Comic Report #105.2 - Home Stretch (Patreon)

Hello again!  This week might be a bit of a short update, but I am happy to report I am making good progress at a good speed on this page- my one-month deadline is like the 25thish and it's not even the 10th yet so I'm on my merry way with this one.  I lost a bit of time this week since I'd gotten my Omicron Covid vaccine booster shot and spent a day in the booster haze, but I don't feel bad about that one.  The new boosters are out in the US, so check your local pharmacy to see if they have an appointment available for you.  Back on track: I'm expecting I should have this page finished some time this weekend, or Monday at the latest.  Once I get through all these foreground figures the background should be a walk in the park.  There isn't a gamedev update this week since I've been focusing 100% on getting this out in a reasonable timeframe.  But anyways, about this page!

I think the biggest novelty of this page is Chops's sweater.  In my normal artmaking I tend to avoid tight patterns and textures in my painting, partly in favor of modeling 3D forms with my lighting but mostly because I get really mentally exhausted by tedium so I try to avoid it where I can.  Chops's sweater is basically one I had myself a long time ago which I remembered, where there were those little shoulder and elbow bits but the sweater bit is ribbed wool stitching so there's lands and grooves on all the shapes.  The way I approach painting something like that is I start out giving some light contouring with my values, so the major planes and shapes of the body under the shirt are visible, but the painting doesn't get too wild, it's just mild tone work.  After I have that laid down I use a semi-opaque brush and I paint the vertical stripes of the lands of the sweater, the translucency allowing some of the underlying subtle value painting to come through without making the pattern visually overwhelming.  I also break up the lines I paint along major body groups, like I have lines on his pecs, lines over his ribs, lines on his abdomen instead of drawing straight lines all the way down; this way the breaks in the lines make the shirt feel slightly folded or shifted at major points of articulation.  This breakup at articulation points is particularly apparent in the elbow creases of Chops's sweater, where the cloth would have the most wavy folds.  And lastly, I try to focus the texture painting in highlighted areas, since in dark fields it might not be as apparent, I just give them some light strokes for consistency but I let them stay dark.

That's it for now.  You'll be hearing back from me sooner than later as I wrap up this page, and then next week I should have more gamedev news to share.  Thanks for checking in!