Commentary: Pages 34-35

Page 034 - Flicker in the Wind

Another very good title, this one was a phrase that’s been knocking around my head for years now.

Not as much to say about this one! I can comment some on backgrounds, though:

Notice something? That’s right, these two panels have the exact same background! Just darkened and flipped. Work smarter not harder. Reusing art is something I love to get away with, but I feel it always needs to be done in a way that isn’t noticeable to the reader, and that’s not always easy to pull off. It worked out well in this case.

This page continues the pattern of this chapter: each protagonist grasps what they want, briefly, before having it snatched away from them. It’s a handy way for us to get a little more insight into every character by altering their circumstances while still returning to the status quo at the end of every sequence. We get a little bit of tentative disruption, but we don’t completely flip the board yet.

If you wanted to be uncharitable you could say that Chapter 2 consists of the story just spinning its wheels in place while we dump exposition onto the reader. And I mean… you wouldn’t be wrong. While Chapter 1 established each character and their circumstances, it did so quickly without really exploring any of their situations very far. It was important, at that point, that we don’t linger too long on any one world, so as to establish the basic premise of Foreach as fast as we could. But that left a lot of information about each world unsaid, and that information was going to be necessary to establish before we started crossing everything over in Chapters 3 and onwards. That’s Chapter 2’s real purpose: stalling for time long enough to cover the exposition I didn’t get around to the first loop around.

Peri peaks in: I know Lum is going somewhere with this, but I do think this chapter is functioning as more than just extra exposition and pacing management. When you are introduced to a character in a situation they are dissatisfied with, it is natural for the reader to ask, “Why don’t they simply do X?” where X is the solution most obvious to an outside observer. Why doesn’t Jasper simply stand up to their dad? Why doesn’t Jiro speak honestly about his feelings? This chapter answers that question, expanding on the obstacles to the characters’ problems (Jasper doesn’t because their dad is really pushy and they feel a genuine obligation to the ghosts!) and exploring the circumstances in which they might be able to access those solutions (Jiro can begin to speak honestly with a friend who he feels understands his misery.) Thus when we dive into the more outlandish scenarios in Chapter 3 and beyond, we have a more grounded sense of where all our characters are starting from.

In this sequence for Jiro, for example, we had a few points to get to. We had to set up the villain, Proteus, and I wanted to get into a little more detail about how girls arrive at the island and what kind of expectations they have for Jiro, through Yuno. Plus, I wanted to set up Casandra’s Orbs and explore Jiro’s character a little bit with Sam. And I wanted to do all that without meaningfully advancing the plot. You can see how all that exposition was carefully weaved together to feel like a single effortless stream of narrative: Yuno’s introduction and Proteus’ introduction are bridged by the Sam encounter, which itself was split into two scenes before and after Proteus, and Cas’ orbs were tied in with the Proteus scene to not take up any time on their own. That itself took some thinking to figure out.

Peri exposits:

Actually I’ve been meaning to talk about that figuring-out process for a few commentaries now! Sorry for interrupting you again Lum, but I think this might be the moment for it.

Putting the Lovebomb sequence for this chapter was an interesting exercise, because as Lum said we had a checklist of events we needed to have happen, but we didn’t necessarily have an order for them at first. The events were thus: Jiro makes a ghost friend, Proteus attacks, a new girl is introduced and snubbed by Jiro, Jiro loses a ghost friend. And also, at some point in there, the orbs needed to be mentioned. We actually went through a number of permutations before landing on the current in-comic sequence! One major element that moved around a lot was when Jiro would meet Sam. It would have made some sense for Sam to have been released from the orb that Jiro uses in the fight with Proteus (which also has the benefit of establishing a mechanism by which ghosts could escape from orbs, which isn’t something that has actually made it into the comic yet.) However, we didn’t want to make it too obvious that the orbs were connected to ghosts yet (don’t want to spoil the end of chapter reveal!) and it put the introduction and outroduction (hah) of Sam too close together. Plus it wouldn’t make sense to have a new girl introduced after an attack–it’s hard to imagine the girls getting back into a celebratory mood so fast. I suppose we could have started with Yuno’s introduction and then have it be interrupted by Proteus’ attack, but that would take the sting out of Jiro snubbing her… 

…you get the idea! A lot of the process of plotting Foreach goes like this. We know where a sequence needs to start and end, and we have a wishlist of items that need to go in the middle. Then we permute them around, thinking through the implications of each arrangement and seeing what will get everyone where they need to be at the right time and with the most emotional impact. It can get pretty complicated at times (especially in subsequent chapters where we have to juggle characters jumping between worlds and need to be in certain places in time for certain scenes!) but it’s also a lot of fun to figure out–like a puzzle!

Alright, enough rambling on that. Back to you, Lum!

There’s also something to be said for the pacing necessity of holding off a little while before throwing things off the rails. The reader needs time to settle into the pattern, to become used to how each setting functions, for the disruption that comes in Chapter 3 to feel meaningful. If we were only barely familiar with each character’s struggles, it wouldn’t feel nearly as significant when they manage to escape. When we’ve seen each character fail once already to break free from their cycles, it adds a new source of tension the next time an opportunity arises for them: will they succeed this time? Or, just like before, will they be denied?

I like the sense it adds that each world’s status quo is kinda sticky. They bend before they break. Throughout this chapter there’s a rising stress placed on the narratives that they struggle to resist. Each time they manage to reassert themselves, but each time the fractures get deeper, until eventually the whole edifice comes crumbling down.

Even still, it’s important to be aware that the narrative is essentially not advancing at all in this sequence. We’re in exposition town– it’s just that the exposition is carefully constructed enough, and seeded with the promise of a mystery, such that it feels like something is still happening. And the feeling is the part that’s important.

Peri parodies: 

This page also generated one of my favorite Foreach memes ever. Credit to our buddy Nem for cursing us with this beautiful image.

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Page 035 - Say Hello

…To my little friend.

It’s Nix!!!

When drawing these sadistic death gauntlets for Nix I always wanted to make sure they looked like actual platformer levels. It was fun to imagine how a player might actually navigate through them despite how totally hostile they appear. Here’s the critical path for this one outlined in blue:

Nix has a walljump and a double jump, as is standard for this sort of game. I for one can already tell those two walljumps right near the buzzsaw are a real pain in the arse, you gotta carry your upward momentum from the previous jump just right while you hit the walls from below otherwise you won’t get enough height to stay clear of the buzzsaw. And little moving platform that goes under the spike wall, ugh, you gotta jump off the side of the platform and then land back on top of it with just the right timing… it’s awful!

That little splash of blood in the corridor at the bottom was Rhys’ idea, imply there was some kind of bullshit crusher trap right in the middle that splatters you mercilessly. Right in the middle of two really tough sequences, too… let’s hope there was a checkpoint.

There’s some early glitch effects on this page. Also another opportunity for hovertext!

Peri ponders: Ah, hover text! I love hover text. It’s one of those things that is just so distinctly webcomics, there’s not really an effective equivalent to it in any other medium. (The closest I can think of is Terry Pratchett’s use of footnotes in his books, but even that has a different flavor to it.) With Foreach being an HTML webcomic and strongly programming-themed, sneaking in some clever hover text usage was basically mandatory!

When we first started discussing the hover text, I remember pushing Lum to use it a lot more. Originally, I wanted to use it on every panel with glitched aspects in it, and even suggested some more out-there ideas like using it to show the thoughts of characters bleeding through from other worlds. (Imagine if the hover text told you Coral’s thoughts as she played through Jiro’s game sequences!) We also discussed using it to tease some of the late game mysteries of the comic–which I’m glad we didn’t, because some of those aspects have been scrapped or transformed so much that the foreshadowing may not fit them anymore. 

Lum was resistant to the idea of these grander hover text schemes, and for good reason. The only way for a reader to find hover text is to laboriously place their mouse over an image and wait. (Or, if they’re on mobile, long press and see if anything pops up.) Start putting too many things in the hover text and suddenly you’ve turned the comic into a slog of a scavenger hunt, with readers having to exhaustively check every single panel for extra goodies. It interrupts the reader’s flow and messes with that page pacing we work so hard to establish. I’ve experienced this myself as a webcomic reader–there are certain comics out there that I feel compelled to read every hover text and every author note while archive-binging, and it really slows down the process. It can even diminish my enjoyment of the experience as a whole, making that completionist instinct working against me!

There’s also the fact that hover text is missable. We haven’t trained the reader to check for it, so we have to work under the assumption that a large portion of readers (quite likely the vast majority of them) will never realize it is there. Like hidden rooms and secret endings in video games, or ciphers in prose works, the comic needs to be able to stand on its own without the hidden content. Or at the very least, we need to be okay with some readers having the “incomplete” experience if they never see it. There is a trade off between accessibility and the satisfaction that comes from uncovering secrets, and while the latter can feel extremely awesome, it also runs the risk of alienating the rest of your audience that isn’t “in” on the secret. I know some creative works out there that are okay with portions of their audience straight up missing huge swaths of their content, and I respect them immensely for this, but it’s also probably not the right choice for Foreach.

So we settled on this outcome: Hovertext error code messages for the first time glitch effects show up in each world, and possibly again later for any particularly major moments of glitchiness. And by restricting ourselves to error codes, the hover text reinforces what the page is already doing rather than adding to or transforming it. It’s enough to add a little bit of spice and feel like a fun easter egg for readers who stumble onto it—but you’re also not missing anything essential if you don’t. Hopefully, to the people who find it, it helps the comic pop off the screen just a little bit more.

I hadn’t yet gotten together my fancy glitch brushes and whatnot for this page so instead I just used some stray blocky pixels vomited up on the screen… I think they get the job done, even if I’m glad I didn’t stick with em. You can also see some kinda runic lookin things on the walls there, but I’m gonna get ahead of you and mention that was meant to be some kind of Avean writing.

Nevermind all that though. Let’s talk about your new favourite character in Foreach, the BR7H4 Rocket Propelled Grenade Launcher.

Peri plaudits: BIG BERTHA WOOOOOOO!

She’s such a beautiful girl… but she wasn’t always! Here’s how my first iteration went:

Yikes!!! The biggest problem here, really, was that it doesn’t look like a rocket launcher. And that’s something I wanted to read immediately! When I showed it to Peri she said it didn’t read to her, though she disclaimed that by mentioning she doesn’t play very many shooters. That’s still a problem though!! I can’t expect most of my readers to be big-time shooterheads, but if I want this page to land I want them to immediately see the gun Nix is eyeing up and immediately associate it with explosions and devastation. Even if you don’t really know much about guns, I had a hunch that the bazooka was enough of a cultural idiom that if I drew it just right the average reader would still recognise it on sight.

So, back to the drawing board!

This one was more realistic, but it still had a kind of cartooniness to it. I think subconsciously I was channeling the bazooka from Worms:

I was already thinking of it as Nix’s weapon, and so I was giving it Nix’s stylised chunky form. That’s exactly the wrong direction to go it with this weapon though! It really ideally should look like a total interloper to this world, like it doesn’t belong in Nix’s hands. Or, wings, as it were. I actually designed the BR7H4 to be, like Nix’s game console, something that Nix could feasibly use without fingers. Note how the trigger is like a big ol paddle with no triggerguard over it: 

You don’t need dextrous little fingers to fire this thing. Nix can easily just push her wing into it to fire. And since all the force of the rocket is dispersed out the hole in the back of the bazooka, Nix’s tiny little frame can easily handle the recoil. This is very much a weapon from Last Gun, it wasn’t meant for Nix’s use, and yet it’s interesting that that’s the one she got her hands on, isn’t it?

So, back on Page 17 I mentioned I’d intended for Nix to not actually be smiling on that page, and this is why: I really liked the idea of this page being the first time you ever see her smile. Milestones like that are fun! If Nix hasn’t smiled at all until this point, it woulda said something, yknow? It’s a great way to generate an insight into a character, we see a character who does not normally do a thing, and then we show you the circumstance that causes them to do so – in this case, the promise of incredible violence. It’s fine though. The first time she smiles being the arcade cabinet still works, and like… when you think about that’s also thanks to the promise of violence…

Peri ponders: 

Hm… what else to say about this page. This is a twelve-paneller, which is quite long for a Foreach page. Hellfuck panels do tend to be faster for Lum to crank out than the other settings (a lot less pesky anatomy to get right!) but I still remember this one being a bit of a doozy to get done in time. It was up in the air exactly how many “pacing” panels would make it into the final page–a pacing panel being one that doesn’t add a lot of new action, but adds further detail to existing actions in order to stretch them out and make them feel like they take more time on the page. A good example is the panel of Nix’s neutral face before her wicked smile at the end. You could cut this panel and the page would still read perfectly clearly, but including it gives extra oomph to the moment when she breaks out into her toothy grin. The one where the Bastard peaks through the crack as she walks away is one too. If pressed, we could probably get this page down to nine or even eight panels pretty easily without any loss of clarity, and that is a sacrifice we choose to make on a lot of pages! But it’s always nice when we can slip in the extra art to really sell these moments.