CONTEXT
Hello, this is the third Dev Diary of 'Discourse Under Duress', A comic inspired by and occuring in Eipril's universe. It's also inspired by a dream where I came across a memoir of a furry who fought in a war, got nuked, survived, went to college and got laid, that's as far as I was willing to read.
I've seen and done weirder things in my dreams and turned them into Youtube videos, so this is nothing, I also want to declare that I am not affiliated with Eipril, so perhaps take this comic as a tribute to these kind of artists in the only way I know how, by barging in screaming with a gun, knocking a vase over and blowing up a police station.
THE ACTUAL DEV DIARY
It's been a hot minute, in between a rough(er than expected) first week back at high school, balancing multiple projects and the release of "Running the Red-light" alongside a lull in motivation, progress was slow on the pages, but I pushed through and got some more panels and such done, alongside that, I've began highlighting the speech bubbles and putting the text in first and then doing the sketches instead of the other way around, though I've had the most success doing them at the same time and modifying it until I'm satisfied with the end result.
I'm also probably going to try and make references for Elizabeth, Rou, Viktor and Tankman, who is not the same Tankman as the captain or his buddy, he's a personal one, it's a long story, long enough that I made a video about it (which is also based off a dream).
I also don't know what to do about the final panel, it's a long text wall meant to inform Liz and Rou about their world, but I really don't want to bore the reader with a text wall, that is bad comic making. Instead I will have one paragraph and an accompanying image, e.g a war, or a bunch of banner flying in the wind or the face a soldier or something like that, just to keep the reader entertained, I don't want for it to go for too many panels however, maybe 3-4 maximum, don't know how to end it, there are multiple ways for me to end the comic:
- A police negotiator disturbs their conversation and a gun fight is about to begin, the comic ends there, with maybe an epilogue of some kind of the 3 mercenaries running and gunning to their escape.
- Yuri breaks the fact that Liz and Rou are watched in their most intimate moments, and are puppets on strings or something like that, I particularly don't want to go this route because I think it gets too meta, and feels like a cop-out.
- The drill finishes, and Viktor and Tankman come over to Yuri's side of the room and they debate whether or not to kill the couple, Yuri makes the point that they're both protected by patróns, and can't be killed, saying that the longer they stay in their world the more unwelcoming it becomes, the three mercenaries leave but before they do Yuri gives one final speech, with the fact that the couple is being watched used as a punch line, before he gets up and leaves, but not before spotting a special token inside the locker that was drilled. (think of those Papers Please tokens).
- A "Dowozer" bursts through the wall payday style and a lot of expletives and gunshots are exchanged between the mercenaries and the Dowozer, this ending leans into the heist aspect of this.
I personally lean to ending 3, endings 2 and 1 are both earlier drafts, and ending 3 was considered since the first 2 were terrible in my eyes, and didn't leave much to the imagination, ending 3 however gives stuff to think about, and still uses elements of ending 2 for a chuckle or a laugh.
PANEL BY PANEL
Anyways, now that's out of the way, I want to dedicate the rest of this dev diary to the comic itself, here's the progress made + any commentaries I have, the second page got done so that's nice, I'll hold off on making any finished pages, and instead focus on making sure I have the comic all finished in the sketch phase, and share on the forums, hopefully I don't get sued.
- All Panels, Page 1: Pink text bubbles to make boundaries more clear.
- All Panels, Page 2: Pink text bubbles make boundaries more clear. The text is a lot different than in the original intended script, if you see closely Yuri was supposed to manifest a magical sword, but I decided against it, instead trying to move the plot along, forgot to do the pink lines in panel 5, but Elizabeth is asking the question here.
- Panel 1: The sketch and text are done.
- Panel 2: Ditto.
- Panel 3: Quite the nightmare to do, the original sketchbook photo was at an angle and wasn't as clear on the first, so it took some effort to get things right, and then I had to draw characters sitting down (a weakness of mine) so I had to work on that as well, but it paid off.
- Panel 4: Yuri was originally a lot closer to the edge of the paper, but I pushed him to the right to make his pose more clearer, and accidentally gave more space for Tankman to pop his head over and see what was going on.
- Panel 5: Much like panel 4, this was also a mini-nightmare to do, characters sitting down + side view + Elizabeth's height is an uncertainty, yet again due to a lack of references, will go searching soon(?), the background also caused problems but not too much, gonna see what should go in the posters, a volleyball club advertisement perhaps?
- Panel 6: I intend to have an image of a bunch of banners flying in the sky, with a bunch of monolith eyes looking, maybe even doors or some latin or something, the logo of the Imperium, a Paw, a 4 leave clover, and a bunch of other factions I'm gonna put in, this segment was always intended, but at the time I didn't know how to implement it without breaking the flow of the story.
Next steps include:
- drawing panel 6, fix the pink lines.
- take a photo of page 3, and start page 3 with the storybook panels.
- Rearrange the panels via editing and make the skeleton of page 3.
- sketch page 3, put in the text.
- if the panels overflow, start page 4.
- once all the panels from the sketchbook are done, make page 4/5 and bring it to an end.
- attempt ending 3.
- post sketch to newgrounds forum.
- receive a cease and desist.
- Colonel Yuri, over and out.
