Comic Report #52 - Actions Speaking Loudly (Patreon)

This was a busy week for me.  Long story short is I have to find a new housing situation soon and I've got a bit of a fire lit under me to shore up some cash to take care of moving, so I opened up art commissions (which can be found here if you're interested in that:  https://twitter.com/deadwintercomic/status/1171540294426218496 )  I worked on a couple commissions, but then I also wanted to get this comic page going for my Friday work update and I just entered some kind of fever state, and here it is. I've really wanted to get to this page for a while so that partly fed into getting it done so quickly, so I'm gonna jump right to it and share my notes for the week with you.

A big part of my planning for extended action sequences is planning what cool moments I want to include and kinda building around those moments. Like for example, in the old Kickstart My Heart sequence I wanted specifically to have a ramp over a roadway as the final escape, so I built the pages leading up to that moment to turn into the park and set up the ramp- that scene was incidentally also where Alice got to really show off her sharpshooting skills.  For the current scene one of the action beats I wanted to include is what my brain calls "the meat sledgehammer".  I wanted to include at least one running zombie, to call back to the last running zombie, so I could use their running momentum to get scooped up by the broad end of Lizzie's mop and slammed down on top of an opponent.  Alice providing cover fire means I could put a line through the zombie's head and it doesn't become a death sentence for the victim being crushed by two hundred pounds of hungry meat.  The zombie running would be the only real way for Lizzie to hoist him up there, since she couldn't deadlift one herself, I really want to nail the momentum and leverage to make sure the movement reads correctly.  

In the leadup to The Meat Sledgehammer I needed to set the stage to flow into the scoop-up.  Two of my other goals for this page were to incapacitate Sword Girl and also bring Pruning Saw into the fight, so to achieve this I open up with a clash break from the end of the last panel and establish a stand-off between Lizzie and two of the three Ponchos.  She had a moment of one-on-one she bought with her opening attack but that is over now so the situation is more dangerous.  The main setup I have is Pruning Saw coming down with an overhead attack Lizzie can deflect with the pommel of her mop, which brings her mop head back so if she dips low she could push it forward to catch the running zombie in the stomach and lift it up.  Her arms are crossed in that specific way so when the zombie is past the apex of its momentum arc she can dump it forward on top of Sword Girl.  I also wanted to break Sword Girl's weapon, since it's a cheap mall katana I figured it would be brittle and it could shatter under the force of a human body crashing down on top of it from the side like that.  With her sword broken that puts her out of the fight and I can focus on Saw vs Mop- for the page duration I planned  I had an initial setup, an opening entanglement and now we're at about the apex of the fight, then I can bring things towards its conclusion.  I want the fight to have a rhythm and a flow to it and I don't want it to overstay its welcome, which is part of why I'm putting in double time to keep the pages coming, but I'm happy to check The Meat Sledgehammer off my to-do list.

i've got a commission I need to work on this weekend but I'm going to start inking and painting this page as well.  I'll likely be back here with a fully inked, half-painted page and then say "I'll get this done by the end of the weekend" and then finish earlier than I planned.  Thanks for sticking with me, I'll report back next week!