Comic Report 30.1 - I Almost Forgot The Title (Patreon)

Here's the textless version of the next page. I wanted to get this finished in this week cycle so I'm really happy to make it a day or so earlier than I thought. If I'm honest that's entirely down to the page's panel count, and while the next page might be light on panels I'm gonna be sinking back into the 8-9 panel pages sooner than later, and all those empty diner booths are gonna have to have people in them- and a couple of the will have to be specific people too- so I'll enjoy this speedy update pace while I can because I'm going straight back to Hell.

The middle three panels of this page were the ones I was least sure about how I would build. It'll hopefully come through with the dialogue in place but I needed to convey two things: one, that Lizzie and Deputy Mayor Martinez were alone with no one eavesdropping; and two, that there are a lot of human interactions that are relevant to what Ms. Martinez needs to talk about.  So I needed to figure out if I wanted the panels to be lonely or cramped, so I opted for a hopscotch one-of-each approach, with the penultimate panel being a shot of the back hallway to the back door, just to point the camera in all three directions around their booth. The third panel was like a "break" background for me- I usually like to paint in all the backgrounds in every panel, which can be taxing, but every now and then I can do an effect background to punctuate what the speech bubbles are saying. I chose overlapping rows of people looking in opposing directions to try to convey a concept of crowd and conflict. I still feel a pang of guilt for using stylized silhouettes, even though I think it looks sharp, but I would go out of my mind drawing all those bodies as fully detailed, individual people, and if I'm honest I don't trust myself not to actually go to all that trouble.  So I think it works for what it is.

I'm gonna get back to work and get the dialogue on the page and put it up on the site, but I wanted to get the traditional no-text page up for my kind Patrons.  Thanks for continuing to support our work!