Archive for ‘Main Story’
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I know everyone was expecting wackiness up in the ballroom, and we’ll get back to that, but I thought it was time to check in with some of the other team members for a bit. I know this page isn’t rip-roaring hilarious and crammed full of jokes, but sometimes you got to do a little setup – besides those pages with 10+ panels are killing me. I like drawing a bit bigger than those tight pages allow for.
The crossed balloon tails is a cardinal no-no for cartooning, but I was sort of writing this page as I drew it. Oh well, no Eisner for me.
So anyone planning on playing any Diablo III this week? I was originally going to take the week off of work when it came out, but I’m not sure this version is going to push all the same buttons that D2 did, seeing as I’m an egregious min/maxer. Still should be awesome, hopefully next week’s comic won’t be all stick figures. Can’t decide what class to play first though. Barb or Wiz. Maybe Demon Hunter. Or Monk. Or Witchdoctor. :P
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I figure that working in a comic book shop, restocking, opening boxes, Sydney’s had her share of papercuts, and of course she conveys her dislike of them in her usual subdued fashion. Fortunately she has remarkable recovery time.
Yeah, and 13 panels on a page? Definitely not the ideal way to do a comic page. I could almost break out each row and post it as a separate strip M-Th or something. Well, we got through all the orbs anyway, maybe I can decompress just a little.
I got some fan art from AndyO! of TMI Comic, which is often a little NSFW so use your own judgement. I’m sure more than a few of you already read it. When the comic that showed Sydney’s predilection for spicy food came up, there were a few who noted the similarity with Ace.
Those of you in the anti-Arianna camp will probably enjoy this page as Sydney is picking on her a bit for no real reason. Unfortunately only got to address one of the orbs on this page and didn’t really touch much on the rules an limitations of the telepresence orb (or comm-ball as Sydney calls it.) It will be addressed more thoroughly in following pages though. In case it’s not clear, the comm-ball has to send out the smaller, inner orb, and the holo-Sydney projects from that point, so it’s a little like Rimmer from Red Drawf once they introduced the “light bee.”
The orbs are a little like any rule or power system introduced in a comic. You get the rules laid out pretty plainly up front, and then specific situations cause the main character to come up with very interesting use cases within those constraints. Death Note is a great example of this, although they kept introducing new rules througout the series, they explored a bunch of clever twists and exploits with each new rule.
The next page should wrap up what all the orbs can do though so it still averages out to more than one/page.
May’s vote incentive is up in case you didn’t notice. Go poke it.
And welcome to anyone visiting from Girls with Slingshots! Have a look around, feel free to rummage through our stuff. Anyone here who doesn’t read GWS probably should, and I’ll start you off with my guest strip, drawn while heavily referencing Danielle’s style, which I like to do to whatever degree I can when I get the chance to do them.
Sydney’s obviously spent some time testing out the orbs, but as we see on this page, that sometimes proved hard to do without drawing attention to herself. She knows their basic functions but still has a lot to learn.
Speaking of learning, you guys get to suffer along with me while I try my hand at different angles. That low shot of Max isn’t terrible but it could be better. I think I spent about an hour on the pencils for just that panel and her mouth still looks a little weird. Oh well, learn by doing.
This week’s superhero fix to tide you over till next Monday is the League of Super Redundant Heroes. Basically, there’s heroes, then there’s sidekicks, then there’s the guys that didn’t quite make sidekick, and then there’s these guys.
We already knew that the orbs grant her powers, I mean, she’s the main character of a superhero comic. Whatever you thought was in the tube, it was obvious it let her hang with supers, but for all the Archon people knew, the tube just contained the holy Spork that Jesus used at the last supper, and it only grants the power to eat both soup and meatballs with the same utensil, or the dying flatus of Gogmagog or something.
And don’t worry, I’m not going to reveal an orb per page for the next 6 weeks. We’ll get through them faster than that.
Oh, and I meant to post this originally with the comic, but it was 1:30 am when I did and I forgot, but if you’re looking for some other amusing superhero webcomics to fill the week long gap between updates here, I’ve been enjoying Love and Capes. It’s got a nice toony art style and is cute and funny, sort of a super hero romantic comedy, lots of referenced to super hero tropes, definitely worth checking out. I have plenty more to recommend but I’ll stick to one a week for a while (when I remember) since some of them have decent sized archives.
Also, I realize after seeing the page fresh after spending all weekend nose down in it that Maxima’s waist and hips are way too small. That’s a bad art habit of mine, I need to keep an eye on that. It’s weird how some artists have blind spots for proportion when looking at their own art, I’m sure you can think of plenty of examples.
So here they are. I know after all the buildup the reveal is going to be a letdown to some, but this is what they’ve always been. It’s interesting to finally see them though, even for me – this is basically the first time I’ve ever drawn them. Of course, revealing what they actually do should be fairly amusing, and will happen quickly over the next few pages. Then her meeting the rest of the team, then… arrg, I wish I could draw this thing faster. :P Speaking of which, it’s ridiculous it’s taken this long to get to. 86 pages and a year and a half just to get the tube open? As some of you know, I had Sydney’s powers listed in her bio on the cast page for several months, cause the reveal was always “soon.” Hopefully things will start moving a little faster now, but it’s a balance of getting in those little moments of character development, jokes and keeping the story moving.
This page, being the big reveal, is unfortunately a little short on content and jokes, but we’ll… uh, call that pacing. It would be nice to be able to say I got lots done on the next page since this one didn’t take quite as long to draw, but that didn’t happen. I did get some banners made up that I’ve been meaning to, it occurs to me I should make a page with all that stuff on it in case anyone wants to grab stuff to link back to this page with. That’s another project for the upcoming weeks.
When I drew the tube, I didn’t pay much attention its size, but now looking at the orbs, I’m not sure they would have fit in the thing. There’s 7 of them (hopefully I haven’t forgotten one, hah) and they’re about the size of a tennis or baseball. Each time I draw the tube its size is a bit different though… the version on this page seems especially skinny, but we’ll say they just barely fit.
There were quite a few good ideas bandied about in the comments (lots of really silly ones too of course) but more than one person suggested the tube was full of gaming dice. I really liked that idea. So much so I almost started trying to figure out how I could merge the idea with everything else I had planned – baseball sized dice, one of each kind, etc., but it would have changed things too much. Still, I could easily do a whole other comic around that idea.
Thanks for all the TWC votes guys. Hitting #1 and even holding it for a couple of days isn’t something I thought would ever happen. I thought I’d be at this for years before even getting into the top 100. It’s quite a feat given the sheer number of webcomics out there and the size of their audiences’s. I’m glad you find my daydreams as amusing as I do.
I updated the webpage in an attempt to make the comments column a bit wider so that the page wouldn’t get quite as tall. It takes a lot of scrolling when a page starts to fill up. Let me know if this explodes anything. I tested it in Chrome, FF, IE 9 and IE9 compatibility mode. Looked ok to me.
Welp, tube’s open. See you next week!
Hah hah no. I swear I’m not trying to jerk you guys around with the tube, this is just how it happened in my head, and that’s pretty much what I’ve run with so far. I’ve always said that since I can’t draw this fast, I’d work towards having a fun ride along the way and also toward making the archive dive a good read. So before anyone gets too bent out of shape, the proper reveal is next week, I promise. That being said, this is everyone’s last chance to read up on pre-open Grrl Power, so share it around on Facebook/Twitter etc. Starting to read the comic at next Monday’s page would take some of the excitement out of the build up. I wish I had time to do a dedicated “what’s in the tube” Project Wonderful campaign.
In fact this week’s comic is actually page #86. I couldn’t fit everything I wanted on this page, the only solution would be to break it into 2 separate pages, but that would have meant doing 3 pages with cliffhanger endings, and that would officially make me a dick. Page #84.5 got partially done, but I realized there was nothing actually critical happening on it, it was just a lot of jokes so I decided to skip it. Trying to squeeze everything into one page and then breaking it back into 2 plus some other stuff going on this month meant I didn’t have time to get any bonus art done, the obvious solution was to show what I have finished of 84.5, and save the finished version for the eventual book. So here you go. There’s a dedicated comments thread for the page over here.
I’ve said in the past that the reveal is “soon,” well, now I can say it without the quotes. I’m sure Maxima would claim that she was intentionally trying to maneuver Sydney into opening the tube, but it’s really just both of their personalities clashing and the sparks are flying. Something’s got to give.
I like how Arianna is leaning into the frame in panel 8. That’s got to be weird looking from Sydney’s point of view, she just tipped over in her chair to interject something.
Reader Doc Savage suggested I name the General after Peter Falk, which I liked since I’ve been watching a lot of Columbo while I draw. Of course I managed to misspell his last name in the dialog and in the bio, but oh well. It’s more original now.
Oh and if you’re interested, Angela Melick does one of my favorite webcomics, Wasted Talent, which is a cutely drawn and funny autobio comic. Just thought I’d mention it cause her second book is out. She pimps it in a video here.
This page derailed rather quickly as I wrote it – it was supposed to start off with the General introducing himself and have a joke about her middle name, but the number of gags I crammed into the page make up for it in my opinion.
It would be classier to let someone else point this out in the comments, but I’m pleased that in Sydney’s own fantasy, Wolvie is less that totally on board with the situation. I wrote it, realized it didn’t make sense, then came to my senses and realized it is of course far better that way. Also, Sydney in a dress? Never thought I’d draw that.
I also like that apparently, Sydney thinks that anyone with a number in their name is automatically royalty somehow? That’s what the crown and the Lion King ripoff says to me. What they would be king of is perhaps more of a mystery.
I’m not sure exactly what Arianna is referring to as terrifying, probably either Sydney’s plans to marry a fictional character, complete with “diagrams,” or the thought of her as a parent.
One thing I’ve definitely messed up on doing the comic so far, is that while I’ve discussed Max’s feminism on the cast page and in the comments, I haven’t actually put it in the comic yet, and this page gets a double dose of it. Even a panel of her getting mad at someone for not being able to maintain eye contact with her would have been enough of a set up but oh well, got to start somewhere with it.
No plot movement in this installment, but I always had this scene in my head where Sydney meets the upper ranks of the team and steels herself for it by making it be known that they better watch their P’s and Q’s, whatever that means.
The general needs a name since he’ll be officially introduced on the next page. I’d call him General Hedaya but that might be a little obvious. Gwen’s reaction is heavily inspired by the scene in Alien 4 when it all starts going south, the alarms sound and it shows the General (played by Hedaya) sit up in bed wearing a tank top. Some woman behind me in the theater said very loudly “Oh my god that guy is so hairy.” Seriously I’ve seen comedy sketches where they glue hair onto someone so they can make jokes about body hair where the guy in the sketch was considerably less hairy than Hedaya.
I don’t know why, but this page took soooo long to draw. I watched 6 episodes of Cadfael and 14 of the old Mission Impossible series while working on it. Granted, it probably wouldn’t take as long if I wasn’t watching stuff out of the corner of eye. Still, Cadfael is good so check that out. It’s… imagine if PBS produced CSI set in the 1100′s. For serious.
