Comic Report #128.3 - The Lineup (Patreon)

Hello! Thanks for waiting for me. I've made it about halfway through the page this past week, I think I can get it wrapped up in the week to come. The end of the month is coming up so I think landing that target will get me back into the rhythm for regular updates again, I'm gonna make it my priority to get this thing wrapped up by that target. In the meantime, here's where I'm at so far:

As I've been painting my foreground figures I've been blocking in my shapes for the final background pass, and I think a lot of where I am now shouldn't be too bad to paint in. The whole top half of the comic is ambiguous buildings, shots of the snowy ground and up at the stars; I get into the most trouble when I have specific depth-of-field shots, looking down long streets lined with buildings that are mapped to be specific places in a specific order. I think the only really painful background to render will be the very last panel, which shouldn't be too much trouble. I think I'll be okay.

I am gonna have to flesh out the cast shadows in the Melody & Clark panel. I have a vague sort of shape blocked in for now, but when I go through here I'm gonna need to shape the shadows they cast in a way that better matches their bodies, and adjust the angle they're cast on. I think Melody's perspective with the ground looks just right, but Clark looks like he's leaning at an angle I don't want him to be at, and I think a lot of that has to do with the temporary shadow angle. That's a mental note to fix when I get back to it.

Last week I mentioned that I might end up lowering the lineup of characters in the very last panel to allow more overhead space, and I ended up acting on that. I think it does end up looking a lot better, there's a lot more room for background and text to go there and the cross symbols on the characters' backs are still centered and framed in the shot. Going through all those characters with a front-lit modeling job shouldn't be too big a deal, since it'll end up being a lot of darks with some very sharp rim highlights in the front to make their silhouettes pop, without quite as much interior modeling as if I painted them in normal lighting.

I'm excited to get this one in the can and get back to the normal rhythm. These past few months have been bumpy but I got done what I needed to do and now I'm picking up the slack I left to accommodate that work. I've been getting back to putting up story vignettes on https://titan.garden too, that project also fell to the wayside during the end crunch for Kitsune Tails, but I've started a new arc on there, if you'd like to check out something new in the meantime that one's definitely worth a read. I'll get back to the grind now, if all goes to plan you should hear from me again before next Saturday. Until then, have a nice week!