 |
In short answer, no. In long answer: nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. I'm just doing this for fun, and given how lazy I am and how much work I forgot doing webcomics is, I'm not foreseeing extensive pages in the future. But, you never know. I'm not really going to bother placing spoiler tags, since no one is going to read this anyway, so yeah. It's pretty much just me running the show, here, though I may bother AOD time after time in order to get some advice or brainstorm, but it's functionally a solo project unless he wants to jump back in or something.
I'm just going to say it since no one will notice it, anyway. I had a lot of fun setting up this page. It's a very atmospheric page, obviously, with minimal dialogue. It's intended to set up this feeling of loneliness, isolation, and uncertainty - and at the same time, the bathroom (of all places) has a kind of dirty sanitary feeling, a place where everyone does what they need to do but aren't proud to admit. It's about here that the comic itself would take a left turn into the darker side (as if it could get any darker as it stands). In a very real sense, this is the last time that Courtney, the character portrayed, has any sense of independence or control over her own fate. Things only go downward from here.
One bit of symbolism I wanted to point out is that, in all the reflections of Courtney, both in the mirror and the faucet, her own features are blurry and hard to make out, but her sunglasses are dominating. The point of this was to hearken back to an earlier page of the fly stuck on the flypaper (page 5). It's incredibly subtle, and hence why I'm saying it (since no one will notice it otherwise). It's a portent of future events where Courtney begins to lose her humanity and her individuality and to become trapped, in a very real manner, to Mary's exploitative behavior. As Mary herself narrated on that page "They're more interesting than animals or insects ... I got bored with those years ago." Implies that, perhaps, Mary has found a new source of entertainment.
I also wanted to point out that accounting for lighting and all the reflections was a pain in the ass, especially in the eye panel. Finally, although I was painstakingly careful about the perspective lines for the bathroom panel (almost aggravatingly so), when it was over, I realized the sink/mirror was so big it would mean the room was about 5 feet tall and Courtney could touch the fluorescent lights without even standing on her tip toes, so I had to do some extensive Photoshop editing to correct it so it would seem like a normal public bathroom. It was surprisingly easier to fix than I thought, but still it was one of those horrifying moments when "Oh god, I just fucked up 4 hours worth of work and have to start over." |
