Page Commentary No. 28

Gunwild: This story DEFINITELY made us decide our text needed to be bigger.

Psu: It looks fine when I put my face five inches away from the screen...

Gunwild: If they were humans, Prince Gleb oughta face court martial for striking one of his underlings! But slapping doesn't really cause Vanaa pain, just unpleasant surprise.

Gunwild: So, you know, Patton shouldn't have hit those guys, but with Gleb it's okay.

Psu: It's not like they have a central nervous system to rattle in a skull box.

Psu: But anyway, I like how we instantly got a classic character in Skwidj over here. That's pretty good evidence showing how you can get people to remember a character by showing who that character is right in their introduction. He wasn't even in any previous pages but now we've got a pretty good template for who he is and get to play with that much more in the future. When I look at the Vanaa cast, they're broadly drawn in the way like... Power Rangers are. You've got the smart one, the pink one, the girl that's not the pink one...

Gunwild: Yeah, Skwidj needs to get a third panicky rant for it to be a running gag though, according to you.

Psu: When a character appears in a relatively limited amount of time over the course of a story, you probably should use them to reinforce their known character traits. Subverting those takes time. It's like getting to know someone in real life.

Psu: Art wise, apart from the big red light that intentionally overwhelms the page, there isn't too much different about this page than the last few. There are still elements that I dislike about it. For Madison and the Vanaa's faces, I would not opt for a more smooth approach to coloring them in. But at the time, this was faster. And I was still fighting for two pages a week even though the buffer of comic pages completely disappeared around now.

Gunwild: I love a good "person on the PA in an emergency says silly things" gag. People should expect those from me in the future.

Gunwild: Oh hey, there they are in the upper left, freaking out!

Gunwild: So many subtle details.

Psu: There will be more emergencies. Oh, one more thing to note. artists should keep palettes and character sheets of all their main characters. I keep on forgetting what color Skwidj actually is because in my mind when drawing this page I knew he was blue and ended up purple in the big red light. But I actually remember him as purple...

Gunwild: Yeah, we've had to correct you on that once or twice. However, you've remembered the "headlights" on his collar without fail! Which he no doubt has because he's scared of the dark.

Psu: They're practical for his job!... What does he do on the ship anyway, Gun?

Gunwild: He's an engineer! A good one, too. He just needs a bit more nerve under pressure.

Psu: It also helps him look into Zoom Tubes that are all dark and broken down.

Gunwild: There are actually little bios on the cast page for all the recurring Vanaa, I encourage people to check 'em out.

Psu: God we need to redo that page...