I changed the palette a little in this page – that red was just too bright. Earlier pages have been updated to match.
So much for staying ahead of schedule! I spent most of yesterday running around getting furniture for my new place so I can have an art party this weekend, and reading Asterios Polyp
Memo to self: USE SUNSCREEN.
Carol’s switch between different modes of sentence precision is somewhat inspired by the pesterlog antics in Homestuck. I’m not planning to start dumping 20k of 3cc3ntr1c 0rth0gr2p}{y beneath each page but I like the idea of using the various cadences one puts into IM to indicate different emotional states.
Also I’ll probably go back into the previous two pages and fix Carol’s face now that I’ve figured out how to draw her.
Ooh, and I almost forgot: here’s the initial rough for this page. Click on it for a closer look. Sometimes I rough stuff out with lines but I mostly try to do it with shapes these days.
Sorry this one is so late! I got caught up in stuff for my burlesque class, and in doing this crazy little animation starring Rita(1)!
After I scribbled out some linear roughs for the first three panels, I really liked the way they looked. Sadly, Illustrator pretty much sucks at trying to simulate using a real brush, no matter which of its several attempts at solving the problem you use. So after a few fruitless minutes reminding myself this was still the case, I printed this page out, grabbed the Zebra brush-pen I had lying around, and knocked out some inks.
It’s not an entirely successful experiment, but it gives this page the right unearthly feel.
At this point I have pretty much introduced all the elements I want this comic to be About. I’m sure a few more will pop up as I play around with these and try to get to the places I want to take the story and the visuals; I’ve already had things twist and turn in ways I didn’t quite expect.
“Blue Train, LLC” came from a Cibo Matto song that iTunes served up while I was trying to come up with the right name for the Mysterious Organization that Rita(1) works with. It just tasted right.
