Hey folks! Stuff on the jobbing front has been quite intense lately so unfortunately I had to put this page on the back burner, particularly frustrating given that I’ve had it sat on my hard drive in a near finished state for a week or more.
On the bright side, for my first real shot at action this turned out remarkably well and there was even room for some experimentation along the way.
Besides the anatomy and poses – which I covered in detail a couple of posts back – I spent a long time mulling over exactly when I’d break the tension and how I would make the transition over to an action sequence. I settled on going big, bold and sudden to maximise the impact and perhaps communicate some of Curt’s evident shock over to reader; I doubt that it was too hard guessing that this was coming but my hope was that in going from 0-100 mph in a single page I’d have a shot at creating a real surprise.
More importantly a major shift has taken place here, over on The Duck someone commented on this being ‘the page that defines your character’ and now I think about it they couldn’t be more right. I gave this moment a whole page and extra effort not because I want to make a masturbatory display of excessive violence but rather because this is the point where we begin to get a sense of who Scratch is. Up till now she’s been little more than a scowl and trench coat; crude and unpleasant as it may well be, this is the first genuine expression Scratch makes and it’s one that provides the lead in for much of her future character development.
Lest I begin to sound too pretentious objectively speaking there are some areas that could have used some reworking: The background is a little sparse, the floor shadow appears to be fractionally off and I felt like I was forced to include the SFX caption to maintain stylistic consistency, but considering how much I’ve dawdled with releases this would be an ideal point to really push forward and rekindle my production efforts as things kick up a gear.
Now forward! Like an elbow to the face! THWACK!
Growing Branch 