#god i gotta research if the storyboards for this were ever posted

[popppyfur]

i loveeee trolls in holiday so much because it has some of the most solid interactions w broppy. not in the shipping sense but their actual dynamic. its so fucking good and funny

[cosmosogler]

hi guys. today i was very sick again. i got up on time and showered. i made myself a bagel for breakfast and before i could even eat a single bite i almost threw up and passed out.

suzanne and harrison covered my teaching sections today. i don’t know how to make it up to them. both of them said not to worry about it. i wish they would humor me at least though.

so i stayed home and... basically did nothing but draw and play with snoopy? i finished an entire scene. the first page took almost twice as long as normal (~7 hours on and off) because i had to design and draw about 10 new characters and fit them into the scene. some of them i had to draw more than once. only one of them (besides nastasia) will ever show up again. and that one will just be in a flashback.

it’s similar to the market scene i drew with timpani a while back, but this time i was trying really hard to give everyone personality and the outfits were all  relatively complicated. and i had to do actual research into the game i had decided to make a nod at, and i also had to learn how to draw bats within the last three panels. 

oh yeah and i had to refresh myself on two-point perspective and try to also freehand some stuff in that perspective because my knowledge on doing angled things is limited.

so like, visually, the page is not technically impressive. i didn’t do anything special with the backgrounds (although the design on the carpet might look familiar if you look close enough). but the amount of work that went into the scene is approximately A LOT.

it’s also a third draft, the two-part altogether. i went through two rounds of storyboards alone.

i’m still not sure how i feel about it. i hope i established nastasia as a kind of quiet observer type of person. by putting her in a group and letting everyone around her talk while she just looks on.

for you guys it’s only been a scene since we last saw blue but for me it’s been hours and hours and hours and days haha. just from the amount of new information i had to cram into my head and then somehow translate into hand motions.

nastasia has so many questions/demands for blue that i’m having trouble figuring out what she asks about first and how to weave in what’s going on with blue in his own head and make sure we also know exactly how nastasia’s doing so we can get to know her really well before things get bad / complicated. i guess it’ll come out a little more naturally once i have it down on a page and i can do nonverbal cues along with the dialogue and stage directions i got in my notes. but GOD!!!!!

i also found a song i really liked when i was clicking around on youtube today looking for new music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_ZRWZv14SA i put it in the comic playlist. and had a digression where i looked up an interview with the singer of the band. i liked what he had to say about feeling conflicted and how he put that into the band’s whole album!

i think what i’m gonna do for the upcoming conversation / traveling scenes is tell it mostly from nastasia’s point of view because blue is on turbo autopilot and doesn’t have a lot of internal monologue going until he cracks periodically.

anyway oh! i forgot, because i wasn’t sure how to process the conversation. but i invited taylor to read my comic after talking to him about manga he liked. i mentioned it was based on a mario game and it was about a guy looking for his wife. taylor made a joke about the princess being in another castle and i wasn’t sure how to react. then he said he wanted to read the whole thing when it was done. i said that might be a few years. i said harrison reads it and thought he would like it, and if he’s ever interested i could show him. he said ok.

i guess i was hoping for a yes / no, and not quibbling around the commitment, and the most obvious jokes. to be fair he’s got no context for what the comic is about other than the premise. i think he figured it was the “stupid pun” kind of story i tell rather than the “horribly depressing” kind. twist ending: it’s actually both.

that’s what was on my mind today. it’s a bit of a relief to have told someone else i draw a comic and be rejected. i had a panic attack when i tried to send the message and deleted it and retyped it several times for about 10 minutes before i finally hit send. i guess it was frustrating to know that he wasn’t gonna read it but he still refused to say “no thanks.” just pick one, dude!!!!!

it was. good. to take a break from physics for a day. i feel like i was doing an arm-day workout for fifty years straight and i finally took a break to do a leg-day. my nose also finally cleared up a little bit in the last hour or so. i had to skip therapy too though, since i stayed home. i made sure to keep the window open since it was just, really nice outside, and i missed going for a long bike ride in that nice weather again. gotta stop being sick!

anyway that’s where i’m at. something good today is that i felt like i was kinda in an art block sort of mood but i just worked meticulously through it and i think i like how the pages came out anyway. they’ll post tomorrow. and i found a new song. so it was... a good productive day non-physics-wise. tomorrow i’d like to get a head start on my grading if i can, in between classes. if i’m well enough to go to class.