Monday, March 14, 2016

Sass Juice- part 2

This is a continuation of the previous Sass Juice comic post. After posting the first panel to my Deviant Art I had a side idea come to mind of Whakara snatching the tea pot and stating with thrill, "Stand back, I've got sass juice!"

I mentioned I was tempted to draw this concept, and got the green light from Atlasavion who's all for the idea, loving the cuteness of the first comic and obviously in agreement to see her character behave so oddly.

Extra dialogue came to mind during the art process, and a few more expressive panels were applied to this scene, including the oh so suave looking face of Whakara on the first panel to the right (an accident that turned out great).

Pearllight can only be thankful the tea isn't caffeinated, feeling awkward from Whakara's sudden display of passion towards tea he believes to be magical. In truth, Whakara doesn't know that the tea he's holding has no magical powers to make one sassy, but it's boosting his confidence into believing he can be, hence why Pearl doesn't say anything.

Look at him, no longer holding up his pinkie, but chugging down the drink like a typical dude. I'm completely amused by a scene of a big old Toa drinking from a pretty little tea pot.
About the art process. I set down my base sketches to figure out pose. Since I was working on this late at night, I was having trouble deciding on which pose seemed to work better, and tackled the second one to the right first. 

I was trying to pick the pose that expressed the most excitement, but then found my first sketch was more in favor with the scene. More about that further down...
 
 
So I drew my line art over the second sketch, feeling it expressed a sense of triumph, and made Whakara grin at the sky as he shakes the teapot about. It was pretty basic, and it took me a few tries to get the right expression on his face. During one of those tries my hand did what it wanted, and out came suave Whakara (right). Instantly the tone of dialogue in my mind changed from excited and crazy, to smooth and charming, his expression giving me the giggles, suave enough to make certain Bionicle fan girls squee (at least it sort of did for me). :P

I was stuck with a sudden question of what I should do. I couldn't part with suave Whakara, but that expression didn't make the first bit of dialogue sound right, and I started hearing other words go through my mind. I knew I needed to keep the first expression so the words sounded right, so I found a way to include his suave face by making an extra panel that carried the scene and made it more amusing (happy accident).

I cropped Whakara's suave face, and extra dialogue came to mind, making me laugh all the more, resulting in the final outline (left) of the first base sketch.

I then was having trouble deciding if the pose did the words justice, and so I decided to outline the original sketch to see which I liked more (resulting in the right image above).
After looking at these two outlines for a bit, I was given feedback that the one on the right was better in the sense of Whakara seeming to value the tea more, and behaving in a more sassy manner as he walks off with Pearllight's tea, disregarding her as she watches awkwardly from a distance.

I don't plan to let the first outline go to waste, I'm making plans on where I can use that particular pose of Whakara, and am considering a side joke of him holding up that tea pot like a weapon towards another OC character of Atlasavion named Sorza, a character from the same universe as Whakara. The future title for that concept art piece may be "Too Late For Tea".

Side trivia. I knew that if the first outline would have been voted as better, I would have used the second outline in a picture of it's own where Whakara is speaking to the teapot, stating, "We're gonna be best friends."

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