Comic Report #55.1 - Quick Turnaround (Patreon)

So I got this page painted up quicker than I thought, if I can keep up this pace I can get us to the big page 600 animation within 2020! I really want to get this page lettered and up on the site ASAP so like I always say for these textless pages, I'm gonna make it quick.

Lately I've been really happy with how my painting has turned out. I don't do it as often as I should but I was rereading my comic the other day and I noticed that I've grown to use a lot less grimy painting than I used to, like not as much light/dark gradient painting. When I first noticed this I was like, am I getting worse at it?  But as I gave it more thought I realized I've gotten smarter or more efficient about my value fields. I'm better able to define big clean shapes with big use of contrast and I can do more subtle toning and modeling within those bigger shapes using softer contrast.  Lizzie's hair in particular stands out, and I think that's a product of working on the game version of these characters.  For a while I tried to paint in like streaks or clumps of her hair, especially in her bangs, but somewhere I drifted more towards jagged shapes that I've been giving 3D edges, depth and facets to, and it's less work but it seems to pop more.  After twelve or so years of working on Dead Winter I think I got kinda good at making smart painting choices and it kinda just snuck up on me.

This panel had a lot of painted depth and space backgrounds again, but the last panel I specifically wanted to create an effect.  I think I mentioned last week I wanted to give Marv the cowboy squint, so the background effect I wanted to put behind him was a combination of like, squint-eye blur, the shape of a western sunset and narrowing horizontal lines to represent what in my head felt like a good spaghetti-western energy.  I'm real happy with the painting I did on Marv's face in that bottom panel, I got all the facial muscles underlit and emphasized how I want to really capture the theme of what's to come.

One quick note before I close up and get back to work, but in panel 5 where Marv is twirling his pistol, I wanted to not only convey him twirling and swinging his arm around but I had a specific sequence of arm positions I wanted to convey.  The sequence isn't absolutely necessary to convey the panel's meaning but I want to put it down on paper so someone out there knows what I did:  the order of hand positions is defined by the spin-circles going from darkest to lightest, and each position movement is marked by a different number of little jagged trailing triangle lines coming off the spin-circle; so position 1 is south, position 2 is north, position 3 is west and position 4 is east, setting up the arm pulling back to sling the pistol back into his holster.  It's super minor but if you've read this far, now you know it's there.

I'm honestly not sure what I'm gonna be able to have in time for Friday's update, seeing as I'm finishing this comic page on a Wednesday night.  I will probably have some kind of gamedev task to share, since I can fit that in small spaces, so that will probably be it.  Thank you for sticking with us, I'll have a lettered page available for you to read shortly!