Comic Report #51 - Body Movin' (Patreon)

Continuing forward with my comics initiative, here's the sketch phase of the next comic page.  One of the elements I want to maintain throughout these pages is having the action choreography be trackable- like for example, the end of the last page has the sword girl swinging her right hand horizontally around, ending with the blade to the right, so at the start of this page I have her cutting back forward again from right to left, with Lizzie dodging out of the way.  I have her posed with the pommel of her mop in the lower left corner because in panel two I want her to step forward, pivot and bring the pommel of the mop up for a counterattack.  I tried to give sword girl a specific pose in her panel 1 attack that could be retracted backwards into that X-shaped guard position, so that in panel 3 she could pull both weapons out and forward in a counterattack of her own.  Since Lizzie had the pommel of her mop up in the air in panel 2 I had her bring her left hand forward to position the mop vertically in panel 3 as her own guard action, and then in panel 4 I let her conclude the action sequence with a kick.  That's always been how I like to think about action sequences, like, "after this moment what would the flow of movement produce next?", rather than drawing fights as just dynamic poses existing next to each other in sequence.  I want to capture that movement!  The movement is like 80% of why I started making comics in the first place.

While I'm building up the tempo of the action sequence on this page I want to commit some frames to establishing the role Alice and Stacy play in the combat, since it isn't strictly Lizzie fighting the three raiders.  Alice is in a safe position and she's there for fire support, and the undead outside the walls are being drawn to the action.  I want to establish that whenever I draw a little line in the background of an action shot on future pages that's Alice providing cover for Lizzie.  One of my dialogue notes is to include a bit about runners, since Lizzie was pulled off that ladder in the alleyway by a runner she knows about that development in the undead situation and would have told Alice, so Alice is telling Stacy to watch out for runners so she can take care of them quickly.  I also want to work in a bit of dialogue between Stacy and Alice as to why Alice doesn't simply shoot the Yellow Ponchos dead where they stand- Lizzie doesn't want to kill people and Alice knows that, and supports her in trying to maintain that sliver of civility.  She'll pop the undead but incapacitate the living.

One of the objectives I want to make sure I hit by the planned conclusion of the fight scene is I don't want Lizzie to end up completely unscathed, like it would be kind of silly if she fought off three opponents at once and didn't take any hits herself.  I also know whenever characters in this comic take damage they tend to wear those injuries for the duration of the story, so I'm planning the main character's receiving damage around what I'd have to draw for the remainder of the comic.  Like fighting the sword, if she takes a cut to the cheek she's going to always have that cut, but I can land bonks with the scabbard and not majorly change the character's appearance.  The last panel of this page kinda showcases both getting bonked in that way and also the choreographed martial action in the early panels kinda breaking down into a goofy, graceless exchange.  I don't want to oversell these characters' fighting abilities, they're absolutely normal people who have survived the crucible and kinda cobbled together their own understandings of self-defense.  They weren't trained to fight, they kinda learned on the fly, so the last panel of this page is a bit of a breakdown.

I'm going to continue working on this page so next Friday I should have another comic update for you.  Thanks for sticking with us, I'm having fun getting back into drawing comic action again!