Let's Read: MTDAA the RPG Part 3d

Finally finishing part 3 (pages 34-45)... there is very little that is mechanical in nature (excepting the rules for promotion), and much of this is background/setting/flavor. I LOVE it. In a few pages, I get the gist of the world and the tone the game strives for. I had previously tried to use a set of comic book pages to establish the tone of the game, and that was successful... but this is much stronger. I like a lot of this very much. There's not much I see that could be improved upon. It's quite solid.

On a related topic, I like how the art holds up. I can see that in some ways, art has come around to me - the black and white style I used is now comparable to black and white anime comics in many ways. The entire industry has shifted in a direction that is favorable to me; while there was the expectation twenty years ago that a 'real' comic would be full color, this is no longer the case, and black-and-white work earns shelf space and younger readers. Those are big wins in my book.

I do see an opportunity in my work to layer in gray-scale backgrounds. I like how the characters are in black and white line work, but some of my favorite images put these against a textured background. I can now simply drop in shades of gray to backgrounds to create fuller-looking images where the foreground characters pop better. Some of my images run into a little trouble where the background has the same line weights and texturing as the characters, making for more visually muddy images. It's never BAD, but sometimes it's a little work to separate the character from a piece of rock or blade of grass; using gray backgrounds would solve a lot, and actually be much easier to create. I spent a lot of time cross-hatching sky and ground and walls; that would all just be a drop of gray (or a few shades thereof) - easy peasy.

I do see the possibility of getting my process down to maybe 2 hours per page (or even one and a half hours), which makes the idea of re-launching a comic a little more enticing. If I can turn out a few pages a week with a moderate time commitment, that might be worth pursuing. I might pop together a short story or two just to try this out and see how it goes... 

Edit: I threw together this drawing in about four minutes... this is not bad at all for the basic look of the comic going forward. Wheels are turning...