cinderbuck

[cinderbuck]

Death Save Bargain Bin, Page 10

Hm, not a very inspired layout, but passable, I think. The original rough layout was really boring, so I tried changing it up. Thinking back, it was probably a bad idea to draw out all the rough rough layouts in one day. They got more and more uninspired the further into the pages I got.

My initial plan was to just have the imp, who goes by the name Trish, terrorizing Galdrus (the dwarf), but I couldn't resist adding more of Greetings (the Cambion).

Trish, short for Trishul, which I believe is another word for trident, was a traveling companion for my character in one of the previous adventures my D&D group played.

Long rant ahead about our old D&D adventure, feel free to skip this:

It was Out Of The Abyss, and my character died in the very first session because the merciless adventure stated that the last person down the rope gets a slime (black ooze or something, I don't remember, it's been years) falling on their head, and dies. Can't make death saves or anything, just melts, dead forever, RIP. (If anyone plans on playing this adventure, I highly recommend not following the book too much. Use it more as a guideline than an actual instruction manual. It's infuriating at times.) It was a bit of a bummer, I had plans for my wizard-Gnome.

Had to make a new character, and in this campaign we all decided to roll our base stats on a D20. I didn't really have time to plan my next character, as we were currently playing, and my rolls were mediocre, so I made Penjamin the Average Man, not thinking he'd survive very long.

Just for fun, while I waited for the DM to find a good place for me to reenter the adventure, used the Origins table in Xanathar's Guide to Everything to flesh out his background some more. One of the tables is 1D100 for where your character is born, where it's pretty much a 50/50 chance you roll "home" (results 1-50). I, however, managed to roll 100, "On an Outer Plane of your choice". I wasn't, and still isn't really, that familiar with the Outer Planes, other than the Nine Hells, and the Abyss, so I chose Hell, and built my character's personality around that. His backstory pretty much ended up being that his mother was a Cambion, but his dad was a human so average that their union didn't spawn a tiefling as they normally would, but just a normal human baby. (I accidentally gave him a huge fro though, because at that time we used character sheets printed on paper, and I had a scribble of Pen on there that I just doodled more and more curls on whenever someone had to look up rules and such. It got huge. DM made it cannon.)

I don't remember why, but for some reason, way out in the adventure (somewhat close to the end, I think) I wanted an imp friend that looked like a cat, not a familiar or anything, just a pet of sorts. The DM granted me one, and along the way Pen and Trish might've made a cult. Some human/dwarven sacrifices were made. Some deals were struck, and by the end of the adventure Pen was a Cambion, and had a large following of mostly dwarves that he took home with him.

(I'm not sure what the rules are with gore here, so I blurred the drawings a little. This is a very old drawing of Pen and Trish.)

This might make it sound like I stole the show, but I didn't. Two others also started cults, and the adventure ended with two of us walking away with pretty much an army of cultists each, and the third one went to reassemble his following. (One of these also married the Demon Lord Graz'zt, I think, or at least ended up in a relationship of sorts with him.

Pen is still my favorite character.

Anyways, back to this comic. Trish, old character, redesigned her slightly for this comic, as I couldn't quite remember what she looked like before I managed to dig up an old drawing. Here's the doll I drew before starting the comic to get the palette nice and look alright in grayscale.

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Next Page, Page 11: Might post on November 10th. (2024.11.10)

As mentioned in previous posts, I have a lot of tests and projects coming up this month, and have to study. Will hopefully have time to sketch out a few more pages before I start posting again.

[cinderbuck]

Death Save Bargain Bin, Page 09

Aaah, a whole page just for bullying Galdrus. Poor guy.

I spent so long, too long, on the background. Might not look like it, as it's so bare, but I found out I had a lot of trouble drawing big-ish scenes in a compressed area. What took so long was mostly quarreling with my 2715x3840px canvas, trying to get the background to fit and make sense. Gave up eventually, and made a new huge canvas just for the background. (6365x4500px, though there's a lot of blank space near the borders. I just needed some elbowroom). Had to shrink it to make it fit the actual comic page, so that's why the lines on the booths might be a bit blurry.

Didn't have to draw all that detail in the back of the third booth, though, as it's not even visible in the page.

The original rough layout, and the new rough layout.

Art is not new to me, I've been doing it as a hobby for nearly thirty years, but I've never really pursued it (still don't but I'm trying to get the fundamentals down). I was an electrician until recently, so my perspective is kind of lacking. I'm hoping I can get a little better at 1-point and 2-point perspective with this comic. Might even touch 3-point, but it's so scary. Perspective was one of the bigger reasons I wanted to start making a short comic project. Drawing boxes in an otherwise empty void can only get you so far before it becomes tedious.

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Next page, Page 10:

Changing it up a bit to give myself a little more time in case I fall behind. Noticed I didn't finish this page until after I usually post. So moving the post from Saturday night to Sunday morning from now on.

After Page 10, I will be taking a short hiatus because of a math test the following week, and I need the time to study. I love math, but I'm horrendous at it.

[cinderbuck]

Death Save Bargain Bin, Page 08

Should've planned ahead for exactly what I wanted in the Bazaar. It was gonna look fabulous. But instead I spent way too long drawing Greetings' boots, and ended up kinda winging the marketplace. In the next page, the one I'm currently working on, I spent more time on the background. Probably too much, as I've been working on it all day, and have just started with the coloring.

I think the *involuntary pirouette* is kind of hard to read. I didn't realize when I was drawing the page last week. I'll keep it in mind for future pages.

The text appearing around Greetings in two of the panels say "be kind", both in English and Infernal. I went with "be kind" instead of "be nice" for the sole reason that "kind" is the Icelandic word for "goat" (or possibly "kid", as in a baby goat, I'm not entirely sure. My Icelandic is terrible.) And Greetings is kind of goat-like, so I simply had to. I recalled a t-shirt my bf had a few years ago with "be kind" on it, and a drawing of a goat. It was lovely, but unfortunately the print kinda just faded away and is now just a blue tee. A reference only I will enjoy.

I do have a conundrum though. As I believe I've mentioned, I'm officially out of finished sketches, and I'm currently working on the page for next week now. Hasn't been a problem the last few weeks, as I haven't really had any Saturday plans, and could spend the entire weekend working on pages, but if I'm busy for just one Saturday, I'll be immediately off schedule. I'll keep trying my best to keep up, but I do know a math quiz is coming up soon, and might have to skip a week around that time.

This was another rather uneventful page, revising-vise.

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[cinderbuck]

Death Save Bargain Bin, Page 07

Here we go, my last finished page. Not to worry though, I am nearly done with the next one now, and will try to get another one done, or at least started tomorrow. I think this is the page I've spent the least amount of time on, probably because there aren't any cars or any background to speak of.

This is the most uneventful page by far, both in terms of things happening and in how many roadblocks I hit drawing it (I think it was none). Had to slow down the pace a bit for the following parts of the comic. You know how it is.

I love Greetings (the Cambion or whatever he is), and I have no idea why. His design is, out of all the characters I've made for this short comic, the one that look the worst in black and white. Too few varying tones. Maybe I just like his stupid name.

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[cinderbuck]

Death Save Bargain Bin, Page 06

Oh, why have I not realized I could add a title to posts before now.

This page also went through a few changes in the layout, though not nearly as much as the previous two pages. Of course, I had to include a jumping vehicle, because apparently that's my go-to. I love drawing jumping/flying vehicles. I should've started ages ago, maybe I'd be wicked good at it by now.

I'm quite happy with the flow in this page. Still working on my SFXs though. Don't think I should write letters backwards, but it was what felt most natural to me to do at the time.

I never gave the "villains" real names, only the placeholder names "Chug-chug" and "Science Rat" (and Oink for the wereboar, that's the worst name, by far). Anyways, Science Rat's dialogue might be a bit odd for people not familiar with the Flesh Warping table in Descent into Avernus.

I circled the effects she's referring to. I thought it'd be funny to use the ones that'd sound the most unnatural to say aloud in-game.

I'm thinking of moving away from black outlines in the future. The next page is already done, so I'm not changing that one, but maybe the pages after.

I have a document where I write down all the suggested improvements and whatnot. Once the entire comic is done, I might get back to those notes and spiff up the old pages a bit. The whole reason I started drawing this comic was to improve by working on a small project. I've already learned quite a lot, and can't wait for more.

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[cinderbuck]

Death Save Bargain Bin, Page 05

This page is a bit of a mess as well, for the same reasons as last week's page. Panels are a bit messy, and there isn't really a reading order here. Looks like you're supposed to follow the tieflings at forst, then read the wereboar's dialogue backwards. Next page is better tho'. I love the next page (page 06).

Unfortunately, I might have to take a week off someday soon. I'm running out of ready made pages, and school has caught up to me, or I have neglected to do much schoolwork at home, more like. I thought doing math and physics an hour or two before school every day would suffice, but evidently not. I probably should've prioritized math, but the thing is, I had no problem with it the days we covered each topic, so I mostly did physics instead, as it's pretty much a completely new topic to me. The physics teacher is really good at the subject, but he's a really bad teacher. You can either take notes, or listen to what he says, but not both, so I chose notes, so I could just look it over later and try to make sense of them. Big mistake, as we now have a math test on the first three chapters, and looking over the older notes, I have no idea how to do these math problems. On top of that we also have two big projects in two other subjects.

Hopefully, I'll have time to draw more pages next weekend, and not have to interrupt the weekly upload schedule.

I'm also running out of pages where I've done all the sketching. Only one more page like that, I think. The rest are still in the rough-rough layout stage.

Some reject doodles from page 04 and 05.

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[cinderbuck]

Death Save Bargain Bin, Page 04

I kind of hate this page, it's really boring. (Also, where did his gun go?)

Thing is, I have all the basic layouts of the pages already, but I didn't realize until I was going to make the lines for page 04 that it was waaay too busy. I decided to split page 04 into two pages, but had so much trouble coming up with a good layout for them. I ended up shamelessly stealing the layout setup from a page in Fables (Storybook Love Part 4. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post pages from actual comic books here).

The next page will be a little better, though a bit messy. The page after that (Page 06) I'm quite happy with.

Spoilers for the next page ahead, I suppose. Also a long rant of excuses.

I knew the bullet points that had to happen. In the previous page, the chain holding the platform Galdrus (the dwarf dressed like a princess) was standing on in place is broken, with the intention of making him fall off in this page. Then prompting the "villains" to take some measures to catch up to the party - pouring demon ichor in the engine. At the same time, the party realized they're missing a dwarf and has to turn back and get him, but not too quickly. I mean, I dubbed the comic Death Save Bargain Bin, it's not much of a spoiler that someone would have to make a death save at some point.

Original rough layout:

Original sketch, sort of. I tried to rearrange the already finished sketch to make up page 05, and apparently didn't back up the original-original setup, hence why it looks so weird. But all the pieces are here. I reused some of the panels in the page I'll post next week, but most of it got scrapped.

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[cinderbuck]

Now that I have a more predictable schedule, I decided to start doing gesture drawing. 1-10 are 30 seconds, 11-20 are one minute, 21-25 are five minutes. Not sure how long I drew yesterday, I forgot to time it, but with some math, I'm sure I'd be able to give a rough estimate. I won't tho'. I'm done with math for the day.

There was a lot of free space at the bottom once I got all the poses in place, so I drew my cat's, Zariel's, current mood. Which at the time was furious because I wouldn't turn on the bathroom sink for her. (I had just watered her. She just wanted to watch the water run.) She still hasn't forgiven me.

And just to keep it simple, here's the gesture drawings from today too. I think 26-30 are 30 seconds, 35-40 are one minute, 41-43 two minutes, and 44-45 five minutes (I'm very tired, I can't remember what I just did). A ribbon at the bottom right corner to fill the blank space.

Used Adorkastock for the poses.

[cinderbuck]

Death Save Bargain Bin, Page 03.

Should probably mention that I'm still learning my way around this platform. I don't know how tumblr works yet.

Hm, some of the text bubbles seem a bit cramped. It's just recently that I started to pay attention to the art of lettering an all that. Still have a lot to learn there. Same goes for the tame sfx.

The characters introduced here are the ones me and my bf used when we played Descent into Avernus. I was the DM, but I'm too scared to do that for a broader audience than just the two of us. As the campaign is made for 4+ players, we decided that we both had to play two characters each (though the characters I played, the Tieflings, were really just glorified NPCs).

Thing is, he didn't remember what his characters, the dwarf and the firbolg, were called (and neither did I). So I had to improvise. I remember the dwarf was a nobleman, an artificer, and basically the leader. The Firbolg was a paladin. I dubbed the dwarf Lord Galdrus Greatmantle, and the firbolg Elaven Forestbreeze. I might've used a random name generator, I don't remember, but if I did it was fantasynamegenerators.com. Galdrus certainly wasn't dresses as a princess when we played (I believe my bf imagined something like Thorin Oakenshield), but I thought he'd stand more out that way. Easier to spot in the pages.

The tieflings, being my characters, of course have a lengthy and wholly unnecessary backstory. Short version is that they're the children of one of my earlier characters from another campaign. Philliam (Phil) is the eldest, two years older than Michaela (Mickey). They're a sorcerer and a rogue respectively.

I should probably make a master post at some point with all the pages. Also, I should make a front page. Probably should've done that ages ago.

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[cinderbuck]

Sketch from today's d&d session. My character, Mijira the Amethyst Dragonborn, wished herself one size bigger (large) at the very beggining of the campaign (I think it might've been the first session). Had to use my only, and scarcely used, ranged weapon - which is still regular crossbow size today. I imagine she had to use it like this.

[cinderbuck]

Death Save Bargain Bin, Page 02.

I don't think it's clear enough in this page that the windshield cracks in the third-ish panel (if you count the topmost truck as a panel). It's also a bit hard to tell that they're still being shot at. I'll try to make this more clear in the future. Also, writing "sliiiiide" backwards might've been a bit confusing. Also, also, my sfx game is weak in this one. I've looked up how to do it better after I finished this page. But otherwise, I think this page turned out all right.

Mind you, I do cut a lot of corners to get them done in a reasonable amount of time. I think this took about 8 hours, not counting the time it took to sketch. I forgot to time that part.

I've now finished page 5 as well. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep this up even when school starts for real next week. I've heard the college pre-course is quite merciless.

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[cinderbuck]

Death Save Bargain Bin, Page 01

I've wanted to get back into drawing for a while, especially comics. So I decided to make a short comic: Based off the alternative rule to Death Saves as presented in Descent into Avernus. The one where you can make deals instead of rolling death saves.

This page is made a few months ago - before I had downloaded a better font. So far I've made four pages out of the scheduled 20 pages. Hopefully, I'll have time to work on the rest while also doing college stuff.

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