Page Commentary No. 27

Psu: "Poik!"

Gunwild: I remember one of the comments I saw on this on a forum was about the Talps and Kettering bit. They said "Why is the background gag in the foreground?"

Psu: It's pretty cute. But gosh it raises a LOT of questions. Has Talps seen naked humanoid females before? Did she assume that this was a shape that might get her closer to Kettering? What's her angle! And well... that's actually all pretty easy to answer because these guys are the doctors of lots of different species! So she might know our anatomy better than many of us.

Gunwild: Plus we have a bit of a backstory idea for why she decided that's a good look to have. But we'll keep it in our back pockets for now.

Psu: Yep yep. Anyway, there's a LOT of designs in this page that came from knowing what scenes we wanted in the story before we started. Knowing that the hangar was part of the main ship's mouth led to some of the background shapes in the top, and how the shape of the top of the Advanced Craft was like a top that can pop off was useful too. This page got a lot of things I liked done pretty well. And the Advanced Rescue Craft is really one of my favorite designs.

Gunwild: It looks like what it is, but more than that I can't really think of many other science fiction spacecraft that look a lot like it.

Psu: Well, here's some of the thinking that went behind it.

Gunwild: By the way audience, in case you haven't noticed by now, that square-in-a-circle symbol is for the Vanaa Aid Corps!

Psu: I knew that the Vanaa ships would have a vague "skull" look to them. The Fast Attack Craft is like the sci-fi helmet version of a skull ship. It's lines would be sleeker. It wouldn't have a mouth. It's eyes would be cool and glowy.

Psu: Have we done a visual like this since this page? For the past couple of pages we knew a lot of it was going to be just a conversation between Maddy and Gleb going over general exposition stuff and setting up the reader's relationship between all the parties. But in the backgrounds of the past few pages we were pantomiming entire stories.

Gunwild: It's pretty hard to create a situation where it's necessary, and also practicable. After all, it kind of requires that the "foreground" conversation doesn't require a lot of visual focus, and also there's a story to tell using the background characters, and it's interesting enough to hold their attention even while they still feel they should read the foreground conversation... I think we have little goings on in the backgrounds of panels all the time that add interest, but we could try to tell little stories more often.

Psu: Well we should talk about the most important character in the background...

Gunwild: The little Vanaa waving at the audience in the upper right corner!

Psu: That little vanaa knows too much. Those sneaky gloobs.

Psu: He's also really good for creating scale. So he's doing his job.

Gunwild: I hadn't even thought of that when you added him. But yeah, visually, it's vital in those precious sci-fi panoramas and such of exciting, unfamiliar objects to put something in for scale. Probably why Transformers are always hanging out with humans in their comics and stuff.

Psu: There were no flying birds available. The traditional artist trick for making images look big.

Gunwild: >:3