Page Commentary No. 154 (Patreon)

Psu: This one's all story stuff! Maybe you gotta do the talkin here buddy!

Gunwild: Yeah it is a talky page... usually I don't like to do that, nobody comics to the comic to read wordswordswords, pictures should get to tell a lot of the story! But there was a lot to get through this time. Mostly I am glad we got to establish Mr. Shnouf, who is a cute and useful accessory.

Psu: I tend to read Alan Moore stuff for the story... no offense to his artist teammates by the way.

Gunwild: Yeah but you still skip the all-text pages in Watchmen! I know your secret sin. Anyway, I've never been an orphan, space-based or otherwise. But I mean, everybody's been in a position where they're going through some stuff and they wish somebody understood or cared, right? And it feels like nobody does. So, hopefully I got that across... I'm not good at explicating my own work.

Psu: I think that actually cemented Nisa as the one going through some of the most stuff, even though she's putting on airs of being brave she's kinda the one that has a lot of fears just below the surface. I'm just really glad we went through the trouble of a lot of characterization for these guys. When we originally had them in the script and then I sketched them onto the page, we didn't know anything about them. And probably never imagined making a page like this. 

Gunwild: I admit, I initially just figured they would be a fun motivation for the audience to actually go, "Okay, it's a decent thing if Cassiopeia wins this stupid race." But we're not good at keeping characters as props if we get a chance to do something with them. It's just not the kinda story we like.

Psu: I think the minute they were doodled and they each had like an individual expression, we got to thinking about who they were as people. I think like... when people do crowd shots they normally have everyone giving off the same expression. Whenever I do one, I like thinking about each character and if it's going to be worthwhile doing a slightly different expression for each person, then I'm gonna do it. So I think when it came to their designs, like just one kid had horns. One kid looked sorta like Kenny from South Park. And one kid has Zeke's hat. And another has a sci fi pun shirt. And one kid's already got the snack bowl? That's PRETTY MUCH all the motivation you need to make a bunch of memorable cast members.

Psu: On the art side of things on this page, I think I already talked about color on the last page. But I wanted to use the final panel to bring back a lot of color and lighten the mood after we had Nisa talk out her feelings. I don't get to draw a lot of sad emotions in this comic all that often. Generally people are in a good mood but every now and then someone gets sad. These days I might have gone a bit harder on Nisa's expressions though. I had a talk with a friend about how to draw crying, and I think I landed on the idea that crying should look ugly. It should look really upsetting. Some anime art styles tends to lean towards these really "pretty" crying. What I should really try is doing the whole Miyazaki SUPER crying thing. I just need a scene to do that in...

Gunwild: This is how I get roped into doing sad scenes, readers!