Comic Report 18.1 - Establishments (Patreon)

Here's my update on this art since last Thursday. I was tempted to skip the isometric establishing shots in panels 1 and 2 until later but I instead decided to just jump in and get them out of the way, so next comic week I can knock out the rest of the figures (which are comparatively easier) and be done with it.  

I left my light spheres active in this progress shot. When I paint a scene I try to maintain a specific light source- in this case its morning, so the sun would be rising in the east, which means it would be coming from the side of town that has the FISH building and the crane. Before I paint my panels I drop in these red dots on their own Photoshop layer and give them a quick shot of white to establish where my light source is coming from, so when I get to painting I know where my lights, shadows and reflected lights are coming from.  In panel 2 I kinda fudged it a bit because I fudged it a little in panel 1, casting the shadows on more of a / than a \ angle since I felt it would give me slightly better shapes in my composition.  A while back earlier this year when I took all that time to make the really-detailed establishing shot of the entire town (page 548), and really spent the effort to plot out where everything was?  That came in very handy in setting up these shots, since I can just pull that panel up and be like, okay, these buildings go here. Boom, done. 

One of my favorite things to paint in these concrete outdoor scenes is the reflection of buildings and other objects in the pavement.  Its very subtle, it sort of captures the way asphalt absorbs oil and water and it generally gives the scene a better sense of atmosphere than if I just kept it flat matte. 

I'll be switching back to gamedev this week, getting started on updating Alice's sprites.  If you're also a games patron, we may have a v.2 demo of the game on the new engine with the new player abilities sometime the end of this weekend or the beginning of next which we'll put up here, so keep an eye out for that!  It's very exciting, the game is becoming a Real Thing.

Thanks for sticking with me!