Comic Report #38.1 - Meeting Half Way (Patreon)

Here is my progress update for this week!  I switched back to working on the comic page after a short stretch of cleaning up some game art revisions. One of the challenges of trying to juggle both comics and games is the mechanical art requirements of each are really different, so it takes me a day or so to actually get into the correct rhythm before I can build momentum. Animation is loose and gestural but I need to fit to specific timings, whereas my comic painting requires a lot more attention to modeling the shape of my subjects, since I need to account for light sources in my work. I thought I'd get farther than I did, but I think I can get the rest of this page finished before this time next week.

Coming from my last comic report post, I decided to dial back the panel borders for the narrative timehop section. I think it's clear enough on its own that the scene is taking place in the past, and I was just getting cocky trying to pull a fancy layout trick. One minor detail I am going to inflict on myself, however, is the specific location of the shot in panel three. In other scenes I've made sure to draw in specific buildings in specific spots of the background, it's completely unnecessary but I feel like it gives the world a sense of consistency that my brain finds comforting.  I have a couple pages earmarked in my archive that I look back to for certain angles in town or in the restaurant or one of the characters' apartments, so I know to put the correct details in the right spots.  I know the specific location of the shot, it's on the far end of the main road where the newspaper office is, at the intersection where a right turn leads towards the sheriff's house. There's a couple buildings on the left side of that road which don't really see much use, or that I might have only ever drawn once, and from one angle, so I might be doing some inventing, but either way, I'd like to maintain consistency.

Normally when I post a comic page I try to make sure the panel I was working on is complete before I put it up but sometimes the time just doesn't line up right, and this is one of those times. In panel three you can see a bit of my process in how I build my paintings; I'll start out by trying to define the shape and form of a character using dark shadows, trying to think like I'm giving the characters polygonal facets. This helps me get a sense of what their body is shaped like, what is casting a shadow on what and how the light from the source, indicated by the red circle, describes it. From there I'll paint in gradients within fields to further indicate light sources and blend some of the hard edges between facets to create a sense of roundness where I need to.  I've learned over the years to try and give flesh a softer contrast than clothing- I used to paint facial shadows very dark and stark, but if I lighten them up and let them blend together more they give the sense that the character's body is more organic than the clothes on their back.  You can see a bit of this in Pat's face in that panel compared to his coat, I still like hard well-defined shapes but letting it blend and be soft does a lot more work than trying to be too literal with my lighting.  Skin is slightly translucent so light diffuses within it, this is why painting it differently works.

As mentioned before, I'll be working on this page and hopefully have it up for next week.  I'm in a comic groove so now that I have my momentum I'm going to carry it all the way to the end.  Thanks for your patience and support for my work!