Grrl Power #1413 – Discombobulate a dragon
The thing I’ve recently discovered about drawing big dragon guys covered in scales is that it rapidly becomes tedious to draw a big dragon guy covered in scales, on account of all the scales. His face doesn’t help either.
I already knew that, academically, but these pages have driven the point home. On top of that, I recently found some time to catch up on some comic reading – I’ve been supporting the Gold Digger “Colorize the first 100 black and white issues” kickstarters, and was reminded that I wasn’t really taking advantage of the medium of comics fully. Good art (or as good as I can manage) is fine, but if good art is all a comic can offer, it’s probably going to be a little boring. I love Joe Madureira’s art, but… I don’t care about the story in Ultimate Avengers at all. Battle Chasers better, but honestly, I think the art actually detracted from the few moments of levity in those books.
The ideal solution, IMO, is something like One Punch Man, equal parts fantastic and goofy art, and never takes itself so seriously that the humor is atonal. Obviously I’m a huge fan of Gold Digger and there are a jillion other examples, mostly in the manga genre.
So today we get… not quite Super Deformed dragon guy. I think proper SD is where the head is at nearly as big as the body. Also, I just like to occasionally take the time for a back and forth panel sequence, where you can see the gears turning in someone’s head, and the page isn’t 85% word bubble. Which I fully admit I am the poster child for that style of comic.
Kobold Sydney vote incentive! Is finally done!
So… you know, check it out. Oh, and as usual, Patreon has a scales only version.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
You commenting about the problems of drawing scales reminds of of what a fantasy artist once said about drawing piles of gold coins before he learned to ‘fake’ it. Before he learned that he didn’t have to draw every single coin and mastered the technique of making it look like he had drawn them, while in truth he only drew enough outlines to make the human brain see it as a pile of single coins.
I had a thought about just such a concept yesterday.
As long as the idea gets conveyed convicingly the art dosn’t matter.
My explnation. One Punch Man. Art was total shit, nobody cared, the story was too damm good.
Dave B your art is great, but at times it dosn’t need to be as long as the story gets told.
> Dave B your art is great, but at times it dosn’t need to be as long as the story gets told.
But DB’s chibi art IS great, too!
I appreciate Dave’s dedication to his art but honestly I’m mostly here for the jokes.
To propose a reframing: the art was not shit. It was simplistic and lazy and did not conform to the usual expectations, but it was also evocative and emotional and clear, which made it effective and good art.
The common dragon curse they see a lone adventurer in their cave and think , he’s harmless I’m about 10 times taller than him .
“But they are game for the munchkin an only a lunatic or a munchkin lurk alone in a dragon cave ” and lunatic population of given area is not extensible.
Maxima is a supemunchkin , superman level.
Try looking at it from the dragon’s perspective, rather than the perspective of the one guy who finally took down the dragon.
*Many* people came to feed themselves to the dragon over thee aeons. Most of them came in groups. Finally, one came by themselves. This wasn’t the first time this happened, by any stretch of the imagination. Why would this one be any different?
That difference is why the story is more interesting than the thousands or millions of other tales in which people went into the dragon’s cave to defeat the dragon, but failed.
I am reminded of how Tarquin described in in [i]The Order of the Stick[/i] — sure, eventually some hero will show up and succeed in killing the tyrant, but until then I get to live like a king and afterwards I get to live forever in song and story.
Does Digital Art Tools still not have libraries of ziptones like the sheet based ones Adam Warren used to get around repetitive ink patterns?
We all understand when the comic requires too much effort with a production deadline. Everyone around Dallas Fandom knows Fred’s Megatokyo initial issues over artwork obsessions that caused months of wastage and led to a domino downfall.
Another Megatokyo fan!
He’s still putting pages out, if OMG painfully slowly. I also try to catch his occasional live stream on twitch. They can be an interesting, but not *too* interesting, second-monitor video to help keep my brain happy when I’m doing my own writing.
Also, the man is too self deprecating for his own good, along with other issues.
Oi! I’m a absolute fan of MT. It’s so out there in just the right direction. These multi-month waits for a page are HARD…
But if Egoma were to best Gaxgy in a… respectful exchange of martial prowess… then how would Gaxgy be feeling about the situation?
Aside from “very surprised”, which I believe we can take as given.
Years ago I had to draw a large tree as the center piece for a theater group T-shirt and was faced with the similar prospect of drawing hundreds of leaves and tiny branches. I discovered that I could just draw the major branches and just scatter “leaves” like a cloud within the outline of the tree. The “leaves” were just a small, spread out “V”. Took maybe 10-15 min for hundreds of them. Came out great.
Yeah I do that a lot, but it only works for “clumps” of things. Leaves, grass, piles of coins, etc. Scales are ordered, at least on Gaxgy they are. I could see a more “monstery” looking lizard monster where you could brush scales on with a particle brush.
I genuinely like the shifts in art quality on this page. The regular shots, the highly detailed closeups…then the sudden lack of details, like a visual version of a record scratch “stop every and hang on for one moment!!” And then the super detail followed by the regular artwork. It’s brilliantly well-done!
Why is there a Coke machine on a space ship?
Know it says Cuke nut not fooling anyone.
Is this a commercial transport like a space bus?
Like Swedish Meatballs, every race will come up with their own version of Cola.
Even the ones for which it is a deadly poison.
cuke
/kyo͞ok/ noun: cuke; plural noun: cukes
a cucumber.
This is Dabbler’s base, so a cucumber dispensing machine may just be a thing for impromptu urges.
They are on a fixed-position space station (solar forge) with a sizeable permanent crew.
Thought they were on a transport ship when I asked that question. Thanks.
Hmmm… I’ve been working on the wiki (grrlpowercomic.fandom.com), making mental note to maybe do an entry for the Cuke machines…
The drink machine is interesting as it leaves you wondering what types of drinks it has. But, what I am truly wondering about is what snacks does that vending machine hold? Maybe hot spicy favored chips like the meal that even Sydney found to be a challenge. Or, gummy aliens that run away when you open the package?
Well done being the serendipitous tumbleweed, Sydney.
Cora, that is not something you tell a dragon (or man) who is that level of smug and expect them to leave it untested.
Egoma is on a clanless master journey. These journeys are filled with fighting. Dave may not want to draw all of these battles, but we know they happen. We can, if he so chooses, proceed to Thursday’s update having a little narration bubble at the upper left corner of the page saying “One boring fight later” and leave it at that, since we all know right now that there’s a fight going to happen between these two and Egoma will win. None of us need to see the fight to have us understand that outcome.
Now, am I saying to not show it? No. But it will be a lot of dragon scales to draw, even though most of the page would be expected to be in the no scales chibi form shown in the middle of this page. I do expect it would be a relatively uninteresting fight, because she’s not looking at putting on a show, she’s looking at completely shutting down a would be suitor who thinks that a male winning a fight with a female causes said female to want said male in bed.
Dave can always turn it into one of those weird noodle events that a million years into the future will have become mythology of ‘How the dragon lost its scales’
You understand the underlying evolutionary reason that women would want physically strong men, right?
Things are quite a bit more complicated than that. Not the least of which is that we have the freedom to consiously decide. (yes, I know, that is a fairly recent development where women cannot be sold to a future husband).
But even before proto humans had developed enough cognition to think about these things there was a strong evolutionary pressure to /not/ go with the ‘strongest male’.
The fossil record clearly shows that for the last several million years the gender dismorphia between male and female hominids in the homo sapiens lineage has /decreased/. This only happens if there is a pressure to select partners who are not the strongest fighters.
While it is partial conjecture, there are two significant pressures for this effect. One is that while a strong male is likely to have strong children (though really only in the male line), the high levels of testosterone required for both the muscule development and the aggression, makes from poor providers. They’re not that great at being protectors either.
Ever since the earliest hominids banded together for protection the ability to cooperate became vastly more important than raw strength. A tiny hominid male, no matter how strong for its species was never going to stand up to the predators of the time. Even today, when humans are nearly twice the size, a bodybuilder is not going to win a fight against a lion.
So, while starting out with a much more pronounced gender dismorphia (akin to that of gorilla’s of today though vastly smaller), humans started evolving in the direction of chimpansees and bonobo’s. This is an ongoing process.
And just so you know, the body-builder look does not appeal to a high, nor even significant, percentage of women. The most attractive is called ‘lean and moderately muscular’ So, some definition but nothing extravagant. Certainly not the popping veins common in overly muscaler men. (think ballet dancers like Nureyev rather than Schwerzenegger. Or a large number of the male characters in the final fantasy series).
But for Gaxgy’s species, it is entirely possible that females are attracted to strong males, leading to the propensity to only mate with males that can defeat them. This would explain his outlook on the situation.
*Giggle/snort!* I love Maxima’s little smirk in panel 7 – and everyone looks so darned cute in the last panel!
Dubious, intrigued, and a little bit *concerned*. He knows Cora, trusts her judgement, but at the same time is pretty damn certain that he could best even the most skilled Stygian, so there must be *something* going on…
They’re doing a pretty bad job of their ostensible aim of bringing in a ringer to the tournament.
Since gossip travels faster than they can. Likely even using Nth tech.
OTOH maybe there’s a deeper game afoot. I wonder if Egoma is actually going to be the disguise she’s going to end up using in the tournament, and they’re starting to build interest.
Stygan vs. dragon is likely to have the bookies not even allowing a bet. Too one-sided, so something’s going on.
“Stygan” vs. dragon would maybe draw bets. Though setting odds would be really hard, so maybe that wouldn’t work.
I’m also wondering just how much they can change their party out. I think Cora will also have to don a disguise to make bets (and also the ship), otherwise the rumor mill will join up “Egoma” pretty fast with whatever disguise Max comes up with.
There’s the field of signal or traffic analysis, where you don’t know what’s actually being sent, but you can derive information from how much, when and between whom.
Get’s her name slightly out there so she dosn’t startle them too much. Ask any con artist, you want the mark to be a little bit aware. so don’t look too much into things. expecially when the teck can be really good.
I guess he isn’t accustomed to the concept of small people having strength that isn’t proportional to their size.
Like some kind of “super”…. “strength”.
Why, it’s almost as surprising as a 99-pounds-soaking-wet nerdette taking down a superpowered military trained agent!
I find dragon-boy’s flirt-by-sparring technique entertaining, partially because I have a woman in my serial who practically lives by the mantra of sparring being a form of foreplay. When she was single, Moriko would have taken that offer in a heartbeat, though during that time she’d have probably lost (and still enjoyed it).
If that scenario were to happen with her current self, I think Moriko would win. Moriko has been taking on teleporting dragon-moose and soloed a kobold sorcerer who was supposed to be a raid boss (living dungeon). But he has some other hurdles to overcome for Moriko’s current self.
A) She already has a dragon-boy at home (one of the other MCs), and B) additional, temporary partners generally need approval from her husband and wife, one or both of whom might also participate. Which isn’t even an actual rule yet, but they have hit the one year mark of her initial promise, and it’s time for the three of them to talk about some things now that they know themselves and each other better.
Can I get the name of your serial or is it not out yet?
Cap’n Crunch ;P
If you’re telling a story (as opposed to drawing “because it looks cool”) then a fight should advance the plot.
Certainly “foreplay” can be “advancing the plot”…
Just remember, how Max normally is, and Dragon like to sleep with gold.
What does Cuke taste like?
With that “‘swoosh’ and being on Dabb’s fabtory, I bet it is a creamy gel.
I loved the surprised dragon so much. Adorable, really.
Just had a thought from two comics ago.
You know how you don’t put a bag of holding inside another?
Maby dabler likes to use folding space for her swords. Turn it into a micro chain-saw blade or something like a plainer edge that can cut through force feilds.
Some one might have already come up with this thread. Don’t know, just reread comic and jumped to this page to post idea.
Not part of the comic but thought you should all know this.
Working graveyard shift for extended periods of time will give you a %80 chance of having a stroke.
I learned this from overhearing two doctors while laying in a hospital bed not able to move my right side.
If you have any friends or relatives please tell them this.
This does explain certain observations about a certain president …
She could always throw the fight…
Maxima? What you smoking?
She may like him but not that much.
She’s sandbagged before (Hiro mentioned it during the restaurant fight). Plus, there’s always the lure of the exotic
So, how hard is it going to be to keep this “episode” from ever reaching Deus’ and Dabs’ ears?
Max’s top when I first looked at it just made me think it had a bat cut-out. And, that she needed a utility belt to go with it.
Just show him your real form and he will follow you to the ends of the galaxy.