Page 21 – It’s Looking Pretty Hairy
I hesitate to say it, but we DO seem to be back on schedule. Tentatively. For now. And this with me having to work overtime on Saturday, too. Confidence is high! One can never predict too much, of course, but I’m pretty happy to be back on the weekly updates – the story is on a pretty good clip now that we’re reaching the end of the first chapter, and I really don’t want to stop now.
So here we have Mike-One-Echo getting into the thick of it. I bet you were wondering about those dome-shaped turrets he was carrying. Well, they’re lasers. And here we see them being used for the first time to shoot down incoming artillery shells. At least that’s what that panel is supposed to depict. And even if you don’t get that, I think it looks pretty active, and in a graphic storytelling sense, it speaks “heavy gunfire” in a general, iconic sense. So I let it stand. Special thanks to the poster calling him/herself “Genn,” for reminding me that Mike actually HAS advanced point-defense that would make him very hard to hit. My original sketch was a complicated “hit-damage-followthrough-response” kind of action sequence, and I think that the way it came out not only was a lot clearer and less complicated, it also put on another dimension to Mike as the rolling fortress that he is: nearly impregnable, and something that the Federates have never seen before.
Anyhow, thanks to everyone who’s been posting here recently. It’s very helpful to me, as well as being a nice reminder that there actually ARE people reading this. And in spite of my artsy-fartsy protestations about art for its own sake, this is, after all, a story, and I want people to read it! So thanks! And thanks also for all the votes. We’re creeping up towards the top 100 with each passing month, so every vote counts!
By the way, for any readers who happen to be cartoonists, or are in any way interested in my take on the art and craft thereof, I’m doing a small series on the Vicious Print blog concerning composition and execution of backgrounds in comic books. Granted, 6-Commando has a decidedly simplified style to the sets and props (this was deliberate, to give it a kind of GI-Joe cartoony feel), but it’s an extremely important part of comic art that is being seriously neglected in a lot of online comics these days, as well as in print, albeit to a much lesser extent (the editors are still on their toes – for now at least!) Anyhow, my first article in the series is up now, and though I don’t normally draw attention to my personal arts blog, this series will, I hope, be of some interest to my fellow comic artists.
Anyway, enough out of me. Keep posting, keep voting, and have a great week!
Excellent page M! I really love panel 5, there’s no messing around with Mike. The print on top of Mike’s armor in perspective is a really nice touch, these types of details are often skipped by most artists.
I think it’s quite clear that panel 4 shows Mike shooting down incoming shells. The thing that makes you look twice is because there’s a lot happening in a relatively small panel. I also see that there is no way around that because you have a lot of story to tell in one page.
Keep ‘m coming!
Good point about panel four. It’s part of the experiment I’m doing, splitting the pages into two simultaneous parts of the storyline. The downside is that I have basically cut the space in half for any one of the two story parts. But in the end I think it’ll work out.
And thanks also for noticing the little things – there are a lot of places where I’ve simply forgotten to add in things like serial numbers, insignia, little flag flashes on people’s shoulders, and it immediately shows. Look, for example, at the truck, or Mike himself, or the shoulder pads on the UNA infantry armor. It’s all different now. Really, it didn’t come completely together until about page 11 or 12. The problem is that once you establish it, you basically have to keep it up throughout, or learn to live with the little differences. If you look at the early pages, a lot of characters and vehicles are totally off-model, primarily because I had not really worked them out completely yet. It’s something that a person reading would probably never care about (given that they’ll look at each page for about fifteen seconds, while I’ve been staring at it for literally hours). But in the end the little things like that are what I plan to go back and correct first when I go to edit all of this.
As a fellow-artist, I know you understand this tension: go back and fix, or push forward and develop? Right now I’m doing the latter, but sooner or later there’ll have to be a major editing session for this chapter. But I tend to think the next chapter will be a lot easier, now that I’m in a groove, and really understand what everything looks like (and I’ve internalized the process of drawing them).
–M
Woot, me likesies the tankies! I can’t wait for more! 😀
Yes, tanks just have a thing about them. Especially when they’re robotic and weigh better than five hundred tons!
Glad you keep coming back – weekly comics are a hard sell in any context, so the reader loyalty is much appreciated!
–M
Mike: RUN! RUN! I AM COMING FOR YOU!
Making Mike-One-Echo seem to have a personality is remarkably difficult. Actually, the idea that he has an “emotional” side is not one that originally struck me as important – he was kind of a gimmick when I started out. But fan mail (however few in number) and posts have run strongly in favor of his character’s development and importance.
But seriously. Making a tank seem to have expression? Not easy. I think he came out pretty well here, though – your response basically says it all! Thanks for the support!
–M
that is a line that the TF2 heavy says when he gets a domination.
Not a bad comparison. If Mike were human I bet he’d look something like this guy:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5f/Tf2_standalonebox.jpg
I wasn’t sure if those red streaks were supposed to be lasers or tracer rounds, but either way I thought that the artillery shells were shadows of aircraft all diving down towards Mike while firing those red lines at him. Completely unrealistic for aircraft to attack that way, but Mike having a bunch of lasers wasn’t even on my radar. And can you even see laser beams unless they’re going through smoke?
A few good points there. Truth be told, you would probably not be able to see lasers that would be of a high enough energy to do damage, since it would be a waste of power to drag them down into the visual spectrum. But as a common enough Sci-Fi trope, I felt it useful to assume they were visible. As to the other point, I think Joost already touched on the fact that I was likely trying to get too much into too small a panel. But these are the decisions we make. Either way, there’s always editing to be done here and there, so maybe I’ll revisit that panel before I go to print. The crit is appreciated, though!
–M