Hey, my Squids! Massive page update for Page 8 of Chapter 3 Part 2!
As a comic artist, I LOVE pages like this, where multiple panels reuse the same elements. The time saving is substantial but it also helps keep everything extremely consistent. We have the passage of time with Leira frozen in the same spot. The only indicator that days are passing is Sudesh: refreshed, with a new outfit. Leira, on the other hand… she’s beginning to fall apart. Stains on her shirt, hair a mess, and consistently emotional.
I want to talk about Sudesh’s outfits. She’s always been one of the stylish members of the band and that followed her into adulthood. While she typically does wear more modest attire, she does like to show out sometimes, as is evident in the third panel. However, there’s a specific reason I chose both that style and color closing out this part of the scene: Leira’s creation.
Walk with me for a minute into Taliah’s past. When I first started creating it, it was going to be about Xolani and Micah. Xolani’s color scheme was white, yellow, and red, while Micah’s was black and pink. Once I decided it would be fun to make a “D&D” party (Xolani is our Paladin, Micah is our warrior/rogue), I made a mage: Leira. Her color scheme was reddish brown/maroon, gray, and gold. Micah eventually became blue, purple, and pink. Sometime later, I made the choice to use more vibrant colors in my art, so I redesigned all of my characters to have palettes that felt a little more bold on the page and stood out when in a panel. However, I was already publishing the webcomic and Leira had a LOT of illustrations in her old outfit. I also knew that at some point it would appear again because we’d go back into the past to show the discovery of the star and Saul’s death. Well, to cap off the way the story begins, I decided that Sudesh would be the reason Leira wore that outfit in the first place. You’ll see on the next page why but I thought it would be fun to give a little glimpse into the meta game I play in keeping things consistent and believable within the story.
Enjoy!