Since I already covered my recent production troubles and new course of action last post, I’ll keep this nice and simple by weighing up the finished page on its own merits/problems so I can get on with things and try to make up for my poor output.
The third panel is pretty much the most notable feature of this page, working as a background and being a more ambitious effort than my usual. Besides wanting to break up the monotony of flat closeups, as I’m bringing this scene to a close I thought a longshot would make a striking conclusion displaying full figures and emphasising the bizarre meeting location. I also thought that the raised angle looking down would make for a nice echo of the first panel in the toilets from page 12, while giving the atmosphere a warped edge in the buildup to the next major beat in the story.
On the downside even with a photographic reference and preliminary sketch to work from it was a small nightmare to draw, forming a large bulk of the delay. It’s close but I’m not sure it quite pulls it off, the perspective on Curt feels on the money but I’m not so sure about Scratch. The fact it looks a bit fisheyed isn’t all bad given the intended tone but I definitely have a long way to go drawing this sort of viewpoint.
My favourite panels are the first and second, an odd thing given how bad they looked in the sketch but somehow they worked out as more than the sum of their parts. Scratch’s ‘don’t give a damn’ expression feels spot on and I was especially pleased with the way the light catches the edge of Curt’s face in the first image. The third and last panels meanwhile feel functional at least but at the same time didn’t quite capture what I wanted; Curt’s expression seems too understated while conversely Scratch’s brooding irritation is a little too overt maybe.
The colours are a continuation of the last two pages so there shouldn’t be any surprises there, however they emphasise my biggest issue with the overall page: wasted space. The top row is fine in this regard but the bottom panels have some embarrassingly barren spots I really should have filled. I coasted on abstraction for the last image but the left corner could have done with some extra clutter or a shift in focus maybe.
One final point; I deviated from my script’s dialogue someway here as it seemed a heavy-handed on review. Scratch said a lot more than she needed to at this stage while Curt’s behaviour seemed unrealistically bold under the circumstances, questioning her ‘name’ and getting a snarky response. It was kind of interesting in some respects but felt forced and unnecessary – a case of what’s left unsaid being more effective I suppose.
The bottom line? An adequate page but still a disappointing one, not so much because of the end result as the time invested. One way or another I must get faster at how I go about this. Hopefully my new approach between traditional and digital mediums will improve matters, I just hope the quality doesn’t suffer as a result.
Growing Branch 
