11-2024 Artist Commentary

Chumi, hoping you guys had a Happy Thanksgiving: Welcome welcome! 🎉🎉 We’re really getting into the holiday season with this one! Unfortunately, this is our last update until the Flash Production break. Look forward to the Flash guys, we’re working really hard!

Kim, Birthday Boy: Hang in there in the meantime folks… It’ll be a hot second before it drops, but hopefully these past few updates will have given you some food for thought to chew on until then. 👀 But before we move too far ahead, let's take a look at last month’s update!

Chumi: Once again, thank you to Floral for boarding this one. Bringing it to life was a collaborative effort between me, Haven, and Kim! If you’re wondering, some have blacked out for spoiler purposes. HEHE..

Floral: The John looking out the window was so silly, like the meteor doesn’t even have windows…

Kim: Some are actually scrapped pages and also some revealing information for next year’s updates… ooOOOOoooo what could it meeaannn…….

Color Keys by Kim Quach

Chumi: Check out this color reference! For the past few updates, one of the things we were keeping in mind was the color of the sky / atmosphere. The sky turning from a dull blue to a dangerous red and blanketing everything else red… It gives a feeling of incoming danger. At this point, danger is knocking on the characters’ front door! 

Kim: We have a very specific visual and idea in mind when the events of the next few updates are going to happen, so it was very important we keyed out the change of time! Gives y’all a little insight about how far ahead we’ve been planning these updates LOL.

It’s funny because when I look back at base Homestuck, you don’t really see observable changes in time over the course of a day. Y’know what, Andrew had the right idea just having everyone standing in a blank void because tryna keep track of these time changes is a pain in the ass.

Chumi: The very first panel is actually one of the last panels that was finished. The team had a whole conversation about what Tavvy’s handwriting would look like, especially since a character’s handwriting is quite indicative of their character. Kim proposed the idea of Tavvy writing with Magic Link handwriting because not gonna lie, it looks a little insane. 

Kim: It makes sense, tbh. Jane seems like the kind of person who would want to strictly set their kid up for success, image and reputation is her priority. Straight down to his handwriting has she been controlling of poor Tavvy… Do kids these days even learn to write cursive anymore?

Chumi: The team also thought it would be funny if Tavvy notarized the note. I based the embossed seal off of the one Andrew showed in the comic, you know the one.

Chumi: There’s a version of the letter that just has a plain red seal! I quite like how simple and elegant it looked, but definitely the embossed seal is funnier.

Floral: Looks so damn cool.

Chumi: The ship drawing changed quite a bit! The perspective was altered, as well as getting rid of the outline so the ship wouldn’t detract too much attention from the kids running away.

Chumi: The sketch-to-final-panel jump is insane. Rose is drawn to resemble Mom Lalonde, no eyes, just her lips visible, a more oval-shaped head… An adult! I thought I was so clever putting a bit of shadow underneath her hands… Because her aspect is Light… She’s blocking the Light / knowledge from reaching the kids…That’s why she’s a silhouette too… Heh…

Andi: That was very clever… I did enjoy this scene. Also really like how Vrissy looks here!! I can’t really say why, it's just nicely done. Idk who that girl is on the left though.

Floral: Chumi captured the vibe i was hoping for with this panel perfectly. The ominous, confusion the kids are feelings. The sink of your stomach.

Kim: The money shot! This is the one (1) panel I personally contributed for this update. :]

Floral thought it’d be fun to make this panel a little different from the usual standard panels. While not as ambitious, I really liked the one really long panel back in the “Chapter 5” update, and was inspired by how Xamag blended all the different scenes together! I think it was especially a genius idea from Floral to combine this all into one panel to further exemplify how all these things are happening simultaneously.

Kim: Further polishing and laying down a quick color sketch…

Kim: All the way to the final polished panel!

Chumi: YAAY It looks great!!

Kim: This particular bit gets me every time I think about it… Jade loves her child!!! The way it completely throws Jade off her game when the most precious thing in her life right now is suddenly in the middle of a freaking battlefield of a WAR. These kids just can’t stand still for one minute can they!!

(Sidebar, another funny favorite bit of mine in this is Harry just not knowing what the fuck is goin on ever lmfao.)

Andi: The colors, the action, the drama. You ate this up.

Haven: Such an amazing panel.

Floral: Was pulling my hair out on call with Kim as he was showing me this, because of how absolutely he killed this shot. How everything flows so perfectly into the stream of events. Bravo!!!!!

Chumi: Owch, my girl got shot… I did my best to emulate Kim’s epic panel from the last update! There was a version where I tried making her hair more spikey, sort of to emphasize the explosion of the bullet leaving her skull. It just didn’t end up looking right though. 🙁

Floral: I can feel how much this hurts, it’s so good.

Andi: YOU DID SO GOOD HERE. It really captured this exact vibe. I like how her hair flares outwards.

Chumi: There were two iterations of this panel as well! The first one shows her definitively pressing the button (you might have to stare at the gif for a few seconds), the other shows her the moment she smashes the button. I thought the first one might be a neat climax moment: we get to see her push it in one, fluid motion. However, it ended up being too subtle, so it was hard to tell that anything was moving at all unless you consciously stared at the panel for a few moments.

Chumi: This panel’s POV is based on the Terezi Make Her Pay pose, although not rendered in the Hero Mode style. Dude is NOT aware of what the hell is going on. 

Floral: I did a single panel for this update too, featuring Dirk’s bell tower and the rest of the human city that stands between it and the meteor site. So much to parse. Wonder what the significance of it all could be.

Chumi: The fateful explosion… We wanted it to have a lot of oomph so we made it a long panel. The light from the explosion dyes the landscape almost white. The impact is also knocking over whole tanks and the trees around the area, so the Rebellion guys near the meteor are totally vaporized. Sorry fellas. The two peeps in front are just some random soldiers to fill the empty space HEHE.

Chumi: We are not done with Act 1 just yet…

Kim: Funny thing about this page, we had this as a placeholder for the text gif underneath and we lowkey wanted to push forward with it.

Kim: But instead we opted out for a Homestuck-ified version of it instead, which in the end is probably more fitting LMFAO.

Haven: hey. 

Haven: First sketch I did when I was conceptualizing this scene some months ago. Switched the monitor for a more old school chunky computer. GC’s setup here is very scuffed and dingy.

Haven:  A new character, a new chat client, and a new mysterious ooze... there isn’t too much i can really say about these visuals yet LOL. The new chat client was discussed and Kim designed a mockup that I don’t think we can show here yet? Or more like we can but would like to properly debut it in the actual comic rather than here in the commentary. Weeeellll other that please speculate away~! Seeya at the big flash!

Haven:  oh actually, I had almost forgot.

Haven:  I had a little drawing about GC’s computer exploding in their face. One day I’ll share it in full! Okay, bye now for real!