Comic Report #126.2 - Back On The Grind (Patreon)

Happy Pride Month! I'm back from my little trip to Chicago- I feel really relaxed, and I can recognize how burnt I was making myself grinding out all my obligations, I think the time off was healthy for me. I'd pressed to get my stuff for Kitsune Tails in throughout May and I got word on the project that it is now "feature complete", that now we just need to fine-tune it and refine what's there but that we actually did achieve our goal of putting the completed product together, and we can ship the software in our slated timeframe of "before September". It feels like a huge accomplishment, it's something I've been working on alongside Dead Winter and Titan Garden stuff throughout the pandemic, since way back in 2020. It feels nice to be in the home stretch on something, and to prepare to see it out the door. It's been a big week, but I'm back home and I'm back on the grind to finish the next comic page for you.

It was the right call to keep this page a simple five-panel run, since I knew I'd be pushing over my line with it after taking a week off, I'm pretty sure I can have this page done by Tuesdayish, maybe late Tuesday but we'll see when we get there. The nicest part that I'd planned for myself is to not have any particularly complex backgrounds, it's all direct shots at walls which I'm mostly planning to put word bubbles overtop of, so it's just a matter of painting in all my figures- there's a few figures to paint, though, which is why I'm calculating my finish time at around Tuesday.

When I was inking this page I tried setting up the third panel to use a lighter shade of grey for the distant characters' lineart in anticipating of a fun effect I'm planning to try. I'd like this shot to really feel like the whole group is circling around this central point of candlelight, so I'm planning to paint the foreground figures with very dark greys, have a very bright midground and then view the background characters through that illumination, so their inks will be a bit lighter to reflect that. This is the shot I'm working on tonight, and I'm looking forward to executing my plan. After that it should be a downhill shot of two easy panels, then the background, then a new page! Yeah!

I'd like to say thank you again for your patience this month, it's been cramped but I feel good and I'm looking forward to getting to draw what I have planned for the near future. You should be hearing back from me halfway around this week with the finished textless version of this page, so please look forward to that. Until then, have a nice rest of the weekend!