in the last panel above.

Second Draft

I start adding in details once I'm happy with the layout and overall feel to get a better sense if the scene works. Here, a technicality is causing troubles for me in the later pages - Pridestar's fringe is on his left, which will obscure his expressions if I continue this path of continuity where he's screen right. I wanted to try shifting him over to screen left:

Third Draft

The transition is not elegant, and a "cheat" at best where we assume that Pridestar runs over the other side and "flips" to his right. Also in this last panel, I had gotten carried away with myself and plumped up Snares quite a bit. As much as I enjoy the size, it's too early now. I want to save the full growth sequence for when they're actually at the showers.

Latest Draft

After much experimentation and rearranging stuff, I pulled 3 panels from page 07 onto page 06 and slotted them at the bottom. Effectively speaking, we still have the same story beats where Pridestar is "helping" with the signage, and shows surprise at the sight of Snares. The new panels remind us of what the "growth trigger" is, and helps set a turning point now for Snares where he's more open to Pridestar's assistance than he initially was in page 05.

That's all for this update, do stick around for the featured stream of this month, as well as page 07! Thank you for your support!

Snares
Sep 2021