Another inch forward. Notice that the volcano demon has red shoes. How she’s floating, I do not know. It just seems that a magical volcano demon should be able to float a little while she’s releasing all of the Moai from the spell she cast on them when she was in an evil mood.
Today I advanced not one, but two inches. I was able to leave my contract job an hour early, which gave me an opportunity to put more time into….yes, page 61. Once I polish up the floating cat, I’ll be able to move on to page 62! Although, when I look at the position of the cat, she’s too close to the margin. I’ll have to shrink the page and more everything to the right. I’ll also have to fill in the margins.
And, in this picture I gave her a tail. I’m going to go back to every page she appears in and add a tail.
Another sketch of the Moai waking up
Page 60 is going to show the volcano demon releasing the Moai from her 400-year old spell. This picture shows some of the Moai waking up, including two female Moai. As far as I know, all of the existing moai on Easter Island are statues of men. In my book, women and children are also moai.
Almost done… I think I need more flowers, and some highlights to perk up the picture. And I have to add in Dylan’s soccer ball. Tomorrow…
These pages show that page 58 leads to the volcano demon visiting the site of the destruction she has wrought. She has a lot of bad deeds to account for.
I re-story-boarded this pages to see if they move the story forward in a sensible way. The top picture shows the volcano demon promising to remove the curse on all of the Moai so they can go back to their regular lives. The middle picture shows her apologizing to Tupa’s father and on the right, we see the volcano demon playing soccer with her friends. The last picture shows her doing a bicycle kick, which she always wanted to do.
I realize that I need to add a page where she says, “I’m so happy to have friends. If I get all crazy and start turning people into statues, just pour a buck of water on me!”
Page 44 again, with Tuca and Betty smoothed out, and a new cat condo for the volcano demon, The cat condo is quite small in an A5 page. I’m concerned that it may be seen as a smudge in the print version. The following pages will show a close-up view of the volcano demon’s little palace.
Today I revised a few pages to include the poisonous green gas that the volcano is venting. Pages 42 & 43 — the sketchy page and the reference photo — will show Tuca carrying Betty up to the mouth of the volcano. Think of Sam carrying Frodo to the top of Mount Doom. It’s corny, but I like corny.
The reference picture show a first responder carrying a fallen soldier using the fireman’s carry. The interesting feature of this method of carrying someone is that you need only one arm to manage three of the victim’s limbs. Your other arm is free to carry something else. Damn cool, I say. Tuca will need that free arm to carry that bucket of water.
I was inspired by Wally Wood’s White-Ben-Day/Dark-foreground
Having lots of dialog means drawing characters talking. Making sure that they’re interesting visually is a challenge. I was inspired by Wally Wood’s 22 panels that always work for my page 35 image. When I finish this page, Betty will be looking seriously darkened, and hopefully the picture will be interesting. Every time I draw Betty Burro, I remind myself never to create a character with long ears! They’re complicated.
Page 34 with flat colors
I was going for a fisheye kind of look to make this picture more visually interesting, with close objects very large and distant objects weirdly smaller and distorted.The big hands are the most eye-catching part of the picture. I’ll add the shadows and background tomorrow.
