#it's just a 4-panel page but I MISSED DRAWING COMICS SO MUCH

[tekesima]

this is the 5th and unfortunately last page of this mini comic. This was intended to be a quick project but ended up stretching to almost if not a year of work due to my commitments to irl stuff. I loved working on this and I'm once again thankful to @blood-injections for letting me make these few pages based off their post here.

you can find the previous pages here: 1, 2&3, 4

more explanation and background beneath the cut

I underestimated the amount of work that would go into making these, especially with all the pages being fully rendered. Initially there were supposed to be 6 pages but I ended up having to stretch it to 7 pages. But now I've decided to end it here on the 5th page due to a number of reasons. The first being that I just unfortunately do not have the time for this kind of commitment anymore with me in college now. I also have just moved on from mcr content and have been more interested in other bands and other media. Another reason is that I do not have a lot of time in general to even do digital drawings anymore and finally I feel like my art style right now that I'm currently happy with is a departure from the style that i started this comic with, and it just doesn't fit it very well.

I felt pretty bad having to take so long on working on these pages and only coming out with one, maybe two pages after 3 months, since i've only been able to work on these during my semester breaks.

Thank you to people who've been following and reading along, and again, thank you so so much to @/blood-injections for giving me permission to make their post into this short comic, even if I never ended up finishing it.

This part will just be some final thoughts. I learned a lot while making the pages; panel shapes and placement and how to make it appealing, how to space out and arrange speech bubbles to make the dialog more digestible and easy to read, how to sort of draw out the sound effects which I'm still trying to get the hang of in terms of fonts. The hardest thing I found about making all of these is consistency, not just in terms of schedule but in terms the process of making the comic itself, particularly the designs of the characters. I hadn't created a character reference sheet at all for this since I anticipated it to be short and quick (it was not lol), and so there were quite a few times where I found myself accidentally forgetting to draw some details of the character's designs but since I had already posted them, all I could do was just add the designs I missed in the next pages. I hope that didn't bug you all too much :'3

That's pretty much all I have to say, thank you for the people that stuck around this long but I apologize for not being able to continue the comic due to personal commitments and having moved on to other interests. I hope you all have a good one :]

[melioristicbeast]

Have a half-crop of a panel bc i am taking way longer with this than i intended - i keep going 'alright time to finish up, but first just little more shading, as a treat' (also i spent way too long thinking of stickers to put on stiles' laptop compared to how little they show but heyyy)

the two stages of sketching, there's no inbetween with me (god help me im gonna try to draw stiles without mike-wazowski'ing him as i have been so far LOL)

i was alerted to the existence of the thumbhole sweater (!!!) and while i haven't yet watched far enough beyond S2 to see it, it has inevitably already entered my 'derek hale in comfortable clothing' roster

[daiourage]

TFO Dual Rulers (?) AU

I've been seeing people do like a "what if D didn't go fuckin' coconuts" AU, and it kinda inspired me to start thinking of what other events would be changed in those scenarios.

(yes i'm still in denial)

Please take these lightly colored sketches!!! Also I'm sorry for lazy handwriting;;

Also also, as always, please click/press the image for quality!!!

("Brief" explanations for each of the numbered panels is under the cut (the numbers are just the order of when I drew them, and not in chronological order of the scenes)!!!)

1. I think, because D won't be the one to shoot at Sentinel because he's grounded in this AU, Sentinel would be the one to use the last of his strength to try and shoot at D, only for Orion to block it. I couldn't figure out how to draw D in immense agony about it so I just decided to make this paper a collection of ideas. If anyone has any ideas, please tell me because I want angst--//shot (I also finally remembered to write my signature this time!!!) 1-2. The main problem I had trouble figuring out was how D would possibly let go of Orion... He'd still say the "Why did you do that, why?!" line, but I don't know where to go from there. Would Sentinel still have energy to kick D's hand? Would Orion be too heavy to hold on? Would Orion tell D to let him go? Maybe they wouldn't even be hanging over the ledge and D would just be holding him--but then what? There was too many things to ponder about just one scene, and I wanted to get my other ideas out before I forgot about them. Guyssss give me your ideas please-- 2. It always bothered me that Orion and Bee left D in Sentinel's office(?) to hold him off on his own;;; like, I get it, D won't listen, but at least tell him you're leaving??? 2-2. I think the "What did he do to you?" conversation would be much longer. Not as comical and cheesy as the comic I sketched a little bit back, but... 3. (Please read it right to left;;; I just got done reading manga when I had the idea to draw this panel;;; also the entire page honestly. I'm so sorry y'all--)At the High Guards' base, I think D'd be the one to initiate a fight with Starscream still, but do it calmly. 4. I wanted to keep this line, because it would make sense still. Also might hurt a little more *screams* (D would not do the Anime Girl Pose™️, but I wanted him and Orion to match oop--) 5. After apprehending Sentinel, somehow we'd get his (Megatronus's) cog and Orion (now Optimus) would give it to D as a token of trust. Based off of @/momonsalmonmon on Twitter/X's absolutely gorgeous comics!!! (I also DO NOT remember how the cogs looked I'm sorry for not doing further research ;w; Will do better next time I promise;;;) 6. Bee and Soundwave BFFs???? (+ annoyed Shockwave) Please. Also maybe bring back Senator Soundwave as a concept??? Miss he;; It might be interesting, with Bee also "working for the government" now,,, 7. Headcanon that Orion is bad at math and confides in Elita and D for enforcing the taxes so the citizens don't become outraged but also so that the government has enough money to do stuff. D might be like "Aww he needs our help" and Elita would be like "godddd let me work out" 7-2. I feel like I draw Elita with an annoyed expression too much I'm so sorry milady;;; I promise I love you;;;

[randomyuu]

so hold my hand (consign me not to darkness) [1/4]

Ah, yes. The fic that made me realise I’m in desperate need of Cursed Spirit Gojou in my ever-growing favourite GoYuu tropes.

Content Warning!

Major Character Death. Other characters are disrespectful to the corpse.

I highly suggest you read the fic first, or just the fic, since I don’t think I was properly able to adapt it into drawings. While I managed to use roughly two weeks of on-and-off planning, researching, and storyboarding, I only had a full week to finish it. You can read more of my thoughts below the comic if you’re curious.

Title: so hold my hand (consign me not to darkness)

Author: qalb_al_louz

It’s ongoing, and as of this drawing, the fic is in its third chapter. While this is (sexually) SFW, always be mindful of the tags! Please keep yourself safe and sound.

Please read from right to left, and enjoy!

You can only upload 30 images in one post, huh Damn, I gotta divide it into parts

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Alrighty, I'll put my watered down unhinged thoughts below. No extra drawings down there if you're curious haha (unless you want to see the storyboard and the characters' full body character sheet, lemme know). You can skip the stuff underneath the Keep Reading for all parts.

This fic had me grinning from ear to ear every time I read this. The atmosphere, how it goes from POV to POV—of pure fear and panic—and the peak excitement I got when Yuuji properly meets Gojou, like brooooo 😭

Gosh I cannot emphasise how much I love this fic. I’ve always been wanting to make a whole comic out of it, especially since it was 2 chapters and it doesn’t look like the author will update it, but it just… kind of forgotten ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿

But then the author posted a new chapter and I told myself this is a sign I should really start.

also goddamn I was so naive to think I can tackle 2 chapters as comic—no I was in fact cannot

The moment I laid my eyes on the first paragraph, things were portrayed very vividly in my mind. The panel, the angle, Gojou's head rolling down... I was like, hell yeah. Then I continued reading and I finally succumbed to my desire to draw this out.

At first I want to adapt this into a vertical format like those manhwas. However the longer I try to learn and storyboard it... I am simply not yet comfortable with it, especially for such a big project. Even the 1st storyboard starts vaguely vertical before the panels quickly crammed into that B4-B5 format lol. The first sketch estimated 69 (heh) pages for 90% of chapter 1. I said "no" for my own sanity and fully focused on the usual manga format and it was narrowed down to 60. Still a lot though, quantity and time-wise. So with a heavy heart, I can only do the majority of chapter 1 :”) I really really want to draw Sukuna talks back to Gojou—do you have any idea how good that scene was??? Gojou tried so hard to restrain himself, he’s so other I love him 😭

Due to the sheer length of this comic (I'm still in disbelief), I have limit lots of things, and that includes the drawing. If you've seen my other JJK fanarts, they are more rendered than this one. Well, this one is purely sketched with the help of the eraser to tidy up some lines. This is also the first fanart that I did purely on Photoshop, so I can control the typesets and drawings in one place. Usually, I use Photoshop for panels and typesetting and Krita for drawing.

I don't really like Photoshop's brush, but it did really well in curbing my perfectionist tendencies, so that's good.

It's also been quite a while since I draw in general (sobs) so... yeah, you might find differences, or not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But I hope you enjoy it nonetheless!

I know setting is important, but maaan I genuinely won't miss rereading chapter 83-93 with a heavy focus on background and character locations. I just want to read the action and dialogue😭 However continuity is really important. But my spatial intelligence is almost non-existent even GPS sometimes can't help me. All I'm saying is that if you find some silly drawing mistakes, do forgive me ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿I only drew all this in a week because otherwise I won't have another chance to complete this.

Well, lots of things I won't miss from this project, but haha let's talk about the characters instead because holy shit what was I thinking, starting this year drawing this many characters in the same project??? I have never drawn anyone here except for Yuuji, Gojou, Nanami and Megumi. I don't think I've ever drawn older Getou before. I already forgot how to draw my boy Yuuji and I gotta draw all these people???

This is what you call making a bad decision, kids. Don't do your "drawing warmup" after months of not drawing and tackling a project of a scale way bigger than you've ever tackled before.

Thank you for reading this far! I hope you find my complaint entertaining! But make no mistake, I genuinely still love the fic. Drawing this, even with all the headaches it gave me, only makes me adore this fic even more.

Thank you very much to each one of you who follows and leaves comments and tags on my silly art—it never failed to make my day :D And I sincerely wish this one also made your day or even made your minute! I'll see you in the next part!

[niuniente]

Hi Niu! I wanted to stop by and let you know that I binged all of DHD last night and this morning. It's FANTASTIC and I'm a bit mad at myself for having slept on this for so long. I've been reading the updates you post here off and on and I *finally* took the plunge and read everything. I love it I love it I love it! You are phenomenal 💖💖💖💖💖

Welcome to read DHD! I'm genuinely so glad and happy you've enjoyed it (I binged it myself recently, too - I need to reread what I have done occasionally not to miss anything).

Good thing for arriving a bit later than others to any series is that there's lot to watch/see/listen and you can indulge yourself as much as you like :D

I do have other comics which you might also enjoy.

FUZZY is completed and tells a story of a seer Irene and a solid black monster called Fuzzy. It was very liked and got on Webtoon's front page as recommended series. READ FUZZY

Demon Sanctuary has been in a hiatus for a long time but I do genuinely want to finish it - even if it took me 20 years. It tells a story of a priest Furmann, who rehabilitates demons instead of exorcising them. One of his demons is a little girl's ghost-demon Suzie, who screams at flowers. READ DEMON SANCTUARY

I'd also like to serialize these three poly-flatmate-idiots at some point with 4 panel style but I have not made any big decisions yet. I have their comics on Tumblr now, tagged as #flatmates (needs a proper name)

Ironically speaking I know how Demon Sanctuary ends and I just need to draw it but I haven't gotten to do it...

Second ironic thing is that there's also another comic which I have had in mind for 7-8 years by now. I know the characters (Poju and Siri, series has no name), I know the story, I pretty much have it all thought from beginning to its end. Again, I don't know when (or how!) this story will come out. I somehow have a hunch that some other form than a comic would fit it really well. A book, perhaps? A game?

NOT TO MENTION that there's also ANOTHER comic idea I've been thinking for a few years now and doodled the characters a bit. It would be about a demon who is VERY proud of being able to manipulate anyone - until he meets a woman who doesn't react to him in anyway. Kind of the same idea as in Lucifer series, but a comedy.

Wow, where these keep coming from?! Not that I complain but I have only two hands, 24h per day and health issues (albeit slowly getting better).

But anyway, long story short; THANK YOU FOR READING DEATH-HEAD'S DEAL! If it's up to me I'll keep drawing comics until I croak or my osteoarthritis wins.

[neogandw]

Page 4 of 6, the rest can be seen here.

Honestly this is the part where I just get to have fun with the training montage and the reason of why I love Smash Bros like I do.

The gameplay IS fun even if I don't actually play online matches all that much (I'm not all that competitive, I play mostly solo or with friends exclusively), but to me Smash Bros is a toy box.

I love these universes and Smash Bros has introduced me to many more over the years, to me its an introduction to various things I could learn and play with, and even more fun to me its concocting how these series gel together and how you could use their elements as playthings to craft a story or a cohesive universe.

I explored this before with another massive comic I made, honestly kind of one this is a sequel to. Its "The Strongest Fighter".

To me, I am not interested at all in "who would beat who", I prefer to think of "Okay, if these two were to meet, how WOULD it go down?" or "If so was in this situation, what would they do?", the joke of the Strongest Fighter comic is not to actually decide who is the strongest in terms of made-up power levels, but rather an exploration of how these characters view and talk about one of their own in a context disguised as a poorly thought-out question.

A lot of people tend to miss this, sadly, even if Shulk points out "Anyone can beat up Kirby" rather blatantly at the end.

So, going back to Page 4, its also similarly an exploration of the question "how do you go on about getting strong in this context?".

With splatoon, there's not much other than "pick up the weapon and sink or swim, we ain't an helicopter parent, you figure it out". But when you introduce the idea of a MENTOR (specially one out of universe like Peach is) how would you go on about teaching something so abstract as getting good aim?

Its not so much that Orange needs training in weaponry at all, I did make it a point to show that she was Super Fresh with everything BUT the Chargers back on Page 1, but that her aiming skills with the Charger are so off that:

Speedy targets won't stay still (Joker just dodging out of the way)

Her shots are blantantly obvious (Samus just leaning her head to the side)

She's not using shooting at a range, so her aim is so off that she misses even in Super Flat World.

So the training montage is tackling these issues.

Study up and learn how the weapon actually works, as I said her first mistake was skipping up Sheldon's explanation, so the first thing Peach does is explain the basics of the weapon to Orange (if you notice, the billboard does show things like leading the shot as exemplified with the Rabbid, using bombs to flush out your enemies and the importance of things like Ink Saver). Basic stuff, but you do hit the books to learn your tool.

Learn in a safe envoirement that is somewhat predictable, and it is slow going (notice the timer of the Break the Targets), get used to shooting long-distance first and foremost, no matter how long it takes.

Then you introduce the erraticness (AKA: the ducks) and practice off that, Orange hit exactly half and Peach mentions as much. The dog may laugh, but its a start.

And finally, put it to the test. I specifically chose Sonic to be the target to be hit because he'd be the most erratic, fastest and would NOT allow himself to be hit that easily. Landing a headshot on Sonic has to be the hardest thing you could do.

I did mostly pick scenarios that would be funny, but I did want it to be a ramping up in getting good. Not just jumping from point A to point B and just skipping to "welp, you're a god at sniping now".

Anyway, the hidden jokes and references of this page:

I used to be a teacher (programming, if you're curious), so the panel of Inkling Girl going to school is reminiscent of my experiences as a teacher and a student. hence why Inkling Girl's set-up on the school resambles what I know rather than the desks you find on Garreg Mach. Such as taking special attention to draw the ever present ruler, using a square notebook for math, the pencil sharpener and erasers being the ones we use down here on México and the bag being a knock-off rather than an official product. Its just sort of the norm you see around here.

You may notice the random calendar on the Garreg Mach page on the top left. On the coloring process I decided to add to the joke of Inkling Girl going to school by imitating a Persona UI.

Originally the joke was to have it be styled after P5's, but the UI used wound up being Persona 3's instead. Not only is it topical thanks to Reload, but the reason I did it is that curiously -just as I was working on this panel- I hit this date on reload ( 8/10 ) and it just so happened that THIS is when you downright lose an entire week worth of days because Mitsuru decided to sign you up for summer classes without consulting you. Fitting for Inkling Girl sacrificing her own free time to learn and study.

Small thing, but if you actually read Orange's notebooks you may notice she's dividing by zero.

Just to show how much Inkling girl sucks at aiming, the break the targets timer is there to show how badly she's doing. Normally during Break the Targets you either get timed to your best time counting UP if you're doing it on the dedicated mode or counting DOWN from 2 minutes if you do it from Classic Mode. The timer instead reads 28:05.15, meaning that Peach had her do it at her own pace and its been nearly half an hour of just missing shots (since she's only been able to hit 1 target so far).

Also, the timer number may be random, but its actually Splatoon 1's release date. I love to hide significant numbers like that on my works. I forgot to mention it but Peach's player ID back on page 3 was also a release date.

And to add on to the cute factor, the platform they're standing on in Break the Targets is actually taken directly from Peach's stage. So she's lending her own target test for the practice.

Fun fact: on the Duck Hunt panel you can see the UI discussing how many ducks have been hit by Inkling Girl. Not easily apparent though is the blue bar below the ducks.

THAT is the minimum requirement. In the original Duck Hunt the UI for the duck tally would shift over to the left and be compared to that blue bar, if you didn't shoot enough ducks to go beyond where the bar was pointing at the game would end.

Essentially, Peach is asking for a bare minimum of 4 ducks to be hit, which Inkling Girl technically did as she managed 5, but she's still frustrated due to the dog's mockery.

Irregardless of how the montage was gonna go on the planning phase, I always wanted to have Sonic be the last test for Inkling's improvement because -once more- I like to think more in-character when writting down these scenarios.

Sonic is the fastest thing alive, he's capable of dodging whatever bullet or explosive eggman tends to throw at him (capable, not reliable, it depends on player input if he does so or not). So he'd be perfect for target practice, specially for something like Sniping.

Sonic's pride would NOT agree with being shot in the face, admittedly, but he could be talked into it if asked as both a challenge and a request. Peach wouldn't put anyone in danger and it is really just ink, so if its for the sake of helping others, Peach could reliably ask Sonic to do it and he'd at least take solace in helping someone else. Though he'd likely taunt and make it as hard as possible due to his ego.

To show that it was amicable and that Sonic agreed to it I had the two bits of Peach handling a tower and Sonic giving a thumbs up, to show that he was in on the plan.

I could have drawn Green Hill Zone again (in fact, the planning phase did had it AS Green Hill), but I instead opted to go with Seaside Hill as the background (kind of a mistake on my part since Ocean Palace is OBTUSE on its architecture), mostly because I wanted some scenery variety with Sonic, its not always gonna be on Green Hill Zone, you know.

The Loading screen that Inkling is having on her head while she realizes she passed the final test is from Sonic 06, which I shouldn't have to tell you that its infamous for its loading.

I originally wanted it to be Splatoon's loading icons, but those would have required animation since they're not visually understandable otherwise. So I just went with the Sonic theme and made it match.

The UI used for the last two panels are the stage clear screens for Splatoon 2 and Splatoon 1 respectively. Also, I didn't just copy-paste the assets from Splatoon 3 into the comic, every time you see the weapon icons like that its one of my recreation of those assets.

[taybatwo2]

Monster High IDW Comics Review: Part 7 of ?: Monster High IDW Issue 1: Part 2

Okay, we got Issue 1’s miscellaneous information out of the way, time for the innards! Show us the story!!

As always, here is the very first part of these reviews/breakdowns:

https://www.tumblr.com/taybatwo2/754406016295321600/monster-high-idw-comics-review-part-13-the-fcbd?source=share

And here is the first part covering issue 1 (review part 6):

https://www.tumblr.com/taybatwo2/772726504008384512/monster-high-idw-comics-review-part-6-of?source=share

The comic page breakdown is under the cut, bubbles are whited out to try and circumvent copyright.

Page 1:

The first page has the “CryptCrier” telling the reader/students of Monster High that two shady figures are in Monster High and are wanting to talk to Headmistress Bloodgood.

Bloodgood is NOT happy that these “shady figures” are requesting her to do….something…we don’t know what yet. She says the students have been through too much and she doesn’t want them traumatized farther (I AM NOT looking forward to cracking open and making my Once Bitten break down). The Shady figures threaten her again.

Pros:

The artwork, lighting, and aesthetics all blend in really well the G1’s 2D cartoon.

Callbacks:

There was a shady figure threatening Frankie’s dad in the Free Comic Book issue too.

G1’s Bloodgood never had axe earrings, those are inspired by G3’s scythe/axe earrings (but they look good on her here).

Page 2:

Bloodgood is still not giving in to their unknown demands and says she’s the one that gives the orders around here (you tell them!). They call her bluff and she is about to call “her nightmare” on them (so she’s Nightmare the nightmare…Bloodgood! You could do better than that). The shadowy figures cut her off by asking if she knew Hexiciah.

She stops and says that “he set off on an expedition months ago and never returned.” They claim he is NOT LOST!! Dun-Dun-DUN.

Pros:

HEXICIAH! I love it when he shows up (and they really lean hard on Bloodgood and Hexiciah’s relationship. >:3 ).

Callbacks:

We are reminded that Bloodgood’s first name is Nora.

Nitpicks:

Nightmare is not known to be intimidating; the back of Bloodgood’s doll’s box reading: “her nervous demeanor belies her rather intimidating name, she is almost always ready to charge into any situation at a moment’s notice…almost.” She is even quoted to have “boughts of fear and panic” on the Monster High wiki. But! She can breathe fire…which is intimidating. I also don’t think Nightmare was a literal “nightmare” before? I believe she was some sort of shadow or demonic horse (specifically based off the demonic blue horse from Denver, Colorado’s airport)

I think Nora deserves to brandish an axe or some fiery jack o’lanterns to protect the school. And I assume that Hexiciah is missing AGAIN…? He was just found by Robecca with the help of Ghoulia after he was missing for ~100 years (according to Robecca and Hexiciah’s SDCC diaries). Someone put a tracking device on this man!!

Part 3:

The shadowy figures show her a picture of Hexiciah and claim they’ve tracked him down and know where he is. If she joins them, they can be reunited.

Bloodgood once again picks Monster High over her love for this guy (apparently why they are not officially together).

The shadowy figures are not too happy to hear this and the CryptCrier makes the beginning of a dark joke about her removable head.

Pros:

Hexiciah is here again.

Bloodgood’s heartbreaking emotions are drawn well here, buuuut

Nitpick:

…..her hands in that last panel look very strange.

Page: 4

Bloodgood has a good head on her shoulder’s until she doesn’t. Ha. Good one CryptCrier. good one. The Shadowy figures take her body and her head and leave a clue.

Pros:

Again, I really like how they draw her face. Especially in that third panel. So lovely. The line work is also very nice in this issue.

Nitpicks:

They used the same hand base for three out of the four hands in this image, which was humorous to notice.

Page 5:

It’s the first day of the New Scaremester (like the comic’s NAME!!) The CryptCrier reminds the readers that normies threatened Monster High last year, the school literally almost fell apart, and morale is at an all time low. Except for FRANKIE (who is trying to cheer up Clawdeen). Mr. D’eath is welcoming the students back (it makes sense that the counselor would be front and center). Frankie is catching up with Clawdeen. Her summer was great because she spent most of it in her dad’s lab where he was specifically studying her brain…a lot more than usual….(I’m sure it’s nothing).

Pros:

I think I’m going to say the artwork is great on every page, but Frankie, Clawdeen, and Abbey especially look so well drawn here. I like the backpack designs in the first panel (Heath’s being partially opened is just like him), Johnny’s being a guitar case is fun (but that’s Operetta’s instrument, not Johnny’s), and Jinafire’s is fun but simple.

Callback:

There are several backgrounders on this page (Jinafire, Abbey, Heath, Johnny Spirit, Operetta, Gil, and Lagoona) AND maybe Miss Sylphia Flapper, a villain and teacher (Dragonomics and Dragon Whispering 101) from the Ghoulfriend Book Series standing next to Mr. D’eath (he had been interested in dating her) and Valentine. ….which would be kinda funny because both Miss Flapper and Valentine could control others… but the way she is colored almost looks like Raven Rhapsody. Maybe she also turned over a new leaf? But in the Ghoulfriends books, Bloodgood was also kidnapped…she really needs some security measures.

Nitpicks:

In the Free Comic Book Issue, Frankie was saying that her father hadn’t left his lab/office very often that summer and was hoping to spend some time with him before school started. I assume the shadowy figure not only threatened his work, but is having him build another franken-monster (hence his sudden interest in her brain in the (latter half??) of the summer).

None of the ghouls seem happy with their boos: Abbey looks beautiful, but pissed….and…I really wish she was drawn taller than Heath (hey, they’re already taking stuff from G3, they might as well take that too), Operetta looks glum with Johnny, and despite Gil looking happy with Lagoona, she doesn’t seem happy with him in the second panel. Granted this is probably because the “morale is at an all-time low.”

Page 6:

Clawdeen says that she is happy that Frankie got to spend more time with her dad (remember that apparently her mom doesn’t exist in this time line).

And Frankie asks her how her parents and Toralei are doing. Clawdeen says it’s been tough. Toralei left her on red after they (not putting the blame on either of them) broke up this summer (that Summer Fangout Pride Magazine is looking more and more worse for ware) and her parents won’t speak to each other (I assume that more information about that can be found in the book…?).

Pros:

Look at Clawdeen’s and Frankie’s face in that first panel! So cute. I also like how the artist makes sure to draw Clawdeen’s nails more claw like.

I’m also happy to see they’re still using iCoffins. :3

Callbacks:

Clawdeen and Toralei’s relationship was shown in part of the Monster High Pride Comic….kinda…

Nitpicks:

…..G1 Clawdeen and Toralei’s relationship not being built well in the Pride comic (in my opinion) PLUS the fact that they’re already broke up here puts a sour taste in my mouth. If you’re going to put these ghouls together (especially since they HATED each other in ALL G1 media), you’ve got to SELL IT.

I don’t like that first Frankie doesn’t have her mom at at all in this version and they changed her dad’s personality from the G1 diaries, but now they are breaking up Clawdeen’s family?!? WHY!? And why is Clawd going with him? I also think his design is boring here and he looks like just a tired, older Clawd or one of her unnamed older brothers (seen here in Clawd’s Figure Collection Diary).

Clawdeen’s dad’s arms look a bit off in the third panel. In my opinion, Clawd looks a tad bit too baby faced compared to the cartoon (he’s also missing his earring in both of these pictures); he’s giving more G3 youthful energy.

Page 7:

Frankie asks if Clawdeen’s parents are really splitting up and Clawdeen says she thinks it’s “fur real this time.” Frankie tries to cheer Clawdeen up by getting her mind off of her personal life by getting ghouls together and getting “murktails” (I still don’t like the pun and I still don’t see mock-tails as being popular with high schoolers….but I’m not in that age range so I could be mistaken), hitting the maul, doing each other’s claws. But Clawdeen isn’t so sure.

Pros:

Frankie is a cutie patootie and the most in-character in this whole comic (especially in that last panel). I also just want to give Clawdeen a big hug too.

Nitpicks:

WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU THINK IT’S “FUR REAL THIS TIME?” Why is every single relationship broken in this G1 timeline?!?

Page 8:

Clawdeen calls Draculaura “the distant,” and is worried about all the work she has taken on/her disappearance since last Scaremester. Frankie tells her she was referring to Cleo and Draculaura (I guess Lagoona isn’t really included in this friend group). Clawdeen is not having it and refuses to spend any time with Cleo after she spread the rumor that Clawdeen was stealing Deuce.

Frankie tries to calm her down and tells her that she knows they miss each other.

But Clawdeen is firm and won’t talk to Cleo until she apologizes (that’s fair!).

The bell for class rings.

Pros:

Clawdeen looks great in the third and fifth panel. Frankie’s profile and serious hair volume in that last panel looks stinking cute.

Callbacks:

Again, more things happened last semester in the Once Bitten book (especially to Draculaura). Draculaura is wearing her G3 Core backpack.

Nitpicks:

Clawdeen being after Deuce makes absolutely no sense unless you’ve been watching the G3 live action movies. This plot point would make more sense if it was Rochelle (who does have a crush on Deuce and I think was still kinda wavering between the forbidden Deuce and her love for Garrott), or literally anyone else. Maybe bring back Amanita and have her be a flirt, I dunno SOMETHING else.

Page 9:

Later on in class, Mr. Rotter tells the class to quiet down.

Pros:

What a beautiful page! The background is gorgeous, and it’s nice seeing a bunch of characters and even Mr. Rotter again. Manny looks like his normal grumpy self, Lagoona is super cute here (look at her little fish ears), Spectra is on her phone and you can see her shoulder, hair, and phone outline in her hands, and Abbey is trying to bump Heath awake.

Callbacks:

The castle painting looks kinda similar to the one that Draculaura attended/lived in in Transylvania (as seen in “Why do Ghouls fall in Love?”). I dunno, it looks very similar to some other castle and I can not put my finger on it.

Page 10:

After quieting the class, Mr. Rotter tells them that Draculaura is a “special guest speaker” and has been informing all of the hisstory classes of a change in school policy. CryptCrier informs us/them that Dracula died last year and Draculaura was thrust into leading the School Board. Pros:

It’s nice to see more Mr. Rotter, a nice profile of Heath, and Draculaura looks adorable here: poof!

Callbacks:

Draculaura can tap into all her vampire powers here, I guess. Her bat form is different to her G1 episode’s (and while I miss her pigtails I think it’s an improvement) and her very plain “Frights, Camera, Action” bat form:

Nitpicks:

To no one’s surprise, I’m not fond of Dracula dying and Draculaura (a STUDENT and not the most powerful vampire around mind you) becoming in charge of a school council (that apparently runs the monster world).

Ugh, well this Issue 1 will have to have a third part for the last ten pages since I ran out of room for pictures.

As always, what are your thoughts? Anything I miss?? Let me know. :)

Here is the third and final part to Issue 1, and part 8 of my whole IDW retrospective.

https://www.tumblr.com/taybatwo2/774166018162671616/monster-high-idw-comics-review-part-8-of?source=share

[washipink]

The Rain Review (Finale)

If you’ve been with my blog for the past week or so, You’ll know I’ve been reading a childhood favorite webcomic of mine, Rain by Jocelyn Samara. And you’d probably be wondering what happened to my review of the comic Year-by-Year. The answer? I went on a road trip for a few days and couldn’t help but read the whole rest of the comic. So today I’m here to talk about my overall thoughts.

For the uninitiated, Rain is a slice-of-life webcomic that started in 2010. It’s about a transgender teenage girl of the same name navigating her senior year at a Catholic high school. There’s a LOT of romantic and gender-related drama. Friends are made and lost. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll see yourself in the characters somewhere along the line.

My experience with Rain prior to this project only goes up to about 2014. I started reading it in middle school on Smackjeeves.com. Y’all remember Smackjeeves? I miss it every day. Apparently it redirects to a shitty webtoon clone now. IDK where I’m gonna find peoples’ sprite comics produced in 2013 now.

Anyway, I bring this up to say that I had stopped keeping up with Rain even though she was a major part of me accepting who I was. When I found out that her story had come to a close, I had a real need to find out how.

This time, there won’t be a plot summary because this comic ran for 11 years and it takes me long enough to do just 1. That and, if I may spoil my final opinion, I really want you to give it a read for yourself.

ART

I want to get this one out of the way because it’s a very common critique that even I hold to some extent. The art in Rain is a clear indicator of the era its artist hails from. In 2010, anime and manga had just hit the American mainstream. Everyone was reading those “How to Draw Anime” books and took a lot of notes from them. To showcase, here’s a page from Chapter 1, the first color page in fact.

This page is actually one of the busier pages in terms of art. Jocelyn doesn’t usually do background details much, if at all. Usually, backgrounds are depicted as solid colors that are associated with specific locations. Grey for the apartment, sky blue for outside, light green for school, etc. But the way Rain is drawn here bears a striking resemblance to the styles a LOT of people were using at the time.

While Jocelyn’s style stays rooted in, shall we say, American who got really into anime, her techniques evolve over time. Especially in terms of displaying what’s going on with limited background detail.

As an example, I really enjoy this scene. Rain and Emily are, in universe, speaking over the phone right now. But neither of them are holding their phones to their ears. They’re looking at each other as if they’re in the same room. Jocelyn uses a gradient background to signify that the two of them are NOT in the same room, but as they get closer during their conversation, they get physically closer in the panel as well.

This page is taken from 2014, about 4 years into the comic’s run. You can see that Jocelyn’s brush choices have changed. Everything is far smoother than it was toward the start. While the overall style is as simplistic as year 1, her technique has changed a lot.

That comfort with her work only continues to grow. Below is a panel from a bonus page that released after the comic’s conclusion. The line work is the cleanest its ever been.

STORY AND CHARACTERS

Now this right here is the REAL meat of the comic. Regardless of any feelings I had on the art, the characters really endeared me. And this being a slice-of-life teen drama, they had plenty of time to learn, grow, and clash against one another.

The majority of the conflict in Rain comes from people being set in their ways. Rain’s whole gaggle of queer friends is hiding from the school’s principal, who refuses to acknowledge that maybe there’s nothing wrong with being a little gay. One of the most compelling ongoing threads in the comic centers around Rain’s brother and sister trying to understand and accept her. These personal stakes were a really enjoyable break from the kind of thing I usually read. In Rain, there is no world to be saved or villain to defeat, but there IS a prom to go to. Sometimes, that’s all you need to tell a good story.

The comic has this small-town vibe I care for a lot. Sometimes, a character will exit another’s life and you’ll never expect to see them again. Then they’ll end up dating Rain’s aunt or something. Word spreads fast in Centerville. People are gossipy. Sometimes, you tell someone something and it reaches ears you didn’t want to hear it. That gossip is what makes things so dangerous for Rain. If the wrong person finds her out, then EVERYONE finds her out. The same goes for all her friends.

There’s all kinds of flavor of queer in this comic in a way that mirrors real life friend groups. We have a tendency to find each other like that.

With all kinds of queers being hormonal teens, things get messy FAST. There’s a lot of things that happen in this comic that I feel like baby gays need to see. There’s a point where a gay boy and a trans girl start going out because... this just happens sometimes. Nobody is “the villain” in this scenario. They both just tried to explore themselves and found mixed results.

That’s one of the big themes of Rain. Self-exploration. Every chapter, we’re learning more about these characters as they learn more about themselves. Nobody stays in the same headspace for too long. They’re constantly evolving.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Rain is ABSOLUTELY worth the read. It’s actually a really easy read. I was able to finish it in about 2 weeks, so I’m sure it won’t take up too much of your time. But, it’s a really heartwarming story that I’m sure a lot of us can relate to. Thanks for going on this journey with me. And be safe, Rain Beaus.

[tickldpnk8]

Season of Mists Reread Ch. 6

So I'm currently rereading Season of Mists and blogging about the clues I'm seeing. You can see the previous posts here:

Prologue/Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5 Bonus: At Death's Door

But on with this latest analysis! At this point, the story is starting to wrap up, and we get the showdown between Morpheus and Azazel. I saw an excellent post on the showdown itself, so I won't go into all that here. But as I read through things looking for clues to the nature of Dream and also foreshadowing, I did spot a few.

On Dream

For one, it's confirmed that Morpheus/Dream doesn't sleep:

He's a bit of a hoarder who likes to store things in his personal pirate chest. The contents of this were also discussed on that Azazel-battle thread, so I won't go into it just yet.

And we see a bit more of how different folks' perceptions of his aspect works as he rescues Nada. In the panels right before this mouth opens, we see the Morpheus we're all familiar with. As soon as Nada can see him, he changes into Kai'kul. And then he's back to his "usual" appearance once she's safe and he's out of her line of sight. I think this is mostly for our benefit as we can only see one drawing of him at a time. But I would now hazard a guess that to all the dignitaries gathered in his throne room, they would each see him as they might have seen him when they are alone. (But who would Bast see?) I think we default to the Reader's perspective of his aspect unless only one other character is viewing him who might have a different perspective. (since we are a character in the story)

On Dream's relationship to his realm

We learn that aside from controlling the weather of the Dreaming, he has complete control over whether it's day or night. If you were wondering how he possibly met with everyone in such a short time, it's because he didn't let the sun rise.

This fancy ceiling room that has been discussed at length is apparently also his throne room?? Or did he move it here from where it was the night before for convenience? In any case, things shifted. The throne now seems simpler than the last we saw it with the Egyptian motifs, but the green drapes remain. His dais is still close to the ground as it was the night before, but much lower than in previous story arcs/issues.

And his castle sits at the Heart of the Dreaming. It is not only his home, but his place of power. He has complete control over reality: "It is what I wish it to be – no more, no less."

On the Plot

Now let's look at the clues to the over-arching plot of the whole Sandman run. I found a few of interest that I didn't notice before.

Aside from Loki seemingly distraught to be leaving at the end and trying to get away from Thor, we get this one small detail within the title page spread that I totally missed the first time:

Meanwhile, Nuala overhears Merlin commenting on the Greek gods not coming. I think this works as a story point on 2 levels: I suspect it ties into larger DC continuity knowing that Wonder Woman's comics regularly show them. But it also works in isolation since it seems they don't tend to get on well with Morpheus from what we've seen of the Calliope story. Or it might just be setting the stage for that relationship if I'm misremembering when we learn things from my first read-through.

And then finally we have that pirate trunk panel mentioned above. I'll add it here again for reference:

In it, we've got the Corinthian's skull, Ornament-Azazel, a ring, another ornament-like bulb (or is it a grenade?? hard to tell), a leather book that is buckled shut, a city in a glass bottle, a penny, and 2 canisters in the background. It'll be interesting to see which of these comes up again. Corinthian we know about. I already know now what the bottle represents, but am wondering if/when I've seen the others.

And that's that! I'd like to do another wrap-up post on the ceiling and once I get to the end of Season of Mists, I'm tempted to do a master post on all the changes Morpheus' castle goes through in just these issues alone. Lots to dissect here. :D

[domonomin]

Working on Underlord

Issue #1 was scary.... I did not have a lot of faith in it when I started working on the story. The thing about it was that I had to be able to deliver a lot of exposition without having it drag on the story and also leaving enough information out to still have some mystery.

Took me 4 drafts to figure it out. Wrote up like 15 pages. only really used 4 of them... the issue as a whole ended up 44 pages... which is fine cause I think it turned out good. a lot of the pages were for slowing down pacing and having neat little character interactions. I didn't write a 5th draft, I just kind of made a bunch of notes on how things should play out and made things up as I went along. which was honestly freeing

my style of writing has been something I struggled to figure out since I started making comics. you'd think that just writing a script would be enough, but I get a little more leeway seeing as I'm a solo act. So I went from no script with my first comic, to a heavy script with the second, to a little mix of both for this one. I've settled on just doing a little outline where I describe what the character is doing and then write a page breakdown with dialogue. It's quick and gives me enough room to improvise when things aren't working quite how I want them to. I'm a lot happier with it.

enough about writing, Lets talk about the art side of things.

I mentioned some confidence issues in my first comic post(Though I doubt you read it...link here) and I guess doing another comic in-between that one and this helped me chill out more. going into this, I had a decent grasp of what I could do, so the main focus was on refining some of my skills and trying to push a little more. Mostly my layouts and compositions. I just wanted to be more creative and I think I handled it well enough with the regular, comic style pages.

The webtoon style ones were hit and miss I think.

so lets talk about pacing for a bit.... Pacing has been my enemy for many years. things always went by faster than I would have liked. I like it when things have time to breathe. My issue with my previous comics was that It felt like things happened a little too fast. writing definitely played a part in it, but I figured, at the time, that maybe using the regular comic format did too. so I actually would draw things normally, then copy and paste panels into the webtoons format to see if that would help. It's not bad, but it is more work. Not to mention that I'm not really used to the style, so things are here or there. I think the first/second part worked out best. the rest are decent, nothing special. At the moment, I'm wondering weather to just stick to one format or the other. That way I could plan things out better. I'll probably test it out with issue 3

Moving on. I mentioned confidence a little earlier. Confidence made me jump into this. Like I did a bit of concept art for some locations and maybe 2 or 3 characters, but for most part, things were made up on the spot and adjusted from part to part. Once again, Nice. Still think some things would work out a little better with more forethought, but I guess that's writing(???).

Don't quote me on that...

I changed art programs twice. Parts 1-4 were done on medibang, 5-9 were done with CSP and for the rest of it, I used procreate. each had their bonuses. I think drawing In procreate is the better of the 3, but lettering in it is kinda rough. I end wrestling with it more than I'd like. I might end up transferring pages to my pc for lettering next time. hopefully that helps.

It's nice seeing how much better I get with drawing as time went on.

I'd like to go back to the issue at some point. Cause there are a lot of easy to fix errors that bother me on re-reads. Originally, I figured I could just redraw the whole thing, But I one of the rules of webcomics is to keep moving forward. If I get to it, I'll be fixing things without erasing my old art. Fix errors and make some changes to help out with character consistency

any who, that's the ramblings of some guy you don't know on a comic He'd love for people to read. It's not the greatest, but it's mine and I'm happy to have done it. I guess next I'll ramble about issue 2 and some plans for the future

Till next time

Link to comic btw!

[loopeyfluff]

OHHHH MEEE FRIEIKCING GODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

YOU!!! YOU DID IT!!! YOU CAPTURED THE SCENE SO WELLL WAHGGHAHA I LOVE THAT SCENE SO MUCH AND U DID IT SOOOO MUCH JUSTICE GAHHH!!! You used screentones sooo well in every panel, it really enhanced the look of the whole thing so much!!! I especially love how the screen tones look in page 4,,, arueghghe. I know we collectively bemoaned over how hard it was to adapt fics, but when Gyro writes

"Warm and content"

I FEEL THAT EXPRESsED SO CLEARLY AND SO WELL THAT IT STRIKES MY SOUL WITH ALL THE LOVE IN THE WORLD. AND ALSO I CAN FEEL HOW MUCH ZORO LVOVES LUFFY IN THIS PANEL CAUSE ITS FROM HIS POV. LIKE. OMFG LUFFY LOOKS POSITIVELY DREAMY!!!

nono Im getting ahead of myself let me go in order u _ u

first of all, brilliant open. when trying to adapt a scene, its sooo hard sometimes to pick where to start drawing!! cause like,,, omg i wanna draw this entire scene but i wud literally die... I think u not only chose a great part to start this whole comic off with, but the whole mystique behind the line

“I never ask you for anything, you know,” he says, not taking his eyes off the barren valley below. It’s easier that way.

is conveyed really well with how u paneled zoro's eyes outta sight! (pretty ironic with how zoros eyes are the only things described XD) << but srsly, artistically what a great decision >:3c AND ALSO you're so good at drawing luffy being the most unserious goofy lil guy ever even in the most serious of situations and I'm so glad that u never stop delivering thanku sm OTL

I wud love to squish his cheeks he looks so stupid!!!!

I actually rlly like how u layout the second panel too, with how u position the speechbubbles? IDK I get really nervous sometimes with putting speech bubbles in places cause I hate covering things up and also gahhh you also need to consider the best way to position things so people read em in orderrr,,, but u did a real gud job there, all that important action is definitely very visible in frame >:) GET SMACKED

oh and yeah, to save time so this doesnt become 2 monstrous of a cute lil adaption project, ofc ya gotta cut out some small tid bits like luffy humming thoughtfully or him snickering against zoro's palm, but all of that personality of goofy luffy is translated so well with,,, how goofy loofy u draw him XD So what im sayin is, i think u were real efficient and thoughtful with how you adapted these things :)))

and GAHHH THE ATMOSPHERE CHANGE !!! AND THE WAY U DREW ZOROS HAND LOWERING TO HIS LAP HERE, IT LOOKS SO GENTLE LIKE HES CARESSING LUFFYS FACE TOO. GAHHHH!!! I just, I ADORE THE FRAMING OF THOSE 3 PAGES!!! it really feels like its just the two of them in this vast world, nothing else to disturb em. its very calming.

Luffy stills, anyway, though—because of course he understands. And when Zoro lowers his hands to his lap, Luffy has chewed and swallowed, quieted to listen. Content to lean against his shoulder in the sunshine, staring out at the horizon to wait while Zoro straightens out the pieces of what he wants to say into something like order. Because even though they can talk without speaking, sometimes the important things need to be said out loud—made just a little more real.

Its true, that these types of lengthy paragraph descriptions cant be translated over to an art adaption without losing the explanations behind it all, but the way you captured the atmosphere of it all, is really, really breathtaking.

AHAHHAHA THE OUR DREAMS AT DUSK HAPPY MEMORY BUBBLES!!!!! Thats actually such a clever way to incorporate them into the fic I ADORE how you used them here!!! GAHHH

Zoro leans back on his palms—curls his fingers in the grass and imagines it’s Sunny’s deck against his skin. For a moment, he misses home.

IM ACTUALLY FREAKING OUTTT WAHHH THATS SOOOO CLEVER!!! I CANT THINK OF A BETTER WAY YOU COULDVE ADAPTED THIS WOWOWOWWW!!! UHFDSUHFGSDFSADFRASDFGSDFSDUHFSD IM GOING TO GO EXPLODE INTO A BAJILLION HAPPY BUBBLES RN GAHHHH

my heart actually physically clenched- and it still clenches every time i read over pages 3 and 4,,, i think i had to put down my phone for a bit and like,,,, cover my mouth with a hand cause it was just too cute for my soul,,, omfg,,,,, ahahah u trlly did just dedicate a whole page FULL of panels, methodically showing luffy falling back and stretching zoro into a real goofy smile XD I love how you paced this, because page 4 hits so much harder with all that gentle set up!! Seeing luffy lay all cutely on zoros lap,,,

and Zoro can’t help it—he snorts out a tender kind of laugh

Yeah I wouldnt be able to help it either man!!!

Anyways, its actually really interesting to see how you paced this comic because like, its a great adaption of course!! BRILLIANT!!! but it works sooo well as a stand alone comic too, even if you havent read the source material. The line about luffy beaming isn't super emphasized in Gyro's writing, it's more of a one off comment backed up by all the other lines of luffy being cute in this scene. But the way you've paced it out, the reader has to really get HIT IN THE FACE by the energy friggin BLASTED OUT FROM HIS SUNSHINE BOY SMILE.

In the original fic, Gyro doesn't need to necessarily emphasize that cause we've been seeing how much zoro treasures luffy from all the way at the start of the fic!!! but I feel like just as a standalone comic, you establish just how precious luffy is from the impact of those panels on the fourth page. and this allows for the final heartbreaking lines that zoro says on the last page to really really stand out and hit just that much harder...

no notes here... this is a good zoro ^^^

And Luffy goes utterly still while Zoro breathes.

YO I SEE HOW THE SECOND PANEL DARKENS THERE. AHHHHHHH ATMOSPHERE CHANGE!!!! ahahah, but I would just like to stop again and say that oughghgh this comic is so so dreamy!!! I love the lil sparks that you put across all the panels on this page, it makes all the panels flow together even more smoothly. It like,,, quickens up the pace of reading I feel? I could draw an entire lil Sin Cos lookin ass chart with how well I feel you control the reading pace in this comic man. gahhh anyways this is a funny stupid exciting moment, FAST READ, and then we slow down the pace again as zoro finally expresses the words weighed on his chest...

QUICK SIDENOTE, the font u use for the LICK sfx conveys just how positively disgusting zoro is i love it. omfg.

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osfsfjfajdsfsdfiaiwfjfsfsdksijisggfdsfdsgdfgie. i dont. i dont think i can convey how lovely i think the last page is in proper words. i just. im tearing up just looking at it. When I read that scene in Gyro's fic, my heart broke, and the fact that you've done such an amazing job of adapting it,,, MY HEART IS BURSTING WITH JOY!!! AND ITS NOT EVEN MY FIC XD!!!!

Amazing job man :))) you knocked it outta the park!!!! (seriously tho I think u've peaked with ur screentone usage in this comic cause woaawhhhh it looks so stunning,,,)

Fanart for a snippet of my most favorite heartbreaking moment from swordsmans's fic bone-breaker ospreys mate for life (rated E)

[fabdante]

@zutaraweek day 4: meeting

this one got slightly out of hand but i think i stopped it from getting entirely out of hand. but here’s a little comic about a subtle little au i’ve been drawing for a few zutara weeks now where the war ended early and kya lives (also is chief).

being a comic and having a short deadline (and also adding a page after I thought I was done), I may have taken a few short cuts and it could have been a little less messy structure wise but it’s fine

transcript, and brief image descriptions, under the cut incase it’s hard to read!

Page 1: Kya and Katara arrive to the Fire Nation, the four panel’s on this page show establishing shots of the Fire Nation. Kya: Oh it’s so nice to be be able to really stretch your legs, don’t you think? Katara: Maybe. Kya: Come on now, this is exciting! You’ve never been to the Fire Nation before! Katara: Am I even going to know anyone at the accords? Kya: Yue might be coming this year. And Fire Lord Iroh has a nephew and niece about your age. Maybe you can be friends. Kya: You’ll love the garden’s, I promise.

Page 2: Kya and Katara talk as they walk Katara: I don’t see why we had to come. The other nations rarely come to us. And the foods probably bad. Kya: The peace accords cycle through every nation every year, Katara. It’s how it’s always been done. Katara: You could have brought Sokka. Kya: My darling, you begged to come. And he wasn’t sure how he felt about raw Fire Nation sea slug tentacles. Katara: Do I have to eat that?

Page 3: We switch to Zuko and Ozai talking, presumably waiting to meet Kya and Katara at the gardens. Text at the top of the page reads ‘meawhile in the Royal Gardens’ Zuko: I don’t see why we had to come. This is supposed to be Uncles job, couldn’t he have sent Lu Ten- Ozai: Your uncle and your cousin are preoccupied doing something with the Earth Kingdom delegates this morning. This is an opportunity to do something above your status, be grateful I chose you.

Page 4: Kya and Katara continue talking Katara: It’s just that these talks always feel pointless. Everything’s still tense. And it’s warmer then you’d said it’d be and I…I already miss home. Kya: It’s natural to be homesick, we’re far from home. But the peace accords between nations are important if we intend to have lasting peace. We need to have a presence each year or else the Fire Nation will forget what stopped the last war. It’s important. Kya: And it’s late fall. The summers are much worse. Katara: There’s worse??

Page 5: Ozai continues to berate Zuko, who is uncomfortable about this. But they get interrupted as Kya and Katara arrive, and we get a shot of the turtle duck pond Ozai: Rarely do we get the opportunity to step from your uncles shadow. Especially you. You forget too easily because your uncle is kind. But not all of us are satisfied being third in line for the throne- Kya, interrupting: Prince Ozai. I wasn’t expecting you.

Page 6: Kya is less then impressed with Ozai but their conversation get’s tuned out by both teens as Katara waves at Zuko and goes to give him a Southern Water Tribe forearm shake as a greeting. Kya: I was told we would be meeting your brother, the Fire Lord, this morning. Ozai: Chief Kya! Iroh had unexpected business. How was your voya-

[comicaurora]

Hello Red! I'm happy to say you've inspired me to start drawing comics, but the biggest issue I've encountered is that it takes actually forever. I'm always really happy I did it when I'm done but it's hard to convince myself to start when I know a couple panels is gonna take me days. So I was wondering if you had any advice regarding streamlining the process for time efficiency or keeping up motivation for long projects, and, if you remember, how long a page took you when you first started vs how long it takes now?

Hoo boy. Yeah, I can help out with that. The very first page of the comic took me, if I'm recalling correctly, a full week. No other projects or pages, just this.

A lot of work went into details that are frankly impossible to see, though I am still glad I did it, both as a learning experience and because I felt like I owed it to Vash to do it some justice before I squished it in twelve pages.

Hell, if you look closely, you can even see the cavalcade of little visual errors I missed because I didn't have it in me to do a seventeenth cleanup pass after a week straight of drawing tiny houses. Getting faster meant I'd have more energy left to polish the pages and get them looking nicer.

The process of getting faster has been kind of a fits-and-starts situation. Drawing that many humanoid figures over and over again eventually means you just get better at the parts you're less sure of, so the process of lining the pages has gotten rather faster since I don't need to burn as much time getting the character poses and lines right. Currently, depending on page complexity, I can fairly consistently get 3-5 pages fully lined in one night. Backgrounds have also gotten faster, and I tend to do those in large batches, sometimes filling out entire chapters with location backgrounds and skyboxes because the scene location isn't going to change and that makes it easier to keep it consistent.

Initially my backgrounds were both more complicated and worse-looking, which is a bad combination.

I ended up deciding between chapters that painstakingly lining a bunch of background trees probably wasn't worth the effort, and worked on finding a shortcut that would work better. I ended up doing something a little more lineless, a shortcut I initially discovered because I didn't want to plug in my drawing tablet and was playing around with things I could do with just my trackpad.

It was simpler, faster, not too jarring, and it meant my clearly-lined foreground figures were more naturally visually separated from the distant background. Win-win-win.

For the style of coloring I do, I tend to shade before I add color, though this is a shortcut I didn't figure out until something like chapter 6. This process is also pretty fast, all things considered, though I've had a lot of practice doing this kind of cel shading which is why I can hammer out a lot of pages' worth of shading quite quickly.

I like working in batches of about one scene, often broken up into subgroups of 4-6 pages at a time, so I can't give a front-to-back turnaround for an individual page - but I also think this kind of assembly-line process has sped up the process overall and makes it more fun for me, because I can storyboard basically as far in advance as I want to, which in turn makes it easier for me to motivate myself to keep going, because I know there's all kinds of good stuff I'm looking forward to drawing down the line. There's some good shit I'm excited for in Chapter 21, and bursts of enthusiasm on the storyboard end of things often translate to enthusiasm on the page-finalizing end which makes it easier to slog through even the tedious bits.

As a bonus, working ahead means the story's got a better chance of making sense and having good pacing when it's read back as an archive. Another win-win.

Overall the greatest optimization tool I can recommend is just working on the project. There's no better way to identify the parts that feel unnecessarily slow and could be changed, or the parts of your art you're unsure of that need polish to get more speedy. If you're planning on publishing the comic anywhere, I recommend building up a buffer beforehand - something like the first chapter (or in my case, first three chapters) will give you a very good sense of what parts need more practice or improvement as you move forward. And it is genuinely easier to motivate yourself to continue if you have an audience giving you positive feedback and/or panicking at what you're doing to their darlings.

[aalghul]

Jason Todd’s Childhood Friends

I’m pretty sure these are all of them but if I missed any, let me know!

EDIT: I forgot Chris, so thanks @leoruby-draws for reminding me. (This is another edit actually. I just saw this get a reblog and I suddenly remembered where Danny and Jason being friends came from.) @janestvalentine reminded me of Donald Brinks.

While I’m here again anyways, I just want to say that I’m not including Roy based off that one three page short story. Roy was a whole adult with a child when Jason was 11 going on Titans missions with them. N52 is on something else and I’m not acknowledging it.

In chronological order:

Donald Brinks: Batman (1940) Annual #9 mentions that Jason worked on a school project with Donald. It’s probably not enough proof, but Bruce remembered him kindly. I wouldn’t doubt that Bruce just memorizes any name Jason ever dropped, but we can pretend.

Eddie: In Blue Devil #19, we have Kid Devil and Robin being the absolute cutest babies the world of sidekicks has to offer, and finding out (through their letters, because they’re adorable pen-pals) that they’re after the same criminal. I can guarantee that you have never seen anything more adorable than the tiny pen-pal wonder and his also tiny friend.

Rena: First appearing in Detective Comics #561, Rena was an immediate love interest of Jason’s (literally at first sight lol), and then she instantly invited Jason to get high with her after school. Spoiler: they didn’t, Jason eventually ends up busting the gang that was putting pressure on her, then they’re a couple (of babies). She moved around a lot, every year or so, because of her dad’s job, so she had a bit of a problem with loneliness and not fitting in. Despite all of the drug talk, my girl really was a good kid.

Danny Chase: Right before he figured out that Jason had died, he mentioned that he had called Jason, “Toddster”, earlier that week. The casual phone call and nickname do lean in favour of them being friends, despite never having interacted (because Jason’s time on the Titans had been explicitly confirmed to have carried over from pre-crisis, but he didn’t interact with any of them on panel post-crisis).

Chris: I originally forgot him, but honestly that’s probably for the best. N52 is famous for bad decisions and not knowing how time works, and a very good example of that is Red Hood and the Outlaws (2011) #25 (Zero Year tie-in) having taken place before Jason was even adopted by Bruce, but for some reason he’s already fifteen. That’s not even mentioning how annoying I found the way Talia’s fighting ability was downgraded. Moving onto Chris, himself, though. I’m sure people could argue that he’s a good foil for Jason as a street kid, but I think it’s stupid + he’s annoying. I’ll give him points for including Jason in his (stupid) idea because he wanted him to benefit too, and that he sided with Jason at the end when he could have just ignored him and stayed with the other Red Hoods. But then he only gets more annoying, so.

Gabby: Red Hood/Arsenal #4 shows us Jason being recognized by a waitress at a diner in Gotham, him also remembering her as soon as she did so. Everything about their interaction and the quick flashback is so important because it’s calling back Jason characterization as a kid who had to be rough to help himself and others, all aspects of that being a defence mechanism of some sort. Jason takes a moment to ruminate over how much better his life would be if Batman hadn’t taken him in, not muse that he would be some sort of criminal. I would love to see more that, if writers want to talk about what would have happened to Jason without Bruce so bad. The fact that Gabby triggered that thought in him, as well as reminded him that he was a good kid and helped people long before the cape, really shows that she had weight in his life. She even knew and cared about him enough to deal with when he lashed out. I would complain about Jason implying that he doesn’t care about people, but with the context of the rest of their interaction, it’s obvious that Jason’s self perception is not intended to match the reality. I like what that says about how he perceives his actions and how he thinks others might. His choosing to just help her out with that money but decide to stay out of her life is so typical Jason. I mean that both fondly and derogatorily.

Numbers: Gotham Nights #11. In a home like Ma Gunn’s, while we know he was already a target for the other residents and undoubtedly other people as well, he chose to take the punishment for something he knew Jason had done. All because Jason had been the first to show him kindness after he had already been beaten down by life as a child. It wasn’t the most clear or well done, but I liked that there was subtle commentary on how some people didn’t get to escape a life of crime when conditions force them into it. This story provides proof for why Jason wouldn’t just kill henchmen and people he didn’t deem personally deserving by having chosen to commit unforgivable acts. It’s proof of that choice being the more interesting concept, at least. As with Gabby, Jason doesn’t give Numbers the option of reconnecting with Jason after he has helped Numbers. Not surprising since we’ve seen Jason leave people before they leave him often (example: how he broke it off with Roy Harper).

Dana: She only existed for Red Hood: Outlaw #52 and #52, but she is easily the best original character to come out of RHATO. She’s my personal favourite for so many reasons (it’s literally two issues, please read them), but her friendship with Jason is wonderful too. Considering Dana’s filling him on everything, introducing him to her friends, and that he didn’t know about her being a vigilante before #52 or her dad’s leg, we know they didn’t really get to catch up before Jason left Gotham after UTRH. It’s probable that Dana didn’t even know he was alive until the Iceberg Lounge thing. We know she’s been watching over his old apartment, possibly since he first got adopted by Bruce. They were probably very close when they were kids if that’s the case. Especially since her dad remembered him easily and even characterized him as “polite” and having been “skinny”, all immediately after meeting him again. Same goes for Dana’s sister, Denise, who Jason got along with easily as soon as she showed up, even though they hadn’t talked in years.

Max: Oh, Max. Firstly, I hate this art. Now. Truth & Justice as a whole was a mess because it missed its intention by a whole lot. Seriously, I know DC wanted people to think of it, and I also know that they put effort into making it clear that they don’t care. #10-13 are about Jason attempting to solve the murder of his childhood best friend, Max Dawkins. Max’s death was set up to look like an overdose, but Jason knew that Max would never touch drugs so he set off to find his killer. He does eventually find that killer, Scarecrow, and then there’s some fear gas, an “I trust you.” from Batman, blah blah. Jason is very emotional throughout the entire story, not even attempting to hide how torn up he is over Max’s death. Max gets nothing but praise for Jason and the narrative itself. However, none of that erases that Max’s death was just to give a white boy something to be sad about. It’s more white bs in a comic filled with white saviourism at every turn.

That aside, their friendship truly is beautiful. Jason straight up says that Max was someone he could always trust to be there for him on the streets, and Jason doesn’t usually say stuff like that. This is another case of Jason walking out of someone’s life while helping them, but it feels more tragic because there’s no possibility for a resolution. Just little Robin helping his friend from the shadows and watching his grow.

[lightgirlification]

Another part of my Omori story!

This and the previous part were emotional for me to draw for lots of reasons.

But while I haven't fully gotten the scene that comes before this one down, it does involve Sunny's dad, and I do know what emotions I want to get across.

Sunny lived with guilt for 4 years, and at the beginning of this guilt his dad literally disowned him straight to his face. A 12 year old boy being told that he was "Not their son" and then abandoned by that father just...It's horrid.

And during that time, Sunny more then likely never allowed himself to mourn, because he felt he didn't deserve it. Thinking about that after seeing the ending made me really think how much Sunny kept inside and needed to let out.

He has that right.

As it's a little muddled Hero says in the final page, top panel:

"I didn't know what else to do or say, so I just held Sunny as he cried. Screaming for Mari even though we both knew it would never be answered."

Sunny has the right to miss his sister. He has the right to cry over and mourn someone he misses so deeply. And in my opinion, Hero would understand this more then anyone.

God this comic is gonna emotionally destroy me, so to liven things up, here's a picture of some more Suntan:

LET THE CUTE HEAL US ALL QAQ

[plasma-packin-mama]

GOD IM SO EXCITED TO POST THIS COMIC it's 5 pages long so far. Probably won't be toooo much longer than that. It's about Arcade and Delilah :]

I have 4 pages fully drawn. Gonna do some quick and dirty line work to make em more clear... And also finish drawing the last page(s) and then it'll be good to post LOL

Here's a panel out of context bc I think it's cute I love drawing Delilah

Embarrassingly this is the longest continuous comic I've done in YEARS and it's cringey earnest fanart. I am really really proud of it tho tbh I think my expressions have been pretty on point. I JUST REALIZED I FORGOT TO DRAW THEIR MISSING TOOTH IN THIS PANEL I'm gonna go fix that ok bye