Page Commentary No. 283

Gunwild: Cupcake, you probably need to get that hat back, it's Navy property...

Psu: You know what I like about having friends that are artists? You can sneak in their OCs into any crowd shot you have when you need someone to fill in a space in the background. We've got Satellite 9 on the turn tables in the back over there. And the lady with a fairy on her shoulder, that's a couple of my friend's character's Kat and Mel, though... they're from adult comics by my friends Suichi and Wossa so I won't link em here. Just thought I'd give em a shout out!

Gunwild: Sat is good at music and can play the piano and stuff, that's just realism! Also, in Panel 3 I made Psu draw Farring doing Shatner's dance from performing Rocketman in 1978.

Psu: Hah, I remember that direction. I'm also glad I got to draw Kreuz's sassy entourage from the previous page again. I knew they were gonna be dancing so in the last page, I made sure to make them look like they were dressed really classily. Maybe a bit much for a rave but I feel like the fashion here was kinda anything goes. Kettering's dressed like a Castlevania for pete's sake.

Gunwild: Yeah it's space, for all anyone knows these outfits could be the height of formality on certain planets. The important thing is to share in the UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ

Psu: Untz untz untz is universal. Actually it might be. I bet we could make a story/joke around the idea that an electronica untz untz untz mirrores the same wave forms as some very deep space cosmic background radiation wave...

Gunwild: Sounds ominous. Someday Untz Untz will consume all... well, actually, I had this theory years ago that there was a cool story in the way that popular music kept getting faster and faster from the 1700s onwards. Like it was speeding up towards some dramatic finale, mirroring the increased pace of human life. But now it seems to have eased off! That was a surprise to me.

Psu: I think people appreciated Rolling in the Deep bringing things back to earth. Maybe leave the cosmos for aliens and space comics... Okay, I should talk about the technical production on this page. I often decide color palettes page by page right? But here's another situation where I knew the colors on this page would decide the tone of the rest of the comic. So I spent a bit of time trying to make sure the page would look good using MOSTLY just the black, cyan, and magenta. Older fans of ours might remember those CGA screens from waaaaay back in the day when computers chose the four worst colors for graphics. While it was bad at representing things like green fields or human beings, with the right imagination it provides a pretty rich palette. Lighting all of the background and the characters in this worked out pretty well for the rest of the chapter.

Gunwild: And I enjoy lasers regardless of their destructive potential, but I knew Theira would see it differently.

Psu: Maybe she just doesn't see the same waves of light that humans do? And they just look like nothing...

Gunwild: Honestly I bet she does like light shows and noise, but in video games. Not big group events with strangers. Theira has, on at least one occasion that we know of in her past, preferred not to stick around and fit in with a really big hive!

Psu: Ya know... that actually makes sense. I hadn't considered that. Thanks for illuminating another aspect of one of our favorite characters!

Gunwild: She's a mystery wrapped in an enigma (wrapped in a cocoon sometimes). Meanwhile Kettlehead might be up for a party, but not in this mood.

Psu: And I like how we can trust our story to say a lot, just by having a wordless closeup of Russ at the end of a page.

Gunwild: It'd be funny if he was actually just thinking, "It's an open bar, but if I want another blue milk, it would be nice to tip the bartender... how much do you give for that?" 

Psu: He'll only give the proper polite amount as agreed upon by social norms of this location, and not more or less.