Drawing people crouch-walking is kind of hard. But, drawing them all walking upright and normal in a tense situation also feels weird, soooo crouching it is.
I cannot explain how long I screwed with the colors on this page to make it look the way I wanted. I think I’m finally happy with it, or happy enough. I like it when it’s squished and tiny in the preview, so that bodes well. I’m in another weird transitional skill period where my abilities are not in sync with what my brain perceives as “good”, so I’m playing catch up. In the end, struggling a little is a good thing, and I come out the other side all leveled up and bad ass, but then the process starts all over again and I go back to hating everything I make lol. Being an artist is just the best, you guys.
Anyway, Aubrey’s little pack is still alive! Good for them! Except Ginger isn’t doing so well, still. Maybe that’ll be important in the next chapter, who knows? I know.
I had to do a bunch of mockups to get the angles right on the outside and inside of this house. I discovered that you can make boxes in Design Doll, and I’ve been going to town with that feature. Sometimes, I don’t need a big, elaborate set up, I just need to see the planes so I can judge spaces that my brain can’t create on its own. I’ve also used the Sims in the past! That’s fun, but the danger there is that I have to avoid getting invested and actually playing the Sims. The bonus is that I can actually set up a whole room using objects that are already in scale to people, and that’s a really nice option to have. I saw another program/website thing pop up on tumblr the other day, which I have already forgotten the name of and I’m too tired to look up, but there are a lot of great options to building a 3D space quickly and using it for reference. I like the generic boxes of Design Doll because they have lines on them at regular intervals, so I can set up my perspective rulers in Clip Studio Paint and work straight off those planes. Much less guessing! I mentioned this yesterday in a reply on Twitter, but I’m all about references. Short of straight up exactly copying a photograph wholesale (because that gets into iffy copyright territory), whatever helps you produce a good image quickly is fair game. I’d love to be able to pluck environments from my brain and faithfully create them here, but I’m not a robot and my spacial abilities aren’t amaaaaazing, so I wander off to Google Image Search and see what I can find. The internet is amazing!
I gotta finish the background coloring for tomorrow’s page (as obvious in the preview), but I’m super looking forward to wandering off next week to visit my family in Mississippi for Thanksgiving. I think I’m getting a little burnt out lately, and having most of the week to drive down there, hang out, be fed, and drive back will be excellent. I looked into plane tickets, but they were already outrageous, partially because Jackson airport is so small, but I really prefer to drive anyway. It’s about 13 hours to my aunt’s house, which is…long. But filling my phone with podcasts and just driving for hours is great for my brain. The rest of this chapter is basically written already, but I’ll need some brain power for when I start the next chapter! Even if I know what happens, I still need to put it all together in the right order, and that can be a real challenge.
But hey, I did laundry (most of it) yesterday, which means today is Day After Laundry Day when my whole closet is at my disposal and my favorite clothes are clean :D.
Now we know where Elias got his “sniffing”-characteristic from XD – Sorry 😉
You are really good with creating atmospheric pages – this is again a very great example 🙂 The colors, the light and how its frames *top*
Hope your trip will fill your energy meter up again – its always sad hearing someone saying they are burned out, in today`s world it`s slowly becoming a normality :-/
Elias and his mom are definitely alike in their sniffing :D. And that’s totally deliberate!
Thank you! I worked really hard on this page. I kind of hated it initially, but once it finally gelled, I really like it now!
I’m very much hoping that this trip will help me get my mojo back! I need to get away from my house for awhile and just do nothing lol
When folks get all spoiler-ish, I get all grump-ity, but I’ve got my guesses, and I’m guessing that Ginger (murphle-mumble.mumble, murmur-susserus, scrabble mumble!). At least that’s my guess at this point, and that makes me scared. … And possibly scarred, but not a tattoo. I’m waiting for Glinda to show up and ask Connie, “Are you a good witch? Or a bad witch? Hmmmm?”
Hahaha well, you never know, your guesses might be right :). We’ll find out a lot more about Ginger’s fate next chapter.
Get well soon to Ginger, hopefully. And good luck to you with your family, and the here’s hoping the burnout doesn’t get to you too much. Sorry not much to say, and ADD can be really annoying when you get a good number of new things happening at once.
I am unfortunately always burnt out this time of year :p. I’ll feel better in like, May. Once the sun comes back and my natural drive to hibernate wanes a bit!
I like the feel of this chapter. Especially those last chapters. It’s like Aubrey and her pack see them coming but they just don’t have it in them to fight. Their just resigned to their death.
They are very resigned! Though at this point, I think they realize that fighting wouldn’t be much of an option even if they wanted to.
Well, they shouldn’t have thrown Eli down the basement stairs, he told his mom and now they’re in for a good old beating *evil grin*
No, they have been hurt enough.
I know, it was more of an ironic comment on the often by kids used phrase ‘That I’m gonna tell my mom!’ Oh, how often I heard it from these kids who bullied me in school but who couldn’t stand the recation they got from me…
Hahaha if I were a much more heavy-handed writer, that’s exactly what would most likely happen.
The even handed emotional juxtaposition here is just wonderful. So not cliche.
Thank you! I tried to give it some gravitas without making anyone want to slap me 🙂
One solution to the copyright issue with photographs is to take your own.
This is true! Usually I try not to get so specific with taking bits from reference that I’d need to worry about that, but I suppose if I ever did need a very specific reference, taking my own photo would solve the issue!
I love Aubrey’s face in the last panel. Its so clear that she’s just tired of it all. Still wary of what these other wolves are doing/going to do, but so very tired.
She’s very tired and a little hopeful 🙂
Haven’t seen them in awhile.
I wanted to keep everybody wondering if they were okay…surprise! One of them kind of isn’t.
I glad they are OK, get better Ginger.
These poor kids…