Comic #962: Tanks for Nothing (Patreon)

Until this morning the original idea was going to be just Nyte by herself. Imagine Miji's role being played by Nyte speaking to the camera, and Narya's dialogue being completely absent. Nyte was going to be the one donning the tank gear and dead in the final panel. The final panel in that original version had no dialogue, just the musical text.

As I was getting ready to draw it, it occurred to me that Nyte could be talking to someone, and they could be the one suffering in the end, and I liked it better, but in that case, I felt Nyte was the wrong character. It would make more sense if a tank was the one talking, and of course Miji never misses any opportunity to torture Narya so it all fell into place.

In some comics more than others I also struggle a lot with character blocking. Essentially, how can I fill the frame with the characters and the dialogue, make everything visible and easy to understand, while everything remains visually appealing without any odd gaps.

Blocking was definitely a challenge on this one. Usually having one short and one tall character helps a lot with filling the frame and providing space for dialogue, but two short characters, like in this comic, can make that more challenging. Especially in panel 1 and 3 where half the panel is taken up by a giant interface popup plus dialogue.

For example, imagine in panel 1 if Miji and Narya were both the same scale, they would be squished into frame. I solved that panel by shrinking Miji into the background, and I solved the issue in panel 3 by just having Miji offscreen. Panel 2 was tricky as well, as I needed Narya in center frame with obvious tank gear on, and both characters being the same height with little dialogue meant it would be tricky to fill the entire frame. Hence why I ended up with Miji in that pose with his arms out. Really helps to frame Narya, fill the frame, and leaves room for dialogue.

One last minute change I made was the color of Narya's clothing. Originally I had his outfit change to be exactly the same as Miji's (plus shoulderpads). But once I got to the final panel, I realized that he looked too similar to Miji, and would confuse the readers, especially because his shoulders aren't visible in that panel. So I ended up creating a hybrid outfit of the two of them to make it clearer that Narya was the central corpse in the final panel.