Comic Report #64 - Getting Down To Business (Patreon)

Alright!  After a bit of a detour into getting some animation work done following the previous page it's time to start work on the Hell Task of animating page 600.  I haven't documented a 100-page animation process on this Patreon before so this week I'll do my best to outline my process.

One of my primary rules for animating comic pages for as long as I've been doing them is that the page needs, absolutely needs to be able to function without the animation.  The motion is fun but it cannot supplant the core structure of a static comic page or else the animation will be a gimmick, and the page will be just a janky sort of cartoon.  The animation, fancy as it might be, is merely an underscore or an accent to the sequential arts.  Every animated page I've done, both the isolated panels as well as these full pages, has followed this rule, it really is the heart of my formula.

Leading up to page 600 I set up a quiet close of the previous day, a moment where everyone is asleep and then a sharp interruption from some loud noise, setting up the big introduction on this page.  I wanted to set up a big moment that might strike a chord with readers, so for page 600 the Omnimart crew arrives in Tombstone.  I'd set this up on page 562, where Lizzie was trying to persuade Maria to get her a better job than being a waitress- Maria took that lead and ran with it and so today the old friends arrive in a gigantic truck, and that's the big reveal!  I've been thinking about these guys for a while, and establishing Tombstone as kind of the central hub of the story it felt right to bring them home as well and not leave their fates up to mystery out in the wild.  With Lizzie, Alice, Monday and Lou, including Stacy and bringing back Amy, Clark, Melody and Dale this little family has become fairly large, it makes their world feel a bit less lonely.

While I have the pace of the page set up, I write little notes for myself for how I want to handle the animation part of that panel.  Panel one opens with Deon and Donna opening Tombstone's Gate B, the same gate the crew came through.  Deon is waving the bus backwards, I can achieve this in a fairly simple animation cycle.  Drawing the bus moving backwards will probably involve making one asset, copying and shrinking it slightly to allow it to maintain a retreating perspective and to paint over the duplicate with new lighting and shadow cast by the surrounding details, to help sell the feeling that the bus is moving in space with depth and atmosphere.  When I draw Donna I always try to research her American Sign Language, though I admit I don't always remember what specific words I looked up on previous pages.  Since she's going to be in a hundred-page animation it will make animating her signing a lot more fun- on this panel she is saying "welcome", starting her hand at her chin and arcing it up and out, in that specific pose.  I'm going to review my references a bunch more to make sure I get it right.  That's basically the movement in panel one.

Panel two is my initial reveal, a shot from inside the gate as the bus backs up, revealing the gleaming grill of an 18-wheeler.  I thought about if I wanted to have the grill all decked out with nailboards and metal plates like a Mad Max supertruck but really these guys would have just gone outside the Omnimart and started it up so that part would probably happen inside Tombstone. This panel will be fairly simple to animate, but it's intended punch is the initial reveal so it doesn't need to be too complicated.

Panel three is what is going to kill me.  The crew aren't the only ones who were woken up by the big horn blast; a crowd gathers around outside to see what is coming into their little town, and from each side the crew join in and look up.  To save myself a little bit I blocked this in as small clusters of incidental characters I can go back through my archive and plug into spots, a few of them will just be three-frame idle boiling loops, which means drawing the same frame three times and playing that on a loop so it looks alive and not static.  The clusters near where each half of the crew are pushing in will need animation frames where they kinda scoot aside to open the way and look over, before looking back up at the camera, a nice subtle movement but one I'm going to have to draw several times.  I also need to draw the crew scooting in from off-frame, nudging by people and then looking up at the camera themselves.  Every one of these 100-mark pages has had some difficulty-spike panel in them and for this page, this crowd scene is it.  I'll work through it, but I expect this to be my speedbump.

The next panel, panel four, I've had some back-and-forth about how I wanted to handle.  My initial thumbnails were to have a shot of the trailer gleam in the light, the camera panning to show the words OMNI (_) MART printed on it, but that felt a bit redundant with the next panel.  Since I sort of expect this to be the last 100-mark page I do I kinda wanted to have everyone get a big shot in it.  The early 100 pages were Monday-focused, and then Monday and Lizzie, and then Lizzie-focused with a dash of Alice.  Alice and Lou deserve some 100-page attention, so this panel is all of their reactions to what would be revealed next.  Lou is an initial reaction, quiet surprise.  Monday's shtick is that he is rarely emotive, but seeing his one real friend Dale come back again is enough to get a look out of him.  Lizzie knew to expect this development, even if not so soon, since she was the one who set the ball in motion and Alice is just overjoyed to see her friends again.  I'm thinking about incorporating the original Omnimart trailer idea into this panel, either in front of them or behind them, I'll figure that out when I get there.

And then, the final panel, is the Big Shot.  The big animated pages always have a big shot at the end, like all that waiting and watching has to culminate in something meaningful.  I'm thinking about introducing it like the front windshield has a glare on it so you only see Dale driving, and then that flashes away to reveal the other three- they would all be as excited as the crew in the panel before them, like here is this whole little civilization they're seeing for the first time.  The truck itself will be static, though I will boil the front end pieces to give it the feeling of a rumbling motor, and the background I can make slowly scroll behind them.  A few pages back I think I mentioned how "this dirt lot where all the cars go, next to the newspaper building, will be important soon", that is essentially where the Omnimart refrigerated truck is heading, so I'll be dipping back a few pages to Stacy's backstory page to reference that scenery in the background of this panel.

It took me a bit of time to find my footing with this comic but as it's progressed I've really grown attached to the overarching narrative about hope and community, so as a possible final 100-mark page this one really conveys what Dead Winter is about at its heart, and I think that will be a good note to hit 600 on.  Thank you for being patient during this stretch while I wrapped up some other tasks, I'll be working hard on this next page until it is finished.