page 1041 – I wasn’t gonna say it, but…
I was soooooooooooo close to pulling another “post the half-finished page in the morning, replace with the final draft in the afternoon” deal here, but I figured it couldn’t take me THAT long to color, so why not press on and do it all at once? HAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahawow that was a bad idea.
Okay, so if you were paying attention Tuesday, that page was sort of last-minute filler because I was trying to work out problems with THIS page, and I still don’t think I quite did. I dunno, something’s just… off about this one. Actually, no, I take that back. I know EXACTLY what’s off about it: it’s too much for one page. I really, really wanted to break this up to two pages… but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to do it. There’s just no obvious point at which to split things up, and no extra punch line I could insert anywhere to MAKE that point. Or, at least, I couldn’t think of one. The most frustrating thing is that I just KNOW some blindingly obvious solution will dawn on me in a week or so when I’m trying to work on something else. But no, in the end I had to go ahead and wedge all this dialog into one page, even though the pacing doesn’t really work like it should.
Oh, and how about that silly little animated effect on the bottom? THAT is why this page wound up taking so long. If I’d just slapped a glittery screen tone layer or whatever in that panel, I really would have gotten this page online before noon, but nooooooo. I just HAD to splurge on something that ended up adding several hours onto the editing process. And this may have been even more frustrating than the creative writing stuff, since at least that was, you know, creative. THIS was just hours of saving files improperly and forgetting to put layers in the right order and tedious, tedious detail things. Now, make no mistake, I can get a lot of joy out of fiddling with tedious little details, when I’m in the right mood. I was not in that right mood today.
Okay, enough bellyaching. Let’s wrap this up on something positive: I need to find more excuses to draw Chibi Tabitha. I have no idea why such a tall, skinny character works so well in squat, chubby form, but she really, REALLY does work like that.
OH YEAH! And Also don’t forget that Voting Incentive are back! (And thanks to those of you who did the whole “vote on Bonus Incentives” thing on Wednesday. Far Out There was actually fitting the TWC top twenty for the first time in a WHILE thanks to that.)
(Historical Notes: I forget where it first came up, but I seem to recall there being some concern that Tabitha might have self-image problems. I THINK it came up someplace earlier, and this page was at least partially conceived as a response to that worry. It’s not so much that Tabitha thinks she ISN’T pretty, she just doesn’t think about it AT ALL unless somebody else brings it up.)
Yes, that was totally a concern. We were just worried about her! She kept saying and doing things that implied that she had those sort of issues (either that or she was fishing for compliments, as Layla mentions, which absolutely doesn’t sound like something she would do). And, despite having been subsequently denied, panel 2 taken by itself does still certainly seem to strongly imply that she actually does think that way. And part of the problem is that there are so many RL Tabithas who do have such issues. Which is an outrage! Um…according to someone I know..who has a friend…who totally has a thing for Science-y girls with glasses. Which increases cuteness by a minimum of 5000%! According to my acquaintance’s friend, of course. 😉
I know that I, personally, tend to find girls in glasses at least 10% cuter than if they weren’t wearing glasses. I have only seen exactly 1 person (randomly in the shops) who was wearing glasses and I assumed would look cuter without them, and it was purely because her nose was so small that it seemed non-existent due to her glasses. Which might have just been the pair of glasses she was wearing/needed, as I don’t remember it very well, but still.