Comic #992: Reality Bites: Part One (Patreon)

Oh boy, here we go again.

I'm planning to have this arc run for 9 parts, ending with #1000. I know last week I talked about wanting to do something with NPCs going AFK, but in the end a better idea came to me, following up from #990 instead of #991. I'm not gonna lie, I am a little bothered by the fact that this comic follows up from the comic before last. I might have to pull a George Lucas and edit my comics after the fact, flip the order of 990 and 991. It would make the arc last a nice even 10 episodes rather than 9. If I do change that, it won't happen till after the arc is finished. We'll see if I care enough then.

I've already written out the 9 episodes of the arc. That isn't to say they won't change as I draw them, but I like to know where I'm going before I start. Otherwise we end up with forever arcs with no end.

Drawing these damn rings on every character's fingers is a pain! I think I'm going to have to just stop drawing them starting next episode. So if you see them disappear, yes it's a continuity error, but hands are hard enough without rings on every finger.

Also, the final panel uses a real background, which was surprisingly challenging. I knew that I wanted to have a real background for the final panel to match my drawn background for the first 6 panels. Both the drawn and real panels had to have a feature that was easily distinguishable to the reader so it would read as the same background. I felt like a portcullis was perfect for this, however that meant I had to find an image of a real portcullis.

Obviously, I don't have any castles nearby with a perfect portcullis to take a picture, so I had to find an image online. That opened a can of worms about usage rights, so I had to buy a subscription to a stock library so I could use it. This image in particular is of Cahir castle in Ireland. Funny enough, I spent a lot of time in Ireland and have visited a number of castles there, but in all that time, I never took a picture of a damn portcullis. Oh well.

I will probably need more stock images if I'm going to continue the trend of having real backgrounds for this arc, so it's worth the investment. I could have easily AI generated the background, but I refuse to use that slop on principle. At least this way some photographer somewhere is getting a cut. It will also be fun to use real locations. Maybe i'll be able to slip in something I've taken a picture of in future issues.

I originally considered not animating panel six, but when it was static it just didn't read as well. It also ended up being a nice mirror to #496, which was the start of the patchwerk arc, which is a pretty similar premise.

I did get to have some fun in the real world in a previous short arc starting with #798, but I felt like I only really scratched the surface.