Comic #751: In the Arms of an Angel (Patreon)

For those not playing currently, there are a group of angelic soul guides that routinely pick you up and fly you to different locations. For some reason, they often grab you right on the head and miraculously drag you around without killing you.

I was originally going to do this comic last week, but the thought of making the animation was so daunting that I decided to do the Maw one instead.

About 80% of the time I spent on this comic was in the last panel. When I create an animated panel I usually only animate small features. This one required the wings and Keydar's ragdoll, both of which were challenging.

I ended up taking screenshots of a flying Kyrian in game, and using each still as a frame of reference. For Keydar, I initially drew an animated sketch of him as a "string" flopping back and forth in the angel's grasp. Then I upgraded the string into a stick figure. Once I liked the look of the animation with a stick figure, I added the features.

The one thing I have noticed with animation is that the animated features don't need to be as detail oriented or perfect as normal, as each frame only exists for a fraction of a second. The wings themselves are actually really simplistic sketches.

You can see an example here: