Comic Report #114 - A Quiet Moment (Patreon)

It's another Friday and we're back on our normal schedule, thank you for your patience.  This week I focused my efforts on getting the next comic page shaped up to present today.  I've been a little sick this week so I put off doing more gamedev work to get this done, so next week I should have more dev work to share.  Today though, let's bounce back into comic work.  

I'd skipped sharing my progress on this page last week because, I feel, it's one of those pages you really gotta get right to do it justice, and I needed more time to stage my poses and get my shot sequence in order.  I'm ready for the ink and paint phase so I feel like my layout is at a phase where I can post it on here and share it with you.

This page is meant to be a breaking point from focusing on Lizzie and Alice before moving on to the next point in the story as well as a capstone to the long arc of night-to-day shifts throughout the comic.  I've used these scenes a lot as a vehicle to mark the passage of time and allow characters a space to be something other than street-running monster mashers.  The world they inhabit is a dangerous place so tucking in for the night is a moment of quiet safety, and those moments have been woven throughout the years.  This one is probably the last one in the main story arc of the comic, so it's a bit of a culmination of the previous scenes leading up to it.

In the opening shot the camera faces into the kitchen, with Liz and Alice's door just slightly ajar.  I gotta go back and check my archives to see if I've drawn the kitchen wall from this angle before, but I suspect I didn't so I can take some liberties with making it nice.  I'm planning it as a dark-lit shot with candlelight peeking out of the doorway, casting a strip of light up the left-side sink and cabinet area, drawing the eye towards the door.  

The second panel has Alice checking on Lizzie's injuries and tending to her bandages.  She'd advised against being reckless on the previous page and suggested just staying in and getting rest as the wisest course of action given what they learned in Marty Mulgrave's office- don't overdo it, you just went out and fought three people the night before.  Just stay put and heal up.  Lizzie asserts her newfound confidence that she could handle whatever problems came up.  She's taken a lot of nicks and bumps in her travels with Alice and she's always gotten back onto her feet.  Alice doesn't have anything to worry about, right?

Panel three is a bit of a callback to page 417, where Alice is checking how tender Lizzie's ribcage was.  The first time she was wincing a lot but this next time it still hurts, but she's facetanking it a bit better.  Alice's point still remains: no running into danger tonight!  That is against medical advice.

The latter half of the page is a moment I'd thought about how to handle for a pretty long time, and is part of why I wanted to make sure I was doing this page right.  Lizzie and Alice had found a common love for each other amidst a tide of unease, each finding a comfort of their own in the other.  Alice has been pining for Lizzie for a little while, and here they're finally in their own safe little room tucked away in the back of town, all cozy and candlelit.  They reflect on the events of the day, on how happy Alice is; after a long road they finally have each other.  At the very beginning of the comic they shared a fold-out bed together sleeping back-to-back, and each day cycle they are a bit more comfortable around the other.  At this point they are fully comfortable, they feel safe and warm and happy.  They've hit the end of their rainbow arc. 

I'd thought a lot about how to write that sort of emotional closure, that sort of capstone to a character arc, in a way that fits the comic I've been writing.  I wanted to make sure the tone was appropriate and it fit the momentum of events in the story, similar to my original anxieties about hammering in their romance arc I wanted to make sure it didn't feel shoehorned in.  Them being safe and happy is my paramount goal, so I took a little more time to pace out my shots and try to convey it well.

That's it for this week.  I have a birthday coming up next week and I plan to take a day to myself, but otherwise I'll try to balance both comic work and game stuff to have something more to share next Friday.  Thanks for reading!  I'll catch you again next week.