Page Commentary No. 245

Gunwild: I should have used a different name for that team than "aspis," which is a word for a type of ancient Greek shield, but sounds like a kid trying to say some swear words.

Psu: I can't believe I never asked you what Aspis meant.

Brellom: Isn't it the sound a can of soda makes when you open it?

Psu: ANYWAY, this was like what... our second or third major clue that these "bad guys" were more than they might have seemed at first?

Gunwild: I think most of the pieces are there for a reader to start making wild guesses... the reason I wanted them to be throwing out some ancient Greek is because that's the Regency standard in a military situation. Granted, it's only been done a couple times before in the comic and I'm sure nobody but me cares, but I wanted it to be consistent. So that's a hint to their true nature. The "hooah" is a more modern regular military thing and that's a bit more blunt. But I gotta say, more than my attempts to make them seem competent through my attempted use of the term "enfilade..." a cool thing is how color is used in the last two panels to indicate that we're looking at two sides of the same door.

Psu: I was just gonna say the guy in Panel 2 is using a "Kettlehead."

Brellom: I think the last two panels probably ended up being a lot of people's favourites. I think this was a page that I did most of the work on, and I wasn't really confident with the dark, sterile colour palette in the first few panels. But the last two? Bright, controlled colours and easily readable shapes. I don't think we had any colours planned for the characters, and I fumbled around a bit. Those last two panels are probably so good because Psu actually handled the environment & lighting.

Psu: Thank you.

Brellom: BUT I did render that Dr. Botz... It's uh... She's nice.

Psu: I kinda knew there wasn't a lot of space to show what I needed to show, but thankfully I spent a lot of time figuring out the colors beforehand for this chapter. So even this hallway, I knew I could use two colors just to indicate where people were, without having to show a lot of silhouettes and stuff. But the rest of the job was done with the text, even though they're a non sequitur, the art and the words and the color together create a nice tension. Plus ya know... don't you hate it when you see someone smiling in a dangerous situation and you know they're gonna get shot in an action movie?

Gunwild: Oh yeah and also the guns in the second to last panel have that thing that most Regency technology does, the glowy light blue dot on the side. That's a quality and story-relevant design note I'm sure I didn't explicitly call for in the script. But it's consistent with the secret subplot in the story, so it makes me look smart. I win again!

Brellom: I figured all guns in the future looked like that.

Psu: Oh yeah, we never really SAY it out loud until a few chapters later but this whole chapter had what I thought were really big clues. And that's before we brought back Sat's Dog.

Brellom: This is probably the best chapter in the entire series so far, because of how much work went into it. and also because i was there too coincidentally

Psu: We didn't even get to talking about how we designed the big general guy. I think there's a tendency for Cassiopeia Quinn antagonists to be interesting but I think this time we knew we wanted someone more like a grunt. Or just a good soldier. We knew the antagonists were going to be the robots and that nice girl in the last panel here. By the way, great rendering on her there Brell. It's kiiinda the sexiest rendering we've seen in a while...

Brellom: I think I was still trying to compromise our rendering styles at the time. The balance between the soft edges & my designy shape language ended up exaggerating the sexiness of the human form beneath the apparel. Under the breast and below the rib cage especially.

Psu: Maybe we should work together and draw some more sexy characters. It's been a bit in the comic.

Gunwild: Hmm...