Comic Report 19.1 - The Great Outdoors (Patreon)

I have an obsessive compulsion, I'm sure of it. When I walk I avoid stepping on cracks, when I drive I try not to turn the engine off until a song is finished, and when I draw outdoor shots I like to make sure every little detail is accounted for.  Way back when I started I would draw backgrounds as just jagged square silhouettes but as time went on buildings became more specific, and when I draw specific buildings I feel compelled to make sure they're as true to their form as any other character on a page.

This isn't particularly necessary. As long as there's enough visual information to convey the who, the what, the where and the mood of a comic panel, that's good enough. Sometimes "good enough" isn't good enough in my weird brain.  I need to make sure the right buildings are next to each other, and that the power lines from the steam generator in the east end of town criss-cross from the correct building to the next, so when I draw night scenes the position of the floodlights are correct.  I need the world to be a background character so people can be in places and not simply exist in the narrative void.  Again, none of this is necessary for making comics, but in the lightning storm between my ears it's as important as panel borders and word balloons.

Interior shots follow the same metric, when I draw a room interior I try to make sure the correct pictures are on the correct walls, that the furniture is in a consistent place from scene to scene, even that the major cracks and stains on the walls maintain consistency from shot to shot. The difference between an exterior and interior shot is the interior shots are less detail-dense, a wall is a wall and a headboard is a headboard.  I got through my major exterior shots, I expect I should be able to knock out the interiors in my next comic run. I haven't drawn an interior shot that wasn't the diner in a long, long time.

My goal for this week coming up is to try to either get Alice's game sprites finished or close enough to finished that I can feel safe knowing that milestone is near to pass, then after that I will likely make a week-plus push to just get the comic page finished instead of letting a tiny bit of work sit until the next work cycle.  Thanks for sticking with me, I sincerely appreciate that people still follow these things that I do.