Hotwire Insolve BTS: Bulletproof Drive pages 18-20 (Patreon)

ALRIGHTY time for the final Bulletproof Drive BTS post pages 18-20, the conclusion to Bulletproof Drive's proper tale, i will be doing a one or two additional posts going over the epilogues.

link to final pages

with Zack taken out of commission, we're free to conclude the story! I worry I wrapped it up too quickly, but I was limiting myself to 20 pages for this, so here we are haha.

Juno's little twirl in the first panel was a late addition, but i thought we needed a transition from the drawing on the previous page. also i generally portray her as being pretty quiet and stoic, and i wanted to show that her personality comes out when she gets to do things she likes like martial arts. she's also much more expressive around Kyrie compared to other people. cuz she likes her too.

the little transitional time-passing panels i picked up from the Initial D manga. I'm sure other comics do this too, but that's where I saw it. I think it's a nice, simple way to show time passing without having a caption just going "an so..." or "a little later." the little panel is a tone i put a noise layer style on in which i made the noise really big, the second is a simple diagonal grid i "pixelated" by applying a mosaic filter, and the third is a few black and grey lines that messed up with the liquify tool. all these in Clip Studio Paint.

for the car when Juno reveals it was just the color that caught her eye about it, i just scribbled in a car then put a shot of the Blender model in there for the final drawing. below is the picture of it. very thankful i took the time to make this thing haha. debating if i should include the actual Blender file in the write upon Juno's car in the future. mostly just apprehensive showing how amateurish my 3D sensibilities probably are, heh.

when i was penciling that panel where Kyrie is saying "oh. huh. interesting..." and doing a hand-on-chin inquisitive pose, i realized Juno's doing pretty much the same thing in the next panel. I embraced this, and just made it the exact same pose. I thought it might help subtly convey how in-sync they are.

link to final pages (same link as above)

just before kyrie gets shot, i really wanted to capture how stupid she looks in my thumbnail of the panel, but i didn't want her looking quite so goofy. i think i did a got there!

this page was pretty easy cuz i drew a good chunk of it a long time ago. I shared a sketch page of the surgeon character in a previous Behind-the-Scenes post. Which included this moment where he plugs Kyrie in the stomach with a pistol and tells Juno she's next.

that's right, i revealed the ending of this comic LONG AGO! while i DID drop these drawings into the file, you can probably see i changed the poses and stuff quite a bit.

If you're comparing to the final pages, you'll probably notice that the last panel's composition is completely flipped. i wanted to have Kyrie doubled over as the final beat. i rethought this, and it just made more sense to have it go Kyrie>Surgeon>Juno, actually. follows the line of action better and makes it more like he's leaving Kyrie behind and turning over to Juno.

Luckily, I didn't finish the whole page before deciding to change it this time. the drawing is mostly the same, just had to change the surgeon's arms, the cord over the surgeon's shoulder, and Juno's hair spiky.

it was relieving being done with this comic finally. well, as you know i'm not done-done, but it is a conclusion nonetheless. i hope it was funny, at the very least. there's a little more to why Juno likes that car, but all that buildup for it to just be her favorite color was always the plan.

a character being quiet can make them seem like they are smart, but make no mistake: they're BOTH the dumb one. i'm looking forward to having more opportunities to explore their characters and relationships.

as always thanks for being here! more stuff soon! ✌️