Comic Report #108 - What Are Friends For? (Patreon)

Hello again!  This has been a pretty hectic week for me but I managed to get the very beginning of the next comic page started.  I'd thought about trying to hack out more detail before this post went up but I think I'll let it be a look at the fleeting super-early phase of a page before it becomes the greyscale work of art we all know and love.

So the overall theme of what I'm looking for with this page is a linker between "meet up with Lou" and the next big moment of the comic's main story, following up on the lead from Monday that the name in the book the girls found inside the bus was shared by Lou's boss.  That page is next, but before we get there Lou's got one other little secret to share with the team.

In planning this page I knew what I wanted it to do so I started with the shot I saw the clearest in my head: the second panel.  The whole idea starting out is Liz picking up from the end of the last page being like, oh, I can't believe the Sheriff died!  We just saw him the other day!  And then in the second panel she's like, do you know how it happened?  Feigning ignorance like she isn't already working that case in the hopes that Lou might cough up a pearl of wisdom.  Alice is there elbowing her in the arm like,  "oh stop!", but she knows the strat is guaranteed to work because if there's one thing Lou loves it's sharing facts he knows.  Let him think he's doing you the favor of informing you instead of letting him know you know something more.  Is it a mean trick to play on Lou?  Maybe, but he's a blabbermouth so you can't let him in on the secret investigation just yet.

The panels after that shot are Lou sharing what he heard from the boys.  I want to have a transitional shot in that second-to-last panel of the three of them walking with some of The Boys in the foreground, implying there are more Boys than just Lou working in the hardhat zone of Tombstone.  They're kinda blobbed in right now because I wanted to establish that they're there but I haven't cooked up designs for them just yet like Chops and Bobby so they're just blocked in for now.  I'll get to them and their secrets shortly.

Closing out the page is the last shot, the foreman's trailer.  I'm preparing to draw the next pages inside this trailer so I'm mentally building its interior, I see it as one of those cramped wood-panel trailer rental offices, metal filing cabinets, stacks of old binders with two-inch thick spines, you know the kind of trailer office.  I am thinking about the exterior of that kind of trailer, so the last panel of this page is setting up that scene.  Oh that's gonna be so cozy to draw, but I gotta get through this part first.

That's it for now.  I have a gamedev report coming up after this so if you're signed up for those stick around!  Next week is American Thanksgiving, I'll try to make as much progress as I can but I might be taking two days to rest.  Thanks for sticking with us!  Until next time, have a pleasant week.