Comic 945 - Blue Blazes, Page 8
13th Mar 2020, 11:00 PM
in Blue Blazes
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Author Notes:
I've mentioned I've been wanting to do better backgrounds lately? This page was pretty much the epitome of that, just kind of looking at this street as drawn and going, "Okay, I can make this look better," and then it just kind of snowballing from there. Not anything mindblowing or anything but do think it really does lead to a much more cohesive package on the whole, and isn't quiiiiite as time-consuming as it could be. Still, yeah, something I'd like to try to have much more of going forward when possible. Probably won't have every page this involved but if we can see a lot of background like we can here I'd at least like to try to make it a bit nicer.
Still need to work on water. Think this looks better than it usually does but kind of looks too icy, especially in the fifth panel.
Comments:
Wolfintina
13th Mar 2020, 11:27 PM
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So those eco-terrorists are still around, very interesting, wonder what's going to happen next.
The embarrassing part is it's all my fault, since for starters I accidentally drew this page at the larger Manga Studio size and that meant I had to re-do the dialog and the program would tend to chug and glitch out regularly. There were also some inconsistencies on the kids' costumes since the last time we saw them, some of which we're going to be keeping. I like that Valerie has those wrist-bands now. ^^
It helps that this page came out really cute, especially the last panel. Very adorable.
Martin really steals the show with this page, though. Not only do I friggin' love the water and wind effects, the former especially since Water is freakishly hard to get right in drawing and coloring, but those details like the crosswalks, the brick, the building effects? All him. He's been killing it with backgrounds lately, and this is one of the pages where I went nuts when I got it back. ^^
On the subject of stealing the show.... As I mentioned, the reason the chapter opened with a bunch of the new-rush heroes being shown off is because their presence in Sapphire City is a major factor in this story. This is just one such group, and their focus is rather minor. I basically spent one slow night at work brainstorming up various no-hoper Hero teams just barely plausible enough to try cutting it in the business, and this is one of them. Any time any hero shows up they're just going to come from that list, which has a whopping one/two sentences for each idea. So... Don't expect any of the wanna-bes to be especially deep, is what I'm saying.
In this case it's Persephone's Children, one of the lingering off-shoots of the Eco-Terrorism group formed by Salix. The idea here is that this particular bunch are just straight-up former criminals trying to re-brand themselves as heroes and are likely still committing eco-terrorism acts on the side. I rapidly grew to hate drawing this group; something about them just got irritating fast. That said, I do sorta like their designs. Their costumes were made from meshing together Green Arrow and Hawkeye, and it does look vaguely cult-ish, especially their leader with the wide, cobra-like hood. Their names all come from natural disasters, hence they're Falling Star, who can surround things with an aura and move them, Flood, who can summon torrent of seawater, Cyclone, who can summon gusts of wind, and Solar Flare, who can disrupt electrical equipment. To show how little I cared about this group, they were gonna have a fifth member, Sinkhole, but I was so bored with them I didn't even include her.
Yeah, honestly after just drawing this group for one page I already want something horrible to happen to them.