BSTDM Page 51 and an AWKWARD Date

Eric and Angel’s date. Rough stuff.  Eric is such a dweeb who has no clue with the ladies.  A bit like when I talk about this comic with my wife.

As regular readers might guess, this was entirely written by Alex, and he seemed to crank it out rather naturally.  I think this is his favorite kind of thing to write.  When I commented on how easily he wrote this scene he laughingly said he was just writing down his real dating experience.

It took me forever to draw.  I couldn’t tell you exactly why, but for a number of reasons I kind of hit a wall with this scene.  Maybe I was a little burnt out from drawing a lot.  Maybe it was the pressure of trying to draw more realistic people.

I also had a couple personal things happening.  My grandma, who was living with my family, very suddenly had to have her leg amputated to prevent a terrible infection from spreading throughout her body and killing her.  So that created a lot of household turmoil, as you might imagine.  Shortly after my wife found out she was pregnant with our 2nd child.  While wonderful and exciting news, that comes with a whole new set of worries for a man who feels like he never makes enough.

So a lot of reasons I guess.  Not that I’m here to make excuses.  Thankfully I already had a couple months of material completed.  But I feel fairly bad about it.  At least the scene is finally done now and hopefully I’ll be able to resume a faster pace.

Looking specifically at this page, I spent some real time trying to recreate the setting of a real Detroit Italian restaurant.  I studies many before choosing the right one.  I tried a few things to draw it, and ended up mixing my drawing with some Google earth image manipulation.

I also spent a lot of time studying facial expressions to really get the perfect, more realistic reactions that I thought would really bring the scene to life for the reader.  I figured the more realistic it looked the more painful the experience would be.  I may tone it back a bit in the next scene, though I did learn a lot while drawing this that I think will enhance my overall style in the future.

It never hurts to have a better understanding of human anatomy.