Hey, look, new cover style! I decided as part of all of the recent art changes that we needed a more professional kind of aesthetic here and so I got to looking into various modern comic covers for reference, kind of piecing together from them some things to try out to jazz things up a bit. Very much used DC as a template for this (since Marvel's modern covers tend to be so bare bones as to basically just be pictures with a logo on them), though tried to put some of our own twists on some of the formatting. Feel like we'd been stuck in kind of a rut for a long while in terms of the overall layout and that it was pretty overdue to try something new and something cleaner with it; even the previous style was basically just a cleaned up retool of assets from the older style so it was very much due for a change of pace.
It's funny, this cover's actually kind of low key one of the most important pages we've done in terms of art progression - I decided basically on a whim to try out using some tonal work with it and it kind of led to this whole snowball effect of digging into all kinds of settings in Manga Studio we'd never really made much of an effort to use previously, which is really noticeable as early as the next page. The whole thing just kind of led to this whole domino effect.
Of course, the actual content of the cover I think is of interest in its own right - as can probably be gathered from how the last chapter ended and the title, this chapter's going to be focused a lot on the duality of Alex and Dorothy, with some of Alex's personal doubts and lingering issues from Dorothy's own life kind of getting in the way. Think the whole thing was a really interesting change of pace to write and am hoping everyone's going to enjoy that.
The characters in each panel were pretty carefully chosen to further that idea and to sort of put over how much has changed between Dorothy's life as it was and how Alex is living in. A lot of the characters seen here aren't actually even in the chapter - some are, and some of them are fairly prominent, but don't be expecting an actual Jack or O'Hara appearance or anything. Funny thing about Jack is that in the script his spot went to Randy, but we weren't entirely sure when we last drew Randy, both worked for the purposes of that block of people Dorothy already knew, and Jack's kind of more fun to draw anyway so we subbed him in on it.
Could probably say more but might as well leave Adam stuff to talk about. Hopefully everyone enjoys this one, we're very happy with it.
.... Oh, crap, I'm really tired and not sure what to say on this one... Hmmm....
Like Martin said, this was an attempt to get more experimental and weird with the covers, trying more striking, enticing imagery, which springboarded into us experimenting with tones and into more intense art.
Like Martin said, a big part of this chapter is gonna focus on Alex's feelings about the Dorothy situation and his regrets about it interfering with both their lives. It's all really cutting, deep stuff and leads to a pretty fascinating chapter writing-wise, capturing a cheery but somber mood. Really love how this one's written.
I think we're gonna need to copy that logo for the cover thing in Blues, just dunno what we could possibly do for the next chapter... A LOT of this makes me curious what the next Blues page will be, but will need to really think over it. Will look at some DC covers for ideas....Hm...
That girl in the cover box got shown off a while ago, but she's Jodie, Dorothy's half-sister. Hope you guys'll like her, you won't have to wait long until she shows up. ^^
It's funny, this cover's actually kind of low key one of the most important pages we've done in terms of art progression - I decided basically on a whim to try out using some tonal work with it and it kind of led to this whole snowball effect of digging into all kinds of settings in Manga Studio we'd never really made much of an effort to use previously, which is really noticeable as early as the next page. The whole thing just kind of led to this whole domino effect.
Of course, the actual content of the cover I think is of interest in its own right - as can probably be gathered from how the last chapter ended and the title, this chapter's going to be focused a lot on the duality of Alex and Dorothy, with some of Alex's personal doubts and lingering issues from Dorothy's own life kind of getting in the way. Think the whole thing was a really interesting change of pace to write and am hoping everyone's going to enjoy that.
The characters in each panel were pretty carefully chosen to further that idea and to sort of put over how much has changed between Dorothy's life as it was and how Alex is living in. A lot of the characters seen here aren't actually even in the chapter - some are, and some of them are fairly prominent, but don't be expecting an actual Jack or O'Hara appearance or anything. Funny thing about Jack is that in the script his spot went to Randy, but we weren't entirely sure when we last drew Randy, both worked for the purposes of that block of people Dorothy already knew, and Jack's kind of more fun to draw anyway so we subbed him in on it.
Could probably say more but might as well leave Adam stuff to talk about. Hopefully everyone enjoys this one, we're very happy with it.