TDM: Page 59 and Deadlines
This page continued the streak of pages taking me a long time to complete, though you, the humble reader, would not know this since I’ve been keeping to my update every Saturday schedule. I know that schedule, 1 page a week, may sound really easy, and for a while it was.
When you build up a surplus it is really easy to cut back on the work-rate because you know you don’t have to do anything for weeks. Then suddenly you are drawing for that current Saturday because you’ve just let it sit there. Sometimes I hit a page or panel that is particularly daunting, and it takes me some effort to muster up the moxie to take it on. This was one of those pages.
Why? For one, I wanted to continue seeing what more realistic characters would look like, so I had to flesh out Kurt and Marie a bit. For two, Marie is a woman and I find them hard to draw, for reasons I’ve discussed in the past. For three, this has a couple of exterior shots, one being a point of view shot. Just a lot going on really.
I do like how it turned out, though. It is a nice continuation from the prior page, showing a similar situation from very different characters’ perspectives.
Speaking of, I was showing off some pages to a relative the other day when I was struck by how much this story actually stays focused on the main characters. I know that was a goal of Alex’s, and a significant change from the old comic books that had a million characters and jumped around all over the place between them constantly. I’m glad we tightened things up that way, and think we still managed to hold readers’ interest.
You would think with my self imposed deadline that it might cause me to be somehow less creative, hurrying just to put something out, but I really don’t see that happening. I still take the time to try new things, challenge myself and be creative. All very important things to keep yourself from growing bored or burning out, in my opinion.
I really like the way the middle panel close-ups came out. You may be able to tell who I’ve based Marie off of there, as I think she looks pretty dead on. I also based Kurt a bit off of someone, though he is much more altered, so I doubt you’ll be able to guess. A different relative who I was also showing the comic to, and who has been a big supporter since issue 1 (despite being quite old he remarkably seems to get everything we go for) and he thought Kurt looked like Glen Beck. Yuck. I see it, though I hope most don’t. You are supposed to like him!
A lot of Photoshop work here, with the photos and the car window effects (which I also used on the last page). The window ended up causing me some problems, that hopefully I have learned from. I hate to repeat mistakes. I think this page continues to set a really exciting tone and take us further into one hell of a scene.
If you are wondering what Black Snow and Lightning Lad are doing, it’s straitening Black Snow’s cape. Not sure how well that came through. It was hard to do so small. You are supposed to be viewing them from the news van. Not sure if that was obvious. I considered framing the panel with the van’s windshield frame, and maybe I should have. Oh well.
Overall a very nice page that I’m happy with.