Hey hey!! Another page, another week. I’m back on track (at least for a little while). I have two more pages done as well, so we should be posting regularly for at least a couple more weeks. My life is busier that it has ever been. I was going to start the Bear War Print this week and it got away from me. There is actually something I need to do RIGHT NOW, so I need to cut this blog short.
I’m interested to get your reactions to this page. I think this is one of the most serious pages I have attempted to draw in quite a while. I dared to try to make you feel a little sorry for Nigel. Not sure if it worked. I feel like sitting under a lone street light in your car sobbing in the middle of the night is one of the saddest places a person can end up. No one wants to go there, but most of us do at some point. If we have a car I guess.
Ethan
Sobbing under a lone streetlight in the middle of the night – unsettling and unfortunate
Sobbing under a lone streetlight in the middle of the night…WITH BEARS!!!! – terrifying
Nigel sobbing under a lone streetligh in the middle of the night…WITH BEARS!!!
– Priceless.
What a beautiful page.
Is there redemption for Nigel? I hope so. No one is ever truly far from redemption.
Well, that’s just about the most profound and intriguing comment I’ve seen on the internet all week. Kudos.
His tears are like candy! A nice bit of seasoning before he is eaten by bears! Poor whichever bear gets him…he will surely have terrible indigestion. 🙁
If there are lights, there is power. If there is power, there are probably intelligent bears. Where there are intelligent bears, there is the Project Ruxpin Headquarters.
Yeah I probably would have not made lights on in the windows, but this is a black and white page that will be colored someday, and I think the windows being dark gray makes things look a little more dead and hollow, but to do that I had to leave them white. It still works though.
At first glance I read “sobbing” as “strobing” and thought you meant the streetlamp had some crazy kind of on/off flickering pattern.
I like this page a lot.
Your best page ever, IMO. Kudos on the decision not to have Nigel talking to himself–less is more.
Also, you should get a Don Martin award for VRRRMH!
You didn’t need to type anything. The overwhelming darkness surrounding the truck did the trick quite nicely, in a way that words wouldn’t have. That’s good art.
I foresee Nigel saving the others by driving the truck into some attacking bears. Then Nigel will either die from his wounds of the impact or be killed by the bears, probably the first would be better as the rest of the group would have some time to talk to him before he dies (emotion).
Sorry, I still want the bears to eat him–unless he does something badass for his former friends–or just does something badass–I still want him to die violently at the paws of bears.
Yeah my goal on this page is not to get complete sympathy, but at least to show that there is another side to Nigel… some sort of inner struggle at least.
And when the bears find him we’re going to see his innards struggle, right? Right?
Really good. REALLY good.
this page actually works better in black and white, imo
reminds me of this book i had as a kid
http://www.amazon.com/Round-Trip-Ann-Jonas/dp/0688099866
was kinda neat
I’m more worried about that moon in the last panel. Wait, that’s no moon — that’s a space station.
Or a snowball being hurled at the “camera”.
I don’t wanna be that guy, but…okay, I do. Back on page 99 (and all previous pages featuring this truck), we could see that this truck had dual rear wheels with bulged-out fenders (most visible in the last panel). And now it seems that it only has single wheels in the back.
Do I expect anyone else to care? Not really–it’s irrelevant to the scene. But I felt I had to point it out.
Oh man woops. Yeah I lost the 3D model of this truck I was using, and now that it is back in the comic I spent a good hour trying to find a match. I thought I found it but I can’t believe I missed the whole second set of tires. I wasn’t looking at it from that angle, and I admit I am not a guy who knows trucks.
No worries–you still got the model right. It’s still a 2008-10 Ford F-350, just without the duals.
Maybe that truck ran out of gas so he had to switch to this one.
This & the last page have been excellent storytelling.
agreed. Finally getting to some emotional development of the characters in the contemplative spaces between the action. This is where real storytelling actually begins.
Long time fan, first time poster.
What I see here is Nigel breaking down. Why is he breaking down? Well, everything has been going pretty bad for him, and it’s his own fault. Having some solitude is a good way to get in touch with yourself. He’s all out there, no friends, no help, no food, just Nigel and his guilt. If I were there, I’d be breaking down too.
Thanks again for telling such a great story!!
Nigel will redeem himself by dying for another member of the team. He must die…but with a redemptive act.
I absolutely love this page. The contrast of the intense focus on small details with the vacuous and open spaces really help exemplify how conflicted he is. The quiet transition of his emotions is really clear and powerfully presented.
Like most people, I’m always fascinated by complex characters and we finally get a glimpse of Nigel when he is alone, coming to terms with his own inner moral compass and his realization that this is fundamentally at odds with his actions. There are so many of us out there that act differently in groups than we do on our own, and are often disgusted by the difference. We’ve all been there at one point or another, so I feel that there is some pretty solid empathy created here, even if he is nowhere near vindicated.
Nigel could not be more alone here, and the private and pained depiction of his character in the bottom left is incredibly raw and powerful. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the story, the characters, and your narrative style from the beginning (when I stumbled onto the first page when it was promo’d on the Dr. McNinja site), have been captivated by the concept and creativity of your work throughout, but the combination of the last two pages has added a really enticing richness to the story. I’ve been a fan all along, but for me the story has hit a new level. Kudos for experimenting and taking risks with your art. They are all appreciated and, as always, I can’t what to read more.
Awww man… I mean can’t ‘wait’ to read more. dammit. lol
I was definitely not expecting this outcome. Seems more realistic though, making him seem more like a normal human. Unless of course in the next few panels you surprise us again by showing he was crying over something completely pointless like him running over a squirrel on accident, rather than him crying over something meaningful like his fight with his friends or burton dying because of him.