Comic Report #131.2 - Lookit It Go

Hello! I've got good news today: after last week's update I managed to hammer out almost all of the rest of the page, and I'm set to be able to get this thing finished up this weekend; you should be reading it Monday morning at the latest. Keeping up this momentum I can probably get the next page up around or just after the end of this month, and that'd be a 150% increase in my page output, which I think isn't too bad. There's nine pages to go after this one, but I won't think too much about that just now. Setting and maintaining a good pace will be my best way through this. I'll be quick with it here, since you'll be hearing from me again sooner than later.

The major element I'm exploring on this page is the use of light sources to imply impact and sell the big hits in the scene. Since the backgrounds are abstract I don't need to define specific light sources, so I can use them to instead say, like, in that first panel where Amy is hitting the sword guy with her attack, the space in between her and him is the impact area, that's where she got him with her brick swing. When rendering the recipient of the attack I sharply highlight under his chin- the area that got hit- and add some lighting to his chest and arms as if the light were scattering off that area in front of him. Likewise, Amy's forearm has the brightest highlight because it's the arm swinging the attack that created the impact, and the rest of the light scattering from that point lands on her face and the rest of her jacket, with much less intense highlighting on her back arm. The light source, here, is the action itself.

Similar to the melee impacts in the top panels, the lighting for the shotgun guy panels are his shotgun blasts. In the panel with his first shot he's lit from the front, with Monday and Amy catching the radial lighting from around the cone of fire they're dodging, implying in what direction the shot passed them. The second shotgun-pump panel has more normal lighting, and then the third panel has very strong frontal lighting again, to reinforce the shoot-pump-shoot-pump rhythm I wanted to convey in these panels. It's action as lighting, and when I get the backgrounds all done I think it's gonna look real sick.

That's about where I'm at for now. Like I mentioned above, I'm basically on the home stretch part of my process so I should be able to have this page ready by the end of the week or early Monday morning, so I'm gonna get that done asap. Thanks for checking in. I'll be back soon, so don't go far!