Comic #943: Forecap (Patreon)

I made a LOT of adjustments to this comic along the way. I’m going to be really descriptive and just list them all here, because many of you have told me you appreciate details about the creative process.

I started out with the same basic premise but with a completely different approach. Originally the whole forecap idea was going to be a Narya invention, and he would be presenting the idea to another player, probably Nyte.

Nyte was going to click it, and it would show her dying to a raid mechanic, Narya would make fun of her, and then click forecap himself, which would show Nyte stomping him to death, and you would see Nyte’s angry silhouette in the background coming up on Narya.

It felt a little too similar to #679. It also required a little too much expositive setup having Narya explain his invention.

Then the idea came to me to have the Forecap feature just exist in-game already and Narya would discover it upon his death. This version of the comic initially started with Narya’s death. He would see the Forecap button, ask about it, and then Krom would pop in to explain.

In this initial version it wasn’t clear that Krom was a raid leader. I try to make sure to include context clues about player roles whenever I can for new readers (as long as it doesn’t interfere too much with the narrative). To fix this, I decided to start the comic identically to #679, and then diverged with Narya’s interruption. This served a few purposes: it made it clear Krom was the raid leader, and it also made for a fun callback to 679 which was conveniently titled “Recap”.

This also allowed me to alter the final panel. Originally the final panel had dialogue. Part of this dialogue included context clues at Krom’s role in the raid, but the dialogue really detracted from the punchline:

Narya: I don’t get it. It’s the same as Recap.

Krom: Only for my raiders…

The final change I made was adding an extra beat before the punchline. Originally, the 3rd and 4th panels were combined. Narya just said “Oooh” after Krom’s explanation within panel 3, and the following panel was the punchline. This really didn't give the reader time to process. Also, characters can only really have one expression per panel, and Narya's dialogue in panel 3 and 4 require vastly different expressions.

I separated Narya's final comment into a new panel, and added “let’s see my Forecap!” I then removed one panel from the start to make room for this new panel. This panel at the start mirrored the first panel from #679. You can see that the panel doesn’t exist in the final version.