Comic Report #8 - Curtain Call (Patreon)

I finished up my game sprite obligations so I'm switching back to comics, so here's the sketch phase of the next page. This one knocked out quickly compared to the last few I've done because it's pretty final, it's the end of a day arc before I start setting things in motion tomorrow, so I can just end it on a cool note.

While planning out the job-introduction day I wanted to segue from closing to home in a way similar to the start of the comic, highlighting a few key differences between Page 1 Lizzie and Page Now Lizzie. She's grown a lot and things have evolved but some things are just the same, so thematically it's a good place to rest the story beat. This will also probably be the last time I draw Dream Lizzie for a while. There's a key final detail to this one which might not show up without color, but I'm hoping a message of wholeness comes across in the end.

I have a bad habit in comics where I want to frame a whole bunch of in-between shots, like panning moments of people walking from one place to another, but I also don't want to waste panels on nothingness.  When I started this page I had thought about how to visually move the comic from the restaurant back home and leave enough page space to fill out the rest of the comic. It took a little bit but then I realized that I already established the route and the apartment so I could just jump from one key turning to the next!  I'm honestly really super-proud of that scene transition. I also screwed up by drawing the door locks wrong at first (they're deadbolt locks, I had drawn them as doorknob locks originally); I'm usually good about remembering details in my own comic but I do a lot of archive-diving to reference specific scenes and I guess I thought I didn't need to do that here, but then I did look back and realized my mistake.  Fortunately moving a drawing of a lock from a doorknob to a door isn't that hard, but it's still a reminder to check my facts.

This page came out pretty quick and I did a fair amount of actual detailing, so I shouldn't have to guess and fill in gaps with the inking, so hopefully I'll get this one done quickly; well, at least relative to starting now, and not so much to when the last page posted.  Someday I'll get back on that old rhythm.

Thanks for reading!