Comic Report #128 - Pulling It Back Together (Patreon)

This week is the big one. We finally shipped our game on Thursday, people are playing it and it sounds like they are mostly enjoying it. I've been in a pressure cooker of stress since then, and I feel like microwaved hamburger. It's those first days, you're not actually sure if people will like what you made, you're seeing people play and your heart stops for a second anytime someone posts a weird physics interaction or a stage layout thing you didn't catch. My nerves are shot but I think things are alright. We made it to the end, now I just need a minute to breathe.

I did try to get the page penciled for today, I'll have to make due with a thumbnail post, though. I'm gonna decompress a little bit but this week I'll be back on the board working on this comic page, and I won't have a massive game release hanging over my head anymore. So real quick today, I'm gonna run through my layout and frame what I'm building towards next.

The intent I have for this page is to frame the main crew and the Omnimart guys linked up and heading out to confront the Tombstone Gravekeepers, so it's meant to be a kind of posse-up line of shots. The first panel is one of my favorite little shots to set up: a row of shoes walking along the road, or in this case crunching in the snow. Every character in this comic has a unique kind of apparel, so being able to convey who is there just by their shoes is a neat little framing device, I think. A nice deep-angle shot across the walking line- an artistic trick about drawing people walking together is, you don't want to draw them all in the same "pose" or the same moment of each step. If you think of what a walk cycle looks like, and draw each character representing a different frame of the walk cycle, then when they're side-by-side the reader's eye scans across your figures and they can read a sense of walking animation in your still frame shot. That's what I'm planning to do.

Mid frames on this page I want to try some nice diagonal paneling while I show the characters prepping their gear for the upcoming scene. I think diagonal compositions are useful in spots where space is hard to come by, since you can block out a "square" of space and use the corner-to-corner width of that space to fit a wide-angle shot into a more compressed bit of paneling, by taking advantage of the longer axis. I also think, for the context here, that it makes the shots feel like more dynamic camera cuts to have them jump from shot to shot with a right-leaning diagonal.

Rounding out the page I want to have a shot centered with Liz and Monday, the long-time conflicting teammates side-by-side in their rare unified cause. From here the camera would turn, showing the characters' backs as they walk forward towards the Gravekeepers' hangout spot, the big building that says FISH on the top. This page is my build-up into the next big scene, and that panel is the step-off point into starting up what's to come.

That's gonna be it for me today. I'm going to rest this weekend, and then it's back to it. If you picked up a copy of Kitsune Tails, be sure to let me know what you think! It's really the only thing that's been in my head since I woke up on Thursday. Until next week: take it easy!