Unwelcome Guests

The updates on this comic have become really inconsistent, largely because our lives have become far more dramatic and tense than the events in the comic. And because I keep forgetting how to draw.

I was pretty happy with the way the rain turned out on this strip, thanks to a couple of online PotatoShop tutorials I found (and then modified slightly to stop it looking quite so flat.)
The group panel was awkward to do, because I don't normally have to draw people in groups, let alone people who all have a distinct look to them. I could have drawn them all separately and then layered them together, but it seemed like a lot of extra work for what would probably not look as good on the finished image.
You probably can't tell, by the way, but this strip is the first time I've inked the whole thing solely using a brush. (The only other time I used a brush was back on the 'Monsterzilla' arc last year, when there was a splash page of Shakra riding on MechaShakra's back, which was a single image and so hardly counts.) Brush is awkward to get used to, and, like most things, has both advantages and disadvantages over pen. Pen is good for small details but handles larger areas more awkwardly. The other problem with pen is that you get all of your lines the same thickness, which lends itself readily to images looking flat and lifeless. The worst thing about a brush is trying to do fine detail without screwing it up. The only place I needed to edit on PotatoShop were Tara's eyes in the group panel. Her irises are actually computer generated. The girl with the cgi eyes.