Page Commentary No. 252 (Patreon)

Gunwild: It's great to learn... 'cause knowledge is power!

Brellom: I want Mcdonalds! Mcdonalds, Mcdonalds, Mcdonalds!

Psu: I pushed pretty hard for this joke I think. And then Brell made an even better one that we didn't actually get to use cause then the story wouldn't make sense and McDonalds didn't actually pay us anything to sell out. Can you just like... put the joke page right in line in the comments, gun? Like right here, so we can all go "I remember that meme."

Gunwild: That's the plan.

Psu: I don't want McDonalds actually. I made super good steak tacos tonight and I needed to take a nap.

Gunwild: You probably learned that from a cookbook!

Psu: Mostly youtube but a little bit from an Argentinian grilling book that Gunwild got me for Christmas, I think. Way to segue back to the topic! Reading is power!

Brellom: I'm pretty sure reading would more likely raise your INT or WIS stats, so I'm not entirely sure if that's correct. Unless we're following Elder Scrolls rules... Anyway I think this was a funny bit and is one of the rare moments where Bug Lass gets to shine most in a page.

Gunwild: Brell, books are like the in-game lore documents for real life.

Psu: The way it's written, and I think this is a great bit for Theira, is like... you know how in anime the heroes will come up against a villain with a power that makes them seem unstoppable. And everyone is like, ugh I just want to get to the last boss but this guy is gonna beat us. Theira here is the anime side character that fans love that just said, "Everyone listen to me, I just evolved my power in a way that is related to the problem we are now facing and will allow me to punch that dude in the face." Except in this case, Theira's punches are missles.

Gunwild: Missiles can be punches, the missiles just need to be shaped like fists. We did not pursue that tack this time, but it remains an option for the future.

Psu: When we need an exceptionally big dumb progress stopping bad guy to punch, we'll find a reason to do that. Anyway... this page is pretty wordy but I think it might actually be my fault? I think this is one of the few pages that had a lot going on, so I needed to propose a sketch page to show how we can get everything we needed to say to fit. And then Gunwild came in to clean up the text and make it less wordy and make more sense.

Gunwild: Yeah, I definitely think I had a version of this page that was drier, and I probably would have gone for it that way if I hadn't been persuaded. But this way the large center image shows more than it tells is very much to my liking.

Psu: This is maybe part of a larger conversation but I think comics should often tell instead of show, depending on the thing being represented. But yeah, I think we just have to ask the readers to forgive us for having the badguys say out loud what they're going to do in earshot of the heroes.

Gunwild: I tried to excuse the coincidence with that line in there about how both they and the bad guys are escaping in the same direction. It's... not subtle, maybe. But it makes me pretend I presented a coherent narrative within some bounds of plausibility.

Psu: It makes sense! Again, we had a lot to get done with the page! And we weren't going to make a four page detour about how Cassiopeia sneaks in to find out the secret orders to go find the stealth bad guy ship. The navy got here in a hurry!

Gunwild: Again, we see that they move at the speed of not having to explain how much time passes between page turns.

Psu: I think before we head off, we didn't talk a lot about the art on the page here. There's quite a lot going on because the different scenes are all coming together. So the palette is starting to unify across the different characters. Brell, did you do the shading on the explosions?

Brellom: I don't really recall. I know I typically let you do most of the environmental stuff back in the day though.

Psu: That's possible. But I can see a couple of your telltale shading techniques, especially in panels 4 and 5. I think you added a lot with the dramatic lighting effects there. Though in retrospect, I wish I added some more color to the shadows you laid out.

Brellom: I feel similarly. The shadows on this page have a grey hue to them, which is a little less fun now that we've got a lot of colour elsewhere on the page. Fortunately, we start getting a lot more playful with colour in the pages after this.

Psu: Yeah. I think if I started experimenting with colored shadows here, it might've run the risk of making everything even messier than it was. But at least everything still flows okay. I'm still really really happy with the idea to use the explosion sound effect to transition from the outside to the inside.

Gunwild: It's a smart one, but not riding the line between the panels so evenly that it renders the scene separation indistinct.

Psu: I just needed a few tiny lines to show that the room the heroes are in, is vibrating from the explosions. So that little bit of blue is there to pull things together.

Psu: I'm kinda just patting myself on the back cause I'd rather talk about that than how I wish I went with a slightly more saturated color for the missle launchers from the ship.

Gunwild: I actually learn a lot about advanced comic art techniques from reading your commentaries on these pages. It's easy to not absorb them as lessons when you're just trying to help figure out how to deploy them and get the page out.

Psu: I honestly think you'll learn more from all these commentaries than the class I took on comics in college. There it was just 14 weeks of lessons. This has got to be what... like a hundred and fifty? That's got to be enough to fill a book.

Gunwild: I'm not sure. We'd have to cut out a lot of talk about McDonalds.

Psu: Quick, which one are you guys? McDonalds? We have food at home? Or drive away with a coffee?

Brellom: We have food at home.

Gunwild: I'm McDonalds, but I'm trying to be a bit more food at home...

Psu: There's literally freshly brewed black coffee on my desk right now, but it's 12 am and that's an AWFUL idea...